Fractal Terrains vs simpler worldbuilders
Hello, I'm new to the forum, but I've owned FT3 and CC3 for a few years, always hoping to learn them. I finally have the time set aside. As I've tried to use FT3 and read the tutorials, and searched the forums, I'm realizing that maybe FT3 etc is not what I needed. That being said, it does some amazing things, so please understand, I'm going to go ahead and learn it, but for a moment, allow me some heretical questions.
Are there random world generators that create a planet of continents, mountains, biomes, that are simpler than FT3. To push my heresy further, I look at the civilization games which can, in a minute, create a world map that at least has the illusion of being a real word, with mountains, deserts, rivers, etc. I've already invested many hours into FT3, but I recognize that if I want to create a world map, FT3 does not transform, even by exporting it to Campaign Cartographer, into predrawn forests, fields and mountain ranges, but just sets down patterns, where I have to set down (a la Joe Sweeney's great videos) all the forests and peaks myself.
I can see the artistic attraction in this, but I was hoping to find a progam that built a world, or at least the geography and climate, in one go...so that I could then set down my races and nations and such.
I suspect this is too much to ask, and that there are no such things... but then I look at the civilization games, and think, well, heck, they did it...
Again, I apologize if I have raised hackles. I intend to fully invest in using the software as I purchased it, but I'm just curious if there's anything "out there" that is simpler, more straight forward, etc. And with that, I'm going to post some questions about FT3...
Are there random world generators that create a planet of continents, mountains, biomes, that are simpler than FT3. To push my heresy further, I look at the civilization games which can, in a minute, create a world map that at least has the illusion of being a real word, with mountains, deserts, rivers, etc. I've already invested many hours into FT3, but I recognize that if I want to create a world map, FT3 does not transform, even by exporting it to Campaign Cartographer, into predrawn forests, fields and mountain ranges, but just sets down patterns, where I have to set down (a la Joe Sweeney's great videos) all the forests and peaks myself.
I can see the artistic attraction in this, but I was hoping to find a progam that built a world, or at least the geography and climate, in one go...so that I could then set down my races and nations and such.
I suspect this is too much to ask, and that there are no such things... but then I look at the civilization games, and think, well, heck, they did it...
Again, I apologize if I have raised hackles. I intend to fully invest in using the software as I purchased it, but I'm just curious if there's anything "out there" that is simpler, more straight forward, etc. And with that, I'm going to post some questions about FT3...
Comments
My maps aren't artistic.
I know FT3 doesn't do ran shadows and other bits of climate.
On my Crest of a Star game world, I made hemisphere maps and drew in major ocean currents with different color arrows. Yellow for surface, light blue for cool currents under the ocean surface, and dark blue arrows for deep cold ocean currents.
Also when you export said map directly into CC3 you can add in the Altitude, Temperature, Climate and Rainfall. While creating your map you can toy with certain aspects of all of those.
I tried to import my own map into it, and it's very imprecise. So I did world after world with little adjustments to get really close to what I had.
The coolest thing was importing it into multiple layers of scale. So I have close to 700 maps of all my landmass. I deleted redundant water only maps.
So the marriage of the two programs isn't perfect, but with a little effort you can get some good results.
FT3 started life about 20 years ago as a way to generate basic terrain outlines and contours for CC2. I didn't quite follow the original ProFantasy specification and the software has picked up a lot of features on the way to where it is today. Unfortunately, some of the decisions that I made ever so long ago are still influencing what the software can do (like the choice to use the Windows GDI graphics system for the display, which seriously limits the available features).
FT3 has two major weaknesses: it's a one-way export from FT3 to CC3+, and FT3 doesn't support the major features of CC3+, mainly symbols. The one-way export is understandable in light of the original purpose of FT3: a generator for CC3+. The symbols thing, though, has more to do with the level of effort required to implement the feature (reading the binary CC3+ file formats, picking symbols, and generating correct outputs). Having FT3 generate symbols correctly for CC3+ is on the wish list; it is dated February 16, 2000.
There isn't any heresy involved in discussing the limitations of FT3. I rather like it, in fact, because it reminds me of the grand visions that I had for FT way back when. I also like to hear what customers are doing (or even trying to do), as well as which parts are causing problems. FT3 doesn't come up in my development rotation as often as I'd like these days, but knowing what customers want and need helps to prioritize what I can do in the limited time that I have available.
I did use FT3 Cosmographer/Traveller export to make the 1,200 Traveller planet maps I have up on my Traveller site. I'm currently trying to match them up with all of the FT3 exports, which I numbered, so I can keep track of which FT3 map goes with which CC3 map. Sigh, yet another thing I didn't think of when I started several years ago. Anyway, I'm about 50% done. If I didn't have duplicate folders, with duplicate files, and ft3 png exports with the same number but different maps I would likely be further along on this or done... argh. I'll just let it go there.
I find that using named views in FT3 (View>>View Window) makes it much easier to get exactly the map set desired and so reduce the amount of manual work required. Unfortunately, it doesn't have any way in FT3 to link maps together with that tool; it's still manual work in CC3+. There also isn't a good overview to show how the different views fit together. Maybe someday.
Automatic atlas generation
I've always disliked the multi file export of FT3, because it leads to a weird and unnatural workflow in CC3+. And maps gets split across unnatural artificial divisions, resulting in a very unusable map for most purposes (and lots of extra work when you want to work on them in CC3+)
The original specification for the multiple-view thing was what we would recognize as a slippy-map today. Way back in 1999, though, I didn't know how to do such a thing. I have learned a bit since then, though. The FT3 implementation was a bit limited and I tried to make it do a few too many things at once. There was also the issue of bugs, of course.
Maybe some day...
My next project is to go through my maps and make a decent one for each of the countries. More as a reference. I love the multi layers of zoom.