Seems like Linux is a better choice for a new platform these days than a macOS.
Someone said much earlier.. Or a way long time ago in a thread far far away.. That some of the functionality of the underlying program was intentionally gimp'd so that people couldn't use CC as an inexpensive alternative to a 'real' CAD program. With the other alternatives out there in 2021, is this really still a thing to be concerned about? I could see not building the same toolset on top of the engine, but not disabling core functionality.
Not exactly a line of site export but it made me think of.. Whatever happened to Realms Overseer, or City Overseer or whatever it was?
Just wanted to voice that I would personally love CC4 (and the remaining software) to be available on Mac without Parallels (or other Windows Emulation). I often find myself wanting to use the software, but not wanting to sit at my desktop to do all the work. And if done right, these new M1 chips would make the program super fluid.
However, instead of just developing for M1/Mac specific, it may be worth seeing if there's a Linux focused build that can be extended to MacOS to get the best of both worlds with minimal extra work?
@Glitch Which elements of the program do you find limited by being a 32-bit program that 64-bit processing would improve? That's not intended to be a snippy question, I'm just trying to understand the limitations here.
Time spent redrawing - I understand that I can work faster without effect on, but early on in the learning curve it is helpful to see the impact of what you are doing. Often when working without effects, and then turning them on it takes significant time to process. Occassionally, it looks like I may be caught in a processing loop - I know it sounds strange but it seems to break the loop if I press file save in the ring menu. I suspect this my be the result of the improper use of effect or maybe the order that they are applied - but I assume with a broader workspace this could be resolved faster.
@Glitch - Something else you might try is having a second window with another program (such as Windows Explorer) on full screen mode, so it hides the CC3+ window completely. This helps stop the looping as much, and you can check the thumbnail view to see when the CC3+ screen is showing correctly again. I spotted Ralf did exactly this on this week's livestream at one point, so I know it's not just me who finds this helps sometimes!
I use and prefer a Mac -- but just guessing -- I would think that porting over to macOS would be a huge task. If so, I'd prefer that effort be spent in the Windows version.
But hey, if it could be done -- I certainly wouldn't complain!
Hexagonal hotspots to use on hex grid maps so clicking on a certain hex will get a certain thing done.
The feature on Traveller Sector maps that loads data from https://travellermap.com/ is fine but I seldom am interested in a whole sector. One that loaded a single subsector map would be more useful to me.
If the above feature generated map notes for each world from metadata collected from the site that could be viewed by clicking the world's hex (see point 1) it would be perfect.
I've read through the entire thread and have not seen what I really want.
This stems from seeing lots of interactive maps onnline with pins that open text. Multi-line only supports a limited number of characters and that is so limiting. If we had a multi-line function with no limitation that also had character width so you can align all of your text.
I personally think this would be a great inclusion, because now all of the details, history, special interest etc etc can all be within your map, instead of being on an entirely different program. (being able to cut, copy and paste huge blocks of text would be awesome too.)
I am going to post an example from the latest map I am working on, to give a little clarity. This needed two full instances of Multi-line text to produce it. It was so time consumming to keep going back hitting enter for a new line, to try line up the text, then keep repeating the process over and over until the text almost looked good.
With some of the macro's I have seen It would be so easy to put text on layer's specific to types of content and have buttons to activate them - boom interactive map. Then all of a sudden world creators can have all of their info IN THEIR MAP, instead of another program.
I am sure even more ambitious people could put buttons on each point of interest to have text pop up.
NOthing would be greater than working on your map, get stuck by a great description of what you are mapping, then write out an entire blurb for that region.
Maybe it's a pipe dream....but that's what I would want.
The biggest problem I have is with aspects of the UI. The greatest being size of the buttons and text. Look, I'm not a teenager anymore and even when I was my eyes were no great shakes. Some of the writing is too small, and even with the increase of fonts size provided by the little hammer on the bottom of the screen they're still too small. The text that often appears to help you know what's going on at the point on the drawing where you're trying to do something manages often to simultaneously be too small to read and large enough to get in the way of seeing what you're trying to do at the point where the two lines come together.
