Lots of questions about the products before buying
Hi everyone, first post :-)
I just stumbled across this suite of products and it looks great, so I have watched lots of tutorials and read what I can, but I have a few questions about the suite, that I either missed the answer too or it was not there.
I am considering the World Mapper Bundle (or building it in parts)
1. Campaign Cartographer vs Campaign Cartographer+ (CC3 vs CC3+)
As I understand they are different products - but now you get both from the store if you buy standalone or as part of a bundle, is that right?
2. Is there a constant link between maps generated with Fractal Terrains and Campaign Cartographer. Eg if I did the following steps
Generate maps from FT
Edit and do stuff with them in CC3
Go back to FT and edit say a coast line
Will the changes be reflected in CC3 without losing my previous edits? Or do I have to do them again.
3. Say I draw a high level view of an island - does CC3 make it easy to then do a detailed map of a section without having to draw it from scratch?
4. I tried the demo of FT3 and saw that you can generated a drill down map of the world, but does that work across products. ie From world map all the way down to a dungeon battle map in a town?
5. Do Dungeon Designer, City Designer and Fractal Terrain all work with CC3+ or is this ongoing? And will I get the CC3+ versions for free?
6. in CC3 or (CC3+) can I select a region and have it auto populate vegetation. eg mark an area as a forest and then it adds all the trees in one go?
7. Can I import/export maps/components between Corel Draw and ProFantasy products as vectors?
8. I use Fantasy Grounds a lot. Is it easy to control grid size on battlemaps to make adding grids in FG easy and not a pain (as it can be sometimes)?
9. From either FT or CC3 is it possible to produce contour shaded/terrain maps automagically?
10. Does FT export terrain height information to CC3?
11. What is the general lifetime of a product regarding moving to next version?
12. Does anyone know if products are moving soon (next year) to ver4, because I have a particular talent for buying software the day before the new release comes out.
13. Is there a 64bit version?
14. Is it multithreaded?
15. I've got 16Gb of RAM in my machine - will it utilize it all?
Thanks for taking the time to read all this, and extra thanks if you answer any of questions.
I just stumbled across this suite of products and it looks great, so I have watched lots of tutorials and read what I can, but I have a few questions about the suite, that I either missed the answer too or it was not there.
I am considering the World Mapper Bundle (or building it in parts)
1. Campaign Cartographer vs Campaign Cartographer+ (CC3 vs CC3+)
As I understand they are different products - but now you get both from the store if you buy standalone or as part of a bundle, is that right?
2. Is there a constant link between maps generated with Fractal Terrains and Campaign Cartographer. Eg if I did the following steps
Generate maps from FT
Edit and do stuff with them in CC3
Go back to FT and edit say a coast line
Will the changes be reflected in CC3 without losing my previous edits? Or do I have to do them again.
3. Say I draw a high level view of an island - does CC3 make it easy to then do a detailed map of a section without having to draw it from scratch?
4. I tried the demo of FT3 and saw that you can generated a drill down map of the world, but does that work across products. ie From world map all the way down to a dungeon battle map in a town?
5. Do Dungeon Designer, City Designer and Fractal Terrain all work with CC3+ or is this ongoing? And will I get the CC3+ versions for free?
6. in CC3 or (CC3+) can I select a region and have it auto populate vegetation. eg mark an area as a forest and then it adds all the trees in one go?
7. Can I import/export maps/components between Corel Draw and ProFantasy products as vectors?
8. I use Fantasy Grounds a lot. Is it easy to control grid size on battlemaps to make adding grids in FG easy and not a pain (as it can be sometimes)?
9. From either FT or CC3 is it possible to produce contour shaded/terrain maps automagically?
10. Does FT export terrain height information to CC3?
11. What is the general lifetime of a product regarding moving to next version?
12. Does anyone know if products are moving soon (next year) to ver4, because I have a particular talent for buying software the day before the new release comes out.
13. Is there a 64bit version?
14. Is it multithreaded?
15. I've got 16Gb of RAM in my machine - will it utilize it all?
Thanks for taking the time to read all this, and extra thanks if you answer any of questions.
Comments
some feedback from my side to your questions.
