Thread: Hydanham

Hi, Eru, & welcome to the Guild.

Your map is just fine, although if you are seriously trying to create the storm of which it is within the eye, then I think you may have to work on not only the clouds but the overall "feel" of the map, for it is very bright & cheery as is, with pastel brights and simple symbols. While just fine in their own right, these do not give the impression of a world torn by storms. You may have to abandon Campaign Cartographer (2?) to edit-in these effects.

Also, there are very few rivers & only one forest; while you explain the latter in the text, it still seems a but unrealistic--although perhaps this map has a specific purpose for which these details are unnecessary?

Finally, a site partnered with the Cartographer's Guild, the Campaign Builder's Guild, may be a good place to ask for help on your project, for the CBG often engages in similar activities.

Take care & look forward to seeing more!

That's really good feedback - thanks! Frankly, until quite recently I've been spending more time coding the site than building the content within it. That is changing as more of the features get worked out, but the content and especially maps will likely continue to lack for a couple months.

Do you have a tool outside of CC2 that you love and would suggest? I guess for the editing of the existing map we're talking Photoshop or some other paint program. I'd rather not go that route, as once you go rastor there's no turning back, and the files get a bit more unwieldy and printing options aren't as simple as with CC. I may try adapting some of the CC symbols to create the "feel" as you say of the storm outside the island. However, because the island itself is and has been in the calm eye for the last 1200 years, I don't feel the need to make it look dark or torn up.

Regarding the rivers, the ones shown on the map are meant to be highly navigable and often define the political boundaries. Regarding the limited woodlands, that's purposeful and tied to the history and actually to the overarching plot underlying the campaign setting itself.

One thing I would like to do is "zoom in" to the map and add further detail section by section. These details might include communities smaller than a village (the smallest community that is visible on the current map), roadside inns, foot trails, small ruins, abandoned mines, and so forth. However, these details shouldn't be visible at the current scale of the map because they'd just clutter the whole thing.

To see where I'm going you can look at the Barony of Middleton, currently a snapshot taken from the larger map. I'd like to remove or scale down the text, scale down some of the symbols (just the symbol for the village of Naryway is 7 miles across at the current scale), and add in more details such as those described above, but only visible at this level of scale.

Has anyone done this type of scaling of a single map before using CC2? Would you recommend trying to do this in the same map file by using layers that could be turned on or off based on the level of zoom or do you think I should just create a new file? If creating a new file, do you know if there's a way to copy and paste a section of the existing map to use as a starting point?

I'd love to hear thoughts and ideas from those with more experience and skill than I.... =)