Please let me decide which functions and commands are going to sit on my toolbars and which will exist only on the drop down menus. CC2 let me have line Breaks and Splits right on my tool bar, now I need to drop a list to see them. Or at the very least, have some feature that takes older version users by the hand and shows them where they changed and hid everything. I feel like an absolute dolt coming in here mad as a wet hen because I spent forever looking for something and then having some calm, patient soul who's found it show me. Please remember that older users will get used to older setups and we need to be told where the new stuff is up front. There are too many instances of "CC2 used to do X this way, but now I have no idea how CC3+ does it or even if it does". In the end, one of the few real criticisms of CC is it's unforgiving learning curve - I think that's something that building intuitive function into the first hand experience would make things a lot easier rather than having everything explained to you after you've sat in the archives of Gondor like Gandalf coughing up dust and burning through Long Bottom Leaf to keep calm and not chuck your whole computer at a passer-by in a fit of pique because that one little magic trick eludes you.
Back in the CC2 days, there was a function on the Profantasy Site where people would come and offer things like their maps and their home-made symbols and so forth to the community at large for sharing. Why was that removed? Has it been moved elsewhere? This leads to another point.
Cosmographer needs more love. Yes, I know, 99.999999 of the universe plays D&D or something like it. The rest of us play something else. Many of the rest of us who use CC also bought Cosmographer. There are individual symbol sets for Fantasy and for Modern Day Maps. There are no individual Symbol Sets for Cosmographer. I have been using precisely the same planets in my star Systems as I have back in 2010. My Starship deckplans have had the same four sublight engine symbols to choose from. Yes. I know there have been Annuals. In some of those Annuals there have been stuff. Some might argue this is actually better than a standalone Symbol Set...until you look at the price tag, and the fact that to get the stuff in the Annuals you need to buy a lot of other stuff you don't want or need. I don't need yet another style of Fantasy Overland Maps. Cosmographer needs some love. Come on guys, you created the thing, show me you loves it too!
Lastly, make it easier to use, I beg of you. I don't mean idiot-proof, I'm not an idiot. I spent the time and study it took to get really good at CC2. But when new editions come along they should build on what I already know, not shuffle the chairs around in the basement and turn off the lights. I have spent more time trying to figure out how to do things that used to come to me at the snap of a finger with CC2 than you would believe and it's frustrating as hell. Now I hear whiffs of a CC4?
And truly, I don't have problems such as Corradus mentioned. But I would like more commands available on right click that are present not there, such as editshading.
Maybe not exactly the way you describe, but you can add large amount of text to your map using map notes. These don't display in-map, but in a separate window, but you can make hotspots to click to show the note you want, and each map note can have up to 8000 characters. Not quite unlimited, but room for quite a bit of text.
I do this frequently for atlas maps, for example, try downloading and opening the Southern Scar map from the atlas, and hit the Description link in the sidebar, and you'll see a description of the map appear. This is a standard hotspot that can be placed anywhere in a map.
I'm sure ProFantasy has a communication plan as part of their scheduled release, and all announcements are carefully scheduled as part of that plan, and we won't know anything until all of the logistics are sorted out...but I am dying to know when CC4 will be released.
Also, much like the lighting tools, have Vision Blocking Layers/Sheets and be able to export in UVTT format.
It would be nice to draw these in CC4 and export directly into a VTT...or better yet have walls draw them atuomatically using the Outline/Extra Entity function of the drawing tools, with wall cutting symbols have them set also.
I suspect that CC4 is well beyond the wish list phase, but my wish list would be able to take oddly shaped polygons created with the polygon tools and fuse them together is a single entity so that they can then be filled with a fill that treats it seamlessly as a single shape. Some fills don’t matter — you can cobble bits together and never see the joins. But others, the joins are more apparent.
Okay, this might be tricky but it could be cool. When a map is exported to a raster format the hotspots could generate an HTML map linking the image areas to Javascript functions containing the macro text as comments for identification. The script file could then be manually edited by the user to provide a similar function (such as linking image pages). This would be similar to a plug-in in GIMP.
This is more or less what I am doing in my dynamic dungeons project. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to pick it back up in a long time, but it still exists as a proof of concept for this functionality. Hopefully I can finish it one day. There is a video showing it in action linked from the beginning of the article:
Sounds like an interesting idea. While I have no idea if something like this will be made for CC4 or not, you can already today get access to all the data needed, so that should be able to be done with an add-on, meaning even if it isn't put into CC4 by default, it should be possible to write for anyone with a bit of programming experience and put in without PF having to add anything to pave the way.
Comments
Someone said much earlier.. Or a way long time ago in a thread far far away.. That some of the functionality of the underlying program was intentionally gimp'd so that people couldn't use CC as an inexpensive alternative to a 'real' CAD program. With the other alternatives out there in 2021, is this really still a thing to be concerned about? I could see not building the same toolset on top of the engine, but not disabling core functionality.
