Steel_Wind said:
A serious question for a moment:
What is it that you guys like about CC2 and hope to enjoy even more in CC3? I confess, I do not see the attraction in these programs in terms of their output but...I reserve the right to be skooled.
Skool me, please.
For me it's simple, I love to create maps. It fascinates me. I've had that love of maps since grade school when some of my school projects had me tracing maps from the encyclopedia using wax paper, as an overlay, and coloring pencils.
CC2 allows me some of the same creative freedom.
CC2 allowed me to start with a global map, go to a regional map, then to a local map and drill down to a site-specific map. It kept the detail from map to map, which saved me time. I could even do that in reverse. Without any loss of detail. It also allowed me to quickly use its tools to create cities, divide them by political/power areas, create sewers underneath my city that easily conformed to the size of my city, etc.
All of those things I could have done with pencil/pen and paper. The only problem was upgradability. If I wanted to go from my local map to a regional map I had to recreate the coast and scale it, from scratch, a considerable hassle. With CC2 it is a matter of 3 clicks/commands and I'm all scaled up or down.
One thing that CC2 couldn't do was handle transparency, that was a major pain in the tookus, specially for site maps, because if you needed it you had to "fake it". Ever try to show a shallow pond with a chest at the bottom? Then you know what I mean.
Some people like "paint" programs to do their mapping. I've seem some fantastic drawings made with those. The part that was missing was the upgradability factor. Paint programs lose detail (pixelate) as you get closer to the objects. That was always a problem for me. So for some time I was using CC2 for the map and a paint program for the "post-production" work.
Now, CC3 combines the best parts of CC2 and a paint program. I can use symbols based on bitmaps that have transparency, or change color based on the currently selected color. I can import bitmaps directly and use them as symbols, etc. And I can still use the vector functions of CC3 to handle scalability, etc. In addition, it has some wonderful functions that allow it to create visual effects based on the sheet an object is placed on, similar to what you can do with "layers" in a paint program.
Add to that a fantastic user community and the best customer support I've ever seen and IMO CC3 is a tough act to follow. That is the overarching reason why I'm so excited about CC2 and the new CC3 upgrade.
