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Thread: Cheles'Vaar, a city, 5th attempt.

  1. #1
    Guild Member RevGunn's Avatar
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    Wip Cheles'Vaar, a city, 5th attempt.

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Name:	ChelesVaarCityfinalworkingcopy.jpg 
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    So, I've been working on this map for over a year. Well okay not this particular map. I've been trying to map this particular city for over a year. I'm getting closer, but still it lacks.. well what I envision in my head. I've forgotten a graveyard or two, and any mills or anything "industrial". This map is an area of 1.9 miles on a side. The river is way too small. The delta is.. its sad. I hate the way it looks.

    What I did here is run the RPG City map maker several times, generating towns, and one large city. I then turned and twisted and cropped them until I got a "towns grown together" kind of effect. My trees are the clumps, the individual ones are from the generator.

    The terrain is adapted from a regional mapping tutorial, just with lower detail settings on the cloud filters. I plan to break this down in to district maps, and I'll likely use the symbols from the Vyntri project, RPG Mapshare and the Dundjinni forums. Great stuff there. This is all being used in the Roll20 VTT.

    Any advice and critique is totally welcome. I'm wondering should I increase the scale of the map? Like double the area and leave the city the same to get the terrain right....

  2. #2

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    I don't think it looks bad at all. But I do have some critique that I hope might help.

    The sea looks horrid to be blunt. =P It has more texture than the rest of the map put together which is sort of the opposite of how it should be in my mind. The sea should have less texture than the land. You should aim for a flatter blue colour I think.

    On the topic of the sea - your river (not sure if it should divide like that at the end either - but anyway) is a completely different colour which makes it look entirely divorced from the ocean it is feeding in to. Also I think that thick black coastal outline isn't appropriate for the style you are aiming for.

    I am not sure if you should increase the scale - it depends on how detailed or close up you want your map to be really. This scale is fine I think even though I prefer something more up close for my own maps - but that is also more work which can be uneeded.
    Last edited by Larb; 01-01-2014 at 10:03 PM.

  3. #3
    Guild Member RevGunn's Avatar
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    Okay, Thank you. The ocean is something left over from the regional map style I used as a basis. I agree. Maybe that is part of what makes the map look wrong. Its perhaps a case of me not being able to see the forest for the trees. The river mouth is what I mean by the delta looking wrong. I think its too small. The entire river I mean.

    I prefer more detail also is why I want to break the map in to districts and map them at a closer scale.

    Thanks for the insight. I'll work on it.

  4. #4

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    From what I know of river deltas they seem to be really BIG systems and the land form around them tends to be more convex -sort of almost like a peninsula - as they carry a lot of silt out into the ocean which gradually builds up.

  5. #5

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    I agree with Larb's assessment. I'd also recommend decreasing the bevel on the rivers, it looks unnatural. I do like how you've done the fields.

    Cheers,
    -Arsheesh

  6. #6
    Guild Member RevGunn's Avatar
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    Click image for larger version. 

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    Here is the next version. I'm liking the terrain a bit better at this point. I hope the water looks okay?

  7. #7

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    Yes I think that looks much better now.

  8. #8
    Guild Member RevGunn's Avatar
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    Alright! Thank you both. Arsheesh, I've learned lots from you. The fields are the "agrarian economy" texture from genetica I think, layer mode to hard light, opacity at 55%.

    The river bevel is to simulate some of the riverbanks I see here in Oklahoma. They have a pretty good drop to a lot of them. I'm considering going with a muddier water color also. I dunno.

  9. #9
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    Hello:
    The second one does look a great deal better. I do have a question, I do not know if your city will have one. Where is the sewer run off for the city. Many medieval cities along a river of waterway would dump their sewage right into the water. Even today modern cities do the same thing, but fortunately the sewage is treated before they release it.

    The map looks great, I was looking at it from an adventurer's point of view.

    Tracker

  10. #10
    Guild Expert jbgibson's Avatar
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    The area's fine - any mapper could legitimately choose to focus on the city 'proper' without environs.

    Think about what you're portraying. If it is supposed to be a photorealistic aerial photo, that's one level of detail / realism. If it's admittedly a map somehow drawn to look like an aerial view, then some generalization / symbology / approximation is fine. If the latter, is it to be 'out of character', hence modern is ok, or is it somehow 'in character'? If in character, you have the problem that people with no actual aerial travel capability nor photographic capability wouldn't be expected to do a good aerial photo view - they just didn't think that way. Unless they were blessed with really high terrain nearby, I guess, to put them in the right mindset.

    If you're doing the best you can to simulate a real aerial view, sameness is your enemy - all the roofs would hardly be the same color or construction... Unless you put in enough detail to suggest something like tiled roofs. I see a bit of bevel, which does visually lift the buildings into 3D... But are they all the same height? What kind of roofs ARE they?

    If it's supposed to be somehow drawn or painted photorealistic, the walls, roads, docks, and water need some more subtle variation, and the texture needs to be smaller size. If those are *symbols* for those feature types, the level of uniformity and roughness are okay. Unless with the river you want to actually indicate depth/ current/ filth?

    I like the 'towns grown together' effect, and the 'used to have walls' indication. It would be okay for the wall remnants to be even sketchier - castles and walls once no longer needed became easily mined sources of building stone. Having most of your buildings back from the shore seems good too - lots of folks forget the danger of tides and storms. Considering tides, it would be okay to show via shadows that the dock surfaces are somewhat elevated. And your admission of the lack of industry is apt - surely that many docking locations would at least call for a bunch of warehouses.

    It's a great start, and even if you quit now it would be a decent product!

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