Learnings from CA155 One Day World Builder and CA181 Fractal Worlds

Sean Nelson

I have spent a ton of time playing with FT3+ and CC+ the last few weeks, specifically with the CA155 One Day Mapping Guide and the very recent CA181 Fractal Worlds.

I have discovered a few tricks along the way I thought I would share. A big thank you to everyone involved in creating FT3+ and the Annuals and Styles as they are perfect for what I have been struggling with.

Here are some learnings (some already on this board on other places).

Ft3+ View Navigation: Finding the right view in FT3 was always tricky, but it seems even trickier in FT3+. I noticed when you grab the globe to move it to a new view, it seems to snap somewhere else, and if you place Lat and Long coordinates in a projection it does not go where you expect.

Here is what to do: (1) make sure your View Properties window is open (find that in View->Toolbars and Docking windows). (2) note the latitude and longitude of the location you want by moving your mouse to the desired location. (3) Click on Change Projection and enter the Lat and Long in the window BUT - reverse the sign on the Lat. So if the spot you want is on -45 Lat you enter 45 Lat (or vice versa). Your projection should now center on the area you want. (4) Save the view by going View->Add View

Ft3+ Rivers: It has already been noted on this board that the river creation process in FT3+ is hit and miss. I found, if you are following the One Day Mapping Guide, to run the Find River process before Burning In sometimes works. What really helped is something I saw on a thread on this board. After I finished the One Day process I had some nice rivers, but I expected more.

Then I learned on another thread I could open the world in the old FT3 version (not the + version) and run the River Tool there. It created the amount of rivers I expected. Then I saved the world and went back to using FT3+. The river migration into CC3+ and style described in CA181 works well

Jerion Extracts Crashing CC3+: This one bugged more for a while. Off and on I found when I tried a CC3+ file that had been extracted from FT3+ using the new _CC3+_Jerion style, it would crash my CC3+ app.

Here is what I found out: The crashing of CC3+ was only related to the preview of the file in the open menu command. What I mean is, when I opened CC3+ and clicked open file, and scrolled through the various .fcw files, the system would crash when I chose a _Jerion extract from FT3+. To avoid the problem, I opened the file from windows by clicking on it, rather than by opening CC3+. Once I did that I had no issues.

I hope some of this helps.