What to Buy - Sci Fi - Download Only
I have bought CC3 and FT Pro. I can buy Download Only programs. (I travel 99% of the time and am never in one spot long enough to receive shipments. And by the time I can usually get home any packages are returned to sender.)
I am embarking on a rather ambitious project – Sci Fi first, although I may go ahead and try Fantasy instead if Sci Fi proves unreasonable. I’ve been running games about 28 years, but on paper or with all data stored in a computer. Now I want to make the whole setup on a website (which I’ll have to learn to create). Here is what I want to do….
1. Star Sector Charts
I can probably do this with CC3 by using high contrast backgrounds. Then map out 40-50 points for stars. Use text for coordinates and add hyperlinks to Star System Maps.
2. Star System Maps
I’m not sure if Cosmographer had star system maps as an option. I’ll have to go back and look. If so … great. If not, I’ll probably have to use CC3 again. Now I link to FT Pro planetary maps.
Q1. Okay … any thoughts as to how to make an interactive FT Pro map? I want to click on a section and get a CC3 map of the local region.
3. Regional Maps.
Next, those Regional maps will need to be have text identified spots with hyperlinks to cities, caves, archeological sites, starship wrecks, etc.
Q2. I am thinking City Maps, Dungeons, Cosmographer … Thoughts?
4. Specific Sites and Characters
I’ll also want to have specific characters linked – with images and data.
Q3. Not sure if there is a good Set for Sci Fi. This is the least important aspect to this project.
I am embarking on a rather ambitious project – Sci Fi first, although I may go ahead and try Fantasy instead if Sci Fi proves unreasonable. I’ve been running games about 28 years, but on paper or with all data stored in a computer. Now I want to make the whole setup on a website (which I’ll have to learn to create). Here is what I want to do….
1. Star Sector Charts
I can probably do this with CC3 by using high contrast backgrounds. Then map out 40-50 points for stars. Use text for coordinates and add hyperlinks to Star System Maps.
2. Star System Maps
I’m not sure if Cosmographer had star system maps as an option. I’ll have to go back and look. If so … great. If not, I’ll probably have to use CC3 again. Now I link to FT Pro planetary maps.
Q1. Okay … any thoughts as to how to make an interactive FT Pro map? I want to click on a section and get a CC3 map of the local region.
3. Regional Maps.
Next, those Regional maps will need to be have text identified spots with hyperlinks to cities, caves, archeological sites, starship wrecks, etc.
Q2. I am thinking City Maps, Dungeons, Cosmographer … Thoughts?
4. Specific Sites and Characters
I’ll also want to have specific characters linked – with images and data.
Q3. Not sure if there is a good Set for Sci Fi. This is the least important aspect to this project.
Comments
But also, if you want to wait for CaCos3 you can make decent maps with basic CC3.
Plus we are all here to help you out.
Q2: With those needs, sounds like you need most of the products ProFantasy have for sale. Hopefully, all of City Designer 3, Cosmographer 3, and Symbol Set 3 - Modern v3 will be out soon, as they would be of great use for you. The current Pro versions of those addons should be able to help you though, as there are CC3 compatibility releases of them all. Dungeon Designer 3, while mainly designed for fantasy gaming, should also be of great use for caves and ruins.
Q3: I am not sure exactly what kinds of "Sets" you are after here. If you are thinking of using Character Artist, there is a small amount of user-contributed modern/futuristic sets in the Library
Star sector maps: NBOS AstroSynthesis v2.0. It's not a Profantasy product, but you can purchase the downloadable version in Profantasy's web shop or on rpg.drivethrustuff.com. Visit nbos.com for more information. I'm not sure how well FT Pro ties into AstroSynthesis, as I haven't bought FT Pro yet.
Regional maps: CC3 will do the job. It doesn't have any symbols for science fiction bases, starports and settlements. With a little research on the web, you may find appropriate symbols, though, or you can create them yourself.
If you want to hyperlink to cities, you may want to preorder City Designer 3. You'll get CD2 immediately.
Cosmographer: If I were you, I'd wait for Cosmographer 3 to be released. I don't see any reasons why you couldn't create pretty neat starship deck plans with CC3 and DD3. I may be mistaken. But that's just my point of view.
The symbols of Cosmographer 3 which I have seen so far on Simon Roger's blog (simonjrogers.livejournal.com) look amazing.
Symbols for science-fiction settings (battle maps): You may want to visit the Dundjinni forums and rpgmapshare.com.
Character tokens: You can handle this in two ways. (1) Download TokenTool, which you can find free of charge on rptools.net, and create nice, old-school tokens from images you find on the Internet. (2) Download top-down tokens from rpgmapshare.com / the Dundjinni forums.
If these aren't enough, you can also buy top-down tokens on www.fouruglymonsters.com. Set 19 and 20 are science fiction only (an alien and a soldier set). They cost USD 5.00 each and they contain 160 tokens in total (incl. colour variations). I know the artist (devinnight), as I'm currently working on a project with him. He's an extremely friendly as well as responsive guy and a very talented artist. He also creates customised tokens and symbols. Although this is more expensive, his prices are very fair. If you're interested in his token packs, make sure to get the high-res versions, as you can easily convert them to low-res tokens yourself (using the CC3 symbol tools).
I hope this helps and wish you a lot of fun with CC3.
Mogul76
LOL, I was trying not to need to wait for Cosmo 3. But you're right, I probably should. I'll have my hands full for awhile with FT Pro and CC3 just building the first interactive maps and building a website. I built a barebones site once ... about 10 years ago... Starting from scratch yet again.
LOL I was disppointed at first at FT Pro ... the first 15 min or so. Then I got a bit more time and figured out some of the features and was considerably more impressed. Haven't settled on the projection to use. But I'll deal with that under another category. I want minimal distance distortions as well as polar maps in some cased. I'll be attempting Mercury and Mars styled planets as well, plus moons and asteroids. I run Play by Email games, so time isn't a serious factor. Email games tend to be slow.
Of course, you can't create a interactive rotating globe or similar this way, but FT can show and export the map in a lot of interesting projections.