Community Atlas - One year in review
Monsen
Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
A little more than a year ago, we started the community atlas project with the intent to create an interactive atlas similar in style to the old Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas. Now, one year and a contest later, we have reached 160 maps, something I feel is quite the success. We still have a way to go to match the 850+ maps of the FRIA, but we also have to remember that those maps are the product of many years of product development.
Personally, I am quite proud of what we have accomplished here together. We have a complete fantasy world with a lot of maps which gamers can use, either the world as it stands, or cherry pick the individual maps they want. It is a great resource, especially since these are CC3+ maps that people can edit themselves, and change to fit into their own campaign. The map itself may be way beyond their skill level to make, but just by changing a few names and such, they have a map for their world, something which is not easy to do when you find maps as image files on the internet. Of course, for the non-CC3+ users we also have hi-res versions of the maps for download. And many of the maps even include helpful lore and descriptions, that can be used for inspiration along with the map.
Now, I think this project is going rather well, but I'll also have to admit that you have basically been playing by my rules here. Many of these rules are for good technical reasons. For example, the reason for limiting artwork use to official ProFantasy stuff and the four community packs allowed us to ensure a much easier experience for those that want to use the atlas. I know the rules around how to use custom artwork (artwork that is distributed with the atlas) may seem a bit cumbersome for some mappers, but it really helps the users, since the atlas can currently be unzipped anywhere on your computer, and everything will just work, user don't have to unzip it in a particular location or manually move artwork folders to their data directory and such.
However, I am a bit curious what you all think about this. Do the project organization as it stands now work for you? Do you have any suggestions for changes that could make things better? Things that should be done differently? Other feedback?
Not everything is easily changeable of course, and I am a bit of a stubborn old goat, but I'll still like to hear what all of you think. Also feel free to ask questions.
Being the stubborn argumentative bastard that I am, I am also probably going to respond to most suggestion with an explanation on why it isn't like this already. Please don't take this as an attempt to shoot down your idea, but more an enlightened look into both my own thought process, as well as insight into the technical side of things which often is a limiting factor. For the current solution I had four concerns:
- Easy for the users to use the atlas.
- Easy and attractive for mappers to submit maps.
- Create a consistent solution.
- Manage this in a way that don't swamp me with work.
Personally, I am quite proud of what we have accomplished here together. We have a complete fantasy world with a lot of maps which gamers can use, either the world as it stands, or cherry pick the individual maps they want. It is a great resource, especially since these are CC3+ maps that people can edit themselves, and change to fit into their own campaign. The map itself may be way beyond their skill level to make, but just by changing a few names and such, they have a map for their world, something which is not easy to do when you find maps as image files on the internet. Of course, for the non-CC3+ users we also have hi-res versions of the maps for download. And many of the maps even include helpful lore and descriptions, that can be used for inspiration along with the map.
Now, I think this project is going rather well, but I'll also have to admit that you have basically been playing by my rules here. Many of these rules are for good technical reasons. For example, the reason for limiting artwork use to official ProFantasy stuff and the four community packs allowed us to ensure a much easier experience for those that want to use the atlas. I know the rules around how to use custom artwork (artwork that is distributed with the atlas) may seem a bit cumbersome for some mappers, but it really helps the users, since the atlas can currently be unzipped anywhere on your computer, and everything will just work, user don't have to unzip it in a particular location or manually move artwork folders to their data directory and such.
However, I am a bit curious what you all think about this. Do the project organization as it stands now work for you? Do you have any suggestions for changes that could make things better? Things that should be done differently? Other feedback?
Not everything is easily changeable of course, and I am a bit of a stubborn old goat, but I'll still like to hear what all of you think. Also feel free to ask questions.
Being the stubborn argumentative bastard that I am, I am also probably going to respond to most suggestion with an explanation on why it isn't like this already. Please don't take this as an attempt to shoot down your idea, but more an enlightened look into both my own thought process, as well as insight into the technical side of things which often is a limiting factor. For the current solution I had four concerns:
- Easy for the users to use the atlas.
