Upgrade Campaign Cartographer 2 to CC2 pro...

Doc_Klueless

Doors and Corners
Background: I bought CC2 many, many moons ago. So many moons that I can no longer upgrade it for free.

Question: Is it worth it to spend the extra cash to upgrade it? What do I get that would make it worth it (in a nutshell)?
 
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User's guide is better than any prior, the CC Pro interface is changed making it easier to do the common things.

From the README...
1 Toolbar buttons are now in the new, sleak, Win 2000 look with transparent icons, instead
of grey-backed ones.
2 Moved specialised mapping commands to the top left icon bars.
3 Added Right-click functionality to toolbar buttons- most with optional pop-up
context menus.
3 Added an help guide tutorial on the Help menu.
4 Added the Draw Tools feature - preprogrammed drawing commands which can "lock" to the map
borders, use many types of fractal and are easy to change. You can add a complex fractal
landmass in two clicks, or add a new section to a cave. They can be used for creating swamps,
rooms, lakes, forests, roads or most other mapping features.
5 Added the Symbol Settings feature. Select from a list of images to choose from related
symbol catalogs, optionally setting an appropriate layer, color or other properties.
6 The previous lake, river, etc. icons, have been replaced with draw tools - left click the
button to get the default, or right click to see a list of choices.
7 A new toolbar with the symbol catalog icons has been added. Select View >> Screen Tools
Symbol Toolbar and point it upward.
8 A new option for large icons is available for high res users (1024x768 or better) on large
monitors (17" or larger, we recommend) Select View >> Screen Tools, Use large toolbar buttons
to select this option, then restart CC2.
9 A right click between commands does not repeat the previous command - instead you get a
context menu. You can turn this option off, or even change the menu if you wish.
See "right click context menu" in the help file for more details
10 We've removed the Text, Insert, Copy, and Options menu, renamed the Modifiers menu the
Snaps menu, and added a Tools, Add-ons and an Overland menu. This last menu is replaced
by the appropriate add-on menu.
11 We've remove the Lock/Unlock, Depth and Cursor Snap buttons, as they are rarely used and
can still be accessed from the Snaps and Tools menus.
12 Many separate commands have been combined into single commands:
* All export commands, including Export Window Section have been incorporated into Save As.
You can control the settings of each export file type by clicking the new Options button
on the Save As menu. A single dialog box controls resolution for all raster formats.
* Picture, Insert Text File, Insert Part and XREF have all been combined into Insert File on
the Edit menu. There is also an option to embed a bitmap in the drawing, instead of having
it as a seperate entity.
* All the various options and perferences scattered around the menus have been combined
into a new Options dialog box on the new Tools menu.
* The various Path, Polygon, Line, Circle, Arc and Offset commands are now combined onto
single dialog boxes. You can choose the default, which is activated by toolbar button
click, or right click a toolbar button for quick access to the drawing commands.
* We've added a Symbol Manager. It lets you manipulate the symbol references in the current
drawing through a single dialog box. You can delete or scale selected symbol references,
create new symbols from scratch or from existing ones and edit or list symbols. You can
also export a selection of symbols to create a new symbol catalog, import CC2 files as
symbols, purge all the symbols from a drawing, import symbols from another drawing,
replace one symbol with another, or reorganise the symbol order. Optionally, you can see
the symbols as thumbnail images or by name alone, and you can hide or show symbol fill style
symbols.
13 You can import and export drawing tool and symbol catalog settings to share them with
other users using Tools >> Import/Export Settings.
14 When you select New... to start a new map, you can select from a gallery of images, and
the new map will be based on the selected template. The previous New options can be
accessed by right clicking the New icon.
15 Add-on icons have been moved to the File icon bar, giving us more space for new add-ons!
16 The new Symbol Style Toggle icon lets you choose between different styles of the same
symbols settings - so click on it to swap between Line and Filled symbols in CC2.
17 The Draw Like command lets you select a drawing entity in your drawing, then proceeds to
draw another.
18 Editing commands have been updated and improved. Move, Scale Rotate lets you drag entities
visually, rotate entities - just right click to finish the rotation, or scale them visually.
Rotate lets you align to a selected straight edge, Scale lets you scale with only one
selection point. The appearance of these commands can be controlled using Cursor Options,
giving you a non-visual or bounding box option. All the original non-visual versions
are available with a right click on the toolbar buttons.
19 New Room and Corridor commands. These are cut down versions of those found in DD2, but
still powerful. Right click the Dungeon Designer to icon to access these.
20 A new building command These are cut down versions of those found in CD2. You get a choice
of six house styles, and you can edit the colors. Right click the City Designer tool bar
button to access these.
21 Paste has been improved to make it visually - it now works like the copy command, and
doesn't ask for a scale or rotation. You can insert bitmaps directly into drawings, too.
The non-visual Paste is still available by right-clicking the Copy button.
22 Right click context menus are available for most toolbar buttons. They give you a menu
of related, but less frequently used commands. These menus are stored in the System
folder and can be edited with a text editor.
23 Added "CAD Files" filter to FILE command.
24 The ATTACH Mode dialog now has a check box showing/changing the current attach enabled
state.
25 Added Hex Grid.
26 Added VSETM command. VSETM <view set name>.
27 Trim now always picks side to trim closest to pick point.
 


