Frequently Asked Questions for Campaign Cartographer 3
Last revised 14/02/2009
This is the Frequently Asked Questions page for Campaign Cartographer 3. It is intended to cover some of the most common issues that have been mentioned on the CC mailing list, and is a Work in Progress. If you have any comments on what should be included, feel free to email suggestions (include "CC3 FAQ" in the subject line) - details are given at the bottom of the page.
Also check out the Profantasy Technical Support pages for more technical information on some issues, as well as the Campaign Cartographer mailing list and the ProFantasy Community Forum for user based support.
Installation
What is the correct installation order for CC3 and add-ons?
Please check the Installation Help in the tech support knowledgebase, where this is covered in detail.
.Net-problems when installing CC3
For .NET related problems, please check this entry in the Technical Support section.
If you are running CC3 under Windows Vista, try disabling the User Account Central before installing .NET and CC3.
I get an error message during installation saying that an add-on cannot find CC3.
This can happen if you do a new or re-install of CC3 from scratch, and then try to install an add-on or patch straight away. To fix it, run CC3 once and close it before installing the add-on. This creates a registry entry which indicates the install location to the setup file.
Do I have to install all patches for CC3?
No, you only need download and install the latest released patch from your registration page. There are no incremental patches for CC3, and all patches include previous ones as well. The only exceptions are the DD3 Random Dungeon patch and the DD3 Vista Wall Break patch, these need to be installed separately and can be found on your registration page.
Is CC3 supported to use on other platforms than Windows OS, like OS X and Linux?
Native versions of CC3 for Linux and Mac are not in the pipeline, however, many users have reported successfully running CC3 under emulations - for example, Boot Camp for Mac OS X, and Wine for Linux.
You can find the full system requirements for CC3 here.
Windows Vista Issues
General installation advice (Vista-specific)
The latest patch (v3.24) corrects most issues with CC3 when run under Windows Vista. You can download this from your registration page.
Make sure that you install CC3 and any add-ons and patches with Administrator rights, not just from your Administrator account but also with the option "Run as Administrator". Only this makes sure all the necessary files are overwritten. Also try disabling the User Account Central before installing CC3.
It has been reported that CC3 sometimes will behave erratically if installed in the default directory (C:\Program Files\CC3). This is due to the high level of protection Vista sets for the Program Files folder. To avoid this, install CC3 in a different directory, like C:\CC3 or C:\Apps\CC3.
Some users have also reported problems if CC3 is run in XP compatibility mode under Vista, so if you are experiencing problems after applying a patch or installing, check that this isn't the case.
I am running CC3 under Vista, and cannot access the help files.
You can download the Winhlp32.exe for Vista from Microsoft's website:
Documentation and Registration
I bought my software from you but I'm not registered.
Registration is voluntary - buying CC3 alone doesn't register your software. To save you typing you can register products directly from any order page. Just follow the link in your order email and scroll down to the bottom of the page.
If you can't find your order records, we can email them to you.
Registered users get access to free updates, reduced-price upgrades and other downloads. Click here for the login page.
What manuals and tutorials are available for CC3? UPDATED!
First, the Essentials Guides included with every product are a great way of getting a quick overview of how to get started with the software.
The CC3 Users Guide is now available from your registration page. Written by Master Mapper Allyn Bowker, it is a comprehensive guide and tutorial to help you get to grips with both the basic and more advanced features of CC3.
The help files in CC3 give thorough explanations for all commands, and while not written from a tutorial perspective, are very comprehensive and detailed. You can access an online version of the help files here.
Joseph Sweeney has created a set of video tutorials showing the creation of an overland map with CC3, and a dungeon floorplan with Dungeon Designer 3. It is an excellent introduction to the basic features of the program and also contains lots of useful hints and tips for more advanced users. The tutorials can be downloaded for free here.
The Cartography Suite is available for free from your registration page at the Profantasy website. While it is written for CC2 and its add-ons, most of it is still applicable for CC3, and Profantasy are working on updating the Suite for CC3.
The Tome of Ultimate Mapping is available to buy in PDF format from the online shop. Again, this was written for CC2, but most techniques covered are still applicable for CC3. It also contains some in depth tutorials on how to create specific mapping styles, and has a comprehensive macro command reference. Profantasy are currently working on updating the Tome for CC3. The estimate for this is currently late summer 2009.
