Starfinder Cities, Streets, & Buildings......?
quirky_cartographer
🖼️ 2 images Traveler
Hey everyone,
First off, I hope I put this under the right section!
I did a quick look and didn't see anything about this. I'm trying to create maps for my Starfinder game and ran up against a brick wall, or bulkhead if you must. I bought the Master Mapper bundle as it had Cosmographer 3 in it hoping I'd be able to create cities, streets, and inside structures for my Starfinder game. However, I'm not seeing anything except for a few corridor pieces, some furniture/crates, and a few things for ships. I looked at some Paizo pictures and recognize some of the items I've seen in Cosmographer 3, but that's where it ends. Does anyone know if I'm missing something for creating futuristic maps?
I don't need space or ships, I need CC3+, DD3, and CD3 set in the future. It was the key reason I got this software after hearing glowing reviews. For my D&D 5E game I love what I can do, but for Starfinder I'm at a loss. Suggestions or can anyone point me to where I am missing something? I even read the guide that came with Cosmographer 3 and don't see anything in there referencing what I need.
Comments
It's no denying that Cos3, being a single product, cannot really be all of CC/CD/DD in space, it's mainly focused on overland maps, starmaps and spaceships.
I use spaceships as a loose term here, because the spaceship parts is really more "futuristic dungeons", and is suitable for all of ship deckplans, spacestations and building floorplans. Personally, I recommend mixing the bitmap A style symbols from Symbol Set 3 modern with the COS stuff when making sci-fi maps, as there are no good reason a chair and a bed doesn't still look like a chair and a bed in the future, especially "on the ground".
For street views, I would probably also rely a bit on the SS3 modern to draw the actual street scene, and then perhaps add in a few symbols from COS3 to give them a more futuristic look. Unfortunately there is no futuristic vehicles.
For city maps, if you want the more visual "building symbols" style of map instead of the more modern simple plain map using lines and polygons style, then I don't think Cos3 has much on offer. If you use CD3 and do a CD3 Vector shaded city, the last button in the toolbar is the Futuristic/Cyberpunk/Moon
button, with Skyscrapers/Modern
also appropriate to mix in. These are old style vector symbols though, and won't be as pretty as modern raster symbols.
Thanks for these tips, Monsen! I'll go back in and give those a look to see.
My players were dead impressed, so the CD3 versions will probably serve you well for Starfinder.
https://www.profantasy.com/annual/2015/march15.html
As it's an annual style, it won't have as many symbols as full styles from the symbol sets, so whether it's worth it depends on if you'll find the rest if that year's annual useful. It's got the excellent 2 part Ancient Realms style and also the Dracula Dossiers one, so I do like that year's annual.
I agree. I use the Downport annual, with SS3 Modern symbols to draw the few Traveller downports I have made.
Thank you everyone. I am saving up for the annuals for my next go around (and SS4 & 5) so probably sometime next year. I'll have to use the modern items for the time being. I did notice a lot of the fantasy items are geared for Travelers, so hopefully in the nearish future we can also get some geared for Starfinder. I'd help but I'm such a novice I wouldn't know the first thing about getting images into CC3+ to use. haha Anyway, thank you all again for your help. Looks like the annuals will be of help when I grab them.
You can import any set of transparent background png files to use as a set of symbols using the Symbol Manager menu. The images should first be placed in a personal sub-folder of the Symbols folder here - C:\ProgramData\Profantasy\CC3Plus\Symbols.
You can import any set of seamless png texture files to be used as fills using Import bitmap fill styles in the Tools menu. The textures should first be placed in a personal sub-folder of the Bitmaps folder here - C:\ProgramData\Profantasy\CC3Plus\Bitmaps.
All these files must be in png format. CC3 is blind to any other kind of graphic file that may happen to be in the same folder, which can be useful at times if you happen to keep source graphics (GIMP, PS or Affinity files) in the same folder just temporarily while you are working on new symbols and fills.