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This is the new CC3 export dialog box for update 8. As well as the aforementioned antialias option, we've added the ability to launch an editor for the image you've just saved, and restrict the export to the map border. Lots of images have a mask around the outside to hide symbols which overlap the edge, and this option ensures the mask isn't included on the export. I can export a 6500x5200 resolution image on my mediocre XP system.
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Peter Olsson, who is responsible for half the CC3 and all the add-on code, has been working with me in the London nerve centre, with Ralf testing at a distance. Peter's cut the bug list in half, including some rare but persistent Vista bugs. He's also finished off the Cosmographer 3 software features. Now, with a bit of jiggery-pokery, we'll be able to import 3D star data into CC3, so that it looks like this:
He's also done some work on export, for example, we now support Zoomify, a deep zoom file format, as demonstrated on the front page of the Profantasy website. We are hoping this will encourage our users to add high resolution zoomable maps to their websites - Zoomify itself is a free Flash application.
CC3 export also has built-in anti-aliasing, which significantly improves the quality of the images.
No aliasing:
Aliasing:
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Photos of GenCon behind the cut, courtesy of Jerome.
( Read more... )
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This map of Shadow World was created by Matt Hanson from the April 2009 issue of the Annual Subscription.
I started creating a map of the continent of Jaiman on Shadow World® to include in an upcoming Player Guide. I wanted to create a comprehensive map that included all map related layers of data in all the official books: Places of Interest for players and GM's, Essaence Flows, Climate, Navigator Obelisks, Roads, Cities & Towns, Kingdom borders in different time periods. However the base map was on the continent scale so I felt the "Fantasy Worlds" style from the April '09 Annual would work best and give a nice simple and clean look.
I made a few changes to the standard Fantasy Worlds style. Given that the entire continent (45 to 70 degrees latitude) would be covered in forest I felt that the obvious borders in the standard forest (that uses a tree symbol fill) didn't make much sense. Instead I changed the color of the default land fill to make it a darker and more saturated green. I also created two additional bitmap fills - one darker and greener, and one lighter and more yellow. I scattered a handful of polygons about using these fills to give further variation in the landmass, representing denser than average forest, and more sparse forest mixed with grassland.
Jaiman Map Copyright Matt Hanson 2009, based on Terry Amthor's Shadow World setting , now published through Guild Companion Publications. Shadow World® is a registered trademark of Terry K. Amtho. This map will be available in final form in the upcoming Shadow World® Player's Guides series.  
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The second most popular Google search term after "Campaign Cartographer 3" is "Campaign Cartographer 3 torrent."
I'd like to appeal to those people considering a pirated copy to buy the software - since 2005 we've had a 14-day money back guarantee, and we urge you to try our support and community if you have any questions during that time. If you don't think the software represents value for money after that, just get your money back.
Piratebay, demonoid and all those other seeders have CC3 on torrent. There isn't too much we can do about it, though we have got a few sites to pull down links, and got a few pirates to pay up. We aren't sure how much this affects our sales - I'm sure a lot of pirates wouldn't have bought our stuff anyway - but there are certainly those who have made the choice to steal rather than buy. I estimate that there are four pirated copies in use for every one sold. These pirates aren't freedom fighters - most of them make money from advertising, and some even have the cheek to ask for donations.
Piracy definitely decreased when we introduced CC3 - it pings our server automatically to validate the serial number on installation, or gets you to type in a code if you don't have internet access. However, we don't want to inconvenience our customers, so we rely on our reputation for technical support, and the excellence of our community to keep revenue flowing. CC3 is a relatively inexpensive piece of software, and even our Whole Shebang bundle, while a fair price, still represents excellent value for money compared with other similar commercial software.
One other issue - on the CC3 torrent we downloaded, there was a very nasty Trojan virus. You get what you pay for.
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This maps is created using DD3 and CC3's lighting effects. It was created by bearclaw over on the ProFantasy forum.
