I'm only just getting started on this, Tony. I need to get the whole set together and release it all in one go, but it has to be practically flawless first.
hehe, I understand that completely. I know my isometric tudor buildings aren't flawless but they were as close as I could get considering I really don't understand the maths behind perspectives. I just went by looks.
Posted By: Tonnichiwahehe, I understand that completely. I know my isometric tudor buildings aren't flawless but they were as close as I could get considering I really don't understand the maths behind perspectives. I just went by looks.
Math ? I just use windage. Well, can't use too much windage, if I did, my buildings would all lean way over, like they were going to fall.
Had one of those lightbulb ideas earlier this evening, and it seems to sort out the shading. One grey shape and a map file.
I also haven't forgotten the waterfalls and all the other little projects I've got flying around in my head. It just might take a bit of time to get them ALL finished.
I have some work to do with them yet. There is a reason I set them up on a white background - I haven't worked out how to colour them in yet, and on a textured background they do look a bit odd.
That shape just kind of happened when I pasted three of the same mountain symbols together in a ring to make sure the shading worked. It must do - or you wouldn't have seen it as a single shape, but three individual pastes of the same shape.
I intend (once I figure out how to correctly colour the things), to create a set of useful shapes that can be rotated to create all kinds of geographical forms.
Why, thank you Jim, but I'm not really a very good cartographer. I'm more of a... well... I'm not entirely sure I know, but whatever it is it spends a long time messing around with symbols and trying to invent new tricks :P
And if I ever live to make a tenth of the maps you have made I'll probably be about 200 years old!
Oh, well, I dashed most of my maps off in CC2 days. My players never saw them unless they looked at my web site. Those maps have mostly been replaced with CC3/CC3+ ones.
On a gaming forum, I was told my site was 'too busy'. Turns out they thought I had too many maps... It was long enough ago I don't remember their exact response, but when I replied to their second contact that I was just getting started, at around 2,300 maps then, they never replied back. I did think at one point, when I was much younger, I could make all of Crestar as 1" = 2,000 feet maps, backpacking level, but I realized very quickly it was take me at least another life time to do that. So I decded to just detail some bits of Crestar.
I remember working it out for someone at the Guild who wanted to employ a cartographer to map an entire fantasy world at dungeon scale.
If it takes a day to do each dungeon map, and each of them is a square mile, and the fantasy world is about the size of the Earth, you would need about...
habitable surface area of the Earth = 24,642,757 square miles... That's 67,514 years, or divided by 50 (approximate working life of a dedicated and totally obsessed cartographer), 1,350 lifetimes.
Yeah, one store gamer tried to tell me his character could do about 15 to 20 different things in one combat round... which is 6 seconds. I got a puzzled look on my face, then laughed. ( From what other people in the store told me later. ) He stomped off to tell the store owner, who listened then laughed. He left the store.
I wanted to tell him he might be able to do all that in 12 combat rounds, but he never came back.
Loopysue tentatively remarked:...I'm not really a very good cartographer. I'm more of a... well... I'm not entirely sure I know, but whatever it is it spends a long time messing around with symbols and trying to invent new tricks :P
The word you're looking for Sue would be "artist", to which I suspect most of us here would want to qualify further with a term such as "excellent", "brilliant", or "amazing".
And that crater looks deeply suspiciously regular, as if created by some advanced terraforming civilisation... Or maybe it's just Slartibartfast's signature
Partly solved the colour problem, but still a way to go yet.
At the moment these mountains rely on the fact that they are placed on a particular background texture, which is the same base texture underneath the colour shading in the heart of each symbol.
The symbols are very hard edged to eradicate a glowing fringe that occurred when I tried fading them out like the bases of isometric mountains. There may be something that can be done about this. Maybe someone who knows more than I do about map files could tell me?
Let me start this saying your mountain ranges are simply great, but i´m not too sold on the colouring.
