Setting up a linux machine to run CC3+ is just a matter of installing linux, installing wine through the package manager for that linux distro, and then simply install CC3+ as you would on windows (Wine should associate itself with .exe files, allowing you to run the installer easily).

CC3+ should run just fine on any distro (as long as it is recently new/up to date), most of them contain Wine for installing through their package manager (if you manage to find one without easy access to wine, then it would be unsuitable). Personally, I recommend users just use the distributions they are familiar with (and if they aren't familiar with any, I wouldn't recommend they go ahead. Using CC3+ on linux is a good enough option if you already use linux, but if they don't already have a desire for using linux, taking on the effort of learning a new OS for no good reason isn't sensible, and there are some quirks with CC3+ on linux as well)

Generally, CC3+ works just fine on linux, the main issue I've had is that fonts doesn't render the same size as under Windows. This isn't a huge problem when mapping, but it is a problem if you plan to share .fcw files with Windows users (for example if you wish to download an .fcw from the atlas, or contribute one). See the Wine AppDB

Also note that you need your button image in four resolutions, compass.bmp, compass24.bmp, compass32.bmp, compass48.bmp. (image sizes should be 16x16, 24x24, 32x32 and 48x48).

Anyone out there playing Minecraft?

Just for fun, I decided to implement the world of Nibirum from the community atlas into Minecraft. It is now available on the atlas download page.

This Minecraft world was made using a height map generated by the original Fractal Terrains file for the community atlas. The resulting world is a very good representation of the FT world. Note that it is exported using a equirectangular projection, so shapes are distorted in the same way as you can see on the atlas world map. This is particularly noticeable for Peredur and Ezrute

Now, the CC3+ atlas maps do not follow the FT3 map faithfully, it is more used as a loose guideline, and to provide the continent shapes, but many mappers ignore things like altitude from FT3. Unfortunately, generating a proper height map from the CC3+ maps is not an easy task, because they do not contain height data, so I had to go to the FT3 source. This unfortunately means that while the Minecraft map is a very good representation of the FT3 world, it will deviate from the CC3+ maps a bit, but there is no helping that.
Additionally, terrain does not carry over when using a height map, so I did some manual biome painting. I did a rough paint job trying to paint biomes roughly matching the CC3+ continent maps. In the end I did find the result quite interesting, although it can certainly be made better but that would take much manual work. Except for the heightmap data for the continents, the rest of the features are generated by Minecraft as per a normal Minecraft map so don't expect to find villages that match up with the location on the atlas maps, I don't have any control over where Minecraft places villages, temples and other structures.

I do think this map does a nice job in allowing you to explore Nibirum "in person" instead of just looking at a map.

Minecraft Technical Information

This map is for the Minecraft Java edition. I have no idea if it can even be imported into any other version.
The map itself is about 30000 by 15000 blocks, where each block roughly represents 1 square mile on Nibirum.
This map was made for Minecraft version 1.12.2. It was made for this version for technical reasons. 1.13 introduces a new map format, and tools to create custom maps does not support this version properly yet. Additionally, while Minecraft itself are supposed to be able to convert maps to the new format, it seems to fail hugely on this one, seriously messing it up when loaded in 1.13. Things seems to look fine at first, but exploring a bit quickly reveals that a lot of the chunks from the map has been replaced with normal randomly generated chunks creating a checkerboard of new and old chunks. So stick to 1.12.2 when using this map, which should be easy to set up a profile for in the Minecraft launcher (At this point this is also the best supported version for mods if you are into that)
The map itself was generated with a few mods in place to make a more interesting map, but the map itself is purely vanilla Minecraft, and do not require any mods to use. It should be fine to use with modded Minecraft too though (but if your mod adds things to the world, like more ore types, you need to look up the term retrogen)
This map is populated with normal Minecraft resources and structures, so it is a fully playable survival world.
The software I used to accomplish this was World Painter to import the height map and generate a minecraft map from it and then I used the Chunk Pregenerator to force Minecraft to populate all the chunks on the map with the various features (caves, mineshafts, runins, villages, trees, etc) without visiting everywhere. Additional structures where also added at this stage by Recurrent Complex.

Screenshots

Here are some screenshots I took while in game. Note that this map is so huge that it is impossible to take screenshots of larger features like landmasses.
You can click any of the screenshots for a higher resolution version (There is also a 30K resolution version of the world map from above, but beware, it is 200MB).


[Image_12165]
A view from the continent of Alarius.


[Image_12166]
Snowy Hills on Ezrute


[Image_12167]
A village on Kentoria


[Image_12168]
Maelstrom Bay on Malajuri


[Image_12169]
A handy teleporter I set up at spawn that can quickly get you to another continents.

What where the problems with moving the symbols? CC3+ symbols/fills can be anywhere you want them. The location of the CC3+ data directory is specified int he file @.ini in the CC3+ installation directory, and that location is set in the installer (but you can also just edit this file manually later and then move the folder manually). There is nothing in CC3+ that forces the data directory to be on the C drive, although that is the default location. I've moved this folder many times without any issues.

