Hi All

Sam Crow

Sam here...I had CC way back around 2000, and have just bought CC3, FT3, CD, DD, and the annuals (yikes!)

So I've been trying to spend a lot of time learning its intricacies in the last week or so. Needless to say I have a lot of questions (I am no graphic designer).

I've started a map using Jon Roberts style (which I think is awesome!)

Some questions...but before I ask them, please bear with me (and correct me) on my use of terms, which, no doubt, will be wrong).

Is it possible to change the color/style of landmasses I've already created?

What I mean is...I drew the land mass (on the Land sheet) using the default color. Now I'd like to change the entire land color/style to forest. Is there a way to do that?

Thanks in advance.

Monsen

Absolutely. There are two basic options I would recommend for this task.

1. If there exists a drawing tool in the style you wish to change your landmass into, then right-click the change properties button, and select the "Change like draw tool" option. Now right click to get up the list of drawing tools, select one, then select your landmass, then right click and select "Do It".

2. Or, more simply, click the change properties button, select your landmass, right click and select do it, and select the new fill style/color from the dialog that appears. Note that if your landmass has an outline, you must be careful so that you don't select that one at the same time. Best way to do this is to exclude black entities by using the Not operator when you do the selection (See the editing chapter in the manual for more details about the selection process)

Sam Crow

Thanks for your quick reply! I'll give it a shot. I find that there's so much that you can do, it gets confusing and I get bogged down in inertia.

Sam Crow

hmm...how do I select the landmass without selecting everything else? I drag the box just on the land, but it doesn't select it. Here...I'll post a pic of what I'm talking about.

Monsen

Don't drag. It is easier to select entities by clicking on their edge. Also, make use of the selection modifiers (and, or, not) to get more precise control of your selections. If you are unsure how to use these, I strongly recommend you read through the editing chapter in the manual.

Sam Crow

Arg. This is actually starting to get frustrating. I've now read the quickstart guide, the essentials guide, the user's (78 page) guide, and watched Sweeney's online video tutorial more than once.

The one thing I can't seem to figure out is the commands. It seems like every time I click a tool it does something different! For exmaple, the change properties tool. I want to change the fill style of a sea. I click the tool, select the entitity and one type of screen comes up. If i do it again, using the exact same procedure, a different screen comes up. Or the sea turns white. It's pretty frustrating because I cannot figure out why the program behaves a different way when I click the same command.

I imagine once I get used to it, it will be okay but it's eating up a lot of my time trying to learn it and CC3 is NOT very user friendly.

JimP

I always go into the layers dialog and freeze everything I'm not working on. Makes the selection process to move or change fill styles, etc. much easier.

Keen

Sam when you installed did you make sure to right click the install files and hit "run as administrator" assuming your on windows 7

objects turn white when selected then right click to "do it" you can click redraw after to see the result

Sam Crow

I believe I did. Here's what I mean...

I want to change the fill style and color of my seas.

I bring up SHEET: SEA and LAYER: COAST/SEA

I click the CHANGE PROPERTIES button.

The square selection cursor comes up.

I select the sea by clicking on its border.

The command line says: "1 Entity Selected"

I click do it.

A CHANGE PROPERTIES window comes up.

I select color (BLUE 55).

The sea turns blue.

I click the CHANGE PROPERTIES button again.

This time an ENTITY PROPERTIES menu comes up.

Why is it CHANGE PROPERTIES the first time and ENTITY PROPERTIES the second time?

Thanks agin.

Shessar

This is not normal behavior. I'm not sure what would cause this, so I'm just bumping this post in case Monsen, Ralf, or Simon comes through the forum.

If you don't hear from them here on the forum, try contacting ProFantasy directly with this issue. They are always very helpful in getting problems like this sorted out.
Technical Support

Monsen

Are you SURE you clicked on the same button each time. The Change Properties and Edit Properties buttons do look quite similar, but they do not work the same way. The major difference between these two button is that the latter only works on a single entity (so it skips the "do it" step), and it show the entity properties box instead of the change properties box.

Sam Crow

Yeah I'm sure; there is only one of them on my interface (the CHANGE PROPERTIES button). Edit...that's not true...the other one is down there near the bottom. Sorry. Maybe I need to switch to beginner interface to avoid confusion?

Monsen

The simple interface is less confusing, because it contains way less buttons, but on the other hand it doesn't contain all the features either. I'll say use the interface you feel more comfortable with. If you prefer to switch to the simple interface, use that for a while until you are more comfortable with everything, then switch back to the full interface.

Sam Crow

Thanks much for your help. CC3 is great when you know how to use it, I imagine. But the same concept still eludes me.

For example; now I want to outline my seas.

I click ONLINE IN CURRENT COLOR, and it outlines in one color. If I click REPEAT SLAT COMMAND on a different sea, it outlines in black or a different color. It just seems to do different things each time. I know its operator error, but it still escapes me why this happens.

Edit...and then, for example, if I want to change to OUTLINE IN BLACK, I follow the same procedure (except, of course, I select OUTLINE IN BLACK), but the sea remains outlined in the prior color. Another Edit...I see that you need to use "CHANGE OUTLINE COLOR," correct?

Monsen

The current color refers to the currently selected color (see color swatch to the right of the sheet indicator), so if the color has changed between the invocation of the command, it will use a different color Always make sure this shows the correct color before executing the command, as the current color is often changed by other commands and tools.

Sam Crow

Alright, last question then I'll hush I promise. Where is the "Character Menu?" That phrase does not appear in the User Guide, and the Help menu does not say where it is; only what it does.