Finally, the Cartographer's Annuals provide mapping tutorials and content on a monthly subscription basis. Each month, a different technique or mapping style is covered, with mapping guides, templates and symbol catalogs provided. Find out more about the Annuals here:
Is there a viewer for CC3 maps, like there is for CC2?
Yes! You can download the viewer from this page:
From this page, you can also download encrypted bitmap files for Dungeon Designer 3 and Symbol Sets 1 and 2, which makes it possible to view maps made with these add-ons, even if you don't own the add-on itself.
I can't find the Dungeon Designer 3 Essentials documentation in my CC3 folder.
You can download the Essentials pdf and the example maps from your registration page, or directly from here:
DD3 Essentials Document
What is the latest version number of CC3?
The latest release (14/2/2009) is version 3.24 . You can download the latest patch from your registration page.
Bugs, Errors and Common Problems
I place a symbol in my map, but it won't show up.
This was a known bug in earlier CC3 versions, where symbols ended up on the Common Sheet if they didn't have the SHEET property. Make sure you have the latest patch installed by checking your CC3 version (Help >> About). If it is less than 3.24, download the latest patch from your registration page on our website (Service >> Registration).
For more information, check out Symbols in the online help pages.
I have exported a PNG version of my map, but my browser displays an error message when I open it.
This has been known to happen on some systems. Try open the PNG file in an image browser, such as the free IrfanView, and save it under a different name.
Text disappears after I've typed it in the dialog box.
In earlier versions of CC3, text was placed on the current sheet by default and not automatically on the TEXT sheet. If the current sheet was one that was lower in the drawing order, this would make it seem like the text disappeared. This is corrected in the latest version (3.24) which can be downloaded from your registration page.
To quickly move all text in a map to the TEXT sheet, try this:
- Right click on the Effects icon and select "Move to sheet."
- Select all your text either by clicking on the labels or by selecting All and then by entity type (2D Text).
- When done selecting, right click to accept, and select the TEXT sheet in the next dialog box.
Other things to check:
- The text height might be too small - you can set this through (Tools Menu >> Set Properties >> Text), or by clicking on the Text Properties button on the right hand toolbar. Change existing text by right clicking on the Change Properties button and selecting Change Text Properties from the drop down menu. Select the text to be edited by clicking on its baseline.
- Text gets created in the current colour - check so that the background underneath the text isn't the same as the currently selected colour. This can be changed by clicking on the Colour Indicator and selecting your text colour through the dialog box.
- Is the layer you're trying to put the text on frozen? This can happen if you use Keep or Like on an entity on a frozen layer. The layer becomes current but doesn't unfreeze. To fix it, double click on the Layer indicator and uncheck the the 'H' box next to the current layer.
For more information, take a look at the Text entry in the Online Help pages.
Fill styles show up pixellated and in a low resolution when I export or print a map.
This is a known bug and Profantasy are working on a patch for it. Currently the "Fixed Bitmap Quality" setting only applies to symbols and not fill styles, and bitmap export does not use the highest available resolution as it should. Until a patch is available, try the following workaround:
- Zoom into the map until the bitmap fills get displayed at their highest resolution.
- You can check this by looking at the bitmap fills in the Fill Style Properties. If the displayed file ends in "VH" you are at that point.
- Then do an "Save As JPG" (or Bitmap or PNG). The output will be at the highest resolution.
The various grid fill styles are not aligned with the GRID command.
From Ralf Schemmann:
CC calculates the symbol fill not from the origin (0,0) of the whole map, but from the left-bottom-most point of the entity containing the fill. There's not much you can do about that easily. Two possibilities are:
- Start your polygon (or whatever) on the origin (or move the origin accordingly) so that the fill aligns. You could possibly use a multipoly, incorporating a tiny, hidden polygon at 0,0 to force the fill to start there.
- Adjust the origin of the fill symbol using the Symbol Manager. You'd have to check by how much your fill is off from the grid, and then move the whole symbol definition around by an equal and opposite amount to match. The problem is, this would only work for one of your filled polys. You'd either have to create separate fill styles and fill symbols for each poly or multipoly everything with the same fill.
