Greyhawk: Atlas of the Flanaess

[Anna]

Wow, that is cool!

And what you do at www.me-dem.org is what I’m aiming for with my work. So far I have reached the treetops and you are on your way to the stars Great to see what some combined effort can accomplish, I’m a solo effort so far.

My machine has 3GB of physically addressable RAM, which max for a 32bit OS, and yes it is straining under the load. I mask of all the parts I’m not working under and it helps a lot. I think Corel uses memory more efficient, but it’s just a hunch, not a fact. Vista 32bit is in fact better than XP 32bit in handling my large files. Hopefully Vista 64bit with 8GB of RAM will be a lot better.

Your projects with ViewinDale and GeoTerSys looks really interesting. Your samples of Middle-Earth are certainly the most inspiring things I have seen on the net so far, and I have seen a lot!

My plan is to make a Flanaess Atlas using this technique and refine it as much as I can without having to remake the old parts, it will probably take 2 years or so. Then I’ll try and continue my work on Greyhawk with whatever improvements in software and knowledge there is.

There are cities and underdark and so much more to map and illustrate……

Thanks to you Game-Printer I now know that my maps are used :-)

Anna

[Publius]

What gorgeous work!

Just to add another perspective on the larger map projects -- and it really is peewee compared to what you folks are doing -- when did Tuala Morn (in Illustrator on 2gb system) there was no way could get all those objects on a single space. The system was groaning with what I was doing and I had several near crashes when I did saves and whatnot.

My approach was top down similar to Redrobes', I started with a larger map and then panned down and did everything in sections. I would have loved to do it all in one shot so I could get the names and all the features in one spot but it just wasn't feasible, and I am often dealing with deadlines that are measured in weeks. If I were to do it again today, I think I would have to consider very carefully what sort of approach to make and plan ahead. The sort of things that I did do (like create reference points so that I could transfer things from one map to the other) helped immensely, but there were other things that I coud have done (like keep everything in the same exact location from one map to another so that I could cut and past more easily between maps using the "paste in place" command) that would have been better in the long run. We always say that we'll come up with a better plan next time, but when doing maps for someone else, you don;t always have the time to develop that plan fully.

Live and learn, but I am taking notes from your excellent examples. Thanks!

[Redrobes]

I was just sending a PM about that sort of stuff to Anna. We use tiles of 2K max so that we can easily fit it into 2Gb. Although most of us have 4Gb+ we don't want to restrict it to cut out some of the members.

Its a chap called Monks who does the mapping. Hes very particular about things and a ME nut. So he has lots of ref maps and has overlaid them all into one giant map and is working off of that to create it in 3D. I believe its all georeffed so its physically accurate to the globe too. I'm just the dev creating the tools and stuff that might get us there. We have others who are also doing some sterling work too.

I would really strongly advise going to tiles. There comes a point where the machine cant cope with such large images easily. As soon as you go to tiles then the memory footprint drops tremendously. You can even use the graphics card processing. Things get faster and you can take the handbrake off.

BTW. Publius if you need a map in a few weeks thats very large take a peek at L3DT. It has some advantages and some disadvantages over other tools but its very easy and quick to get a large terrain out of it. I really like it but accept that it has some limitations that would have not worked well for MeDem. However it may be fine for what you need. A few weeks is a drop in the ocean for large scale high def mapping tho.

[NeonKnight]

Anna; Your first map I would LOVE to see at a much Higher RES, especially the area of the Duchy of Urnst. I wrote a few mods and did a few maps in CC2 for the Duchy of Unrst back in the early years of Living Greyhawk, and so would loe to see that area.

[Anna]

I split my terrain bitmap in half a while ago because it was becoming too big, only joined it again to make the overlapping areas easer. Now I will split it in half again and continue working on each half.

I’ll run into the problem again when I’m expanding north but I’ll deal with that then, it will not be until 2009 anyway I think, so there will be at least one upgrade in hardware and probably software too before then.

Hopefully the attached map can fulfill your desire for a map of the Duchy of Urnst. Here is a link to my webstorage where you can find highres copies of all my Atlas maps I have done to date:
https://lagring.storegate.se/user/Fi...&Folder=753149

It is thanks to you and others who researched the area before me that I could have made the map the way I did.

Anna

[Anna]

Publius I can understand your frustration with limited resources and all doing a project like that against a deadline. I could never make this project against a deadline, it has taken me well over 10 years to come this far.

The worst part when I started was to work out a procedure to achieve a result I was satisfied with. Now the worst part is to see all new cool tools and techniques available and to stay focused and finish this, before moving on.

People here in Cartographers guild biggest asset are their talent but I think mine is to never give up! I’m sure that everyone here could have made what I’m doing and made it look better if they just had kept on doing it for half as long as I have.
But now I feel like I’m getting somewhere.

Here are some examples of my early work
Anna

[NeonKnight]

I split my terrain bitmap in half a while ago because it was becoming too big, only joined it again to make the overlapping areas easer. Now I will split it in half again and continue working on each half.

I’ll run into the problem again when I’m expanding north but I’ll deal with that then, it will not be until 2009 anyway I think, so there will be at least one upgrade in hardware and probably software too before then.

Hopefully the attached map can fulfill your desire for a map of the Duchy of Urnst. Here is a link to my webstorage where you can find highres copies of all my Atlas maps I have done to date:
https://lagring.storegate.se/user/Fi...&Folder=753149

It is thanks to you and others who researched the area before me that I could have made the map the way I did.

Anna

WOOT! What is really cool, is the the village of Thallin (East of Nesserhead) was the name I made up for the small forestry village for the Year Duchy Module I wrote: Never the Same Thing Twice.

Its nice to see little things I did years ago in others work

[Publius]

What a gorgeous map, amazing work. I have not done any work with 3d as of yet. Just amazing.

[NeonKnight]

Also, I think you have misspelled the name of Castle Seh to Sen (On the Duchy Map, west of the Spurned Vale in the Celadon Forest.

I will see if I have my detailed CC2 map of the Duchy of Urnst kicking around still and post it up for you if you wish.