Yeah, as Don says that's not really an issue for anyone who's ever played Call of Cthulhu. Surviving long enough to actually get to that point, now THAT'S the tricky part 😉.

Yes, this can be a problem with some of the topographic mapping styles, and it's not possible to solve them all the same way (as they don't all use effects that will work equally well with things such as transparency). Luckily, this one does work that way.

Back at the mapping, the fourth quadrant has now been completed, and various items tweaked to a greater or lesser extent that seemed to need them. Names have been added for the main rivers and uplands, as appropriate, and a few more smaller patches of woodland "grown" in parts:

Then I added the title, scalebar and compass rose, and did some tests with the texture options activated. This image shows both in place:

While that looked sort-of OK, I wasn't very satisfied with it, so I tried various alternatives, ultimately deciding to have two separate sheets with the texture on them, because doubling-up helps accentuate the "water-colour-paper" look, and I could also restrict the textured areas to the newly-expanded upper and lower map borders only. That's not possible with the all-map Texture effect. Which brought me to:

However, I wasn't convinced this was sufficiently clear, as apart from darkening the map in general, it also further blurs everything. So I'm now thinking to leave the texturing options off entirely:

A few more minor adjustments are likely while preparing the notes to go with the Atlas version. At present, I'm intending to add some bridges to help clarify where the fords are over the lesser rivers, for instance. This is though probably close to the final version now. Until I find I've missed something, that is!

There's always something... Been there, done that, have a wardrobe of T-shirts to prove it 😏.

Further progress now, with the contours mostly mapped-in, except for the highest peaks. I felt it was growing less easy to separate the upper contours, so experimented with some colouring alternatives. The range of fill-colour options in this style is very limited, so that meant trying out some effects as well, including one or two I've only rarely tested previously. Naturally, everything remains in flux at this stage. However, this option seemed satisfactory, using a combination of an RGB Matrix Process, retaining the Glow to highlight the contour's edge, and a Blend Mode using the Phoenix setting:

As should be obvious enough, I've also hugely toned-down the contour-edge Glows since my previous post, when I was still trying to get the contour shapes right, and being able to quickly identify which was which was more important. The "woodcut look" of earlier has its attractions, and has been used to good effect in other maps presented on the Forum over the years. It seemed much too strident for the Worthington style's subtle colouring at this scale though.

Whilst blundering about among the effects, I chanced to find there was an inactive Texturize effect on the whole map. Turning it on did nothing obvious, even when I changed its settings. When I looked closer at what file it was reaching for though, the reason became obvious, as the file it was trying to find was located at D:\Programme\ProFantasy\CC3\Filters\Images\CA91 Texture.png. The correct file location for a standard CC3+ installation should be C:\ProgramData\ProFantasy\CC3Plus\Filters\Images\CA91 Texture.png. So I changed that, with this result (without altering any of the default settings):

While quite subtle, especially at this res, it does create a somewhat different appearance, as might be expected, rather like watercolour paper. I do like how it softens everything, even if I'm not sure if it'll stay to the end of the mapping at this point. While mapping, it'll have to stay off for best clarity (as it affects EVERYTHING in the drawing, of course, including the bitmap version I'm copying-in details from).

Further exploration showed a possible reason why this global effect had been turned off (and perhaps forgotten, given the non-standard file-path), as there's also a TEXTURE sheet, which has a Transparency effect, set to 70% opacity by default, and another copy of the texture PNG on it. This is right at the top of the list of sheets (actually, of course, at the bottom in the Drawing Sheets and Effects pane), so it affects the entire map and its frame. Naturally, this is why the whole map looks quite misty, and a little faded. I ran a series of experiments with both the global effect setting and this TEXTURE sheet on or off (hidden or shown for the sheet), though I'm undecided as to which is preferable still. I suspect I'll need to see how the finished map looks before making a final decision. The contours alone probably aren't enough to judge by at present.

All of which lengthy fiddling about only left enough time to add the highest mountain peaks, with a further colour change, this time making use of the CA91 Ice bitmap fill for a suitable pale topping. With whole-map texturing and the texture sheet visible:

and with just the texture sheet shown:

Without the global texturing is certainly clearer. As noted above though, have to see how I feel about it another day 😊.

It seems we may soon be looking to more new maps, and some fresh mappers, for the Atlas, which can only be A Good Thing!

Meanwhile, back at the camp, and wondering which style to choose for the area map...

One of the issues with symbol-based overland styles is the hidden "north" side of everything, where you can't properly show what's happening there without using some sort of indicator or map notes. Often, that doesn't matter too much, but for details of what's where within a mountain range, it can become more problematic. For this area map, I decided to use a top-down drawing style instead, and picked one I've been intending to try for a while, the Worthington Historical from CA91. This has only a few symbols for the settlements particularly, with the terrain and vegetation all illustrated using bitmap-fill drawing tools and sheet effects.

As the area's size had been determined already, the one thing I changed when creating the new map in CC3+ was the background fill style, opting for the green Farmland fill in place of the default blue Sea one, as there's no large expanse of open water here. After that, I simply created the usual new BITMAP Sheet and Layer, and inserted my features map onto them:

The grid dots that are showing are from a new "2 miles, 2 snaps" one created for the purpose as well, making for both easy placement of the inserted map, and a check that the scaling was correct (I did a double-check using the Info -- Distance drop-down menu command as well, just to be sure).

I sketched in a base colour for the rising land that fills much of the map except in the top right and lower left corners using the Terrain Default, Hills tool. That was rather hard to distinguish, as it uses the Solid 10 fill, the palest of the transparent "Solid" fills. I tried changing it to Solid 20, and while the Glow effect on the TERRAIN HILLS Sheet looked interesting, the fill itself still didn't really show clearly enough. After a further couple of failed attempts using the darker Solid fills, and an examination of what effects were on which sheet, plus a few more experiments, I ended up simply copying the drawn HILLS area to the CONTOURS (LAND) Sheet, and changed the fill style to the Land, Default style, which produced this:

Happy with that, I began draughting-in the hill and mountain terrain using the Terrain Default, Mountains drawing tool, only to find that the two Mountain sheets had no effects on them. I'm not sure if this may have been corrected subsequently in that Annual's download file. If not, it's easy enough to correct by just copying the effects over from one of the sample maps for this Annual issue instead. Which I did!

I had a couple of false starts in drawing the terrain. While it's important to try to mimic the placement of symbols with where the more dominant features are in this kind of "zooming-in" area map, I find it's often a question of trial and error to see what looks best when converted to a different, in this case more topographical, drawing style, something that will likely also need testing variations in the sheet effects subsequently as well.

As the mountain terrains are all drawn using the same fill and effects in the unadjusted Worthington Historical style, stacking mountain contours atop one another also creates the dreaded mottling of transparency acne, thus a series of "BACK" sheets without effects and a different fill had to be added - and changed - each time I redrew the various contours during this. So long as you do this singly or in batches, to make best use of the "Prior" selection option, that's not too bad though.

This shot is only partway through the process of changing the contours, so it looks really messy still in places. The Glow effect on the various terrain sheets is obviously too strong as well, for all it helped keep things clearer for me while drawing to this point. Hence why I hadn't changed it at this stage. This is as far as I got during the session:

The final image for today shows what happens when one of those "BACK" Sheets is deactivated:

Someone's knocked over the pepperpot 😉.

More to follow.