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Mountain drawing tools

RalfRalf Administrator, ProFantasy 🖼️ 18 images Mapmaker
in Mapping with ProFantasy's Software
The following came up in Simon's feature request thread:
Posted By: DavarisAs I was laying down mountain ranges last night, I was thinking it would be great to have something like the forest symbol, where you can draw a shape and a nice looking mountain range appears inside it.
This is technically quite possible, but so far good result has eluded me. I toyed around with a mountains drawing tool for the new CC3 vector styles, but scrapped the idea when I couldn't get it to look quite right.

Unzip the attached zip over your CC3 folder, start a map based on the new CC3 Overland BW style and try out the "Terrain Default, Mountains drawing" tool. Choose Draw > Fill with Symbols to see the settings for the filler and toy around with them.

I'm happy for suggestions how to get this to look "right".
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Comments

  • BobajobBobajob
    edited April 2009
    Ralf,
    I tried it out but there was an error. Drawing forests worked, but mountains didn't.

    As I drew out the shape for the mountains, straight lines appeared for the polygon I created, but no curved lines appeared inside it, like they did for the forest. When I right clicked to complete the polygon, there was an error sound and three error boxes appeared.


    Error Box 1:

    CC2

    ChkData has no pending DRQ

    SELREST


    Error Box 2:

    Warning

    Campaign Cartographer 3 cannot perform
    the command:

    MINERALS/MOUNTAINS

    Error Box 3:

    (same as Error Box 2)
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  • RalfRalf Administrator, ProFantasy 🖼️ 18 images Mapmaker
    Hmm... the straight lines coming up are fine. I made the background poly straight in this one, as you don't see it anyway (white on white background).

    As for the second one, please try downloading and extracting the zip again. If the error persists, what settings do you have if you type FORESTOPT at the command line? Does it point to the correct symbol catalog?
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  • BobajobBobajob
    >As for the second one, please try downloading and extracting the zip again.

    I tried it again and got the same error.

    >what settings do you have if you type FORESTOPT at the command line? Does it point to the correct symbol catalog?

    I took a screen shot of it:

    http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/1653/forestopt.png
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  • RalfRalf Administrator, ProFantasy 🖼️ 18 images Mapmaker
    If you select the new mountain drawing tool and click Advanced > Command to execute, what is the macro?

    It should be:

    SELSAVE
    SELBYP
    FORESTLOAD #system\Fillers\CC3B_Mountains.FIL
    FOREST
    CHANGEL MINERALS/MOUNTAINS
    SELREST

    with a line feed at the end.

    Is anybody else having this problem?
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  • BobajobBobajob
    edited April 2009
    This is it:

    SELSAVE
    SELBYP
    FORESTLOAD #system\Fillers\CC3B_Mountains.FIL
    FOREST
    CHANGEL MINERALS/MOUNTAINS
    SELREST


    Should I get a screen grab?
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  • Simon RogersSimon Rogers Administrator, ProFantasy Traveler
    I bet it's a hardwired path in the FIL settings.
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  • RalfRalf Administrator, ProFantasy 🖼️ 18 images Mapmaker
    And of course Simon is right! Thanks, I've fixed the FIL in the zip.
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  • BobajobBobajob
    edited April 2009
    I just tried it out and it looks like it needs more randomness in the selection of peaks, their range and frequency of sizes, spacing and placement. If there was an interface so users could alter these settings, I'm sure some nice results could be achieved. All in all I think the mountain fill tool shows a lot of potential.

    Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

    QuickPost
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  • BobajobBobajob
    edited April 2009
    I just had another idea to add to my suggestion above. How about being able to sketch the shape you want your mountains to take as you draw them in the map? These sketches could take the form of stick figure like forms that the mountains roughly follow depending on randomness factors I mentioned above. If these sketches could be done quickly and chained together (more than one sketch for the program to randomly choose from as it lays down mountains), you could sketch them before you draw a mountain chain (in a particular direction) in the map.
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  • BobajobBobajob
    edited April 2009
    A simpler solution would be to draw the mountain chains as a series of fine lines directly onto the map and when you are finished, pressing a populate with mountains button (with the random position settings I mentioned above) and the mountains would be created along the lines. Its pretty much the same as your draw with polygon method.

    EDIT:

    This thread has something similar to what I imagined.

    FR Moutain Macro
    http://forum.profantasy.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=921&page=1#Item_2
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