Starship Deckplans

[Vanguard]

Anyone know any good freeware software to create starship deck plans?

 

I know this was a topic of conversation a while back and someone mentioned Cosmographer Pro from Pro Fantasy. I've got Campaign Cartographer Pro 2 and well, I'm not too happy with it so a bit wary of purchasing Cosmographer. Anyone use this/have a review of it?

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

[Fitz]

Re: Starship Deckplans

 

There's a freeware SVG editor available called Inkscape which looks pretty good, but it doesn't have the symbol libraries and stuff you get with CC2 so you'd be building everything from scratch.

 

I use CorelDraw for all that sort of thing, and it does everything I need. It's not free though, not even a little bit.

[Spence]

Re: Starship Deckplans

 

Anyone know any good freeware software to create starship deck plans?

 

I know this was a topic of conversation a while back and someone mentioned Cosmographer Pro from Pro Fantasy. I've got Campaign Cartographer Pro 2 and well, I'm not too happy with it so a bit wary of purchasing Cosmographer. Anyone use this/have a review of it?

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

Cosmographer has a fair amount of symbols and templates for deck plans. It also has a good tile selection that you can just drop in rooms and passageways. Good program once you get the hang of it.

[Vanguard]

Re: Starship Deckplans

 

Getting the hang of it is part of my problem. My main concern is proportion. I have/had a devil of a time figuring out how to make things look right in CC2 and I don't want to have to deal with the same in Cosmographer.

 

Which is sad since I've seen the previews and the completed stuff looks excellent. Unfortunately, it also looks like the pictures of food on menus. What you get never looks like the picture.

 

So, here's a question. Would it be worth getting Cosmographer and dealing with the learning curve?

[Spence]

Re: Starship Deckplans

 

Getting the hang of it is part of my problem. My main concern is proportion. I have/had a devil of a time figuring out how to make things look right in CC2 and I don't want to have to deal with the same in Cosmographer.

 

Which is sad since I've seen the previews and the completed stuff looks excellent. Unfortunately, it also looks like the pictures of food on menus. What you get never looks like the picture.

 

So, here's a question. Would it be worth getting Cosmographer and dealing with the learning curve?

 

 

Now that is a real tough question to answer. The quick one is to say I thought so. In fact I bought City Designer and Dungeon Designer as well. But that doesn't really mean much, since you are not me.

 

Think of CC as the Fred of mapping programs. The core program lets you do fantastic things in maps. But it has virtually nothing prebuilt. You have to define everything from the symbols to the scale of the map. When I first tried to make something in CC it took a while before I realized that I needed to add a map scale and once I did IT defined what was 10 feet. Making my first symbol was a nightmare. But I discovered the CC2 discussion boards and they were as helpful as the Hero boards are. They let me in on the "common knowledge" items and it wasn't long before I could define my own symbols. Now that is CC itself. On to Cosmographer.

 

Cosmographer is a add-on that was designed to assist in building maps fro scifi games. Do you remember some of the cheapee dungeon mappers? Well CC's Dungeon Designer has geomorphes as well that can be dropped into place. Cosmo has prebuilt "tiles" as well. They have separate prebuilt "symbols" for passageways, engineering systems, command systems, weapon systems, wall features and so on. So once you have drawn the hull and placed the corridors you can place the equipment (engines, weapons, etc). They also include complete prebuilt rooms that can be dropped into the design complete. Various crew quarters, a bridge and so on. I liked these because like everything in CC, I could deconstruct the symbol to see how it was done.

 

The user interface is a little different. You have to select what objects and then what you want to happen. Then there is an additional "Do it" command that most other programs do not have.

 

The bottom line is I think of CC+addons are to other mapping programs as Hero system is to most other RPG's. Difficult in concept to pick up on your own. But once learned you can do thing with it that other products just dream about.

 

But is it worth it? I would say definitely yes. And the discussion board that I found most helpful was the Yahoo group "cc2-I". The Pro-Fantasy site is also very helpful and you can get the Ubermanual there in PDF. The company is really responsive to questions, but remember that the Yahoo group is what Profantasy uses as its discussion boards.

 

I hope this helps.

 

Spence

[Curufea]

Re: Starship Deckplans

 

Autorealm-

http://autorealm.sourceforge.net/index.php

[Vanguard]

Re: Starship Deckplans

 

Never thought of it that way Spence.

 

And with that information I think I might take the leap and buy it. Thanks for the run down and information.

[Spence]

Re: Starship Deckplans

 

Never thought of it that way Spence.

 

And with that information I think I might take the leap and buy it. Thanks for the run down and information.

 

I'll be glad to answer any questions you might have, that I can that is. The Ubermanual is what they call the combined users manual and is a free download from their site. You can read before you buy

 

Spence

[Vanguard]

Re: Starship Deckplans

 

You might regret making that statement.

 

If I decide to purchase Cosmo (which I'm leaning towards) I'll probably have tons of questions (probably most of which will revolve around CC2 itseld).

 

Thanks again for the assitance and the offer of continued assitance.

[Spence]

Re: Starship Deckplans

 

You might regret making that statement.

 

If I decide to purchase Cosmo (which I'm leaning towards) I'll probably have tons of questions (probably most of which will revolve around CC2 itseld).

 

Thanks again for the assitance and the offer of continued assitance.

 

 

Well I won't claim to be a CC wizard but I can get around the basics fairly well. I made a decent deckplan for a deep space salvage tug for a LUGTrek game once. I was using a symbol library I had made/downloaded over several weeks. The plans themselves only took me two days, about 5 hours, to make. I was using a laptop use would take to the ship with me. When it crashed I lost my custom libraries. Since I had failed to BACK UP ANYTHING I lost it all.

 

I guess I have been avoiding the rebuild. Making new stuff is fun. Remaking old stuff is double boring

[Mal-2]

Re: Starship Deckplans

 

Anyone know any good freeware software to create starship deck plans?

 

You tool of choice is probably going to depend on how you want the program to work.

 

If you want a CAD-like design program, CC2 (not free) or Autorealm (free) are your best choices. They're both designed to do RPG mapping.

 

If you want a program that works like a paint program (like photoshop), try the GIMP. It's a powerful, general purpose paint program, and it's free. The interface isn't as friendly as photoshop or paintshop pro, but you can't beat the price.

 

All of those tools require two things: Artistic talent and a willingness to climb the learning curve. None of them are going to have you churning out beautiful maps in a few hours.

 

My advice for getting started is to rough out your first designs on paper first! Don't try to do your creative work at the same time you're learning your tools. Start with a concept, then use the program to put it into pixels. That way, you're only dealing with the learning curve of the software.

 

Good Luck

[Vanguard]

Re: Starship Deckplans

 

Part of it is also incentive.

 

When I couldn't really get things working right in CC2 (I didn't know that you could set scale in there and then it automatically adjusted things), and since I really didn't need overland maps, I just let it fall by the wayside.

 

I think, if I do decided to get Cosmo, since it's something I'm actually rather interested in, I'll take the time to deal with the learning curve.

 

As an old friend of mine used to say, "It's all about how bad do you want it"

[Spence]

Re: Starship Deckplans

 

Vanguard

 

Check out Super Squirrels topic City Designer 2 on the "Other Software and Design Resources" board. While he is talking about CD2, Cosmo is basically the same thing as far as ease of use.

 

Spence