Gal2CC 1.2 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. Note: you 
   don't need the Cosmographer add-on!
   <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 fourth public release; 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 ).

Changes in 1.2:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Adjusted the program to use "INSSYM" in the scripts instead of 
"SYMBOL", which has stopped working in CC2 Update 6.

A more major update is in the works.

John G. Wood <john@elvwood.org>

2 March 2005