Didn't get quite as much done as I'd hoped before reporting back here (though that's often the case), as sometimes tweaking the effects or making subtle colour changes just needs more time that you can easily predict. However, a bit further forward:

The basic cave outlines were swiftly converted from their previous white outlines by simply using the "Change like draw tool" option under the right-click list of the :CC2MCHANGE: button, although the floors had to be moved to their correct sheet for the effects to work after that too. I also added a "Solid 30 Bitmap" fill over these new floors (by simply copying the existing floors to a new sheet, and changing the properties of the floor piece so-created), to try to give an impression that the floors aren't attached to the hex-rooms on these upper levels. Note that two of the exterior exit upper levels in the lower right corner haven't had their new fills added yet, because they have to be drawn in freshly, as the tunnel floors are really floors at the new level, with a ledge where they begin. That's all still to sort out.

The hex-room walls were simply converted to their thicker, coloured versions by changing properties of the original white versions. I've also changed the "identified" room colour in the upper cavern to be less jarring, though I think now this may be too subtle! Suitable floors, hopefully looking enough like the cells in a beehive, were added by again copying the hex-walls to another new sheet and amending their properties accordingly. I also added an Inner Glow effect to this sheet to alter the look of the floors a little more. I've not added doorways (which may include floor hatches - haven't finally decided) to the upper levels yet, as I wanted the basic room shapes to be completed first. Cutting the walls beforehand would have made this problematic.

For the upper hex-room cave levels, I hand-sketched some ideas using a mix of graph and tracing paper to make sure I had the general sizes and layouts correct. Then, I redrew those into the CC3+ map, using the same TEMP Sheet and Layer as for the base hex-room layouts earlier. I decided not to scan-in and insert the hand-drawings this time, as I knew things would need adjusting in-map to fit with what was already drawn there.

After that, a great deal of tweaking, changing and moving about followed, to improve the look and layout of the whole. Indeed, this took so long, I didn't have time to start converting the drawn lines to parts of the map, although I did identify one new item, which was the need to indicate a specific hex-room in all the "northern" hex-room cave layouts, to help with orientation (the one larger hex-room on all the "southern" layouts solves that problem there already).

Oh, and I changed all the layout lines to white!

Layout of the upper levels, and what each of these levels will look like, are of course subject to change once converting them to the appearance of the rest of the map begins, and the red-wall room isn't definitely how it will be in the end either. The external exits from some of the higher levels were suggested as existing by the Inkwell Ideas book for these designs, incidentally.

While these were all essential tasks, hopefully, there'll be some "real" mapping progress to report by next time!

A little further on now, and the cave's starting to look a bit more lived-in:

Getting the effects to look right for the two raised rock platforms in the southern front cave took quite a while, and may need further tweaking. I also tried adding some texturing patches to the cave floors in places, but they started to feel a little too much for the drawing, so were removed after a while. Might have a rethink on those later, perhaps.

I was happier with how the hex-room walls worked out, again after quite a bit of trial and error. Being the basal level here, they're attached directly to the cave floor, and I did add - and left there still - some texture patches inside those rooms. All I did beyond that was move them to a new sheet with some suitable effects, broaden the lines a little and change their colouring. And then cut some narrow doorways using the :CC2BREAK: command. Working on the principle the humanoid bee-folk are slim and not too tall, so they don't really need large doorways!

Upper levels to start after this. More when it's done!

As the perceptive among you will have noticed, I made a further change to the locations of some of the upper level layout designs after hiding the bitmap sheet I'd been tracing, something that I find happens all the time, when things don't look quite right. And which are liable to be changed repeatedly thereafter till I'm happy (or happier...) with them!

However, to today's update. The exterior is done for now, with ground cover, some vegetation and a few tumbled smaller rocks. I've also added the new SCREEN Sheet mask to hide what's beyond the map border:

The effects on the various external ground and symbols sheets has needed a degree of amending as well to reach this point, and I've also added those three free-standing boulders/rock pillars at the mouth of the southern front cavern. Haven't done anything inside the caves as yet, although I have had to add a small polygon of one of the patchy grey dirt terrain bitmap fills (one of the "T" types) to better disguise one of the outer-inner transitional passageway ends, where (as sometimes happens), the Edge Fade, Inner effect was giving too sharp a line where the outside brown dirt bitmap fill met the grey of the cave floor.

Next will be the initial interior cavern features.

Thanks very much Sue!

Inkwell indeed have a fascinating collection of RPG-ideas mechanics like the dice and accompanying books, and a range of cards as well, for settings, adventures and characters. In fact, they currently have an active crowdfunding campaign on Backerkit that has only 36 hours left as I type this (ends 2024 May 10, 03:00 GMT) for some new cards.

Meanwhile, resuming from where I left off, the first thing I wanted to do was draw the base shapes for those hex-rooms, so they'd be actual hex shapes, not my wonky hand-drawn efforts. This would give a clearer impression of where the four upper level layouts could go, and allow adjusting the position of the inserted base-map, before starting the mapping. So I set-up a suitable 10-foot hex snap-grid:

The "Edit Hex Grid System" dialogue pane does pretty much all the work for you, as once you type in the first hex dimension, it automatically calculates the second. For everything else, apart from the grid system's name, I just used the default settings. The resulting maze of dots allows an easy check that the size will work for what's needed. One hex-room is larger though, so I also created a second, 15-foot hex grid similarly.

Then I created a TEMP Sheet and Layer, drew out both the hex-room layouts onto those, using 0.4-width lines, and made four copies of each that could then be moved around to test different layouts. The next illustration shows what I settled on just before beginning the map. In it, the BITMAP sheet now has a 50% transparency effect activated:

The locations for those upper levels are liable to need further adjustment, since I'm likely to want to vary the individual layouts, plus the cave walls will need to be shown too. That will mean more shuffling about, and could require the map border and background to be expanded as well. Neither should be all that difficult, at least in theory...

And so to the basic cave mapping:

Nothing fancy here as yet, as I've just dropped in a simple hand-copy fractal polygon of the main cave floor and the exterior, using the Cave, Default drawing tool (which also adds walls automatically). Using the drawing tool means it's easy to trace the exact outer lines of those hex-rooms in each respective cavern, although it does mean the cave floor won't be drawn beyond the map border. That creates a couple of problems, as the Outer Glow effect is larger than the current SCREEN sheet's mask (that thin white strip just outside the map's edge) can hide, and there's also a darkening towards the top left map corner due to the Inner Glow on the cave floors.

Enlarging the SCREEN's mask (typing-in the commands "collardel" - which removes the existing Screen Sheet mask - and then "collarauto" - which creates a new, larger, mask on the SCREEN Sheet) is easily done, but I'll wait a while for that, because I also want to draw on some exterior terrain over the cave's base design here, with some vegetation, to make clear it's the outside. Drawing that terrain "floor" so it extends beyond the map's border will also hide the "Inner Glow" issue there currently. That's something for another day though.