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Wyvern

Wyvern

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Wyvern
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  • Community Atlas: Embra - Constructed Places

    Place 2 is the Willow Observatory, inspired loosely by the real-world astronomical observatories at Edinburgh, Royal Observatory Edinburgh (which is some distance from the city itself) and Calton Hill Observatory, which is right in the city centre, and the consequent long tradition of watching the night sky from there. While some of that tradition was used to inspire what happens at Willow Observatory (including the annual summer activity of looking-out for dragon ghosts in the all-night-twilit northern sky; you'll have more luck trying a search for "noctilucent clouds", should you wish to learn more before the PDF and text files are available), the setting is purely Embra, as the misty marshes and woods nearby would scarcely seem conducive to dedicated sky-watching if anywhere else. And who knows what you might see on the planets of the Nibirum Solar System using one or other of the great magical telescopes here:

    Building interiors:

    And the upper interior floor for the Gatehouse:

    Plus there are oddities nearby, all of which receive at least some discussion in the accompanying notes.

    JimP[Deleted User]Loopysue
  • Community Atlas: Embra - Constructed Places

    Last of the individual sites is the Twilight Market setting for this group of Places, Candlelight Hall. The Hall has a huge, pale-blue, glass-tiled roof over much of it, and while that was straightforward enough to draw - CD3 tiled roof shaded polygon with added Sheet Transparency Effect - the support structure took rather more thought and effort, albeit "Trim To Entity" does work wonders in cases like this, for all those roof beams. The view complete:

    Even this view indicates the interior had to be quite heavily detailed while the roof was left in place, and for once it was prepared normally with fills and symbols, not just the cream-and-green plan sketches all the other Embra interiors have received. The "normal" image above does allow the focus to be a little more on the scatter of other stalls and tents outside the Hall itself, before plunging inside. And so to that interior:

    Peering closely suggests there are a lot of windows piercing the walls, all narrow, high, point-topped, and painted with a great assortment of subjects and scenes, which with the huge see-through roof area, means that at twilight or in the dark, the lights from inside shine out like a beacon from here, partly hence the name. And just in case you couldn't guess, Smokin' Mona's is THE restaurant for this part of the Market.

    Comparing the two views here, one other element becomes clear. The internal labelling can be turned on or off separately to the other map labels this time. If all goes to plan, that should be via toggles in the Atlas' FCW version.

    JimP[Deleted User]Loopysue
  • Issue 199

    Yeah, nothing with computers is ever easy, is it, Jim? 😏

    @Mike Vermilye - I've just done a very quick test new map with my own reinstallation, and am not seeing the problems you've mentioned. However, I didn't do an uninstall, I just deleted the files and folders that Ralf referred to:

    Once I'd done that, I simply installed the replacement Monkey Frog Annual as new.

    I'd suggest going through the three places in Ralf's list, removing both any surviving Silverman AND the Monkey Frog versions, and then try a fresh installation of the new Monkey Frog version of the Annual, to see if that resolves things. Failing that, you'd probably be best advised to contact ProFantasy support (through your account page) - unless someone else leaps in here with an alternative. I am NO expert with computers, so that might be your better option now!

    JimPLoopysue
  • Community Atlas: Embra - Constructed Places

    However, the sixth built Place is one more suited to indoor musical performances without such adaptations, Spring Festival Hall:

    The bright green roof tiles are all made in the shapes of unfurling, fresh, spring leaves, to contrast with the walls and ceilings of the Hall, that bear relief-carved autumnal foliage instead (Embra; what else would one expect by this stage?).

    Inside, only the layout plan for the surface-level is provided. Most of the towers have higher, and lower, floors too, which are not illustrated, and which also like to change at times, as the accompanying written notes indicate:

    Folding doors allow performances to be enjoyed outdoors on The Plaza or in The Garden, while the Mobile Stage can be raised or lowered to allow more seating in the Grand Auditorium. Despite its odd shape, the internal acoustics are excellent. If you want to perform here - and have the skill to do so - it might help to have befriended some of the musicians from Glass Harmonica Way first (see the Watery Places Streets map). Plus of course, any excuse to use some more of Sue's wonderful red sandstone cliffs!

    JimP[Deleted User]Loopysue
  • Community Atlas: Embra - Constructed Places

    The fifth Constructed Place moves us into the "entertainment" quarter (if Embra had such a thing, at least), the actors' village of Stubble Chin Theatre. Subtlety isn't really in it, with Sorceress' Hill and Verdant Wood adjoining one another, but theatricals often feel the need to make a clear statement, it's said...

    The Theatre itself is an open-air one, though it has a concealed clamshell cover that can be raised to move everything indoors when required, allowing for a greater variety of performances, not necessarily all of a theatrical nature.

    JimP[Deleted User]Loopysue
  • Community Atlas: Embra - Constructed Places

    Constructed Places map 1 is that for the ruler's Crepuscular Palace at Embra. Well, I say "ruler", but she's actually more the physical embodiment of Embra made magically real and living, The Verdant Sorceress, who flies on wings made of summer flowers. Something like the Archfey of D&D, though really more like the deity of/being who is Embra in power and abilities here. The name and flower-wings came from random rolls using tables in A Wanderer's Guide to the Feywild, by Heavenly Spoon, available on the DM's Guild download site (Pay-What-You-Want). The rest is more "me", however. I'd added some details to the PDF and text files for the Crepuscular Palace map before I realised it would be feasible to provide a CA3 drawing of the Sorceress for the Atlas as well, something that needed quite a bit of late revision of both texts and the Palace map. Although there wasn't space to add the full CA3 drawing to the Palace one, I did want to add a suitable link-spot by it. So this is the final Palace map:

    And this is the lady herself:

    Of course, this is only how she appears in her Elf-like humanoid form, when out and about meeting people, and not trying to terrify visitors unnecessarily. She could seem equally to be anyone else in Embra, or anything at the city - such as a flower, a shrub, a tree, a building, a pond, a floral meadow, a path, a hill, a forest, a cloud, a rainbow, colours in a cloud, the River Clack, or a blade of grass. In a real sense, she IS Embra, in all its aspects, positive and negative. (Oh, and this means the final tally of Embra drawings for the Atlas is now 58, not 57...)

