Achievements?

LeeB

I read the following article about X-box style achievements being introduced to non-game software to encourage adoption, best practices and continued use (plus a bit of competition between users):

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-01-19-microsoft-adds-achievements-to-visual-studio-software

When I read it, it got me thinking about what achievements we could include in CC3 to encourage 'good' cartography and the use of the CC3 product(s). Plus a little healthy competition amongst cartographers couldn't hurt to stimulate creativity and community :-)

Off the top of my head, I thought of achievements along the lines of:

1) Create an overland map of various minimum target sizes (e.g,. 200x200, 1,000x1,000, 10,000x10,000, ...).
2) Create at least one map using each of the templates.
3) Create a map using a map style from an Annual.
4) Create a map containing more than a target number of different symbols (10, 20, 50, ...).
5) Share a target number of maps on the forum (1, 5, 10, 25, ...).
6) Complete the tutorial.
7) Subscribe to the Map Making Made Easy YouTube Channel.
8) Produce a dungeon map.
9) Produce a city map.
10) Produce a cosmograph.
11) Spend more than a target number of hours editing and tweaking a single map (edit time above 1 hour, 5 hours, 10 hours, 100 hours, ...).

And so on.

Just a thought,
Lee

JimP

We've had symbol contests in the past. i enjoyed them... even though I had to be dragged kicking and screaming into makig symbols. :-)

I don't think I would have time, but we'll see.

I'll add that videos don't work for me. Text is better.

Torg Smith

That takes development resources to do. I would prefer they spent those hours trying to simplify map creation. It still takes a lot of effort to make nice maps. They have done great work so far, but there is still plenty of room for simplification.

JimP

I've mapped just over one thousand eight hundred maps, on Crestar and my starship site. They vary in quality as I learned the software. Someday I'll go back and update the older ones. Not much done in the past 3-5 years, I haven't had the time.

I've looked at, one recently, other mapping programs and I find them lacking. Most have incredibly bad documentation. Or no docs at all.

CC2, and CC3, are far far better.

I realize that the interface, based on FastCAD, is detailed. But the excellent documentation available from Profantasy helps greatly.

Note that I don't use effects, and do use some of the older symbols on my maps, as I came up with a style I prefer. I can just imagine changing all my maps to a style that uses effects... but that would give me nightmares due to the work involved.

A few years ago Allyn suggested I change my jpgs to pngs, which I did. I think it was a most excellent idea. Allyn is one of the CC3 mapping gurus, but Allyn hasn't posted in a long time. I miss Allyn being here.

Torg Smith

I created a new thread about my ideas so as to not derail this one.

http://forum.profantasy.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=2707

Simon Rogers

This achievement idea is pretty good, but very hard to automate. How would it work in practice? We could do some little icons if that helps.

Monsen

Maybe a web-based system, based on what you share, and not what you create? After all, we wish to encourage people to make good maps, not create a map of a certain style just to get the achievement.

We could even have achievement for "best map/symbol/macro/ of the month/year", as voted by other community members, thus having achievements that are actually a bit difficult to get, since they require you to not only make a good map, but one that is good compared to others.