New Buyer - which bundle to buy?
I've seen a couple of "potential buyer" threads when browsing the forum, and I've seen a great community answering them all patiently. Therefore I hope this thread will get some replies too 
.
I'm sitting here, credit card in hand, and can't make up my mind. Should I go for the World Builder, should I look at the Fantasy Mapper, or should I just buy the 3-app bundle and add some symbol sets?
Easy questions right? You know all about my ambitions and ideas, so I don't need to clarify anything, right?
Or.. I could tell you what I want to do.
I have several project ideas and at the moment they're all rather small scale. I'm a city/village mapper, and want to be able to map both real areas (I do genealogy and would like to map a small village from the late 19th century) and fantasy areas for stories I write, and roleplaying games I play. The roleplaying games, however, are not strictly fantasy. I play modern day, Victorian, and sci fi. At some point, mapping a larger scale map with multiple cities on it will be of interest.
My choices are:
1) World Builder (but I'm not certain I need Fractal Terrains)
2) Fantasy Builder (but do I need Character Artist and Dioramas?)
3) Top Three + Floorplans and Overland Symbol sets (and maybe even modern?)
I'm also curious as to which annuals might be useful with my above preferences. I would absolutely love some Western symbol sets (Deadlands).
Looking forward to any replies you can give me.
Oh, and a P.S., I'm running a Macbook Pro with Parallells on which I've got Windows XP. Will XP be sufficient or do I need to upgrade to Windows 7, 8 or 10?
.I'm sitting here, credit card in hand, and can't make up my mind. Should I go for the World Builder, should I look at the Fantasy Mapper, or should I just buy the 3-app bundle and add some symbol sets?
Easy questions right? You know all about my ambitions and ideas, so I don't need to clarify anything, right?
Or.. I could tell you what I want to do.
I have several project ideas and at the moment they're all rather small scale. I'm a city/village mapper, and want to be able to map both real areas (I do genealogy and would like to map a small village from the late 19th century) and fantasy areas for stories I write, and roleplaying games I play. The roleplaying games, however, are not strictly fantasy. I play modern day, Victorian, and sci fi. At some point, mapping a larger scale map with multiple cities on it will be of interest.
My choices are:
1) World Builder (but I'm not certain I need Fractal Terrains)
2) Fantasy Builder (but do I need Character Artist and Dioramas?)
3) Top Three + Floorplans and Overland Symbol sets (and maybe even modern?)
I'm also curious as to which annuals might be useful with my above preferences. I would absolutely love some Western symbol sets (Deadlands).
Looking forward to any replies you can give me.
Oh, and a P.S., I'm running a Macbook Pro with Parallells on which I've got Windows XP. Will XP be sufficient or do I need to upgrade to Windows 7, 8 or 10?
Comments
b) You can make worlds without FT3, but its faster with FT3.
c) not much in the way of sf symbols; however, 3 of the annuals have bitmap fills for High Space and can be used for any map. Two of them are the same year. Annuals have to be purchased by the year. Even if you may not at first see a need for all 12 issues of each annual, some of us have found uses for them. For ideas alone I think they are worth it. I use the Annual issues of old B&W maps for 'early maps found by adventurers'. And color maps for the current game world.
d) CC3 uses a maximum of 2 gigs and doesn't use the video card. I ran CC2 on XP, but I was on Vista when CC3 came out, so I don't know if it works under XP or not.
e) I suggest making large maps, then making small areas detailed on separate maps. I started about 10 years ago making small maps, and then tried to progress up to continent size maps. I tried off and on for years, it was likely possible, but I had no luck at it. So I scrapped around 2000 overland maps, and used FT3 to output two large pngs. One for the southern and one for the northern hemisphere of Crestar. I also use FT3 to make Traveller worlds. I'm at 1039 of them so far.
f) the symbol sets are good. Look around the forums for the Vintyri project pngs. Gigabytes of free symbols.
g) I don't remember any Victorian symbols, but I've made mistakes before this. Most Profantasy symbols are Middle Ages Europe types. There are Traveller starship and overland symbols.
Crest of a Star
and
my Traveller site
I will most likely do what Lorelei suggested though, and start with the Top Three after all. However, your post has made me very curious about Fractal Terrains, Jim, and your suggestion regarding working inwards rather than outwards makes sense, but I feel like maybe I should take a few steps at a time
Once I feel comfortable with designing villages and towns, I might end up buying Fractal Terrains for new projects.
Jim, when you say you make detailed separate maps - is it possible to link between the two somehow? Or is that done post production when you publish on the web or whatever format you use?
Also, you mention you want to make city/village maps. No matter what kinds of maps you wish to create, I highly recommend that you work through the tutorials in the manual accompanying the program first, even if you do not plan on making overland maps, as they teach you the basic skills needed for any kind of map.
So basically i have a country entrance page. Linked at the top of that page, and all pages of that country, are links for cities, and any adventures areas in that country.
example:
1) country 2) city 1 3) city 2 4) village 1 5) castle 6) dungeon by the river 7) dungeon in the mountain.
And each of those are links to the pages with details and maps.
Since my Traveller site is still planets and no adventure areas yet, the Crestar site would show the linking method I've exampled above.
Thanks again for all your replies.
The "top three" are a fantastic bundle and will let you make amazing cities, towns, and villages. I think you'll find the Tome purchase to be invaluable. Keep in mind that it is still the CC3 edition of the Tome and has not yet been updated for CC3+ (the project is in the works). So, if you're using CC3+ and notice something isn't quite the same as described in the Tome just keep that in mind. However, the usage differences between CC3 and CC3+ are pretty minimal* and the Tome will provide you volumes of valuable instruction, tips, and information.
Happy mapping!
~Dogtag
* CC3+ does have some new features but, mostly, it's strengths are improved performance, slight enhancements over CC3 (like the ability to work with effects on almost as easily as with them off), and some behind-the-scenes stuff to improve compatibility with newer versions of Windows. And some fantastic bundled mapping styles! Mustn't forget those.
Welcome to CC3 and the ProFantasy forums.
Before you install City Designer for CC3+ perhaps you need to install the latest update for CC3+ first. I believe that's CC3+ Update 6, which you should be able to download from your registration page.
I hope that helps,
~Dogtag
And, of course, don't forget to re-enable your antivirus software after you're done installing stuff.
Cheers!
~Dogtag
Have an awesome day...Rob
Happy mapping!
~Dogtag
Cheers, Rob
Can't guarantee anything, but past forum posts indicate that re-running the Update one or two times can sometimes fix stuff like that.
Cheers,
~Dogtag
I don't personally use the CSUAC or Vintyri collections, so it's not an issue for me. Sorry! Hopefully someone from PF or someone else who does use third-party tools will chime in with more info for you.
You're going to need to run later updates anyway. Best to find out now. I'm pretty sure another CC3+ Update is coming really soon.
I was hoping you might have turned 'round and said I just had a setting wrong somewhere, but don't worry. I can cope without the button. I know where it used to be, and that's all that matters right now. Thanks for trying to help
Cheers,
Rob
Cheers,
Rob
Cheers,
Rob
Cheers,
Rob