Battle for Wesnoth - various maps

[zookeeper]

They seem to have a bit of a stylistic mismatch to me. The trees, the forest labels, and the compasses all kind of shout "Computer" while the rest of the map is trying to look hand drawn.

Yeah, you're not the first to mention that, at least regarding forests. Basically, I never found the compasses particularly mismatching, I didn't find a way to give the forests a more drawn/painted look while still having them look as nice, and for forest labels I didn't come up with any good-looking alternatives either. Well, given enough time I'm sure I eventually could have, but having already spent several months on this and really wanting to get things finished ASAP, I wasn't tempted enough.

Some of the area labels also look a bit off. You usually want to align them to the largest extent of the area, and then use letter spacing to fit them to that extent.

Could you give a specific example or two? I think I know what you mean, but it wouldn't hurt to be sure.

[Hai-Etlik]

Yeah, you're not the first to mention that, at least regarding forests. Basically, I never found the compasses particularly mismatching, I didn't find a way to give the forests a more drawn/painted look while still having them look as nice, and for forest labels I didn't come up with any good-looking alternatives either. Well, given enough time I'm sure I eventually could have, but having already spent several months on this and really wanting to get things finished ASAP, I wasn't tempted enough.


Could you give a specific example or two? I think I know what you mean, but it wouldn't hurt to be sure.

On the second map, the "Forest of Thelien" and "Greenwood", "Frosty Wastes", and "Desert of Death" are examples. They'd both look better if they were put along paths and spaced out to cover the extent. The "Black Marshes" and "Mountains of Haag" also look like they might benefit from a bit more letter spacing.

I found I get the best results when combining mountains in that hand drawn style with labels by doing careful adjustment to both individual letter kerning and symbol placement, along with a few careful edits to individual symbols. That requires that you either keep each mountain symbol on separate layer, or that you use vector graphics (which is what I do). It also requires advanced typographic control which is more common in vector software than raster, and it requires quite a bit of manual editing. When I'm being fancy, I likewise delete the trees around the labels to make room rather than using a halo around the text. Or I represent forests as areas with scalloped edges rather than by discrete tree symbols. That works quite well with a hand drawn look.

Here are a couple of my maps that demonstrate:

Picture 1 of 4 from Other
Picture 4 of 4 from Other

[zookeeper]

On the second map, the "Forest of Thelien" and "Greenwood", "Frosty Wastes", and "Desert of Death" are examples. They'd both look better if they were put along paths and spaced out to cover the extent. The "Black Marshes" and "Mountains of Haag" also look like they might benefit from a bit more letter spacing.

I found I get the best results when combining mountains in that hand drawn style with labels by doing careful adjustment to both individual letter kerning and symbol placement, along with a few careful edits to individual symbols. That requires that you either keep each mountain symbol on separate layer, or that you use vector graphics (which is what I do). It also requires advanced typographic control which is more common in vector software than raster, and it requires quite a bit of manual editing. When I'm being fancy, I likewise delete the trees around the labels to make room rather than using a halo around the text. Or I represent forests as areas with scalloped edges rather than by discrete tree symbols. That works quite well with a hand drawn look.

Here are a couple of my maps that demonstrate:

Picture 1 of 4 from Other
Picture 4 of 4 from Other

Right, thanks, I see what you mean. In hindsight, that would indeed have been a better idea for the regional labels. One consideration I haven't mentioned which did put some practical limitations on the text is the requirement that the labels needed to be localizable by non-artists; for each language the game supports, the translators may provide localized versions of images containing text (such as the maps), and while I've managed to make the process pretty simple for them (they just need to place the text and run a script), it still rules out some visual choices. One of those is removing the trees from underneath forest labels, which would probably have been my #1 choice if not for the fact that the labels will be of different size and length in different languages. That's also why I'd be hesitant to use elaborate tweaks on the text such as individual letter kerning on this particular project.

Still, that's good advice and I'll keep it in mind for any possible future projects.

[Shadow Knight]

I always enjoyed the maps and the game. Some rep for you.

[nyogtha]

"Clap clap" ! Very nice work, like it !

[SirGalahad]

What's up, man? I've been developing a campaign for Wesnoth and I want to know if I can use your maps for it. If you like, I can send you the campaign if you wanna test it.

I just wanna be completely sure I can use your maps with no problem.

[zookeeper]

What's up, man? I've been developing a campaign for Wesnoth and I want to know if I can use your maps for it. If you like, I can send you the campaign if you wanna test it.

I just wanna be completely sure I can use your maps with no problem.

Well, of course you can use them (as well as edit, if you need to), just like any other assets in the game.

If you have any further questions you should do it through the Wesnoth forums though, because as you can see, I don't exactly check here very often. I took a look at this thread purely by chance.