    Those who've been following this lengthy series of posts regarding my Embra mapping closely may recall the Palace Heights map among the Hilly Places, and spot the resemblance to this Crepuscular Palace one. That would be scarcely surprising, as they're the same place, here with the Palace a living, still fully extant, building, rather than grassed-over ruins. With an interior:

    However, the interior is shown only for the ground level. The upper storeys - which all the towers, walls and great central dome have - are left for GMs to determine, if required, as the elements in it change from time to time.

    JimP[Deleted User]Loopysue
  • How do i know what i currently have installed?

    Go to CC3+, find the drop-down menu "Tools" in the bar along the top of the window, and then go to the "Add Ons" label in that drop-down. That will show you everything you have currently installed, and you can click on any one of those names to access each individual item's description in an HTML file.

    Jacob BLoopysue
  • [WIP] Community Atlas August Mapping Contest: Cloven House

    Less time than I'd hoped today for mapping, but a bit more progress, and things are starting to look a little more organised. Sort of!

    Yes, I know the alignments aren't all quite the same between the different boxes. I ended up sorting things together for an image too rapidly and didn't have time for fine-tuning! However, the main part of the drawing's done now, and although the Dracula Dossier style doesn't usually use much, if anything, by way of effects, I felt the roofs looked too flat without some shadows, so much of today's effort went into getting those to look acceptable, subject to further tweaking, as ever (the roof towers stand out quite nicely now; perhaps a little too strongly though). The sixth, empty, box is there for a reason, mostly that it's currently anchoring the 0,0 point, so I don't forget where it is. The final layout's still not fixed in my mind, never mind in the drawing!

    Away from the drawing, I've also been jotting down some notes for the Atlas PDF and textfile description, since that may have implications for features on the plans as well. One new item has already been added as a direct result of that. Not saying what, though it is fairly obvious in comparing yesterday's images to this one!

    Also, and not sure if it may be something I've done or not, but the style doesn't seem to load the Dossier's symbols on opening the map. I noticed it yesterday too, and forgot to say then. I had a quick look at the On Open macro, and there may be an error in that, as it points at Symbols\Modern\Floorplans\Dracula_Symbols.FSC, whereas I think it should be pointing at Symbols\Modern\Floorplans\Dracula Dossier\Simple.FSC (according to the notes in the PDF mapping guide, at least; probably also should be "Dracula_Dossier"?). Haven't tried changing the On Open macro yet to check - time again! - and I'm no expert, but maybe someone else here could give it a try to see?

    Sorry @Loopysue, didn't see your message earlier and haven't done that yet, though it looks as if there may be something else to sort for this style pack now anyway!

    @Maidhc O Casain - I'm not sure I've ever mapped something that hasn't needed some kind of tweaking like this, either to change the look of a fill style, or tweak the effects, and that can sometimes be quite a battle. I think it's not really being sure what some of the parameters you can change mean in terms of whatever mapping scale you're using. The fact some of the effects work to completely different methods than what they seem to (the classic being the percentages for glow strengths and so forth, which actually go only in 12.5% steps) just complicates matters more!

    LoopysueMonsenMaidhc O Casain[Deleted User]
  • My first completed map utilizing CC3+

    Not really seeing too much looking "wrong" with your map, to be honest.

    As with most styles, there will be things that seem to work better than others sometimes, and it's often just a question of knowing what options there are, and what (sometimes quite small) tweaks will help make things look closer to what you were hoping for. Sue already covered your points regarding forests, settlement placement, and terrain fill blending, I think.

    For your point 3, symbol scaling, sometimes the "correct" symbol scaling just doesn't look right - or maybe not for all the available symbols - so you simply have to rescale the ones that don't look so good to fit more with how you envisaged them looking at the scale of the whole map (not zoomed-in though!).

    Point 5, unknown areas. You could add areas of a standard terrain fill with no symbols or other features, and maybe add a new Sheet with a pale single-colour polygon - like a grey or white - drawn over the unknown region, and add a Transparency Effect to that, perhaps with an Edge Fade as well. Or you could try a Blur Effect on the terrain fill itself - again set it on its own Sheet so it's not ALL the terrain that does this! Blur can make the file uncomfortably large if used too frequently, however. Just trying things out with the Sheet Effects is always worth doing, so you get a better feeling for what they can do. If there are terrain features that must be in the region too, you can also partly hide them this way. It really depends what you want the area to have the players might know about in advance.

    roflo1OwlishlyTaboo
  • Ancient maps

    That 22-foot Roman Empire map is the Peutinger Table, aka Tabula Peutingeriana, and the Wikipedia page includes a high-res complete image of the whole - may take a while to load, however, as the full-size JPG is about 15 MB. This is the direct link to that Wikimedia image.

    Loopysuemike robel[Deleted User]