The sheets I added to my map have disappeared after I saved it!
Sheets need to have entities on them, otherwise they get deleted when the map is saved. Here's a quick tutorial from Linda Kekumu:
Each sheet that needs to be saved with the template or map needs to have added a POINT at 0,0 on the Template layer & it's respective sheet. The Template layer is then hidden & frozen to prevent accidental deletion.
When you add new sheets you should also add this POINT to the Template layer. There are numerous ways to do this but the easiest I have found is to:
- Show all sheets
- Set the template layers as the current layer & Common Sheet as the current sheet
- Delete >> All > AND >> Entity Type >> 2D POINT
- Do Draw Menu >> POINT & place it at 0,0
- Type in COPYVIS >> All >> AND >> Entity Type >> 2D POINT
- Hide & Freeze the Template layer
All of this takes a few seconds to accomplish. What it does is copy the Point from the Common Sheet to all visible sheets - in this case all sheets because we have all of them showing. Now, you can save the map or template & it will save the sheets because they do have an entity on them. The point is the smallest entity in CC3, so it takes up very little resources & we have placed it on a layer that is now hidden & frozen so it won't interfere with the rest of the map.
CC3 crashes when I'm drawing a map!
First, always make sure that you have the latest patch applied. You can download patches from your registration page. Having said that, there are some common reasons why CC3 might crash while you're drawing.:
- Too many nodes: Sometimes, especially when using the Freehand Tracing tool or the Fractal tools, the amount of nodes in the map can be too much for Windows to handle. The exact amount depends on your RAM configuration and Windows version, but this is an OS bug, not a CC3 bug. To fix, try using the Reduce Nodes command ("Edit Menu >> Reshape >> Remove Nodes" or type "REDN" in the command line) on selected entities. Check out Remove Nodes in the online help for more information.
- Embedded bitmaps: In CC2, you have the option when importing a bitmap image to embed it in the current map. Even though CC3 can handle large file sizes, embedded bitmaps had a tendency to cause crashes, and this option has now been disabled. If you are opening a map you created with CC2 that has an embedded bitmap, it is advisable to delete the bitmap and insert it again in CC3.
I get a "No compatible Drawing Tool" or "Error loading file" message when I click on the drawing tool buttons.
"Error loading file" means a menu file is missing. In your CC3 folder, you'll find an application called CC3MenuConfig.EXE. This is a program that will run silently and setup the correct menu configuration for the latest version. Run this file and then open CC3 again. If there's still a problem, contact Tech Support through your registration page.
"No compatible drawing tool" means that the drawing is not configured to use the current set of drawing tools.
To temporarily use say Dungeon drawing tools on an Overland map, click the Tools button, then pull down the list of drawing tools, selecting the appropriate one. Because different styles have different looks, and templates don't usually have every single fill style in them, you might not get the results you are expecting if you use a drawing tool on a map not configured for it.
To be able to use them all the time, run an appropriate converter (File >> CC2 to CC3 conversion), then click Drawing Properties and pull down the list of draw tool styles. You'll then have the fill styles you need to run the drawing tools.
Improving the "No compatible drawing tool" dialog, giving these options is on the wish list.
When I switch between add-ons, the fill styles all show up colored in a solid style rather than a bitmap style
This usually happens when the bitmap fill styles for those tools are not defined in the current map template.
To get them into your map, do an "Draw > Insert File", and navigate to CC3/System/Fill Styles/. This folder has some predefined fill style maps, which ones are depending on which add-ons you have already installed. Insert the relevant file into your map, and Erase it again - this is easiest done by clicking the Erase button, right clicking to bring up the context menu and selecting Prior, and finally right clicking again to select Do It. You should now have all the relevant fill styles for the drawing tools in your map.
You can also create fill style maps for other templates that haven't been defined. This is an example creating a style map for DD3:
- Create a new map from a DD3 Dungeon template.
- Erase everything on the new map.
- Save it in System/Fill Styles/ as "DD3 Dungeon Color".
- Load the map you're working on and proceed as mentioned previously.
I can't get the effects to work in my map.