I feel your pain

Ranger REG said:
Now if I can only find a how-to book. The program is cool but I don't know where to start.
I felt the same way when I first got CC2. I actually became very frustrated and I felt cheated.

I had never used a CAD program before and everything that I had learned from using "Paint" programs was completely different in CC2.

However, someone in the CC2 mailing list recommended that I do the tutorials that come in the user manual. The tutorials helped me understand the CC2 interface, which is a CAD interface. After doing the tutorials I was not frustrated anymore. I understood the CC2 paradigm.

Now I'm hooked. CC-Pro is a marked improvement in functionality and organization. However, the program still operates on a CAD engine, so doing those tutorials is still the best place to start.

I do recommend the CC-Pro upgrade. However, if you are not willing to spend the time to learn how the program operates then it will be a waste of money.

All in all, it took me about 6 hours, spread over several days, to get really comfortable with the interface. The greatest thing about this program is that it has a community that is very supportive and Profantasy is Top-Notch at customer support.
 
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Quick Sample

Attached is a simple overland map that I created using CC-Pro.

It is not a work of art by any standard but it is functional for my campaign purposes. It took about 15 minutes to create.

One of the great advantages of CC-Pro (CC-2 also) is that all entities within it are vector graphics, which means that I can keep zooming into the picture without any pixelation or loss of definition.

If you want to see some impressive maps completely made with CC you need to look at the World of Jhendor by Ralf Schemmann (I hope I spelled his name right).

One of the coolest things I've found with CC is that you can create symbols. Symbols are entities with unique identifiers, which can be placed on your maps in a variety of ways. They can be scaled dynamically, rotated or mirrored as necessary. In addition any entity in CC can be moved and placed with great accuracy, without affecting any other entity. So I could place a door on a wall or a city on a forest. If at some time in the future I wanted to move that entity somewhere else I can do it without affecting any other entity on top of which they were placed.

All the entities in the attached drawing are symbols.

CC is not limited to overland maps. You can create some pretty cool dungeon maps too. Since the entities are independent you can create a square room and then rotate it to whatever angle you need. Circular rooms, odd shaped rooms, etc., all of them can be created with a few mouse-clicks with CC. The second attached image is a quick sample to demonstrate.

Some other cool stuff are the sheets. Consider sheets as tranparent overlays that can be reorganized in whatever order you choose. So you can have a sheet that has the grids, another with all the text labels. One that has all the sewers, etc. If you're building a city and need to see the sewer overlay you display that one. If you want to see the roads and sewers you display those two sheets. If you also want to see the grid display that one also.

Entities can also be grouped by categories known as layers. So if I have all my mountains in the mountains layer and all my rivers in the rivers layer I can perform functions on them exclusively by hiding all the other layers.

CC is very powerful but it requires patience and perseverance to find out all the cool stuff it can do. CC-Pro has an updated manual that is fantastic and is also currently being updated to show some more of the functionality. The updated manual is available at the Profantasy website registration page. It is available to current owners of CC-Pro and it also comes in the new CD if you purchase CC-pro that way.
 

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