Creating my own templates

I was hoping to find a tutorial or have someone give me a step by step on how to create my own templates. I am looking to do a lot of maps for my Villains and Vigilantes gaming, also possibly publishing an adventure or two. I have created a few maps, importing Cosmographer fill styles into Dungeon Designer templates. Getting my own template created that has modern and sci-fi symbols in a dungeon designer style interface seems like the best fit for doing lot's of these though.

Just looking for someone to point me in the right direction.

Comments

  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    edited January 2011
    A template is basically just a map. Just create a map, set it up with the fill styles and such you require, then just do a save as, and change the file type to CC3 FCT template. You'll probably want to save it inside CC3's template directory for easier use.

    It sounds like you might want to do a bit more than a template will though though. You may wiash to check out the Annual 2007 December issue. It details creating your own map style.
  • I have been meaning to get some of the annuals, just haven't had the money in the hobby fund for it yet.

    Can I create one template and then use it to populate the other templates i want with the same fill styles? I have created the first one as a 150x150 scale, I will need several other sizes but I want them all to have the same fill styles available.
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    edited January 2011
    Couple of ways to do this

    1. Simply re-size the template and save under a new name
    or
    2. Create a new template. Then use insert file to insert the first template into this one, then immediately hit Undo. This will remove any entities placed into the template, but it will leave the fill style intact. Now just save this new template (Note: I don't remember if you can actually insert a template using Insert File. If this doesn't work directly, just create a map based on that template and insert that map instead, or rename the template from .fct (template extension) to .fcw (map extension) temporarily, insert it, then rename it back when done)
  • I can understand how to handle number two there, I have no clue how to go about just resizing the template though.
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    edited January 2011
    Resizing the template is done using the regular SCALE command. You'll find this by right-clicking the Scale image button and selecting Non-Visual Scale, or by typing SCALE into your command line. Now just select everything, right click->do it.
    The command line now asks for the scale factor. Type the appropriate number, then hit enter. Next up is scale center. The default value is 0,0, which is the correct one, so just hit enter again. Done.

    Note that if you have some fancy borders, you may need to redraw them since this operation scales everything, including the border. If you had a scale bar included in your template, it also need to be recreated.
    Finally, before doing this, make sure that no layers are hidden or frozen, and that no sheets are hidden.
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