Gal2CC 1.1 is a utility for Traveller Referees to produce printed sector
(and subsector) maps approaching the standards of maps published in GDW,
DGP and IG products.  Two other programs are required:

1. Campaign Cartographer 2 (CC2), an excellent commercial Windows app
   for producing printed maps, from ProFantasy Software Ltd.
   <http://www.profantasy.com/>

2. Galactic, a freely-available DOS program (and IMO the best Traveller
   sector mapper on PC), written by Jim Vassilakos.
   <http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~jimv>

(If you obtained Gal2CC from the Traveller CD-Rom you will find
 Galactic and a demo version of CC2 on the disk as well.)

Gal2CC takes sectors from Galactic and creates script files for CC2.

Installation:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gal2CC.exe is self-contained, so you just need to copy it somewhere.  I
recommend putting it in the Galactic base directory (the one with
Gal.exe in it) as this will save you typing later.

Using It:
~~~~~~~~~
Run it without any parameters first, to get a list of options.
If you've copied it in the Galactic base directory you can try producing
a classic Spinward Marches map as follows.  Note that with Galactic 2.3
you should omit "Gals\" wherever this is mentioned.

1. From a DOS shell, cd to the Galactic directory.
2. At the prompt, type
        Gal2CC -y "1105 (Second Survey)" Gals\Classic\Spinmar
   (This should produce a file called "Spinmar.scr" in the
    Classic\Spinmar directory).
3. Switch to Campaign Cartographer and load "Sector.fcw".  For safety,
   choose "File|Save As" and save it as "Spinmar.fcw" - you don't want
   to overwrite your blank sector map!
4. Run the generated script by choosing "File|Script", moving to the
   Classic\Spinmar directory of Galactic, and selecting "Spinmar.scr".
   (this may take some time; you should see details appearing on the
    sector map.)
5. You can now save or print the completed map.

Once you've successfully done this, try experimenting with the options.
For instance, 
        Gal2CC -a- -b- -g- -n- -p- -t- -z- -xn Gals\Classic\Spinmar
will produce a very sparse map, and
        Gal2CC -sj Gals\Classic\Spinmar
will also produce a subsector script file "SpinmarJ.scr" for subsector
J (the Sword Worlds), usable with "Subsector.fcw".

Features include:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* Optional printing of world name (including capitalised pop 9+ names
  and red text for capitals), port, bases, gas giant, amber/red zones,
  hex location, allegiance, and trade routes.
* Automatic generation of base key and subsector catalog.
* Blank CC2 sector and subsector maps are included.

Limitations:
~~~~~~~~~~~~
* It currently exists only as a console app, so you need to type
  inconvenient commands like
    > Gal2CC -y "1105 (Second Survey)" Gals\Classic\Spinmar
* Subsector borders cut across hexes with worlds.
* Subsector maps only show the names of adjacent subsectors if they are
  within the same sector.
* It makes no attempt to prevent trade routes cutting across other
  details.  This is a tricky one - I may leave this to human
  intervention (moving world names, etc).  This was presumably done for
  the published maps.
* I don't know how reserves are indicated in the data, so can't add
  them.
* It uses standard base descriptions rather than the ones in the
  Galactic sector file.  This is actually quite tricky to solve too,
  since a single base code can indicate multiple bases, and I'd need
  fuzzy pattern matching to resolve (say) "Naval & Scout Bases" into
  "Navy Base" and "Scout Base".  I may go for a compromise solution.
* It would be nice to add political borders, but these don't seem to be
  represented in the Galactic files.

Future Enhancements:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* Add a Windows front end for easy selection of (sub)sectors & options.
* Break subsector borders so they don't cut across worlds.
* Add an accompanying program to generate system orbit maps.

Notes on CC2:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* You may need the patch file from the Profantasy site to run the
  scripts properly.  The original release version didn't cope with font
  names with spaces (like "Courier New", which I use for hex numbers).
* The generated scripts are long (full Spinward Marches with all
  details: 10640 lines), even though I've optimised it to eliminate
  redundant commands.  This can be slow to process in CC2 (2.5 mins on
  my P166).
* To get the best results printing on a black & white printer, You will
  probably want to make the desert world symbol into a hollow circle.
  Choose "Edit|Change|Fill Style", Select by Color, click on the sandy
  box at the very top of the colour bar, select "OK - Do it", hit return
  for the dialog, and choose Hollow from the Fill Style Name combo box.
  Click OK.  Choose "File|Print", and make sure the "Print White as
  Black" box is checked before continuing.

Implementation:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's written in fairly portable C, with OS-specific stuff (such as I/O)
isolated.  This was just for practice - converting files from a DOS
program to a Win32 app means it didn't actually need to be portable!  I
haven't written any C for four years, and it shows...

This is the third public release, so any feedback would be appreciated.
It has been tested with Galactic 2.3 and 2.4.

Changes in 1.1:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Corrected problem where the presence of gas giants and planetoid belts 
were swapped (my thanks to Shane Mclean for spotting this - see his work 
on http://www.travellerrpg.com ).

A more major update is in the works.

John G. Wood <john@elvwood.org>

26 February 2003