Last weekend I thought I'd learn light effects for DD3. What an amazing tool!!! I was fairly impressed with the end result that I put together (which is for an on-going adventure we're currently playing).
The characters in my adventure are all demi-humans so I wanted to add light to the side rooms that they can see with their infravision. I put a light at the door facing inwards. I did that a greyish color light where the torches are all yellow. There's also a light at the top of the stairs facing downwards that is a white light to show the daylight streaming down, but that one didn't turn out as well as I would have liked.
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Time for a new Map of the Month. KeithC over on the ProFantasy Forum made these maps using the default CC3 style. He says:
The images overlap around the town of Footbridge. This was intentional.
I'm starting at the southernmost town and mapping my way north. I'm trying to make the entire ecological and economical system work, i.e. how the towns, villages, and city interact with each other based upon imports/exports, local trade craft, proximity to water for fish and/or game for hunting/food, crops grown at which altitude etc. I need to keep the settlements rather small to prevent over hunting, deforestation, polluting water sources. Each grid represents approximately 16 miles and the altitude logically increases as you travel north. Click on the images for a bigger image.  
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We asked our ProFantasy user base to fill in a survey, and we got well over 1000 responses.
I'm glad that a few results surprised me, for example, the number of people who run games using miniature-scale battle maps (72%), and that 25% of users draw starship deckplans.
Competition
Guess what percentage of our users have computers under a year old? A prize for the nearest. Post your answer in the comments.
The prize? We'll be doing an open RPG cartography survey, which will include some more general questions.
The winner will be able to choose the question, and get the results.
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This map of the month was created by Sarah Newton of Cubicle 7. This starmap (or one very like it) is taken from the upcoming 'Mindjammer' campaign setting for Cubicle 7's 'Starblazer Adventures' roleplaying game, available this autumn. See here for more details.
This is another purely vector map, and it's neat and clean. We liked it so much we are including it as a style in the forthcoming Cosmographer 3.
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After a dearth of maps of the month, two come along at once. The first is by Joachim de Ravenbel, a frequent poster on the ProFantasy Forums, and excellent macro creator. It makes good use of line art and subtle effects, with an inner glow on the on the ragged border.
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Mark and Ralf have revamped the ProFantasy store so that it accepts PayPal. We hadn't done this before because we were concerned about the additional costs associated with people switching to PayPal where it is offered. Our merchant rates on credit cards are pretty good, and we'd prefer people to use those methods. But, only a relatively small increase in sales would have compensated for this, and it's certainly a lot more convenient for Paypal-using customers.
Initially, we considered making Paypal an option which required a little additional work for the user, but in the end decided to present it as an option on the cart page. Paypal seem to think that installing their payment system increases sales by 14%.
Since we implemented it, sales via paypal have been responsible for 26% of our income. It's hard to tell from the raw sales data whether this had any effect, so I did a survey of all customers who used Paypal (half responded), and 38% said that they would either have delayed their purchase or not purchased anyway without PayPal. If we assume this is accurate, then our sales have increased by about 10% as a result of this decision.
It does seem ridiculous that a few days' work has increased sales by 10%. Not that I'm complaining.
One thing I haven't found was an increase in German sales. I've been told that Germans don't use credit cards much, and I thought this might help, but the country profile of PayPal users is pretty much the same as that of non-PayPal customers.
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We launched the Encompass range of PDF map-making products on 1st February exclusively on rpgnow. We've changed the products three times in response to customer feedback. As a result, one customer has upgraded his review from 2 two 5 stars, and our reviews now average slightly over 4 stars. Sales have been OK, about $200 of margin so far.
What's interesting to me is that all the art is originated in CC3, and exported from it directly to PDF, but we are not using CC3 as a selling point at all. Because CC3 has certain default styles which are very recognisable, when other maps are posted which don't have that distinctive look, people assume they come from Photoshop. This is a little annoying for me from a ProFantasy point of view, and we have to address it in the galleries and map libraries, but for Encompass, it's quite good. It builds Encompass as a separate brand in a slightly distinct market and make use of existing resources.
