Rosantis - Interactive Fantasy Map

Hello. I've been searching for a place to show off my latest creation in photoshop and to get some feedback and advice. This was the first place that turned up after a google search, so here I am :)

The map I made has 8 rectangles on it, each of which are basically buttons. Presss them, and you'll zoom in on that area for a closer look at the towns and surrounding landscape. I'm currently working on zooming in another layer for a closer look at the streets of the cities, but that is quite time consuming. Anyway... Here is the link...

Rosantis

If you'd take a few minutes to check it out and then post your impressions along with any advice you might have, it'd be much appreciated :D Thanks!

Edit: Also, if you were curious, the names are just a designation based on basic colors and then a geographical feature. They aren't ACTUALLY called Orange Island or the Blue Jungles, as entertaining as that might be ;)

That is a pretty nice map and it is nice being able to "zoom in". I am wondering though why you built that functionality using a giant table instead of the imagemap function. It just seems more time consuming that way.

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Originally Posted by Larb

That is a pretty nice map and it is nice being able to "zoom in". I am wondering though why you built that functionality using a giant table instead of the imagemap function. It just seems more time consuming that way.

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Well, actually I'm not sure what the "imagemap function" is, haha. I'm still going to school for web and graphics design. So this is what I know how to do for now.

I know that working on an additional layer of "zooming" could be potentially time consuming, but if you stick through with it this could be a totally engrossing map! It would be great to see more detail!

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Originally Posted by PolarThebiBear

I know that working on an additional layer of "zooming" could be potentially time consuming, but if you stick through with it this could be a totally engrossing map! It would be great to see more detail!

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Well, if you'd like to see the one city map I've finished, here it is. I suppose it may not be quite finished, as I'm quite the perfectionist, but tell me what you think. For reference, this is the Red Plains city, located roughly in the middle of the map.

Attachment 52158

So, this city scale map took me roughly 2 hours of solid work. It's fully layered, and was entirely experimental as I've never done anything this close up before. The farms were a bit tricky to make look natural, but I think I got it... mostly. I played around with the idea of drawing in boats, but decided against it. Another thing, is the scale of the map is 15 miles wide, but some things dont adhere to that scale. For example, the tents in the upper portions of the city (yes, those are tents :P) are not to scale to the grey palace in the center of the city. So... I dunno, take it all with a metaphorical grain of salt or whatever. It's arguably still a work in progress.

So, I am absolutely not meaning to dis your work here... please understand that. I really think you need to spend some time looking carefully at your scale. It just doesn't make any sense to me. A couple of your cities are literally dozens of miles across. In your last map, your main dock is nearly 1/2 mile out into the water. I think artistically you've got a good thing going, and when I read the scale it lost me entirely. Personally, I would remove your scale marks entirely.

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Originally Posted by Veilheim

So, I am absolutely not meaning to dis your work here... please understand that. I really think you need to spend some time looking carefully at your scale. It just doesn't make any sense to me. A couple of your cities are literally dozens of miles across. In your last map, your main dock is nearly 1/2 mile out into the water. I think artistically you've got a good thing going, and when I read the scale it lost me entirely. Personally, I would remove your scale marks entirely.

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Yeah, I totally understand where you're coming from. And I'm aware of the discrepancy. I talked about it a small bit at the end of my last post. Lots of things kinda break the scale, really. Like rivers and bridges, and yeah the piers definitely. However... I'm very fond of the scales. I think they tie together a map. I will be doing some research into alternatives, or possibly just tweaking the scale to be smaller. Thanks for the input :)

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Originally Posted by Larion

Well, actually I'm not sure what the "imagemap function" is, haha. I'm still going to school for web and graphics design. So this is what I know how to do for now.

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ImageMap is an html way to subdivide an image on a webpage into one or more clickable sections. For example, you could have a picture of a clown and designate the small area around his red nose as a clickable link while the remainder of the image is not. No messy tables to deal with.

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Originally Posted by Larion

Well, actually I'm not sure what the "imagemap function" is, haha. I'm still going to school for web and graphics design. So this is what I know how to do for now.

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ImageMap is an html way to subdivide an image on a webpage into one or more clickable sections. For example, you could have a picture of a clown and designate the small area around his red nose as a clickable link while the remainder of the image is not. No messy tables to deal with.

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Originally Posted by jfrazierjr

ImageMap is an html way to subdivide an image on a webpage into one or more clickable sections. For example, you could have a picture of a clown and designate the small area around his red nose as a clickable link while the remainder of the image is not. No messy tables to deal with.

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Ah. What I was using was Photoshops 'slice tool'. It wasn't too hard, really. It had a few hiccups at first but I straightened them out easy enough. Then after I divided it into slices, I entered in the destination URL's into the fields, and exported them as Web pages. Then I just plopped the whole thing onto my website.