When I decided to enter the competition I said I would be taking the southern gatehouse. And while everyone else is posting very advanced progress pictures, I've spent most of the time figuring out which style to use, measuring, placing guides on top of the parent bitmap, thinking about the layout I want to achieve, and testing one drawing tool (I don't think it's visible, but if you manage to spot it, don't mind the acne... yet).

So, instead of exporting a render of my progress, I decided to screenshot my work area:

I sure hope I can finish this before the deadline. I expect once I get through the "planning" stage, I should advance more quickly.

Vacations are almost over. Luckily, I've been making good progress:

I really like having all the floors in one image. However, that's not ideal for sharing in this forum, so I'm also including individual floors:

If I'm not mistaken, Sue's list only covers the contents of HCC3. Since this bundle also includes HCC1, I might as well post this matrix I've been trying to fill since the last bundle:

I'm not 100% sure on all entries, but it should be very close.

I forgot to post this yesterday:

I toyed around with both Bevel effects and tried tinkering with the settings. I found it very hard to notice the slight variations between those attempts (especially since I really liked adding the blur afterwards), but here it is.

Now that I think about it, I didn't try a smaller Bevel, one that covers 1/3 of the width.. I guess I should try that next.

This was pretty much a "throwaway" map for me, so I didn't expect to revisit it.

However, my favourite VTT is now defunct and now I have to worry about lighting effects and nighttime. So I wanted to test it out and this seemed like a good candidate.

Lessons learned:

Light effects are best placed at the top of the list (unless you really know what you're doing).

Make sure you check which symbols shouldn't cast a shadow..

... of all the above recommendations I only changed torches to candles, and then I totally missed the tiny candle symbols when moving the chimney, tables and shelves to another sheet. I'm not proud to admit that it took me a long time to realize it.

Oh, while I type this message I'll add: blurring the shadows is a good idea (totally missed it until now).

Well, it's time to post my entry.

I chose The Southern Gatehouse:

And this is my entry:

For those wanting to zoom in further, I'm putting one image per floor in the WIP thread, and this same image (with a better resolution) in my gallery. And if you still want more resolution, I'll be handing the FCW to Monsen for inclusion in the atlas. Which leads me to my next question:

How is everyone else sending their FCWs to Monsen? Post in the WIP thread? Private message?

EDIT: Ah, I found the answer myself:

So... I took a dive to see which were these missing background images.

As fas as I could recall, FRIA didn't support images at all, and it does seem to be that way. This is the FRIA screenshot with all layers shown:

And this is the same map in CC3+ with all layers shown:

But that's not all. In CC3+ you can go to File->CC2 to CC3 conversion... and choose a target style (I chose dungeon CC3 style) and this is the result:

As you can see, the image is loaded automagically (doesn't look too good, though). What you can't see in a screenshot is that multiple sheets were added (FRIA didn't have sheets either). BTW, just deleting the entity with the missing fill, seems to show the same image than the FRIA.

My guess? This was probably some early experimentation towards adding raster fills to maps, but never made it to the official product. The fact that FRIA simply ignores these entities makes me think this theory could be right.

Ralf did a live mapping session on creating your own symbols:

It starts describing how to create vector-based (very important to understand how symbol catalogs work), and then around 42:05 it covers importing PNGs as symbols.

Despite my effort (pickyness?) to keep all floors aligned with precision.. I managed to mess it up. LOL. As far as I can tell, this error is present even on my second post in this thread. But.. I fixed it.

And then, just as I was typing this message, I spotted a few minor mistakes. Fixed as well.

Anyway. I'm keeping the plain white border (not visible below, but you can check it in my post for the competition).

Thanks to all for your encouragement and feedback!

I ended up making 3 versions (using the magic of layers).

Cepheus Engine:

Cepheus Deluxe (the range chart is not really needed in CD, but it looks cool):

Mongoose 2E:

I guess I'm almost done. I just want to double check I didn't mix rules between systems.

EDIT: BTW, the range chart is my take on the "ruler" mentioned in this video: https://youtu.be/u0rPlnZ2uJE?t=599