Avatar

Wyvern

Wyvern

About

Username
Wyvern
Joined
Visits
3,230
Last Active
Roles
Member
Points
5,507
Rank
Cartographer
Badges
24

Latest Images

  • Live Mapping: Napoleonic Battles

    @mike robel commented:

    The contour line in the 1930 annual does not appear to print the hash marks.

    It does Mike, but it actually creates a Symbols Along line to do so (assuming you're meaning CA84 1930s Overland Maps). There are detailed instructions on how to set this up in the PDF Mapping Guide that comes with this Annual issue, which is worth carefully reading and following, to get the best from this style.

     I don't really understand "map units"

    Map Units are simply what CC3+ recognises as the number to be used for the size-ratio of the area of your map. For an overland map, the default is that CC3+ calls 1 Map Unit 1 Mile (or 1 Kilometre if you opt for metric). This has nothing at all to do with what physical size anything will be in whatever final printouts you choose to do.

    You simply draw your map to the correct ground scale and size using only Map Units (so ONLY Miles or Kilometres; forget the "inches" thing; forget the "scale ratio" thing - at this stage they're irrelevant), including any hexes, so the hex has the correct scale-size for the map as you're drawing it. If the hex has to represent an area 100 metres from flat side to flat side, say, you can check that the distance across it is exactly 100 metres using the drop-down menu's "Info - Distance" option.

    If you're tracing an imported map image, make sure that's correctly scaled in the same way before you start copying it, so the scale CC3+ is using is exactly the same as that on the map image you're copying.

    Once you've finished mapping, you can then export an image of whatever size and resolution you need for your final printout using the drop-down menu's "File - Save As..." option. This is the point you can finally switch to thinking about what inch-size you'd like your hexes to be; just don't worry about it before this point. At all!

    Simplest way for this is probably to choose one of the "Rectangular section" graphic image export options, PNG or JPG, say, as the dialogue box allows you to set the size of your export by width and height in either pixels (and you can set the pixels per inch or per centimetre at the same time too) or physical dimensions (again, inches or centimetres). Then just select which area you want to export from your CC3+ map. If you've set your snap grid correctly, you can just use that to help draw the area you want.

    If you need the hexes to be a specific physical size on the final print graphic, say 1 inch from flat side to flat side, and there are 20 columns of hexes across either the width or height of the map that fit flat-side to flat-side, it's clear you need one of those dimensions to be 20 inches. The other has to fit the hex width, which is usually around 1.15 times the flat-flat size, thus about 1.15 inches per hex, times however many columns/rows of hexes in the area you need the graphic to be.

    Remember, what you're drawing in CC3+ is a map, NOT a hex-board printable for gaming on. Only the final exported graphic - which you can always resize precisely in a separate graphics-manipulation program, if you're happier using that - is where you need to worry about what inch-size what feature is meant to be.

    mike robel
  • Community Atlas: Embra - Hilly Places

    Thanks very much Sue!

    I wanted the cliffs here to look different to yours, which I'd already decided to use for the red sandstone types at Embra, as the Palace Heights ones are meant to be a harder, volcanic type of rock. Actually, a Faerie type of volcanic rock, which has different properties and abilities to "ordinary" volcanic rock, so I also wanted the forms here to act as a reminder that something a little different to normal was involved. I also used a similar style of cliff drawing in one of the Crossing Places Streets - the Rocky Vale under Seafield Road there, again because the Vale is a weird place that can't be reached, another reminder of something odd happening there.

    [Deleted User]Loopysue
  • Community Atlas: Embra - Hilly Places

    The final Hilly Places map condenses the last four items, the streets, into one sketch:

    These have a different random design mechanic behind them to the individual-place maps, and it became a particular fascination for me to see what patterns came out of this system. Here, I had to fit hills to the streets so-created, but that wasn't particularly difficult. Some features along the routes could be added based on the various featured texts, while others simply came from the street names, or the shapes the system produced, if sometimes with a bit of adjustment, or inspiration that struck while drawing them. Circus Place though just happened to look like a huge pair of spectacles from the outset - and what greater spectacle than a circus? Well, two circuses! Not saying it definitely did, but that might have influenced the final appearance of The Eye in Western Approach as well! Plus how apt was it that Western Approach can be approached only from the west? Sometimes, you start to wonder if randomness is truly "random" after all...

    [Deleted User]LoopysueRalf
  • Community Atlas: Embra - Hilly Places

    Last of the individual Hilly Places is the segment of the Twilight Market for this set, Fair Market:

    The overall nature of this location was decided well in advance - a hilltop funfair and market, with a living-wagon camp nearby for the funfair folk and some of the traders. And another chance to play "spot the castle" as determined by the original base map! Here though, that allows the easy segregation of the funfair from the main part of the market, though there is a degree of mixing as well.

    Most of the features are temporary structures, stalls, tents, etc. Even those "walls" are beautifully-crafted wooden lookalikes, with huge tents at the "turret corners", though stout enough to support an array of stalls built into the lower part of the walls, and more along the upper level's walkway. There is a handful of buildings too, in the Inns of Trade area south of the hill and market proper:

    Those varicolor, chimneyless, long, wooden buildings, and the small, square ones, from the CA169 Fantasy Town Annual, are amazingly versatile, I've discovered. Change their sizes a little, and an entire array of market stalls appears as if by magic, especially once some of Sue's City Domes from CA144A are added to the mix for circular tents, stall roofs or awnings, including here for a theatre/performance venue (Great Dome) and a Helter-Skelter tower (with a couple of drawn additions), not to mention that square Grand Pavilion. And the wooden long-houses also work nicely as the living-caravans (with the addition of a drawn, little round chimney top for each), as well as more of the square buildings for the stores/privies alongside the vans in the Camp. Plus there are a few more oddities in the written information to go with this drawing, as normal.

    [Deleted User]
  • Community Atlas: Embra - Hilly Places

    Hilly map 5 is Sunset Mound, a rather more characterful hill than some in this set, looking a little like a fish with a small tail, the dominant upland in the area, with a swarm of much smaller, elongated hills clustering nearby:

    While the shape for The Fence hedge-lines with its dense corner copses was largely determined by the base-map being a castle, most of the interior for that was ignored, replaced instead with a small focal-point derived from the map's accompanying featured text, that bloodstained Altar of the Dying Swan. Why such a huge, empty space surrounds it, is for GMs to expand upon.

    [Deleted User]