The Tellerian City of Tethyll

[Sinnyo]

Tethyll is one of the cities marked on my map of the Tellerian homeworld, Tel'lar. It is the first place Tellerian characters will see in this, my MMO game design project.

I've drawn maps of my hometown, and sketched out street maps for small 3D level scenes, but have never drawn a fantasy city before. Not sure where to start, I was rather grateful for tutorials like OldBoy's, as featured on the homepage, and for more of Ascension's tutorials on closer-scale terrain. The latter didn't work out too well; I suspect it's because of the way I'd started this map - hand-drawn rather than procedurally. But I'm quite grateful indeed for being able to make buildings as a result of brush-work. Though I have quite a few gaps to close where the brush spacing didn't work out, that fast effect is perfect for a city which players will only have limited access to.

Original illustration

One problem I'm fining with this quite illustrative style of mapping is in the labelling. It works for simply adding quest objectives and such for my own gaming documents, but I have to add desaturation filters to add half-decent labelling. I intend to have a poke about this forum - hope you don't mind! - for inspiration on that front. I also should learn about marking forestry; enough to add alien flora in the wilds surrounding Tethyll. Ooer.

Annotated map

I should point out that very few points are marked on the actual map - this is partly my not knowing how to label well, and partly down to the ongoing process of mapping this game, mission by mission.