Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 6785852" data-attributes="member: 85870">Man, how to respond to this? On the whole, my experience with CC3 was &quot;positive,&quot; in that the software generally works as advertised. But once I understood what it was doing, and that 1) I could accomplish EXACTLY THE SAME THINGS using tools that other people actually use in the real world (i.e., Illustrator and Photoshop), 2) do it much faster, and 3) actually get some &quot;marketable skills transfer&quot; using those real-world products, I abandoned CC3 completely.The biggest problem with CC3 is frankly, speed. Digital mapmaking is &quot;fiddly&quot; ---- you're constantly tweaking one thing or another to get it looking just right. These little fiddles on CC3 just took too long, because the rendering engine is so slow. That, combined with the fact that unless you're the type to go out and build your own massive library of textures, tiles, and assets, the stuff that comes with the base program is very limited. If you don't like the basic &quot;style&quot; of map it produces out of the gate, you're going to have to shell out for a set of assets that works.Now---if your use of CC3 will be &quot;casual,&quot; or infrequent --- it MIGHT be worth the investment. To me, I was having to invest huge chunks of time learning how to use it, and then ultimately wasn't satisfied with the end result. For the &quot;casual&quot; user, in my opinion Fractal Mapper is the better choice. Fractal Mapper's stuff won't be as &quot;pretty&quot; as CC3's stuff, but it'll be faster to create, and if you're not getting into mapping &quot;hardcore&quot; anyway, how worried are you about the quality of output? For basic stuff that most GM's want, Fractal Mapper is easier to do.To me the &quot;big picture&quot; about Campaign Cartographer can be summed up this way --- I've yet to come across anyone who's a raving fan of the software. Most opinions you'll see about it are about like mine --- it's a solid, functional tool that generally works, and will produce a decent-looking map, but its inherent limitations make it hard to say, &quot;Yes, you should ABSOLUTELY go out and buy it.&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="innerdude, post: 6785852, member: 85870"] Man, how to respond to this? On the whole, my experience with CC3 was "positive," in that the software generally works as advertised. But once I understood what it was doing, and that 1) I could accomplish EXACTLY THE SAME THINGS using tools that other people actually use in the real world (i.e., Illustrator and Photoshop), 2) do it much faster, and 3) actually get some "marketable skills transfer" using those real-world products, I abandoned CC3 completely. The biggest problem with CC3 is frankly, speed. Digital mapmaking is "fiddly" ---- you're constantly tweaking one thing or another to get it looking [I]just right[/I]. These little fiddles on CC3 just took too long, because the rendering engine is so slow. That, combined with the fact that unless you're the type to go out and build your own massive library of textures, tiles, and assets, the stuff that comes with the base program is very limited. If you don't like the basic "style" of map it produces out of the gate, you're going to have to shell out for a set of assets that works. Now---if your use of CC3 will be "casual," or infrequent --- it MIGHT be worth the investment. To me, I was having to invest huge chunks of time learning how to use it, and then ultimately wasn't satisfied with the end result. For the "casual" user, in my opinion Fractal Mapper is the better choice. Fractal Mapper's stuff won't be as "pretty" as CC3's stuff, but it'll be faster to create, and if you're not getting into mapping "hardcore" anyway, how worried are you about the quality of output? For basic stuff that most GM's want, Fractal Mapper is easier to do. To me the "big picture" about Campaign Cartographer can be summed up this way --- I've yet to come across anyone who's a raving fan of the software. Most opinions you'll see about it are about like mine --- it's a solid, functional tool that generally works, and will produce a decent-looking map, but its inherent limitations make it hard to say, "Yes, you should ABSOLUTELY go out and buy it." [/QUOTE]

Verification