Monsen

The Character Menu is only available if you have installed the Character Artist Pro addon. If you have this add-on installed, you can click the character artist button in the main toolbar to load the menu and toolbar sets for CA, and the character menu will now be visible between the symbol and info menus (the menu that appears in this spot depends on the currently active add-on, and contain add-on specific commands)

Sam Crow

Okay, then I don't know how to change the outline color of my seas. The help menu and guide says that using the OUTLINE command won't change the color; rather, it just adds a separate entity.

Monsen

That is true, the OUTLINE command adds a separate entity. If you need to change the color of this outline entity, simply use Change Properties on it.

Sam Crow

Thanks again Monsen; your patience is very much appreciated.

Sam Crow

I guess I figure why start another thread. Things are actually coming along, but I have another question. I'd like to change my fill style from Herwin Wielink to Jon Roberts. I selected Herwin Wielink as map style to begin with. Can I change to Roberts now? I know I can use Roberts symbols, but can't figure out how to change the fill style (EDIT PROPERTIES doesn't have the option of changing to different Annual). Yes I have bought both; love both but Wielink gets pixelated up close.

Monsen

First, go to drawing properties, and change the style of the map. This affects which tools are available.
Now, to change for example the landmass. Right click the change properties button, and select "Change like draw tool". Right click to bring up the list of drawing tools. Now select the new landmass style you wish to use. Now, simply select all your landmasses, then right click and select do it. All the selected entities will change style to the new one.

Do note that by default, the Herwin Wielink template does not contain all the required bitmap fills, so you may need to import these first.
Simplest way to do this is to first create a new Jon Roberts map (Just start a new map, save it, you don't need to draw anything.)
Now, in your actual map, select insert file from the draw menu, then insert the file you just created above. Immediately after inserting it, select Undo (Ctrl+Z). This will undo the insertion, but the fill style definition will remain behind, allowing you to use the jon roberts fills in this map.


Another way of doing it is to copy all the entities (except the background and map border) to a new blank Jon Roberts map, the use the change like draw tool described earlier. This saves you from importing the fill styles, but the entities will see a little bit strange untill you have finished changing them, since this map does not contain the fill style from the Wielink map that your entities used.

Sam Crow

Monsen,

I feel like I would be wasting your time if, every time you helped me, I posted another thank you. So please accept this post as a blanket thank you.

So things are working out, and here's my next question (I think this was alluded to in Sweeney's tutorial video)...

I want to have a large map of 200 miles by 200 miles. I would like it to be comprised of 100 smaller maps of 20 miles by 20 miles. Each of these I would like to be comprised of 100 smaller maps of 2 miles by 2 miles.

Don't worry; I'm not actually going to attempt to draw 201 maps. But what I'm after is varying levels of detail. My goal is to get a general area, then zoom down to the smallest level of detail (2 x 2) and start mapping a particular area. From there, I can work out over time from a particular spot.

So, my question is, can I do a bunch of small maps which I can link to each other? Or, is there another way of doing what I'm trying to do?

Monsen

Well, I can give more than one answer to that questions. But one word of warning before you start, DO NOT attempt to do a division like that. Dividing maps that way creates very artificial borders, and makes the detailed maps more difficult to use. You should definitely draw both overview maps and more detailed maps of local areas, but you should make the more detailed maps based on interesting/needed areas, NOT by artificially dividing it into squares (Oh, and the scheme you described would require you to draw 10,101 maps, not 201).

The best way of handling this is to draw an overview map, then extracting the interesting sections, one by one, and make them more detailed. The process for doing this is given a brief overview in the editing chapter of the CC3 manual (check under the Trace heading in the editing chapter), and a more thorough examination in both the Tome of Ultimate Mapping and one of the annual issues.

When it comes to linking, you can place hyperlinks in maps which can take you to other maps, so you can easily create a point and click atlas for example.

Sam Crow

What do you mean by "very artificial border?" Are you referring to the fact that, for example, the "Kingdom of Blah" would be spread over, for example, 57 tiny maps of very large scale? I can see that as being unwieldy but, for illustration's sake, is it possible to make, for example, a road leave the edge of one map and go onto another?

Monsen

Yes, it is possible to make, but ultimately, quite useless in most cases. What you often end up with is that you have some interesting feature, for example a village that might end up in the middle of your division lines. So instead of having one nice map containing the village, you now need to consult two maps simultaneously to see the village and immediate environs. Perhaps it even ends up on 4 separate maps if you are unfortunate. It is much better to create one detailed map centered on that village instead. The chance that you are going to need every individual detail map is also very slim.
The general advice I would like to give is:
- Create one world/continent/main map
- Create regional maps for the interesting areas on this map. Make sure each regional map has a view that is properly centered to view the entire area. Also remember, there is really no need that all the regional maps depict an area of equal size. As long as you use the same scale, the maps are fully compatible, but it works fine if the large region A is depicted on a 20 by 40 mile map, while the smaller region b is depicted on a 15 by 10 mile map.
- Then, continue with this though, creating local maps from the areas of the regional maps that needs more detail, following the same guidelines as above. You may need to make some extra regional maps, not because the region is interesting, but because it contains areas you wish to have local maps of.

I'll refer you to this topic where this particular issue was also discussed.

(Edit: Don't let me stop you if you are really sure you want it this way, but I will advice you to think this through at least a couple of times before you go ahead)

JimP

Well, I have, and continue to have, a great deal of trouble going from several thousand small maps to one large map.

But I think I have an idea on how to go from one large to several detailed local maps.

Say for example.

You have two nations, oposite sides of a continent. You want adventurers, and merchants, going back and forth. But the resulting detailed maps would be in the thousands.

Instead of detailing all of the continent between those two nations, make strip maps. One for each of the main trading routes, and one for each of the bad guys' paths for getting between the nations. Say 5-7 paths between these two nations.

Results, just a few detailed maps, instead of thousands of them.