- Easy and attractive for mappers to submit maps.
- Create a consistent solution.
- Manage this in a way that don't swamp me with work.
Comments
I have in some cases let maps through that uses custom fonts, but for those maps, the expected result for any end user will be that those texts show up using Arial instead of the desired font. so generally, if you want the map to look as good as possible, it is better to use a font that you are sure the user will have, even if it is not as pretty as you would like, rather than use a fancy font that the end users won't see anyway.
And I think it is important to keep the current single-step model for the atlas - just unzip it anywhere, then use it. No instructions to follow or anything.
And I agree with the current single-step model.
Just wondering - since we've been talking about making a community art collection
I completely understand the updating problems!
Maybe there can be dates by which to send you things to be sure of having them included in the next version?
I'm trying to make whole collections of things before sending them to you, so that you get finished folders rather than ones I may still add stuff to. I know that means there may be a delay between people seeing things in my texture threads and getting to use them, but I agree with you that there must be some kind of system and control
On the fonts front, it would be helpful to have a complete listing of what fonts are available in each of the Profantasy sets and Annual issues, as although I know there's the AtlasFonts.png list, as far as I can recall, that doesn't cover the various official PF add-ons, only the main installation and standard Windows (?) fonts package. I realise this may be impractical, since I think quite a number of fonts have appeared with individual Annual issues, but it would be useful to have an official listing to try to avoid problems with font-usage in future for Atlas map creators. I've tended to assume that fonts which appear in the list you can call up in CC3+ when setting the text properties (when I've not added to the list for that Annual/product) are officially available ones permissible in the Atlas, but it would be nice to have that confirmed, say.
The only other thing that occurs to me is that comparisons with the Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas aren't perhaps such a good idea, given that was based on a highly-developed game world for which many maps already existed, only needing conversion to an electronic format. With the Community Atlas, we have an entirely new setting, being created and developed as we go along, with descriptive texts, and in ways far beyond what was done with the Forgotten Realms in places. I'm not even sure FR covered an entire planet, and I KNOW it didn't include anything much about its night sky (even if we add-in the often contradictory information in the old Realmspace products), for instance. Plus, the FRIA is no longer available, so many potential Community Atlas users/contributors probably won't know what it is.
Edit: Thinking about it, perhaps not all of the old annuals where updated when that screenshot was taken. I can make a new one.
As for referencing the FR atlas, I guess you are right. Not many newcommers will have heard of that now, but it is really the only good comparison I know about. I don't refer to the FR atlas in general description of the community atlas though, I just found it a fair comparison when reviewing what has been done so far, and perhaps to inspire people to make even more maps.
The reason I asked is because when I was constructing the Nibirum Sky Maps, CC3+ offered me very few fonts, but one of those was Century Schoolbook, which I didn't find on this image. As I hadn't added any fonts to the list, I assumed it was a standard CC3+ one (or from Windows; it's not one I've added to my system so far as I recall), so I went on to use it in all those maps. Hence I took it the list wasn't fully complete.
Plus there are a few listed - such as University-Roman-Normal Medium, Sam's Gold Black, IM FELL DW Pica PRO and Deneane Medium - that I don't have available (though I don't have all the CC3+ add-ons). I also only have Calligrapher, not Calligrapher Medium; Morgan, not Morgan TwentyNine; SawasHand, not SawasHand Medium; and System, not System Bold.
The MasonSerif group just seem to have one-word names, without the additional "Medium", "Regular" or "Bold" qualifiers - so just MasonSerifBold, MasonSerifRegular, MasonSerifSuper and MasonSerifSuperBold (though I realise you've added "Regular" to a lot of the names anyway, and perhaps also "Medium" and "Bold" a few times, so this may be just another example of that). Given the intricate font nomenclature anyway, this can all get a bit confusing! I'm unclear what the difference may be between "Regular" and "Medium", if those were used just as personal qualifiers, not as part of the font names.
