Testing out CD 3 - WIP on Small seaside town.

[Mark Oliva]

@Mark; CD3 will use what ever House Style you define to fill streets.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Can I, for instance, tell CD3 to take, say, a collection of 50 third party building symbols and then generate a new house style that will populate a street with those symbols?

[Gandwarf]

I like the map, it has character, even though it does have the generic CC3 look and feel. This map is pretty usable for a lot of DM's I think
I like how you did the house on the hill/cliffs.

[Mark Oliva]

I agree with Elothan. In the ProFantasy Forum you will find a thread with tutorials:
http://forum.profantasy.com/comments...scussionID=928
Have a look at tutorial 1...

Good. I looked at the tutorial. I don't believe it answers my question, although I might be wrong.

The main reason I'm asking this is because we've gotten some mail from CC3 users who have downloaded our Cartographic Collection, which contains more than 1,000 raster symbols, mostly of buildings. There also are other raster building symbols available free in the CSUAC, at RPG Map Share and in the Dundjinni forums. They're much better quality than the CD3 symbols I see in maps. Our symbols and those work from the CSUAC, Dundjinni users and RPG Map Sharework fine in CC3 after being converted, but only as individual symbols.

People who have CD3 are asking whether there's any way to use our symbols, converted for CC3, together with the CD3 street generation tool. I haven't the foggiest idea. I worked for about a year with CC3 and DD3 before giving them away, but I've never seen CD3. I have told folks to inquire at ProFantasy, but at least some of them found the answers that they got confusing and not helpful.

So ... if the answer is yes, if one can use third party raster symbols with the street generation tool of CD3, and someone can point me somewhere that tells how, I would be delighted to pass that information on when I'm asked and help those CD3 users get more from their program.

Thanks for your replies so far!

[NeonKnight]

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Can I, for instance, tell CD3 to take, say, a collection of 50 third party building symbols and then generate a new house style that will populate a street with those symbols?

You can take the Bitmap Fill Styles and use those to draw Buildings. I am not 100% sure about auto populatiing with actulal symbols beyond CC3 generic DRAW SYMBOLS ALONG A LINE tool.

[Mark Oliva]

You can take the Bitmap Fill Styles and use those to draw Buildings. I am not 100% sure about auto populating with actual symbols beyond CC3 generic DRAW SYMBOLS ALONG A LINE tool.

Again, thanks for your answer. I know what you mean, but the problem doesn't deal with fill styles, although I'm informed those don't always come out right either in the sense that roof tiles don't change direction. The problem deals with specific individual raster symbols, each of a specific building. I suspect that CD3 wasn't designed to do that, but I don't know that.

[Katto]

OK, sorry my fault. I was at work and had not much time.
CC3 can use *.png pictures that can be placed in the maps additional to the vector based shapes. These, let's call them symbols, are organized by themes, e.g. mountains, trees etc. in the symbol manager. From there you choose the symbol to place it on the map, no difference if it is a vector graphic or a *.png (The *.png's come in different sizes from low to very high resolution). The linked tutorial about macros shows us in chapter 11 that it is possible to place *.png's (the tree) along a path. The tutorial further shows how to place different randomized *.png's along the path and how to scale them.
You see that it is possible to add raster pictures in the way the street generation tool does, but not that comfortable. To be honest, it is not a thing of a few minutes or days. Nor do I have an idea at the moment how powerful the CC3 macro language is in interacting with the user. The "Tome of Ultimate Mapping" is a good resource, but refers to the CC2 series. I hope there will be an update soon.

[Mark Oliva]

CC3 can use *.png pictures that can be placed in the maps additional to the vector based shapes.

Right.

The linked tutorial about macros shows us in chapter 11 that it is possible to place *.png's (the tree) along a path. The tutorial further shows how to place different randomized *.png's along the path and how to scale them.

Right again. All of that I still remember from the year that I worked with CC3. However, it's been more than a year since I've seen CC3. I think it's fair to say that only a small percentage of CC3 users will do things with macros. The people who are asking if they can build our symbols (i.e. PNGs and JPGs) into the CD3 street generator probably aren't in that category.

All that not withstanding, thanks again for your answers.

[Mark Oliva]

Had a few feww hours today, so I thought I woud test out CD3 a little bit, and after trying a little bit, I came up with this...
Not exactly Gandwarf quality, but served me nice learning a bit about the software

It just occurred to me that I've kind of stolen your thread to ask questions that have nothing whatsoever to do with your map. I'll either drop out now or, if it's purposeful, start a new thread to continue the discussion. Apologies! I hadn't intended to hijack you!

[Elothan]

@Mark Olivia It is no problem at all Perhaps a mod can split the topic or something so it goes into the right place

@Gandwarf That means a lot, especially coming from you


Seems like I am a bit stck making "simpler" CD3 maps until I get an harware upgrade.. My poor old 13" laptop is struggeling with larger Citymaps....

[Katto]

Sorry Elothan. It was not my intention to misuse your WIP thread .