Avatar

Wyvern

Wyvern

About

Username
Wyvern
Joined
Visits
2,457
Last Active
Roles
Member
Points
4,383
Rank
Mapmaker
Badges
23

Latest Images

  • Problems with Annual Overland Hex Map

    I highlighted the issue of the symbols in this style not snapping to the grid correctly earlier. As that didn't draw a response, and from this topic, it's clearly an ongoing issue, which presumably hasn't been resolved by an update of the Annual more recently.

    The structure symbols changing size could be because you changed the size of the symbols while you were mapping, but when you've reopened the file, it's reset to the default size for the area you're mapping (what you get if you click the "Set normal" button after calling up the "Symbol Parameters" information pane).

    The structures will actually go on whichever of the Symbols sheets you currently have selected. If you didn't have any of the Symbols sheets selected when you placed the symbol, it will default to the ordinary "Symbols" sheet.

    As Sue and Jim have said though, if you are willing to share the FCW file, that should allow us to confirm if anything else may be happening here.

    JimP
  • Live Mapping: Black and White Cities

    Yep, had guessed something must be wrong. Best wishes to Ralf for a speedy recovery!

    JimProflo1
  • Community Atlas: Embra - Enclosed Places

    Many thanks everyone for your kind comments, "Likes", and so forth. Haven't been on here for a couple of days, so apologies if I've seemed to be ignoring anyone.

    I've been working on this group of maps for about six months now, so I've tinkered around with quite a few options, some of which worked better than others, and some of which have ended-up as something of a compromise. I went with the paler mists in the end (and there are some minor variations in the colouring and density in places) as I wanted Embra to be "lighter" in tone generally, although there are a few less welcoming spots too (we'll get to those...).

    Well, once the maps are in the Atlas, it should work a little like this, once you find Embra at least. It might have been nice to be able to swap from map to map without needing the linear Atlas structure, but the set was designed specifically for use that way.

    They're my own interpretations of images from randomly-drawn tarot cards. These are the notes regarding them that I gave in the opening "Embra" Forum topic:

    A few notes were added in the process, but I wanted more, less predictable, aspects too. I turned to two tarot decks, which each coincidentally consist of 78 cards. One card was randomly drawn for each Village, Place and Street from either deck, and extra comments added to the map. The decks were Tarot of the Secret Forest (although this online review page has a lot more images), illustrated by Lucia Mattioli (Lo Scarabeo, 2005), and Shadowscapes Tarot, illustrated by Stephanie Pui-Min Law (Llewellyn Books, 2010). Both are heavily Faerie-inspired in their designs.

    The texts were also designed to fit the available space next to the map, and how much text you can type into a single text-box in CC3+, so some of the descriptions were amended because of those constraints too!

    LoopysueJimP
  • Community Atlas - Forlorn Archipelago - Fisher Isle, several villages and surrounding areas

    Yes Jim, the breaks in the lettering are due a type of acne where the same colours in the letters recur in the symbols or fill texture the letters are overlying. This seems to happen when there's any glow on the lettering. You may be able to solve it, should you change your mind, by changing the colour of the lettering (either to the "other" black - colour 17 if you originally used 0, for instance - or one of the darkest greys or browns), or by adding a new Sheet just below the TEXT Sheet, and copying the text onto it, but with no effects active on the new Sheet. In this case though, you may find the paler lettering will be OK on the darker woodland fill, without the need to use dark text letters there.

    [Deleted User]
  • Switching symbol orientation - Symbol Set 6

    The Arena symbol only has one orientation, but the Amphitheatres tab fine for me.

    Mythal82
  • [WIP] Continent Map using CC3+ MS Overland and other resources

    This looks good.

    Not sure about the labels crossing one another though; I'd be inclined to redraft those so they can all be read clearly.

    The coastline also seems a bit too harsh and linear currently. Maybe change the land to a smooth-edged polygon, or add some more nodes to the existing coastline, to make it look less jarring - all the other lines flow nicely, after all.

    Mythal82
  • Community Atlas: Embra - Watery Places

    The third set of Embra "Places" are the Watery Places of Interest, accessed from the appropriate pie-segment of the "Official Guide" map:

    One of the aspects that caught my attention from when I originally bought it in the Dover Clip-Art "Celtic Borders on Layout Grids" hardcopy book, was a page of individual knotwork creatures. Here, I simply couldn't resist the two merfolk to add to the borders for the Watery Places, with a neat little criss-cross design just in the frame's corners. As previously, the link-spaces on this schematic drawing are simply labelled extracts from the actual linked maps, with GM notes. The pattern for the layout here was basically the same as for the first of these Places of Interest maps, the Enclosed Places.