First, check the settings of the effect - sometimes an effect has to be tweaked to be noticeable, especially if you have a very large or very small map. Currently the effects values do not scale with the size of the map and so may look off at small or large scales. Having the effects values work relative to the map size is on the Profantasy wish list.
What also might have happened is that the MERGE layer has been hidden. The entity that controls the effects is placed on the MERGE layer by default, so if the MERGE layer is hidden, effects won't work. To check this, click on the Layer Indicator to bring up the Select Layer box. If there is a "H" marked next to the MERGE layer, click on the box to remove the "H". You could also click on the "Show All" button.
To find out more about the Select Layer box, have a look at the Layer Control entry in the online help.
I get a blank sheet when I print my map.
Go to File Menu >> Print... to bring up the Print Drawing dialog box. In the second section, named "View to Print", click the "Sheet:" drop down menu and select "All visible sheets as one page (Standard CC3 drawing))".
I can't select entities in my map!
This can happen sometimes if a command or macro gets aborted. To fix it, type SELBYD at the command prompt to restore the default selection method.
To find out more about how CC3's selection methods work, have a look at the following help entries:
I'm using the Mozilla Suite as my browser and can't see the ProFantasy website displayed correctly.
Mozilla browsers (versions 1.7.xx) can't display some parts of the website correctly. Please use Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera instead.
Multipolies and possible problems with them
One of the most common issues with maps that don't display properly, like banding and nodes that suddenly appear on different zoom levels, are leaks in big multipolies. This can also lead to printing issues and program crashes. Linda Kekumu has the following to say about this, along with some tips on how to fix it:
In some cases it's because the map exported from FT has multipolied all of the same colored entities into one multipoly. In some cases these multipolies need to be exploded & reworked.
This is the classic example of what is happening:
All of a single color is multipolied. This includes the large land mass, it's lakes, other islands & islands in the lakes. The proper way to multipoly this is to leave all of the islands as polys then only multipolythe large landmass & it's interior lakes - not the lakes & the islands in the lakes & the islands outside of the landmass. If you multipoly the landmass, the lakes & the islands in the lakes you are going to get leaky multipolies. The alternative is to just use polys & put the lakes above the land sheet.
To fix it:
Explode the multipoly, make all parts of this multipoly the same color, select & change to a different color one part. Now Zoom into to endpoint of this part & see if there is a gap or crossed entity - correct if necessary. Change the color of the checked segment & then Zoom to the next endpoint. This makes it easy to determine what nodes you have checked & where to zoom in to. Once all of the parts have been changed to the new color, you are done & can redo multipoly or try LTP2 (right click on the Explode icon & choose Line to Path)
The other thing that causes leaks is stacked, duplicate entities. If the above does not resolve the problem, then I explode again & using Count, check that each segment is actually only 1 entity.
Fractal polygons won't close. NEW!
Currently, fractal polies won't close when right clicking to finish the polygon, unless you have drawn a fractal path first. This is a known problem, and a fix is in the works for an upcoming patch. In the meantime, use CLOSEPATH to close the fractal poly. (Right click Explode, then select Path to Poly.) Or you can draw a fractal path, delete it, and then draw a fractal poly as usual.
Features
What is the difference between Sheets and Layers?
Short version: Sheets define the drawing order in the map, while Layers are categories of similar map objects. There is a good description of the differences in the Essentials Guide (p8-10) supplied with CC3.
The best information on sheets, updated for CC3 is found in the following help index entries:
- Sheets (and subheadings)
- Sheets and Layers (for differences and uses)
- Sheets and Effects
- Sheets Overview
- Sheets and Symbols (describes another use of sheets - you can convert symbol catalogs in a set of sheets then use sheet commands to edit the entire catalog at once, then convert them back again)
- Symbol Catalog Options (how to change how symbols are placed on sheets)
What symbol scale should I use for my maps?
Map scales are set automatically by CC3. The value is stored in the drawing. You can view and change the default set scale in the Drawing Properties dialog (File >> Drawing Properties).
The recommended scale for overland maps is (map width/1000), so for a map that is 500 miles wide, symbol scale should be set to 0.5.
Compiled by Erik Nolander (mail me at enolander<-at->gmail<-dot->com if you have any suggestions for updates)