Not exactly a line of site export but it made me think of.. Whatever happened to Realms Overseer, or City Overseer or whatever it was?
I've used AutoCAD. CC3, etc. is not a straight forward CAD program. It uses a CAD engine. A difference.
Just wanted to voice that I would personally love CC4 (and the remaining software) to be available on Mac without Parallels (or other Windows Emulation). I often find myself wanting to use the software, but not wanting to sit at my desktop to do all the work. And if done right, these new M1 chips would make the program super fluid.
However, instead of just developing for M1/Mac specific, it may be worth seeing if there's a Linux focused build that can be extended to MacOS to get the best of both worlds with minimal extra work?
Mac OS support.
64 bit processing would be a big improvement. Also I would love a way to restore to original install state.
@Glitch Which elements of the program do you find limited by being a 32-bit program that 64-bit processing would improve? That's not intended to be a snippy question, I'm just trying to understand the limitations here.
Animation?
Time spent redrawing - I understand that I can work faster without effect on, but early on in the learning curve it is helpful to see the impact of what you are doing. Often when working without effects, and then turning them on it takes significant time to process. Occassionally, it looks like I may be caught in a processing loop - I know it sounds strange but it seems to break the loop if I press file save in the ring menu. I suspect this my be the result of the improper use of effect or maybe the order that they are applied - but I assume with a broader workspace this could be resolved faster.
@Glitch - Something else you might try is having a second window with another program (such as Windows Explorer) on full screen mode, so it hides the CC3+ window completely. This helps stop the looping as much, and you can check the thumbnail view to see when the CC3+ screen is showing correctly again. I spotted Ralf did exactly this on this week's livestream at one point, so I know it's not just me who finds this helps sometimes!
I use and prefer a Mac -- but just guessing -- I would think that porting over to macOS would be a huge task. If so, I'd prefer that effort be spent in the Windows version.
But hey, if it could be done -- I certainly wouldn't complain!
@Wyvern I agree - I use this 'technique' often with my big city maps, with good effect. Found out about it by accident a couple of years back.
- Hexagonal hotspots to use on hex grid maps so clicking on a certain hex will get a certain thing done.
- The feature on Traveller Sector maps that loads data from https://travellermap.com/ is fine but I seldom am interested in a whole sector. One that loaded a single subsector map would be more useful to me.
- If the above feature generated map notes for each world from metadata collected from the site that could be viewed by clicking the world's hex (see point 1) it would be perfect.
(Okay, I may have been spending too much time on the Citizens of the Imperium site lately.I've read through the entire thread and have not seen what I really want.
This stems from seeing lots of interactive maps onnline with pins that open text. Multi-line only supports a limited number of characters and that is so limiting. If we had a multi-line function with no limitation that also had character width so you can align all of your text.
I personally think this would be a great inclusion, because now all of the details, history, special interest etc etc can all be within your map, instead of being on an entirely different program. (being able to cut, copy and paste huge blocks of text would be awesome too.)
I am going to post an example from the latest map I am working on, to give a little clarity. This needed two full instances of Multi-line text to produce it. It was so time consumming to keep going back hitting enter for a new line, to try line up the text, then keep repeating the process over and over until the text almost looked good.
With some of the macro's I have seen It would be so easy to put text on layer's specific to types of content and have buttons to activate them - boom interactive map. Then all of a sudden world creators can have all of their info IN THEIR MAP, instead of another program.
I am sure even more ambitious people could put buttons on each point of interest to have text pop up.
NOthing would be greater than working on your map, get stuck by a great description of what you are mapping, then write out an entire blurb for that region.
Maybe it's a pipe dream....but that's what I would want.
CC4 really needs to work on some stuff IMO:
The biggest problem I have is with aspects of the UI. The greatest being size of the buttons and text. Look, I'm not a teenager anymore and even when I was my eyes were no great shakes. Some of the writing is too small, and even with the increase of fonts size provided by the little hammer on the bottom of the screen they're still too small. The text that often appears to help you know what's going on at the point on the drawing where you're trying to do something manages often to simultaneously be too small to read and large enough to get in the way of seeing what you're trying to do at the point where the two lines come together.