Considering that the mountains look realistic, i´d try to go for a more realistic approach: snow in the "highest" peaks, or simply grey, and then some downgrade to the background you want to place. The picture on the right feels better than the left one maybe due that. but i know you and i´m sure you´re already improving yourself
Great to see you around again, and thanks for the honest opinion
There will eventually be lots of different kinds to choose from, these are just the start - prototypes, if you like. And you are right, I'm constantly trying new things.
Ok, so... there is a pretty big problem with the mountain symbols I made above, in that the base has to be a hard line. That's because the map file (the blue and red one that tells CC3 how to shade the mountain) does some very strange things if any of the pixels in the graphic file (the coloured one that's visible on the drawing) are semi-transparent - a faded edge to blend things in with one another.
This means the resulting hard-edged mountains have to be sat on a perfectly matched background to make it look as if they are seamlessly part of the ground - elevations rather than just strange coloured blobs dotted around the place.
I discovered that I could solve this problem using en Edge Fade Inner sheet effect on the SYMBOLS mountains sheet to give them their faded edge, but these are home-made symbols. The built in symbols of the Herwin Wielink style absolutely will not respond to the EFI effect, even though they are on the very same sheet.
I don't understand why this is happening. Is it that some part of the process of making a catalogue file causes the symbols to become unresponsive to sheet effects? I'm trying to work out if I can carry on assuming the EFI will continue to work once the symbols I've made are shared.
This is a screen shot showing the edge of one of my top view mountains (too dark, but this is only a prototype) nicely faded into the paper background using the EFI on the SYMBOLS mountains sheet, while the two HW symbols I've pasted to the left of it remain unaffected.
This is caused by CC3+ treating symbols with maps differently from other symbols. The content of a sheet is drawn in multiple passes, and the last thing that happens (after effects have been applied) is that symbols are being drawn on top, effectively cancelling out any effects that operates on the inside of the symbol edge. Symbols with maps are not treated this way.
This behavior can be turned off by setting DELAYDRAWSYM to 0, but that isn't a good idea, since that breaks compatibility for existing maps and may make them look different, that is more of a workaround tool for spesific circumstances.
So I can assume that if the mountains I'm making work with an EFI for me, then they will carry on working with an EFI for everyone else. That's great news - brilliant in fact, since the last great barrier for me has just been blown away!
Unless Profantasy change their policy about how shaded symbols are treated/processed at some point in the future, everything should be fine
About policy change, that is a big question actually. A change would have enabled many effects to work with symbols today that don't, but there are some downsides too (which is why it is the way it is today). Any change would also break old maps, which isn't good. Newer maps actually do contain within them the version number of the version that made them, so in the future, it is actually possible to handle maps differently based on this. This kind of behavior creates another layer of complexity and unpredictability though, so I don't know if it is a good idea.
If you want symbols that will react to sheet effects, but which don't currently behave that way, what about creating a dummy map file for each one? The file would be completely transparent and exactly the same size as the symbol file. It wouldn't be all that large because totally transparent files never are.
Comments
I'm only just getting started on this, Tony. I need to get the whole set together and release it all in one go, but it has to be practically flawless first.
That's just one of my pet 'things'.
Had one of those lightbulb ideas earlier this evening, and it seems to sort out the shading. One grey shape and a map file.
I also haven't forgotten the waterfalls and all the other little projects I've got flying around in my head. It just might take a bit of time to get them ALL finished.
I have some work to do with them yet. There is a reason I set them up on a white background - I haven't worked out how to colour them in yet, and on a textured background they do look a bit odd.
Hmmm... I was also thinking maybe subsidence, but that wouldn't work for that shape.
I intend (once I figure out how to correctly colour the things), to create a set of useful shapes that can be rotated to create all kinds of geographical forms.
I'm looking forward to the shapes you make with this.
And if I ever live to make a tenth of the maps you have made I'll probably be about 200 years old!
On a gaming forum, I was told my site was 'too busy'. Turns out they thought I had too many maps... It was long enough ago I don't remember their exact response, but when I replied to their second contact that I was just getting started, at around 2,300 maps then, they never replied back. I did think at one point, when I was much younger, I could make all of Crestar as 1" = 2,000 feet maps, backpacking level, but I realized very quickly it was take me at least another life time to do that. So I decded to just detail some bits of Crestar.
