Me too!😁

Forgot to mention last time that I'd deleted and created a new beyond-map mask on the SCREEN sheet after laying-down the final terrain segments, using the same typed commands as mentioned back in the mists of time in this topic (end of the May 8th notes for the Bee Caverns map 😊). I do this for almost all CC3+ mapping, as I generally extend such areas well beyond the map border, to ensure any effects on their sheets won't create an unwanted edge-of-the-world outline look inside the map's frame. Similarly, any drawing tools I'm using that will run beyond the border need to have their "Restrict to map border" box unchecked, and then the tool saved so it'll remember I've done that. Thus for the River, Current Width tool:

Which of course is a not-so-subtle clue that things have progressed to drawing in some rivers now!

The next stage of the process began by sketching the base line for the road through the Pass, and the rough river lines, all hand traced from my inserted bitmap image design. All of these are going to be changed as the mapping proceeds, as they now have to fit the new terrain that's already there, so the lines are very approximate to begin with. More minor river lines will be added, others removed, for instance, as well as some new trails added. Plus to get the river and road lines right, the various randomly-located map features also need to be emplaced, as they'll help identify where such things need to be.

While the random allocation of features to squares is fine for the planning stage, they have to be moved around to suit the look of the map now. If two (or more) things are in adjacent squares, I might keep them separate, or combine them at one place, depending on exactly what they are, for instance. Some creatures or monsters have preferred habitats, such as woodlands or marshes, so that provides an opportunity to add some smaller patches of woods, aside from those the base map had already indicated in the lower left corner. Consequently, this part of the process can be quite complex, fairly slow, yet also fascinating, as there's a lot to think about, and try to be creative with.

Hence the limited amount of new features added or changed so far in this image (all the texturing options have been turned off for now):

As this shows too, labels need adding (mostly so I don't lose track of what each thing is meant to be). Red are creatures or monsters (in the RPG sense), green is vegetation, brown are occupied Dwarf settlements, grey unoccupied or ruined places, and blue unusual water features. The accompanying notes will clarify this in the final Atlas version, though I may add a map legend as well. The limited range of symbols has meant all have been repurposed so far beyond what their "official" titles suggest - those very popular circles are listed as "Hamlet", for example. Luckily, all have varicolor options, so identifying what's what becomes fully practical.

My original intention was to use the Gaeilge 1 font for the labels again, as with the Bee Caverns map. However, I couldn't get that to look sufficiently legible at reduced size, so have switched to the good old standby of boldfaced Arial for now. Place names were selected from a pre-rolled list of random options constructed from the name-tables in North Wind Adventures' "Hyperborea" RPG, adjusted or added-to in places, as those tables generate what are meant as personal names, based on a number of different Earthly cultures (although I ignored those tables for the more recognisable Greek, Latin and Old English/Anglo-Saxon ones in this case).

As usual, all that's been done till now remains subject to change, including the exact locations of the various features - aside from those sketchy, unadjusted river lines away from the area developed so far. I'm not happy with the look of that patch of Cedar Woods forest either. I've heavily adjusted the effects on the FOREST sheet already, and ran out of time to do more. I'm thinking currently to add a new sheet to outline the woodland area, so I can make the inner part, still on the FOREST sheet, transparent enough to show the contour lines for the rising mountains. There is a Transparency effect on that sheet now. Unfortunately, Transparency's something of an odd effect, which tends to interact poorly with glows on the same sheet (which is what's presently outlining the wood), so it's no longer properly see-through. I've had to set the Transparency to 90% opacity just to stop the glow from doing all sorts of unwanted things to the whole polygon to get this appearance. Then again, even if the opacity is set to 100%, objects on a sheet with only Transparency active look more washed-out, and sometimes slightly transparent still, than if the effect is turned off entirely.

Still, a typical level of progress so far!

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.

Indeed, good luck with the surgery. As someone who also has manual dexterity problems, I can quite appreciate the problems. CC's been a definite boon in this regard.

All the places that have been either mapped or reserved are shown as such in the online Atlas. Everywhere else is free to choose from - and don't forget that even if somewhere has already been mapped at some level, you could always map a smaller piece of that, down to a room in a house or a dungeon (or even smaller places!) if that hasn't been mapped in detail yet, should you choose to. There are no limits except your imagination!

You can reserve a place or places by commenting on this Forum topic, or by contacting the Atlas' organiser and coordinator, Remy Monsen.

Full information can be found out regarding all aspects of mapping for the Atlas on the How to Contribute page of the Atlas.