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Thread: Need a helping hand with an existing map

  1. #1
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    Post Need a helping hand with an existing map

    Hey there!

    Some of you might have heard of the Republic of Hippostania, a fictional country I roleplay with in NationStates, an online browser game.

    I have made a map for Hippostania with Inkscape, which can be seen here. The problem is that it just doesn't look that realistic. Especially the geography is way off, the terrain is unrealistic and I know that. I just don't know how I could fix it, and even if I knew, I'm not sure if I could do it myself.

    That's why I decided to come here asking for help. I'd be extremely grateful if someone could edit my map so it'd look more realistic. Ideally, it should look like a Google Maps map with less white, or like Norscand (though that amount of detail is not really needed). It doesn't matter what you do, you can just edit the geography a bit to make it more realistic or go berserk and add everything from small streams and villages to roads and mountains. You can edit the paths of rivers and mountains, shapes of bodies of water and urban areas, but the overall shape of the country shouldn't change.

    Time is not a problem. I can wait for months if it is required. Copyright-wise, I'm just going to use the map for non-profit purposes; to develop my fictional nation, that is. That's why I'd like to keep the copyright of the map.

    Vector version of the map can be downloaded here.

    Unfortunately I am a student with a fairly meager budget, so I can't really afford to pay anything. But I still hope that someone will be willing to edit the map to look at least a bit more realistic

    I can be contacted by email at arttu(insert two doubleW's here)-at-hotmail.com

  2. #2
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    I'm going to bump this a bit, sorry about that D: But I'd really, really appreciate if someone could at least try to fix the map a bit.

    I don't want anything major, if someone could spare 30 minutes of their time to fix the worst flaws, that'd be more than enough

  3. #3
    Guild Journeyer gilgamec's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hippo View Post
    I'm going to bump this a bit, sorry about that D: But I'd really, really appreciate if someone could at least try to fix the map a bit.

    I don't want anything major, if someone could spare 30 minutes of their time to fix the worst flaws, that'd be more than enough
    If you could re-upload the svg version of the map (the link you posted doesn't seem to work), I'd be willing to look at it for a couple of hours this weekend. (You might be able to make it an attachment to a message.)

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by gilgamec View Post
    If you could re-upload the svg version of the map (the link you posted doesn't seem to work), I'd be willing to look at it for a couple of hours this weekend. (You might be able to make it an attachment to a message.)
    map.svg

    I'm sorry it took so long, but here's the SVG version anyway.

  5. #5
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    I'm gonna bump this a bit.. Please, anyone?

  6. #6
    Guild Adept foremost's Avatar
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    I don't think the problem is about what you have, but rather about what you're missing. Transportation network needs details. Are you going to make the cities look like something other than dots?
    The best maps are the ones we like the most after looking at the longest.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by foremost View Post
    I don't think the problem is about what you have, but rather about what you're missing. Transportation network needs details. Are you going to make the cities look like something other than dots?
    True, transportation network only contains motorways. The problem is that when I try to add smaller roads, they never seem realistic enough. Major cities already contain yellow (urban) areas.

  8. #8
    Guild Journeyer gilgamec's Avatar
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    Hi! I've done some work on this, but real life has reared its head and I'm not going to be able to do anything more with it. It was harder than I had expected, due largely to some problems (not necessarily your fault) in the SVG file; Illustrator definitely didn't like it!
    Click image for larger version. 

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    (I spent a lot of time gluing together bits of motorways and rivers with up to four different transformations.) Again, this may just be how Illustrator handles Inkscape-generated SVG files; it certainly throws a warning about it.

    I also noticed some problems in the geography that you may want to look at:
    • As foremost mentioned, the transportation network needs work. I'm particularly wondering about the motorways, which tend to avoid towns and terminate in the middle of nowhere, neither of which looks much like highways of my experience. (You also have two M88s, one near Montrouge, one near Warwick.)
    • The river network doesn't make sense. Depending on the direction of flow of the East River, either Hippo Lake has three outflows (East, Avon, Hippo rivers) or the East River splits in two at Studham. Both are no-nos. Also, the Guezermeer has far too many outflows, and they split several times, which doesn't make sense unless Oranjeland is basically a two-hundred kilometer wide swamp.


    Anyway, attached is a sample of what I managed to make of the map, and may serve as a style example. Towns don't have names because the positions all change if you change the font size, so positioning should either be made relative or at least done last.
    Click image for larger version. 

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