Please let me decide which functions and commands are going to sit on my toolbars and which will exist only on the drop down menus. CC2 let me have line Breaks and Splits right on my tool bar, now I need to drop a list to see them. Or at the very least, have some feature that takes older version users by the hand and shows them where they changed and hid everything. I feel like an absolute dolt coming in here mad as a wet hen because I spent forever looking for something and then having some calm, patient soul who's found it show me. Please remember that older users will get used to older setups and we need to be told where the new stuff is up front. There are too many instances of "CC2 used to do X this way, but now I have no idea how CC3+ does it or even if it does". In the end, one of the few real criticisms of CC is it's unforgiving learning curve - I think that's something that building intuitive function into the first hand experience would make things a lot easier rather than having everything explained to you after you've sat in the archives of Gondor like Gandalf coughing up dust and burning through Long Bottom Leaf to keep calm and not chuck your whole computer at a passer-by in a fit of pique because that one little magic trick eludes you.
Back in the CC2 days, there was a function on the Profantasy Site where people would come and offer things like their maps and their home-made symbols and so forth to the community at large for sharing. Why was that removed? Has it been moved elsewhere? This leads to another point.
Cosmographer needs more love. Yes, I know, 99.999999 of the universe plays D&D or something like it. The rest of us play something else. Many of the rest of us who use CC also bought Cosmographer. There are individual symbol sets for Fantasy and for Modern Day Maps. There are no individual Symbol Sets for Cosmographer. I have been using precisely the same planets in my star Systems as I have back in 2010. My Starship deckplans have had the same four sublight engine symbols to choose from. Yes. I know there have been Annuals. In some of those Annuals there have been stuff. Some might argue this is actually better than a standalone Symbol Set...until you look at the price tag, and the fact that to get the stuff in the Annuals you need to buy a lot of other stuff you don't want or need. I don't need yet another style of Fantasy Overland Maps. Cosmographer needs some love. Come on guys, you created the thing, show me you loves it too!
Lastly, make it easier to use, I beg of you. I don't mean idiot-proof, I'm not an idiot. I spent the time and study it took to get really good at CC2. But when new editions come along they should build on what I already know, not shuffle the chairs around in the basement and turn off the lights. I have spent more time trying to figure out how to do things that used to come to me at the snap of a finger with CC2 than you would believe and it's frustrating as hell. Now I hear whiffs of a CC4?
Frankly I'm afraid.
I agree with Don, it would be great to have the limit on word count in the text removed.
And truly, I don't have problems such as Corradus mentioned. But I would like more commands available on right click that are present not there, such as editshading.
And an up-to-date Help file.
Maybe not exactly the way you describe, but you can add large amount of text to your map using map notes. These don't display in-map, but in a separate window, but you can make hotspots to click to show the note you want, and each map note can have up to 8000 characters. Not quite unlimited, but room for quite a bit of text.
I do this frequently for atlas maps, for example, try downloading and opening the Southern Scar map from the atlas, and hit the Description link in the sidebar, and you'll see a description of the map appear. This is a standard hotspot that can be placed anywhere in a map.
Some more information in this blog article:
Yes I like map notes, but that is totally not what I would want. I'd love for it to be like the interactive maps.
(using map notes helped me so much with the FRIA repairs)
I agree, Don.
Oh will there be anything done with Nodes?
Having selectable nodes would be excellent like Inkscape.
I'm sure ProFantasy has a communication plan as part of their scheduled release, and all announcements are carefully scheduled as part of that plan, and we won't know anything until all of the logistics are sorted out...but I am dying to know when CC4 will be released.
Interactive text would be a good idea.
Also, much like the lighting tools, have Vision Blocking Layers/Sheets and be able to export in UVTT format.
It would be nice to draw these in CC4 and export directly into a VTT...or better yet have walls draw them atuomatically using the Outline/Extra Entity function of the drawing tools, with wall cutting symbols have them set also.
I suspect that CC4 is well beyond the wish list phase, but my wish list would be able to take oddly shaped polygons created with the polygon tools and fuse them together is a single entity so that they can then be filled with a fill that treats it seamlessly as a single shape. Some fills don’t matter — you can cobble bits together and never see the joins. But others, the joins are more apparent.
We are still listening, though things are quite advanced already.
This is more or less what I am doing in my dynamic dungeons project. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to pick it back up in a long time, but it still exists as a proof of concept for this functionality. Hopefully I can finish it one day. There is a video showing it in action linked from the beginning of the article:
Sounds like an interesting idea. While I have no idea if something like this will be made for CC4 or not, you can already today get access to all the data needed, so that should be able to be done with an add-on, meaning even if it isn't put into CC4 by default, it should be possible to write for anyone with a bit of programming experience and put in without PF having to add anything to pave the way.