Contests here seem to me as much an opportunity to experiment within parameters we might not ordinarily set ourselves otherwise, as anything else. And learning's all part of that. The snow caves look interesting; impressed by their fractal extent and complexity! Not sure they quite connect with the room maze, but appreciate that might be deliberate, given the red number "1" by the double doors.

I like the off-axis room-maze too, but maybe the numbers might be set upright? That could emphasize the off-kilter nature more, though they're perfectly legible as-is.

I keep an eye on a few other places online than this Forum from time to time, and today came across this recent posting on Dyson Logos' blog. It concerns a very long, thin, detailed dungeon map, and you can download a free copy of it from the blog page in its coloured version, as well as a zip file in black-and-white with and without a grid. I've not come across anything quite like this previously.

What occurred to me was that this might be an interesting idea to try using the strip-map technique, highlighted back in May 2009's Cartographer's Annual issue. The nature of the map on Dyson's website would make it difficult to draw something similar using CC3+ as-is, as just being so long, but a chopped-up version like the classic strip map could work quite well.

Long walk for the player characters if the entrance and exit are at the same end, and the big treasure room's at the other, of course!

@Autumn Getty - That's midday = noon on Monday by Greenwich Mean Time = UTC. If you're not in the GMT = UTC time zone, you'll need to convert, of course.

Reading contour maps like this is something of a specialist skill. It often benefits from field experience of walking over the terrain using a suitable map, or looking at an area and picking out features from the map as comparisons. Sometimes, it's very obvious what's too steep because of how close the contour lines are together - closer = steeper, basically.

Some folks are able to look at a contour map and visualise the terrain, and this is something you can teach yourself with practice, though not everyone finds it either possible or very easy to do.

You might find plotting out scale drawings, cross-sections at a right-angle to the contour lines, gives you a better idea of what the topography will really be like.

You might also examine real-world contour maps at an appropriate kind of scale to what you're planning, and look at where, and how, water flows over the landscape. Water always flows downhill, and goes for the easiest route, which often means where there's a steeper gradient.

However, you'd probably find more useful advice by searching online for "interpreting topographic maps", as there are a lot of suitable sites and videos regarding this topic. Good luck!

You should be able to find Wingdings from that More Fonts dialogue, Jim, assuming you have it installed on your computer. Of course, the pointing hand might not be one of the characters CC3+ will let you access, even so.

Meant to give this a bump yesterday, when the style was released into the wild for real!

@TheBlackVolk - Remy Monsen posted this video last July which may help.

I probably already moved the city somewhat, given the relative size of the symbol on the enlarged bitmap version I used as the basis for this map. That linked version is the one I'm basing all my comments on now, however, as it's not going to change substantially before it hits the Atlas. Assuming I ever get the fortress mapping completed...

The way I've been thinking could influence parts of the city's final layout is all, drawing on the final notes write-up.

You could certainly use the technique I suggested to make any existing pictorial city symbols look underwater too, with a transparent small polygon waving across part of the symbol, say, or blurring the whole symbol a little (though the Blur Effect, if used extensively on a map, can slow down redraw times, unfortunately), or a mixture of the two. If it's in shallower waters (less than circa 200 metres/660 feet of seawater, generally speaking for Earth; maximum sunlight penetration limit), you could add a few wobbly green lines to represent photosynthetic undersea organisms in a similar way alongside and over parts of the symbol as well.

Fully second Jim's point about us all always learning. The CC3+ program suite is vast in what it can achieve, and it's impossible to be aware of even many aspects of it, let alone all of them, especially as there are usually multiple ways to achieve something using it.

I like the "goes to somewhere else..." tunnels! I spent years designing dungeons/scenarios that were intended to link with one another by similarly vague pathways, and where the next mapped sequence had a similar group of tunnels going - who knows where! I ended up having to keep a separate written list of all the "blank" routes so I didn't lose track completely...

?