Thread: [WIP] The Emric Coast

Excellent first piece. Technical trick.. Explode all of your text when you are sure teh map is FINISHED. It will make several printing and zooming issues go away. Unless you wanted to add more shadowing or terrain blending around the mountain or forest bases, it looks good to me.

Thanks for the encouragement and the advice. I tried exploding my text but it made the text clump together due to the font I'm using. I'll most certainly be using that trick in the future, but due to wanting a quick fix, and since my text is in a whole bunch of different layers I've noticed, I've decided to just set up a black glow, which I think does the job nicely. Obviously exploding would have been a better option but due to my own mistake it was too much of a hassle to redo it.

My only potential criticism is that, given the way the Mountains are set up, unless there is some other source of Water to the West, the Mountains should probably result in a large Rain Shadow, thus the forest should probably be a desert.

That said, this looks like a very small area of a vastly larger map, so it is entirely possible there is some other source of water-vapor rich incoming air on the Forested Side of the Mountains. After all, both sides of the Alps have forests. So my criticism is less a criticism and more a 'keep this in mind'. There are plenty of ways you could justify the Mountains without resorting to wizardry. Actually, if there is a large body of water to the west that sends Water-Rich air heading east, the Forests make a lot of sense because that air would crash into the mountains, creating a lot of precipitation, instead causing a Rain Shadow to the East. This would especially be true if this is at a Latitudinal Range where Easterly Winds prevail, generally around the Temperate and Polar Zones (which is, incidentally, where you tend to get deep thick non-rain forests).

So again, less a 'Criticism' and more a 'Keep this in Mind'. Overall, I like it.

It looks good for a first work . Another trick that really helps the colourblind population is not to use thin red elements (like the invisible road) on green backgrounds.

That's a great suggestion, Lukc, I hadn't even thought of that. I changed the roads to a much darker brown color to help with that issue.

The one visually unusual piece to me is the lake behind the mountains that then runs to the coast while passing that close to the mountains. Like a lack of any rain shadow effect it could be explained but it is jarring to my eyes.

Looking good, Dndungeoneer! May your players earn bountiful EXP while traversing those lands, or at least give you the pleasure of crushing them with giant rocks thrown by mutant geese.

A couple of suggestions:

-Add some more randomness to the edges of the forest, by placing more sparce trees around it. It'll help it look more natural and blend with the surroundings.

-Maybe put some of the mountains protruding into the forest too, to give it a more transitional feel. Unless they are supposed to be very clear-cut, of course.


Keep up the good work!

Originally Posted by Sinphanius

There are plenty of ways you could justify the Mountains without resorting to wizardry. Actually, if there is a large body of water to the west that sends Water-Rich air heading east, the Forests make a lot of sense because that air would crash into the mountains, creating a lot of precipitation, instead causing a Rain Shadow to the East.

I've actually decided to have the capital of the kingdom directly to the west be centered near a large body of water, so perhaps that would help explain the forests in a more meteorological sense.

Originally Posted by Klaus van der Kroft

A couple of suggestions:

-Add some more randomness to the edges of the forest, by placing more sparce trees around it. It'll help it look more natural and blend with the surroundings.

-Maybe put some of the mountains protruding into the forest too, to give it a more transitional feel. Unless they are supposed to be very clear-cut, of course.


Keep up the good work!

Thanks for the suggestions Klaus, I was thinking of those as well but wanted some feedback first. I've uploaded a map with all the suggestion in mind.