This is a fine-looking map!

The doors could maybe use some kind of shadow or glow effect, as the doorways all look open currently.

Maybe add some heavier shadows, or an Inner Glow to the floors in the Training Arena (7) and its connected areas, as they seem meant to be lower than the rest of the layout.

Perhaps label the stairs down in this section too, and move the "S" secret door symbols off their walls for better clarity?

Mind you, for a lost temple, those beds seem awfully neatly made...

Hi @Nevermet!

The intuitiveness of CC3+ is directly proportional to your familiarity with CAD software. Most folks coming to the program afresh are more used to image manipulation software, and that works in a very different way. But we all started from the same point of knowing nothing. Now we know how much we didn't know then and how much we still don't know... ?

I'd recommend working through the CC3+ manual and the tutorials (especially the video tutorials - see the links in the Forum sidebar, any page, for these) before going too deeply into the Tome. The Tome's intended more for people who are already moderately familiar with the program, but want to get more involved with it, and improve their mapping strategies and abilities still further.

Isn't this the wrong way "up" to match with Level 1? I'm assuming the stairs down are those that link with the secret passage off the northeast side of the Training Arena in saying this, mind you.

I agree it would be helpful to know what the original purpose was for the "trident" room, and also why it links with one of the caves, as this would likely give you a better feeling for what you want to do with the map overall.

Just a quick follow-up here to highlight the brand new Cartographer's Annual issue, freshly issued (CA172), Ship Deckplans, which does indeed update the original Sailing Ships pack, much as hoped! Especially happy to see the sample FCW file for the Drakkar, personally. Thanks very much @Ralf !

Always liked this style; it was what persuaded me to buy my first-ever Cartographer's Annual! Plus of course it was updated more recently as well.

The "seeing them always float" problem is quite common, unfortunately. I often find this looking at crater images from other planets, where they seem to be domes above the surface, not holes sunken into it. Sometimes if I concentrate enough, the "up" and "down" will simply flip to look correct again.

When I'm struggling to get a Sheet Effect, or combination of Effects, to look right, I turn them all off and identify why that makes things look worse, and then try adding the Effects again one at a time, adjusting each one to see exactly what it's doing. This may mean adding different Effects, and deleting the ones that don't help.

Something that might be worth considering is to stop trying to get the shadow Effects to work at all, and simply try drawing some grey polygons for where the shadows should be, on a separate Sheet of their own, above the cliff lines (so they'll shadow the cliffs correctly), but below the cliff top polygons (so you'll get a sharp cutoff at the top of the cliff edge). This has the disadvantage that if you want to change the lighting angle, you'll have to redraw the lot again, however, and you'll need to keep track of exactly what the lighting angle will be, with some construction lines across the map.

I suggest this because what I'm seeing on your most recent drawing is that the shadows aren't coming from the cliff edges in the right places. Many seem to be coming from a point much higher up the cliffs, so are looking too much like a drop shadow, even when they aren't. I think this is because you're relying on the clifftop polygons to produce the shadow, but because the lower cliffs aren't in the same place as that (further away from its line), they're looking wrong and "floaty".

This is looking much better for the "mesas" in the central area. The long cliff line at the northern edge shows one problem, in that the cliff lines on that aren't shaded at all, which really detracts from losing that "floating" impression.

There seem to be a number of pale grey polygons in places, which are rather distracting now. If these are needed (I have the impression a couple may be being used to conceal unwanted parts of the shadows in places), I'd suggest changing them to match the background colour.

The "white gap" event may be due to some of the Sheet Effects interfering with one another. If it persists, and you can't find the cause, you could try uploading the FCW file here for one of our more technical experts to examine, as I'm sure they could find a solution to that sort of problem if necessary. It may be there's something else on that upper cliffs Sheet that shouldn't be there (a white polygon, perhaps), and that's all that needs resolving.

Shorter shadows just mean a higher Sun, so hopefully this won't be too much of a problem in terms of still giving a useful impression of height for you.

You might alternatively try adding a Glow Effect to your settlements, roads and rivers, which would help them stand out more as well. You may want to move, or remove, some of the trees where they're hiding the river and road lines too.

The simplicity is VERY appealing on these, I agree - as long as you can remember what the symbols mean, anyway! I recently got a full set of the Inkwell Ideas Dungeonmorph Dice sets, many of which use the same basic designs and symbols. At least those come with a key on each boxed set though!

I do recall now you mention it that photocopy prevention angle; I'd forgotten all about that in the intervening decades. Mind you, it was a struggle to even read the pale blue or grey maps sometimes anyway, which always seemed rather self-defeating, particularly when the detail plans inside the booklets were done in clear black-and-white.

It's great to be able to add a grid to these maps without worrying about where it's going, as that blue background hides everything that's the same colour so nicely.

That's much better!

Still seeing some patches of pale grey in places, but that too might be a Sheet Effect. I have found that if you have a stack of objects on different Sheets above or very near one another, that can start to cause all kinds of weird problems, as the Effects seem to start interacting in completely unexpected ways - inexplicable, very often. Even two different Effects on the same Sheet can create oddities which then go away if you simply move one Effect above the other (sometimes)!

Symbol gaps can be tricky to overcome in these cliffs. You may resolve some by simply adding a few short hand-drawn lines of suitable colour and thickness in the appropriate places. Where you have sets of lines forming a "V" shape, you could add either hand-drawn lines or extra, more broken, cliff-lines, to suggest hanging valleys on the cliff-tops, perhaps.