I remember working it out for someone at the Guild who wanted to employ a cartographer to map an entire fantasy world at dungeon scale.
If it takes a day to do each dungeon map, and each of them is a square mile, and the fantasy world is about the size of the Earth, you would need about...
habitable surface area of the Earth = 24,642,757 square miles... That's 67,514 years, or divided by 50 (approximate working life of a dedicated and totally obsessed cartographer), 1,350 lifetimes.
He still didn't get the point!
I wanted to tell him he might be able to do all that in 12 combat rounds, but he never came back.
And that crater looks deeply suspiciously regular, as if created by some advanced terraforming civilisation... Or maybe it's just Slartibartfast's signature
Thank you guys
At the moment these mountains rely on the fact that they are placed on a particular background texture, which is the same base texture underneath the colour shading in the heart of each symbol.
The symbols are very hard edged to eradicate a glowing fringe that occurred when I tried fading them out like the bases of isometric mountains. There may be something that can be done about this. Maybe someone who knows more than I do about map files could tell me?
Considering that the mountains look realistic, i´d try to go for a more realistic approach: snow in the "highest" peaks, or simply grey, and then some downgrade to the background you want to place. The picture on the right feels better than the left one maybe due that. but i know you and i´m sure you´re already improving yourself
Great to see you around again, and thanks for the honest opinion
There will eventually be lots of different kinds to choose from, these are just the start - prototypes, if you like. And you are right, I'm constantly trying new things.
Ok, so... there is a pretty big problem with the mountain symbols I made above, in that the base has to be a hard line. That's because the map file (the blue and red one that tells CC3 how to shade the mountain) does some very strange things if any of the pixels in the graphic file (the coloured one that's visible on the drawing) are semi-transparent - a faded edge to blend things in with one another.
This means the resulting hard-edged mountains have to be sat on a perfectly matched background to make it look as if they are seamlessly part of the ground - elevations rather than just strange coloured blobs dotted around the place.
I discovered that I could solve this problem using en Edge Fade Inner sheet effect on the SYMBOLS mountains sheet to give them their faded edge, but these are home-made symbols. The built in symbols of the Herwin Wielink style absolutely will not respond to the EFI effect, even though they are on the very same sheet.
I don't understand why this is happening. Is it that some part of the process of making a catalogue file causes the symbols to become unresponsive to sheet effects? I'm trying to work out if I can carry on assuming the EFI will continue to work once the symbols I've made are shared.
This is a screen shot showing the edge of one of my top view mountains (too dark, but this is only a prototype) nicely faded into the paper background using the EFI on the SYMBOLS mountains sheet, while the two HW symbols I've pasted to the left of it remain unaffected.
Can anyone solve the puzzle for me?
Symbols with maps are not treated this way.
This behavior can be turned off by setting DELAYDRAWSYM to 0, but that isn't a good idea, since that breaks compatibility for existing maps and may make them look different, that is more of a workaround tool for spesific circumstances.
Thank you so much, Remy!
It all makes sense now
I completely 'get it'.
So I can assume that if the mountains I'm making work with an EFI for me, then they will carry on working with an EFI for everyone else. That's great news - brilliant in fact, since the last great barrier for me has just been blown away!
Unless Profantasy change their policy about how shaded symbols are treated/processed at some point in the future, everything should be fine
About policy change, that is a big question actually. A change would have enabled many effects to work with symbols today that don't, but there are some downsides too (which is why it is the way it is today). Any change would also break old maps, which isn't good.
Newer maps actually do contain within them the version number of the version that made them, so in the future, it is actually possible to handle maps differently based on this. This kind of behavior creates another layer of complexity and unpredictability though, so I don't know if it is a good idea.
But it would be one way of generating a lot more possibilities
If you want symbols that will react to sheet effects, but which don't currently behave that way, what about creating a dummy map file for each one? The file would be completely transparent and exactly the same size as the symbol file. It wouldn't be all that large because totally transparent files never are.