    JimPpablo gonzalez
  • Community Atlas: Embra - Hilly Places

    Hilly map 5 is Sunset Mound, a rather more characterful hill than some in this set, looking a little like a fish with a small tail, the dominant upland in the area, with a swarm of much smaller, elongated hills clustering nearby:

    While the shape for The Fence hedge-lines with its dense corner copses was largely determined by the base-map being a castle, most of the interior for that was ignored, replaced instead with a small focal-point derived from the map's accompanying featured text, that bloodstained Altar of the Dying Swan. Why such a huge, empty space surrounds it, is for GMs to expand upon.

    [Deleted User]
  • Community Atlas: Embra - Hilly Places

    Last of the individual Hilly Places is the segment of the Twilight Market for this set, Fair Market:

    The overall nature of this location was decided well in advance - a hilltop funfair and market, with a living-wagon camp nearby for the funfair folk and some of the traders. And another chance to play "spot the castle" as determined by the original base map! Here though, that allows the easy segregation of the funfair from the main part of the market, though there is a degree of mixing as well.

    Most of the features are temporary structures, stalls, tents, etc. Even those "walls" are beautifully-crafted wooden lookalikes, with huge tents at the "turret corners", though stout enough to support an array of stalls built into the lower part of the walls, and more along the upper level's walkway. There is a handful of buildings too, in the Inns of Trade area south of the hill and market proper:

    Those varicolor, chimneyless, long, wooden buildings, and the small, square ones, from the CA169 Fantasy Town Annual, are amazingly versatile, I've discovered. Change their sizes a little, and an entire array of market stalls appears as if by magic, especially once some of Sue's City Domes from CA144A are added to the mix for circular tents, stall roofs or awnings, including here for a theatre/performance venue (Great Dome) and a Helter-Skelter tower (with a couple of drawn additions), not to mention that square Grand Pavilion. And the wooden long-houses also work nicely as the living-caravans (with the addition of a drawn, little round chimney top for each), as well as more of the square buildings for the stores/privies alongside the vans in the Camp. Plus there are a few more oddities in the written information to go with this drawing, as normal.

    [Deleted User]
  • Live Mapping: Napoleonic Battles

    @mike robel commented:

    The contour line in the 1930 annual does not appear to print the hash marks.

    It does Mike, but it actually creates a Symbols Along line to do so (assuming you're meaning CA84 1930s Overland Maps). There are detailed instructions on how to set this up in the PDF Mapping Guide that comes with this Annual issue, which is worth carefully reading and following, to get the best from this style.

     I don't really understand "map units"

    Map Units are simply what CC3+ recognises as the number to be used for the size-ratio of the area of your map. For an overland map, the default is that CC3+ calls 1 Map Unit 1 Mile (or 1 Kilometre if you opt for metric). This has nothing at all to do with what physical size anything will be in whatever final printouts you choose to do.

    You simply draw your map to the correct ground scale and size using only Map Units (so ONLY Miles or Kilometres; forget the "inches" thing; forget the "scale ratio" thing - at this stage they're irrelevant), including any hexes, so the hex has the correct scale-size for the map as you're drawing it. If the hex has to represent an area 100 metres from flat side to flat side, say, you can check that the distance across it is exactly 100 metres using the drop-down menu's "Info - Distance" option.

    If you're tracing an imported map image, make sure that's correctly scaled in the same way before you start copying it, so the scale CC3+ is using is exactly the same as that on the map image you're copying.

    Once you've finished mapping, you can then export an image of whatever size and resolution you need for your final printout using the drop-down menu's "File - Save As..." option. This is the point you can finally switch to thinking about what inch-size you'd like your hexes to be; just don't worry about it before this point. At all!

    Simplest way for this is probably to choose one of the "Rectangular section" graphic image export options, PNG or JPG, say, as the dialogue box allows you to set the size of your export by width and height in either pixels (and you can set the pixels per inch or per centimetre at the same time too) or physical dimensions (again, inches or centimetres). Then just select which area you want to export from your CC3+ map. If you've set your snap grid correctly, you can just use that to help draw the area you want.

    If you need the hexes to be a specific physical size on the final print graphic, say 1 inch from flat side to flat side, and there are 20 columns of hexes across either the width or height of the map that fit flat-side to flat-side, it's clear you need one of those dimensions to be 20 inches. The other has to fit the hex width, which is usually around 1.15 times the flat-flat size, thus about 1.15 inches per hex, times however many columns/rows of hexes in the area you need the graphic to be.

    Remember, what you're drawing in CC3+ is a map, NOT a hex-board printable for gaming on. Only the final exported graphic - which you can always resize precisely in a separate graphics-manipulation program, if you're happier using that - is where you need to worry about what inch-size what feature is meant to be.

    mike robel