Geidor

[altasilvapuer]

Finally! I kept looking at the map the past couple days and didn't feel like printing it, because it felt like it was missing something essential, first, so I finally caved and mapped out cities, roads, and sea lanes.

I'm still trying to find a good way to make them not so obtrusive without just lowering the opacity and washing them out. I might try a layer of white or black underneath each of the icons and then lower the opacity of the icons, but I don't know. Might not have time to try that until Saturday, so you might not hear from me again until then.

For now, though, here's the map with roads, cities, and sea lanes. I haven't labeled anything, yet, but that's the next step.
Also, I finally found my error in the calculations for the scale (I think) does it look pretty close, assuming this is nearly all of an Earth-sized planet?
WIP A-0.7c 4000x2588 - Roads & Cities.jpg

So do you all think I should print it now, just for fun, or label it first? I'm tempted to wait, since all that I feel like I'll do before declaring this finally, actually 'done' is label it. But I can be quite slow at names, sometimes. Well, at creating names I like, anyway. Though I do have a couple unused ideas lying about that can be re-purposed. Labeling might take me a couple weeks, especially knowing class starts back so soon.

-asp

[Karro]

Looks good. I really don't think they're that obtrusive - especially not the roads/seaways (if anything, those might be a little too unobtrusive moreso, as occassionally they are hard to make out). As for the cities themselves, they're clear but not overbearing, I think.

My only comments/suggestions are:

1.) With the antiqued wood looking cartouche... maybe you want to go with a more antiqued or thematically similar looking symbol for the cities or vice-versa.

2.) What do the different colors of city mean? You might want to have something about that in a key/legend.

[altasilvapuer]

Looks good. I really don't think they're that obtrusive - especially not the roads/seaways (if anything, those might be a little too unobtrusive moreso, as occassionally they are hard to make out). As for the cities themselves, they're clear but not overbearing, I think.

My only comments/suggestions are:

1.) With the antiqued wood looking cartouche... maybe you want to go with a more antiqued or thematically similar looking symbol for the cities or vice-versa.

2.) What do the different colors of city mean? You might want to have something about that in a key/legend.

For the roads, etc, I have to wonder if part of the problem is in the down-sampling process I undergo to upload. I actually resize the original as a PSD, and then save as JPG. It only occurred to me last night after I'd saved everything that I had a number of layer styles dependent on that full resolution that were incorrectly downsampling. As a result, I think I'm going to try down-sampling a flattened jpg before my next upload, and see if it improves.

I was actually also feeling something somewhat similar to what you mentioned about the cartouche, though in reverse. This world originally was (and still mostly is) conceived as a scifi world. The cartouche was just something fun thrown on one day when I thought I'd be printing it that day. I'd still like to go back to that, and I think the city and roads were at least a half-concious attempt to do so. I still haven't decided what I'm doing with the cartouche, though. Any ideas?

As for the city colours, I completely forgot to mention them when I uploaded. I'm still indecisive as to whether there will be a key explaining them or not, but basically the breakdown is this:

By colour:
The brownish-orange pips represent cities and other civilian areas.
The blue-grey pips represent military bases and installations and such.
The reddish pips with orange inner glows represent some vague idea of bandit/pirate/rogue/whatever settlements. I'm still unclear as to what even I intend of these, and whether they'll stay red or change to brownish-orange (or maybe even blue-grey in one case).

By size:
The sizes come in three variations: 30px, 20px, and 10px (at the original resolution of 5100x3300px)
For the brownish-orange pips, the size represents mostly just the size of the represented city/whatever
For the blue-grey pips, the size represents mostly the importance of the military installation and/or it's resident forces.
The red pips, at the moment, only come in the 10px variety, but they represent a rough mix of the two variations according to size listed previously.

...I think that makes sense. If not, let me know.

The main reason I didn't include a legend with them, yet, was lack of time, though I'm still debating whether I'll implement one and if so, how. If I do, I think it might be separate from the cartouche, possibly in the open ocean space at the middle left.

A secondary reason for not including them, though, is that once labeled, the colours would be mostly explained by the few of each number labeled, and I'd hoped the size was reasonably self-explanatory.[/color]

I've got a couple ideas bouncing around in my head for a new cartouche and/or legend for the pips, but it'll probably be shaky on how much I get done in the next week or two.

[/wall-o'-text]

-asp

[Karro]

I was actually also feeling something somewhat similar to what you mentioned about the cartouche, though in reverse. This world originally was (and still mostly is) conceived as a scifi world. The cartouche was just something fun thrown on one day when I thought I'd be printing it that day. I'd still like to go back to that, and I think the city and roads were at least a half-concious attempt to do so. I still haven't decided what I'm doing with the cartouche, though. Any ideas?

-asp

I thought I recalled this was intended to be a sci-fi world. That's why I added the "or vice versa" to my statement. One possibility that always looks sci-fiy: a glowy phosphorescent screen overlay for the cartouche, with sci-fiy databits contained therein as well.

Alternately, try for a post-modern design of some kind... can't help you much there as I'm not really a well-rehearsed student of that kind of design.

[zenram]

What a wonderful work, i read the post and learn a lot. XD

[DethinBlack]

This map is wonderful, and the amount of thought you have put in it for air/sea currents and the like is absolutly awesome!

I was thinking about your question, what to do with the Cartouche, and Karro had a good idea with the screen type overlay. I was thinking, however, that if you wanted to make it more modern and not hundreds of years in the future scifi, you could just change the cartouche you have now. Instead of a wood grain pattern, you could take the rose out and make it more like a steel plate? For the most part everything would be the same, but in metal, instead of wood. Updates it, brings it into the modern, semi future, without way overshooting?

Of course im not sure how scifi this is supposed to look

[altasilvapuer]

Thanks for the ideas, guys! Unfortunately, it might be a while before I get any updates to this done. I'm currently working on naming and labeling things, but am having to take a break. All this intensive work the past couple weeks has really tired out the muscles and nerves in my hands, and being an oboist and music student, I really need them in somewhat working order for the start of classes on Monday, so I'm going to be trying to take it really easy for a while.

I'm still going to be poking around here regularly, because I'm shamelessly and proudly addicted, but probably won't work on Geidor much. I make myself no promises about shiny new (small!) projects, though.

I'm also going to take advantage of this to get away from Geidor mentally for a little bit, in the hopes of new ideas bubbling up while I undergo withdrawal from it. Works every time; you guys should try it, too. Fun stuff!

-asp

[Coyotemax]

I'm also going to take advantage of this to get away from Geidor mentally for a little bit, in the hopes of new ideas bubbling up while I undergo withdrawal from it. Works every time; you guys should try it, too. Fun stuff!

-asp

Oh, is THAT what sleep is for??


Good luck with the break, may you feel inspired from it, and good luck with your classes!