The only issue may be if you have made symbol catalogs yourself (or just inserted image files directly in the map without using symbol catalogs). In these cases, your existing maps may have hardcoded paths to the C-drive instead of the relative path CC3+ uses in it's own configuration. Custom symbol catalogs should always be defined with relative paths as LordEntrails points out above.

CC3+ contains a huge amount of various commands and features. This series highlights a number of these. There won't be any special progression to this series, and the command will be selected from the entire range, from the simple basic commands, to more advanced features intended for the more advanced users. Feel free to use this topic to discuss the command presented.
This series is called the command of the week, but it could also explain a feature. The explanations will tend to explain the technical parts of the command, and is intended to highlight the basics (and complexities) of the command, and information about how to use it, but won't be a detailed tutorial. It is up to you to use it creatively in your maps.

Week 50 - Fill with Symbols

The Fill with Symbols command is designed to fill a polygon with symbols. It was originally designed to create forests, which is still the main use today, and as such, it is designed to pack the area tightly, and does rather regular positioning. This means that it is very useful for some purposes, but less useful for other purposes (like randomly filling an area)

Where to find it

Menu: Draw -> Fill with Symbols
Command Line: FORESTOPT, FOREST, FORESTLOAD

How to use it?

The most common usage of this command is to pick a forest-type drawing tool and use it in your map. Map styles generally have two ways of representing forests, the first one is using this command to place the forest as symbols, the second one is to simply use a fill style with a tree pattern. The tools creating the forest using symbols generally have better looking edges, since you can see the trees and their trunks at the edge.
Back in the old days, one had to put in forests manually, and this is why you in many symbols catalogs can find these big blocks of trees with only their tops. These blocks of trees allowed you to draw a large forest quickly, and the reason these blocks only showed the tree tops was that when additional trees were being placed in front of the, the trunks and bottoms would be hidden anyway, and back in the day, skipping these parts made the trees simpler, which meant they would redraw quicker, increasing performance. With the modern bitmap symbols, this speed optimization is less of a concern, since a block of trees is still only a single image, no matter if the trees contains trunks or not, but it is still a big performance benefit from having large blocks of trees as a single symbol instead of each tree being it's own symbol in a large forest.

However, this command doesn't just have to be used with the forest drawing tools. You can configure it yourself, and use it manually to draw whatever you like. First, let us start by configuring the tool. When you start the command, you'll see the Forest Options Dialog, here filled with the values used by the Decid forest drawing tool from the Mike Schley overland style.
This dialog may seem a bit daunting, but let us explain the basics of it:

• Symbol Catalog: This is the symbol catalog we will be pulling the symbols from. Any given run can only pull symbols from a single catalog
• Unit Size: This defines the placement grid CC3+ uses to draw the result. This should be roughly equal to the size of a single-entity symbol at scale 1.0
• Offset All: This allows you to offset the final result a bit. For example, you may see from the existing drawing tools that the treetops extends a small bit outside the polygon you defined. This helps enforce the illusion of height on the trees.
• Symbols: Here you tell CC3+ how many symbols are in your list below. You can set this to a smaller value if you don't want to use all the configured symbols.
• Symbol list: This is a list of the symbols to use for the fill. To provide a tight fit, like a forest needs, the size (CX and CY) needs to be the exact multiple of the unit size defined above, or if you want spacing between your symbols, you can increase this further. The Single checkbox indicates that this is a single symbol (as opposed to a symbol showing a group of things), and that this symbol is suitable to place on the edge of the area. For example, with the forest, a single tree (with trunk) should have the single checkbox checked, but a group of trees without trunks should not, as you don't want these on the edge.
• Load, Save: Allows you to load and save the settings for later use
• Run Now: Starts the command, and asks you to pick a polygon to fill with symbol. Note that when manually invoking this command, you should already have drawn the polygon, it won't work like the drawing tool that first have you draw the polygon, then fills it, instead you must pick an existing polygon in your map.

When you run the command, CC3+ will fill the specified area with symbols from the list. It will try to use the biggest symbols in the list it can fit in any given position, and then fill inn the smaller gaps with the smaller symbols to fill the area as tightly as possible (assuming the CX/CY values matches the symbol sizes, if not gaps will occur).

Note that when you run this command, CC3+ will use the current default symbol scale defined in your map, so if you have placed all your other symbols in your map using a different scale than the default (without changing it), you should go to File -> Drawing properties and change it to your preferred value before running the command. This is something you should normally do in all cases anyway to match the scale your are using in your map if you are not using the default value.

Example

For this example, let us try making a city from multiple village symbols, like some maps that have been posted to the forum lately. Do note that this won't put in perspective and such, so it is a pretty limited reproduction, but it shows one way to use this command.

For my example, I started with a 50 by 40 Mike Schley overland map and drew a polygon representing my city shape. I then ran the command with the values as shown in the dialog below, and got the result in the image to the right. Note that the command also use the varicolor version of the symbols I picked, because they were defined in the same symbol group in the symbol catalog. This provides some variation, but make sure to select a decent color before running the command.
It won't fill perfectly to the edge, because the symbols are quite large compared to the polygon size. The smaller symbols are related to this, the more "perfectly" the symbols will fill the polygon.


[Image_9929]