Cities, Towns, Villages, Hamlets - Oh My!

I have a new situation developing in my map-making system; doing cities/towns/villages/hamlets.

Naming them is no problem for me (I mean, come on!); I write short stories for fun! On the other hand, it is making them on a map. Normally, I find in my experience that in order to understand the settings you make, you first have to make the settings you want to make.

Makes sense, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, I cannot seem to find a decent enough tutorial within our wonderful guild that can help me create a city map within GIMP.

Can anyone help me out here?!

I don't have any Gimp answers, but I can maybe help you get them - specify what level of detail you need, and what you're using the cities for. Encounter maps would be different from what would go on a 1:25000 area map. Me - I can tell you how to put city dots on a world map, but I bet that's not what you're going for :-).

Like jb says, a proper answer to your question requires some idea of what kind of detail you want. I know that there are tuts for making cities and towns around here, and you should know that PS tuts work quite well with Gimp too. You will have to do some translation with the terminology, but most work well.

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Originally Posted by MTGEmperor

I have a new situation developing in my map-making system; doing cities/towns/villages/hamlets.

Naming them is no problem for me (I mean, come on!); I write short stories for fun! On the other hand, it is making them on a map. Normally, I find in my experience that in order to understand the settings you make, you first have to make the settings you want to make.

Makes sense, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, I cannot seem to find a decent enough tutorial within our wonderful guild that can help me create a city map within GIMP.

Can anyone help me out here?!

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Unless you "really" want a beautiful map, I would suggest for a writer to just make a few quick sketches. Ie, why spend a lot of time on doing something that you don't really focus on "full time". Now granted, if you plan to publish these and don't want to hire someone, that's a different story. I map for fun, but if I were a writer, I would just make a map just detailed enough to convey the layout and get back to writing.

As far as GIMP goes, most of the PS tutorials on map making can be converted. There are some steps to are not possible due to missing features, but most of the results can be done even if the steps are different. I would guess that in general terms other than specific names (car vs automobile for example), probably about 85% of each PS tutorial is able to be followed step for step in GIMP. So pick one and start a WIP thread and we can try to help for those parts that don't convert directly.

Of course, the basic thing is something no tutorial can teach you as such. It is some basic grounding in urban ecology and urban architecture - why and how cities develop where they do. Basically, you can start by looking at maps of real cities and thinking to yourself: why is this shaped the way it is? why does this road go here? why is this nexus so important? which buildings and locations "pull" people towards them, which "push" away? Etc. etc.

It's like a little personal puzzle game!

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Originally Posted by jbgibson

I don't have any Gimp answers, but I can maybe help you get them - specify what level of detail you need, and what you're using the cities for. Encounter maps would be different from what would go on a 1:25000 area map. Me - I can tell you how to put city dots on a world map, but I bet that's not what you're going for :-).

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When I return to Midgard (a created world I did in one of my stories), I have plans to be specific to Taerak, Elmwood, and two other cities. If I gave numbers, you can help me out, i hope.

Village/City = (Current Population)
Taerak = 235
Elmwood = 58
Dwarf City = 524 (unnamed, FYI)
Coldwind = 64