And 🤞 that Ralf's Internet holds-up better this time!

I was going to leave a discussion of some of the text items to my closing post on this topic, but since that's not quite ready yet, and as the subject's been mentioned, we can today take a closer look at...

The Kaiin Mutiny*

Using text in Campaign Cartographer can often raise issues, and is typically one of the most complex elements. Aside from variables such as which font to choose, the font size for particular labels (as only one size can be allocated to each text item), suitable colouring and effects, the placement point can often be the trickiest to get right. Text will tend to expand away from whatever placement point is chosen at different screen and image resolutions - if that's "Mid Left", the text will usually hold fast on its left side, expanding away to its right, for example. This can only be fully overcome by using the "Explode" command on the text, to convert it to graphic entities that will hold their positions correctly. While this has advantages sometimes, it has the serious disadvantage that the text can no longer be edited as text, so make any mistakes, and the whole rigmarole must be gone through again.

In this case, I was using two different font sizes, and thus separate text items, for many of the map labels, larger for the place-name, smaller for the notes. The Kaiin label was an especial problem, because at the place-name font size, there wasn't enough room to fit the full text line in due to "The Melantine Gulf" label. So I reduced the font size for "The White City" part, and set-up the two parts of the name-label aligned, but with the intended fixed placement points of mid-right for "Kaiin" and mid-left for "The White City". It looked fine, as this screenshot from the FCW file shows:

However, rendering the map image as a JPG at the normal Forum resolution, and it came out like this:

This is unusual, but I didn't spot it right away, hence why it appeared on the map images posted last time (and again in one of the WIP images still to come). Typically, once I think a map's completed, I do a trial printout on an A4 page, so I can check it for mistakes, rather than relying on just on-screen images. Which is where this little "delight" was noticed. Checking the FCW file showed that "The White City" had been given a mid-right placement point as well as the "Kaiin" one, which I'd guess was due to a mis-click on my part; luckily, easily corrected, as this sneak-preview of a later-stage-mapping image shows:

One further point about the map labels should be noted. As often happens with such labels that have effects on them, when placed over mapped features with a very similar to identical colour, that can cause the text to lose definition, or gain unwanted holes and marks. When I spotted that first, for the "Fer Aquila Mountains" label, I decided to duplicate all the on-map texts to a lower sheet without effects on it, which stopped the problem in its tracks. That did though help slow-down the whole labelling process subsequently, both in remembering to do it on a per-label basis, and when the label's placement point, font size, or appearance for multi-line texts, had to be amended after adding it. Which, of course, is partly why the Kaiin Mutiny was allowed to continue for so long 😉!

* A punning reference to the title of an old Humphrey Bogart movie.😎

As I noted on the Forum yesterday, in trying to help resolve a different issue someone was having with the Ferraris Style (from Cartographer's Annual 158), I ran into issues with the program crashing if I tried to open the Vegetation.fsc catalogue. Rather than continue hijacking that topic here, I felt it better to start a new one instead.

The key elements of the problems I had, as extracted from that other topic below here, were all discovered just using the two example maps from that CA issue:

As our resident Forum expert Sue Daniel was unable to recreate the problem, she suggested I contact PF Tech Support, and having done so, I had a reply from Ralf this morning. He WAS able to reproduce the problem, and sent me a replacement Vegetation.fsc file to test, and that HAS solved the issues, so the program no longer crashes. However, he mentioned too being uncertain as to what was causing it; possibly something to do with one or other macro implemented with the drawing tools.

If others run into the same issue, at least you'll know it can be solved, and can hopefully be resolved in the download file before long as well. Providing this solution hasn't thrown-up another problem I've not spotted yet, at least!

Honestly, I do this all the time on the Forum. I come back a few days later and find there's something among showing as unread way down the list, when I'm sure I'd clicked to check all the new topics here. Probably just get distracted with too many other things at the same time. At least you found it now! Thanks too for your very positive comments!

And particular thanks, as ever, to Remy for fitting these into the Atlas now!

Heading further south in the main landmass area now:

Plus making tweaks to a few labels previously-placed. Every now and then, something just doesn't look right, or something's been forgotten. Or occasionally realising there's more space than was thought before, etc...

Everything here has been placed individually, incidentally, except for some of the areas of wasteland/steppe symbols, where the black outline drawing fill designs were used instead (mostly because few of those outline versions are available as separate symbols too - only the grass and dead trees, in fact). As those fills can look a little sparse, I did a mixture of adding some extra symbols by-hand, and duplicating the filled polygon to a separate sheet, then changing its fill type. There are several sheets for different terrain types in the default style setting, so there's a choice of picking sheets that do or don't have effects on with these - the black outline drawing fills don't usually need the edge fade effect some sheets like the mountain background terrain one has, for instance. As an example, for the Tundra, Lirrh Aing Wastes and Steppe areas, I began by adding a coloured polygon using the Desert Terrain drawing tool, and then just copied that polygon onto two or three more sheets to add the black-line symbol-fills (using separate sheets in case I needed to remove one after its "test fitting").

Down to the map's southern edge next, giving a chance to play with some sand dunes in the unnamed Desert (although I'd already added a few dunes to Kauchique in the early stages, these were more concentrated here). Not to mention sneaking-in a couple more sea creatures:

The results of the last session for this update finally sees the label added for perhaps the most evocative of the Dying Earth place-names, The Land of the Falling Wall, where may be found the dark-eyed necrophages and the great Walking Serpents (couldn't quite find space to squeeze in a label saying this, unfortunately, after a couple of failed attempts; at least I'll remember!):

I didn't actually realise until I was typing-up these notes and checking through the images, that for some reason, without having altered the image size or resolution, or changed the map effects, the sea lines just off the coasts are slightly different on this image to all the rest - fractionally thicker and further from the shore-lines. No idea why though! One more mystery of The Land of the Falling Wall, mayhap?

Last segment to complete - needing maybe just another couple of sessions...