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I've been looking at the Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas we produced for Wizards of the Coast in 1999. With over 15' x 15' of maps on the floor, many not quite overlapping, it was quite a job to build up the world, but the excellent high-res relief image WotC sent us made it a lot easier. The navigation method, using an interactive globe was created by Joe Slayton (of Fractal Terrains fame), reminds me of Google Maps.
The Atlas has a vast number of maps - far too many for the price, I think - and there is too much FR material for it ever to be complete. I remember that an FR Atlas enthusiast advising Wizards of the Coast, emailed us to let us know we had missed out some villages and mispositioned an inn based on a paragraph in a novel. To Wizards of the Coast credit, they commissioned lots of new maps after the first release, and we ended up with over 850. Looking at PDF products map products now, and even our own Source Maps series (which I consider to be good value), the Atlas was an amazing bargain. WotC sold through the first print very quickly, but there never was a second one. It now sells at $150+ on Ebay.
In my research, I remembered that back in 2006 I set up a petition to for those interested in reviving the Atlas; it has over 2000 verified email addresses now, 35% of those in the last year.
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We've launched a new range of PDF cartography products under the new Encompass imprint over on rpgnow.com. Based on original ProFantasy's Source Maps material and rendered in a beautiful up-to-date style they include tileable maps at miniature scale, overviews for both player and GM and copious notes.
You can see a demo sample here.
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Here, for the first time, are some sales trends for ProFantasy. This first graph shows the seasonal variation in our sales, averaged over the last seven years. Some of the big summer hump is down to us releasing major products in time for GenCon, but by no means all. It took us a while to work these trends out, and we no longer panic when sales decline heavily into January through May. I'd be interested to see if this pattern matches those of any other RPG publisher.
Now for gross mail order sales year-on year, in Sterling. CC3 was released in 2006. This is a big boost to our sales, but reduces sales of redundant add-on products. This was exacerbated by the large price reduction in CC3 from $75.95 to $44.95 late in 2005, and the number of retrospective vouchers we gave out to customers who bought at the higher price, or bought CC2 Pro near the release of CC3. Since 2005, sales have increased year on year, and we are now above 2004 levels, though not as high as the halycon days of 2001, when we released CC2 Pro and FT during the 3rd Edition boom. Our margins improved in the second half of 2008, particularly with us leaving OBS in July and gaining City Designer 3 mail order sales as a result.
So far, January is holding up well in comparison to Jan 2008, but it will be a good few months before we know how much the credit crunch will affect us. I think RPGs will do well in a time of recession.
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This month's gorgeous map was created by Gandwarf, a regular poster over at the Cartographer's Guild, using City Designer 3. It's the first map he created in CD3, but it's changed substantially from its first incarnation, which was more sprawling. It's produced using one of the default styles in CD3, with good use of effects to give depth to the image.
Gandwarf's Tips: I used only standard CD3 functions and symbols. It was just a matter of planning the city, placing the objects and then tweaking the effects and sizes a bit. I did a small example map in this thread, see one of the last posts.
The fcw file is there also, including the effects I use on most of my maps. I am a bit of a sloppy mapper, so the different layers and sheets are a bit of a mess. It's the end result that counts for me. I am sure I am doing stuff wrong or inefficient.
The only thing non CD3: I exported the map in large dimensions and resized it with Paint Shop Pro. I find the anti-aliasing of CD3 a bit lacking (but maybe I am doing something wrong). The labelling was also done outside CD3, but it can perfectly be done with your software of course.
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This is a video demo of one of the new features of the forthcoming Cosmographer 3 add-on for CC3. It's just over 2 minutes.
I've found a nice bit of software which enables me to create and record demos on the fly. I don't have time to make properly edited vids, but I thought this might be OK for an LJ post. Please let me know whether you find it useful. Suggestions for improvement which don't involve spending more than a modest amount of extra time are welcome.
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