1. yes you do. You'll get access to your private download area and there is an entry "Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus" containing the manuals, patches, cc3+ and cc3.
2. I cannot say anything to FT because I'm not owning it, sorry.
3. I know there is a tutorial for this, but I cannot find it. For me it works fine, I'm exporting some elements form the overview-map to a new file, then remove everything not needed and change the scale of the map, then I'm adding the details. Sure there may be an easier way, but it takes only some minutes doing it like I'm doing it
Ah, found it (http://www.welshpiper.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/CreatingALocalMapInCC2.pdf)
4. sorry, not FT
5. currently only CD, DD and SS4 are working, but ProFantasy is in the process to convert everything over to CC3. Lately the updates were free, but there is neither a roadmap nor any post regarding the timeframes or prices.
6. Yes absolutly, there are already predefined tools for this, most of them are working with the build-in macro-language, but there is also a tool "fill with symbols" where you can define which symbols you want to use, adjust spacing and so on. It's absolutly possible, but may require some work for getting into it (but saving you hours of time afterwards).
7. I guess no, CC3+ allows to export as CC3-Files, PNG, JPG, BMP and some autocad formats (DWG, DWF), I don't know if the last two are helping, but normal workflow are pixel orientated files.
8. You can adjust the grid on shape, size, form, create a layer containing your grid by painting lines in whatever color or intensity you like.
9. afaik there is a macro for CD to create random cities and as I understand FT can do this, but... no TF...
10. don't know
11. several years
12. CC3+ came out some months ago and many components of ProFantasy are going to be converted to CC3+. I'm very sure there will be no CC4 for the next few years. But: Some components like CD3 may be updated. Look ad CC3 as the BaseApplication, the other products as the Applications and the Iconsets and annuals as themes. Everything can be updated seperately and as more or less it's own version number.
13. Not at the moment, but according to posts in this forum it runs fine on every windows version.
14. some parts are, some not. Overall CC3+ could use multithreading a lot better, but talking from the programmers side: multithreading is a pain in the .... to get it right.
15. no, I took a look at my current map. It contains 10.5k Elements (9.2k Symbols, rest are Areas, Lines and so on) and Windows tells me cc3 would use 120mb ram.
I use both FG and CC3+. It is easy to simply put the grid on its own separate sheet (or layer), and make it disappear by unchecking a box.
In general, if you are using a map for a VTT, there is no reason to include a grid. FG will easily throw down a grid on its own.
While FT has some editing ability, I prefer to do it in CC3.
Profantasy has an excellent upgrade policy. I've been using their products for around 10 years now.
4. FT is for worlds, not nation/city/town level. For that you use CC3.
You can create a world in CC3, you dont need FT for that.
My AD&D site; Crest of a Star with hundreds of maps. The northern hemisphere map is a rectangular area created in FT3, exported and edited in CC3. The southern hemisphere, with some excptions, was all created in CC3. A few islands were done in FT3.
My Traveller site 518 random worlds created with FT3
9. Not automatically, no. CC3 uses a CAD engine. Adding symbols can be somewhat automated, but I prefer to add them by mouse click.
Large areas of mountains or forests, its better to place a large polygon of the appropriate color and name it. Then when a small region is drawn as a separate detailed map, add symbols. You can see this on my Crest of a Star site.
13. Is there a 64bit version? not at this time.
14. Is it multithreaded? No.
15. I've got 16Gb of RAM in my machine - will it utilize it all? Currently, CC3 uses 2 gigs of ram and not the video card. I don't remember if this is benig worked on or not.
On my previous Crestar site version I had slightly over 2000 maps. They werre done as I learned how to use the software. I decided to redo the site with new maps. Not many towns or villages currently. That wil lchange over time.
Never having spent much time on CC3 as I struggled a bit with the commands etc; I have found on CC3+ the learning curve to be much easier, simply because the 'command line' follows the mouse and so is easier to remember about.
I would also recommend the Tome of Mapping as I worked through it from Page 1 and it has taught me so much
#4 No, but you an set up links on maps so you can click on spot in FT World view imported into CC3 and have it link to another map that shows a map detailing a lower area and this can be done again in the new map and make an interactive atlas.