Might be worth redrafting the list just using the straightforward font names, perhaps?
As for fonts you may have or not, here are a couple of points that affects things:
- This is a Windows 10 installation. I don't know which of those fonts came from CC3+ and add-ons, and which are Windows 10. Other versions of Windows may not have exactly the same fonts
- Font listed as "available" in a CC3+ template/map just means that the creator of that template had access tot he font. The fonts listed are NOT fonts available on your machines, but fonts that have been linked in to the drawing at one point or another. As such, there may be fonts there you don't have. You'll need to hit the add font button to get the list of things actually installed on your system.
Since I posted yesterday, I've done a little more digging into this, and seem to have found only more confusion, since as far as I can tell, there doesn't seem to be a definitive listing online of what fonts a standard Win 10 installation should contain. This Wikipedia page seems about the most comprehensive and more likely up-to-date, as it seems from discussions elsewhere there may have been additions to the list in various Win 10 updates. Some of the online discussions also include fonts installed with other MS products though, which is less than helpful!
However, that Wikipedia list includes 167 individual typefaces (i.e. NOT including the various bold, italic, etc., etc. options) which have been included from Win 3.1x to Win 10, and it's unclear which are still included in Win 10, given there's a subsidiary list dated March 2018 which lists just 93 typefaces included in the basic Win 10 installations for the USA and Canada (only).
Worse still, neither of those lists coincides with your fonts list (124 entries). By that I mean there are various fonts "missing" or "added" compared to the two Wikipedia Windows font lists; I appreciate CC3+ will have added to the Win 10 list, of course, but the discrepancies seem greater than I'd have expected.
Maybe this is why the "custom fonts" problem you mentioned a couple of days ago has occurred repeatedly in the Atlas entries, because there isn't a global standard Win 10 fonts list?
I'm wondering now if rather than restricting the fonts to some list that may or may not coincide with what Windows installations can contain (possibly only in some parts of the world), we shouldn't simply allow the use of whatever fonts people may choose, but then note in the "products required" list what fonts will be needed to view the FCW file correctly, along with the CC3+ and the four community pack products needed. It should be possible for the map's author to do a quick search to see if their chosen font is freely available online (just done that for Century Schoolbook, for example, and it is widely available free, for instance; still don't know where "mine" came from though...), so that could be noted - or perhaps they could switch to a free near-alternative version otherwise.
Failing that though, I think we really are going to need a genuinely definitive fonts list for the Atlas otherwise, from which mappers can choose, or the "custom fonts" problem will simply recur. Or have I just missed something by way of a definitive Win 10 fonts list somewhere?
So, basically, if you wish your maps to look their best, you stick with an approved font, because most users won't see that fancy font anyway, making the map look works than if you had picked a better font in the first place. It might not be as pretty as the font the mapper wanted, but at least the end user will see the map the way you made it.
Of course, all of this is a bit tricky, because the only fonts the user is guaranteed to have are those shipped with CC3+ itself, and the fonts of those add-ons you are already relying on for artwork. Relying on a font from an annual would cause the same problem for those not owning said annual.
I've attached a list of all the fonts on my atlas computer and where they came from. Took some work, but they are now listed by the add-on they came from. All the fonts listed as Windows are fonts that appeared in my clean install of Windows 10, Fall Creators Update, US English edition. While there might be some differences, there are a lot of fonts in that list every Windows user should have. Since this is based on Us English, it don't contain various non-latin fonts that many other versions of Windows would have, but which most people wouldn't have.
You've probably done this already, but if not yet, I'd say it was definitely worth adding to the Atlas contributors' guidelines on the Atlas website and here on the Forum, so at least people can't say in future they didn't know about this aspect!
Of course, it will likely need updating from time to time as presumably various CC3+ products will continue to add to the fonts available, but having a definitive approved fonts listing now means that shouldn't be so difficult in future at least.