Advice for a Newbie

Bryden88

Hi, I've had CC since oh around 2006, that said, I've never really taken the time to use it.
I'm trying to make a map of the world I'm writing my fantasy stories in so that I have a good reference, as well as if I of course, one day actually complete my writing projects and try to publish. Anyway, I need some advice.

- I'm focusing on only fleshing out one continent since it is the main setting for my stories. Should I make a map of the entire continent OR should I focus on doing regional maps? The follow up question to that of course is, if I do regional maps, is there a way to combine them to make one big continental map?

- And the second main question. If I do a continent map, and the mountain range is near the coast or a desert is near the coast, how do I get my desert terrain to line up with the default terrain AND/OR get borders around the desert/mountain parts that are infact overlapping the edges of the default terrain?

JimP

My game world surface maps consists of a large number of maps that are 185 miles by 234 miles. They started out years ago as 5mm sheets of paper I scanned into a computer as bmp files. Inserted the bmps into a map template, trace over them, then delete the bmp from the map.

I use html to tie the resulting maps together.

World all 12 is one of them. There are 14 such pages on my site. Some of the thumbnails look out of place as I tried multiple mapping styles. I am slowly fixing that.

The template and bitmap fills I use for my surface maps are here: Color chart, bitmap fills I use

The tutorial I wrote to make sure such maps match on their edges, roads, rivers, etc: joining maps

I hope that answers all of your questions.

mfrizzell

Just got CC3 world pack last weekend and really like it but having a bit of difficulty figuring out a couple of things. Hoping someone here can help.

1. How do you or can you import your own images as symbols, floor textures or wall textures. I have an extensive collection I've built up in the last few years and wouldn't want to waste them.
2. I was working on doing a cave complex and it has a small river flowing through it. What is the best way to add that. I tried the water but it does a smooth polygon which doesn't look right and I'm not sure how you would feather the edges to make it look more natural.

Any help would be much appreciated. I've spent some time leaching all of your excellent maps off this site and want to be able to give back to the community.

Thanks very much,
Mike

JimP

1) The bitmap fills I mention above are pngs created by someone.

2) You can fractalize an object like a river of continent. Look on the left side of CC3 for an icon just to the right of the firecracker. Hover your moust over it. The tooltip should show 'fractalize'. I would be careful and not fractalize too much.

Ralf

Hi there and welcome to the Profantasy community,

@Bryden88

- Concerning whether to do regional or continental maps, that's really a matter of taste and what focus your stories have.
- To attach a terrain fill to the coast (or a border to an exiting terrain), use the "Trace" function of the drawing tools. Take a look at the command line. After you've started a drawing tool and clicked the first point it tells you to hit "T" to trace an existing entity.

@mfrizzell

1. There are two separate functions to import your bitmaps, depending on how you want to use them. Note that you need the images in png format. BMP (Windows bitmap) is also possible, but png is much better.
a) If you want to import bitmaps as symbols, use "Symbols > Import pngs...". You can also just open your folder with the pngs in the catalog window, but this won't give you the general symbol functionality for them.
b) If you want to import bitmaps as fill styles, use "Tools > Import bitmap fill styles".

2.
a) You can change an exiting polygon from being smooth to a fractalized one, as Jim describes. If you want to change the water drawing tool itself. Click "ADvanced" in the drawing tool dialog and change the "Draw method" accordingly.
b) If you want to soften the edge of the water, you can add an "Edge Fade Inner" effect to the WATER sheet. Open the sheet and effects dialog, select WATER, activate sheet effects and add the appropriate effect to the sheet.

Hope that helps.

JimP

The template I have linked above shows a list, under Tools -> Bitmap styles with the pngs added in with various names. I used various color bitmaps, as you can see from the color chart pages, to show contours on my surface maps. To see the bitmap fils in the template you will have to also download the zip containing the fills and install them. it has been a long time, and I forget the path/folders the fills have to be in to show up in the template. I modified them on my Vista computer so CC3 wouldn't be in C:\Program Files. So you may have to try several placements to get them to show up.

Sigh. Maybe I just need take some spare time... and type up more tutorials. Hmm... Maybe I can go somewhere and get some 'spare time'.

mfrizzell

@mfrizzell

1. There are two separate functions to import your bitmaps, depending on how you want to use them. Note that you need the images in png format. BMP (Windows bitmap) is also possible, but png is much better.
a) If you want to import bitmaps as symbols, use "Symbols > Import pngs...". You can also just open your folder with the pngs in the catalog window, but this won't give you the general symbol functionality for them.
b) If you want to import bitmaps as fill styles, use "Tools > Import bitmap fill styles".

Thank you very much for the info, what I'm trying to accomplish is the bitmap import. I have thousands of ground textures images that I've collected for the past couple of years. I've previously made maps using GIMP and in Maptools. Mapttols is very easy but seriously limited and GIMP is not easy nor fast. I'm loving CC3 with DD3. So what I want is to be able to import the png's and then have them show in the right click for either floors or walls. I've tried importing through the tools but it doesn't show up in either walls or floors. I even opened the filter to just * but the imported file was not in the list.
Your help is very much appreciated.

Ralf

The new bitmap fills won't show up right away as wall and floor drawing tools. You'll have to create those:

- Right-click the Floors drawing tool button, click "Advanced".
- Select an existing floor drawing tool.
- Click "New" and give your new tool a matching name. Leave it starting with "Floor," so it shows up under that tool.
- Click "Properties" and under "Use fill style" choose the bitmap fill you've imported into the map from the dropdown list.
- Save the tool.

You can also create a floor (or wall) drawing tool using the "current fill" by choosing the *current settings* option as the fill style. This tool will always use the current fill style you've set through the fill styles dialog.

Hope that helps.

mfrizzell

Much appreciated worked like a champ. Uh oh, this only works for the current drawing right? When I open a new drawing those aren't there anymore. The tools are there just not the fills. I

Ralf

Exactly, you'll need to get the bitmap fills into the map again. There is an easy way to do this though:

- use Draw > Insert File to import your old map (which already has the fills) into the new map, then erase it again (use Undo, or select by Prior). This will create all the bitmap fills in the map.

JimP

Or you can add them to a template... and do a save as for the fct file and use that for your surface maps.