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Many of us remember, and were inspired by Pete Fenlon's wonderful maps for the Middle Earth Roleplaying Game. Today, Pete is Chairman and Studio Director at Mayfair Games. In January, with Pete's permission we released a style pack for making maps in his style as part of the Cartographer's Annual 2008.
Steve Townshend produced this beautiful map in the Pete Fenlon style.
It uses only specially designed vector symbols combined with CC3's effects to get the right look.
Style packs are preconfigured so that if you select a tool (for example, rivers, roads and terrain), it looks right for the map style. To create a forest, you just select the forest draw tool, click points for the border, and it does this, adding random tree tops and edge trees.
You building up mountain ranges by selecting a symbol, then placing. They are selected randomly from a collection of symbols. So this was one click per mountain, and the mess at the bottom is a mountain cursor. You can tab through random styles if you don't like the current mountain at the cursor.
The distinctive ridges are also built up of symbols. On the left, with CC3 effects off, on the right, with them on.
 
Although the styles definitely make it easier to create maps such as these, Steve Townshend demonstrates that the human touch is still required to get an aesthetically pleasing map - style packs just make it easier to get the desired effect.
You can download the map in CC3 format here.
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We've released our latest symbol set - Fantasy Floorplans for CC3. SS2v3 includes over 2500 new symbols in four styles, handdrawn, vector fantasy, and two new high resolution raster art styles. For a limited time we have an upgrade for existing SS2 customers. For more details, look here.
( Sample images behind the cut )
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An example map from ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) uthoroc demonstrating the second of the new SS2 symbol styles:
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We've been working on ways to support roof shading in City Designer 3. In CD Pro, if you place a building, you can control which roof sections appears dark and light, but this doesn't change if you rotate the building, and it doesn't work with house symbols.
For the new version, we want a method which allows us to rotate buildings and still retain the shading with no extra work for the user. It has to work with png and with vector symbols. Here is an early sample. It's the same building in png format, displaying roof shading. I've also added a shadow effect on the buildings for emphasis.
The big problem is doing more complex shapes. This may require a complete rewrite, as there is no way of shading domes at the moment. Other issues: the wall shadow filter (the one the building casts) is a fixed direction, whereas the roof shadow direction is easily adjustable. It would be good if we could do an omnidirectional wall shadow.
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We are at the final stages of putting together DD3. I always find that updating one of the older maps to the new version is a good test of its capabilities. I work with two copies of CC3 open; one to correct any errors I find with the templates and symbol catalogs, and another to work on the map. I'm about two thirds of the way through the map. It's taken about four hours (excluding bug fixes)
( Large image behind the cut )
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The Symbol Set 2: Fantasy Floorplans art upgrade will include new png artwork created by Peter Gifford, who created the look for our website and packaging. Here are a few early art samples. Peter is also working on new art for Symbol Set 1: Fantasy Overland.
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