Battle for Wesnoth - various maps

[zookeeper]

Hi, I'm new here.

I've created a bunch of maps for the (free and open source) game Battle for Wesnoth, and in the process I found this forum a great source of ideas and inspiration (as well as providing me with the invaluable TreeThing). So, even though I never started a WIP thread here, I figured I'd still showcase the results. This is the first time I've done any cartography, and likely the best pieces of art I've ever created. There's more maps than these these four (currently 10 in total, with a few more coming up), but the others are mostly just close-ups of some of the regions seen here, so they tend to be a bit more sparse and not as interesting.

I haven't designed most of the geography since it has already been established a long time ago, so what I've done is largely just joining previously disconnected maps into a consistent whole and creating a new visual style, along with a handful of new features and names. The geography is surely far from realistic, but a hyper-realistic world isn't really needed for this sort of game so I haven't particularly tried to make things more realistic than they've been before.

I have a very elaborate but mechanical process for creating new maps from a basic set of masks (land/water, forests, hills, mountains, swamps, deserts) and I've used very very little painting by hand in these (mostly to correct little glitches and for the torn edge outlines and a few textures like the border decorations), so aside from the background and the parchment textures, I think what you see can be considered about 90% procedurally generated. The background was made from a photo I took of a wooden table, with very very heavy editing. The parchment textures were not originally by me, but I created the heightmaps to match the folds.

Software used:

Paint.net (for most of the basic work)
GIMP (for the displacement effects)
Photoshop (for text and creating the background)
TreeThing (for forests)
Wilbur (for mountain heightmaps)
3ds Max (for rendering mountains and hills)

[Redrobes]

Wow - really cool ! I like the crispness of these. I think if I had these in a box set game I would be well pleased. I'll just add that I do most of my maps procedurally in a similar sense to how you have done these and its an unusual way to do them so double kudos from this direction.

[Mornagest]

Hi,

Great stuff ! Do you plan to offer those maps to the conceptors of Wesnoth ?

[zookeeper]

Thanks!

Hi,

Great stuff ! Do you plan to offer those maps to the conceptors of Wesnoth ?

Well, yes, I'm one of the developers myself and I made these expressly for the purpose of replacing the current map(s) and to give (almost) every campaign a proper map.

[Larb]

Very nice maps! Those will look great in the game. I've actually played quite a bit of Wesnoth. I particularly like the music. =P

[arsheesh]

I have not had the opportunity to play this game, but I like these maps quite a bit. Lovely work.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Jaxilon]

Fantastic, I really like the look. I have played the game and it was lots of fun. I may have to try it out again just to see the new maps in action

[darkfox]

i like the detail and the wear effects. looks great

[sreynders]

nice details on the edges of the map! i love the green you used in the woods. nice map overal!

[Hai-Etlik]

They seem to have a bit of a stylistic mismatch to me. The trees, the forest labels, and the compasses all kind of shout "Computer" while the rest of the map is trying to look hand drawn.

Some of the area labels also look a bit off. You usually want to align them to the largest extent of the area, and then use letter spacing to fit them to that extent.