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Thread: Valdessia - Modern Fantasy

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    Default Valdessia - Modern Fantasy

    Please offer any criticism you might have for this map. Thank you.

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    So this world is kind of like modern day Earth except it has Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Orcs, and Humans as its five races. Each race originated from one of the five major continents, and developed a distinct set of cultures, but today, all five races mix throughout the globe. Technology is pretty much the same as it is in the real world. Each race has many cultures and ethnic groups with in it - they are not uniform groups of people.

    Elves are the most imperialistic, and originate from Aldoa in the northeast. They have colonized, enslaved, or strongly influenced every corner of the world.

    Humans are from Exora, in the southeast. They were once enslaved by the Elves to do heavy labor, but they have since liberated themselves and control several powerful nations.

    Dwarves are from Odra, in the south. They did not develop technology as quickly as the Elves, but resisted colonization for centuries.

    Gnomes are native to Yal Sanu, in the southwest. They are generally peaceful,and for a long time did not stray beyond the shores of their continent, but in recent days have started to migrate to where the weather is nicer.

    Finally, Orcs are from Kandra, in the center. They originally belonged to thousands of hunter-gatherer tribes that spanned the huge continent, but most of their civilization has been lost in war or has been assimiliated into Human, Elf, and Dwarf culture. Today, they are the least populous of the five races, but still boast a powerful presence in Kandra.

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    Hey everybody. I would really like it if someone would comment on this map that I have been working on. Thank you.

  3. #3
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    Hey Will, the shapes are interesting but it needs more work on the moutains and the way they blend in my opinion. Also I'm not a great fan or the labels ( probably the font and the color) and I expected more informations.

  4. #4

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    Hi Will-

    A couple items for consideration.

    Is this map representing an entire planet? If so, you may have some issues with the overall shape of the continents reflecting the distortion you would see near poles.

    I'm personally not a big fan of the coastal glow effect - might be that the cyan is a bit to intense? But that is personal preference.

    You've used the same bump-map like texture everywhere not mountains, and it stands out as a bit too regular (especially if it is at a global scale) You might want to mix it up a bit more.

    The frame has a very regular repeat at the top and bottom. You might want to find a larger pattern to use if you want wood-grain.

    I thing you did a great job with the political borders - logically placed by following major terrain features.

    Keep working on it!

    -Rob A>

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    Thank you so much for the feedback. How would you like me to do the labels? And do you have any suggestions for how to get a better bump map?
    Also, I realize that distortion near the poles is a problem with world maps. I guess I intended this as a Mercator map minus the extreme north and south, but I will fiddle with the map projection and make the longitude/latitude more precise.

    And when everything else is done, I'll add cities to the countries.

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    Guild Expert jbgibson's Avatar
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    It may be too late to tweak continent shapes, but you have a bit of the "fill the rectangular page" thing going. See if you can render at least the raw shapes in other projections, and watch how they look more or less believable.

    Your rivers make good sense.

    If you're going to have the oceans so dark, consider flipping their labels to light instead of dark. I can't promise that'll look great, but you do have a contrast problem with dark-on-dark.

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