Example: My world map has a link to another map in it which details a portion of the world map, the map of the enlarged area on could shows a certain city. I put a link on the city to have it go to yet another map which details the city. I can put links on the city map to detail various buildings showing on it that have the interiors detailed on other maps I made.
All my maps would have a link spot that if appropriate would let you go up one level to the previous map you had too.
#7 I'm not sure if this is what you are asking but you can make map symbol images in your graphic program and turn them into CC3 symbols. You would in a map making work flow export your finished CC3 map into a graphics format it can use and edit the exported image in it.
You can also export your CC3 map and have only certain things show on the export if you wanted to work on a finished version in your graphics program and have them separate layers in your graphics program version.
#8 Yes, they also have a free Annual issue on making battle maps you can download. It has videos tutorials you can what that cover exporting for printing and fantasy grounds. Joe Sweeny who did he tutorials also has several others you can watch that can help. I highly recommend you watch all of his videos.
#11 Several years.
#12 No plans for a version 4 any time soon. The next major release is going to be a new version of the Perspectives expansion at some point in the future. (On of the reasons the Plus version was done was so an updated version of Perspectives could get released at some point.)
Currently having CC3+ versions of all the current products is what is being worked on.
#13 Not currently, however I will add that some fonts in annuals and expansions may have problems with newer versions of Windows with instillation and display. I made a long detailed post on font problems you may experience and how to fix them you can find on the forum if you search.
From the replies I realize I was unclear on some of my questions
9 - What I meant was can FT create maps like this in CC3: http://academic.emporia.edu/abersusa/gis/wikipedia02.jpg basically topographical maps (with or without contour lines)
15 - was can the software use the 16Gb of RAM on my machine - or is it capped as 4Gb like a 32bit application
And a new important questions
16. How do you convince your wife that spending money on mapping software is worth it :-)
17. Is there any type of search for the symbols or browse only? ie Can I search for 'laboratory tables'
18. Is there any global search including add-on's that I don't have - so then I can see I need to purchase ModXYZ to get graphic ABC? (I understand this is hard because profantasy do not want to give away their IP)
19. Is there a trace paper type mode - where I can load and display a jpeg, on a layer, of an existing map and use it as a guide to create a new map in CC3?
Oh and a weird thing - clicking on http://www.profantasy.com/library/tutorials/DD3_Tutorial_3.wmv
I get refused by the web server for some reason - guessing doesn't like my ISP dynamic range at the moment of the class B that I am on
Denied 168.103.*.*
15 - It is a 32-bit program, so basically it is limited to 2GB of RAM (It is not compiled with LARGEADDERESSAWARE [At least not CC3, i am a bit unsure on CC3+ in that regard])
16 - Show her the beautiful maps you can make. Lots of them on the gallery pages of each product.
17 - Browse only, but symbols are put into appropriate categories easily accessible from toolbar buttons
18 - no
19 - You can import an image file to the background and draw on top it. Note that you need to trace it manually, CC3 cannot automatically trace a raster image.
You can watch the tutorials on YouTube. Joe Sweeny has numerous ones you can view and others have posted tutorials to YouTube.
You can also download several zip files of video tutorial in various places on the ProFantasy website.
16. It can do other things aside from making just maps. You can use it to make character sheets, item cards, and others things. You can with the CA3 expansion make counter sheets, character sketches, etc.
18. They have sample images and PDFs of maps made with various expansions to show what the various expansions can do on the Product page for each expansion on the ProFantasy website. Each Annual issue also has webpage devoted to it show what it covers. You can't view all the graphics in each expansion but you'll get an idea of the type of graphics they contain.
Also, some of the video tutorials on YouTube cover expansions.. So you can for example see a Cosmographer maps, etc. being done.
Finally, if you are looking for a certain type of graphic for map or what to make maps for certain game systems, etc. just ask on the forum and someone will be able to point you too what expansion has what you are looking for and/or if any free images exist for what you are looking for. They have a lot of free images that people have made to cover various thing not fond in any annual on various websites that you can import as a map symbol, etc.
Just have to wait for payday now