January/February 2014 Lite Challenge: Jannah Manor

[Jalyha]

Thanks! I'm glad you like it!

How could I refuse with so much pressure?

About the tree... It *was* a perfect place to read... once... but then!

Nevermind, I'll tell you later!

[Jalyha]

Anything to avoid the manor roof(s)!!

With the colored ipe-tree/blossom tree thingy in there, and the addition of my compass, I started to get a feel for the manor I was mapping - and why I was mapping it.

Jannah Manor is a peaceful haven in a modern world, not very unlike our own. Recently re-opened to tourists, the current Monsieur Jannah (or rather his PR team!) decided to offer a whimsical little guide/pamphlet, of which this map is a part.


I'd never imagined this world before today, so the names/stories are primarily a LOT of silliness, and a few semi-realistic bits of information hidden in between. Some of the names, however, DO have meanings or histories - and if you find them all, you'll realize how silly it is.

Some names were also chosen randomly


However, this is still very much a WIP, and I'm sure there's something wrong with what I have here

Also, I still need to do the left side, with the map data... and.. not sure what to do there...

AND I had to reduce the size because the forum wouldn't let me upload it!

ANYWAY here's my map/guidebook/pamphlet/thingy so far:

### Latest WIP ###

[Jalyha]

I want to put a water feature in the NorthEast corner with a mosaic around it, but I am having problems. I've been building my mosaic ALL DAY so no update to the map, but I will show what I've done:

[Azélor]

That would make a very fancy map border.

[Jalyha]

Lol, it's supposed to be a mosaic for a patio in my garden, but it's going so slowly I guess it would make a nice border

[Bogie]

Putting all those tiles down one at a time can take forever, but there is a quicker way.

Once you have a line of tiles, make a copy of the piece, rotate it 90 deg. and just use the clone tool to copy the line of tiles back onto the original making another side of the square, then rotate again and make the next side. This works as long as the piece is symetrical and does not have directional shadows on it. Here is a screen shot of me part way through, and the finished tile.

[Gamerprinter]

Yes, definitely clone/duplicate what you've already created and use it again through out the map. Consider that when I generate a set of custom trees (for example) I try to create 20 - 30 unique versions of each tree, then I duplicate bunches of those trees as a group, rotate them, ungroup, move some around and in the end have a forest of trees that almost look like each one is unique, though there might be 10 sets of duplicates of everything. Speed under control is what I rely on in creating maps. Any shortcut to help maintain a faster end result is a primary goal of mine. Most maps I create, I create in a single sitting measured in hours. I don't like doing the same map day after day - I get bored, I don't want to finish if I can't do it quick. I will put in an extra hour or two, then I planned on, if I think I can finish a map in that time.

[Jalyha]

OMG That would have saved so much time

I did try rotating one of my (larger) tiles, but it got all blurry? Am I doing it wrong? (It let me flip one, vertically or horizontally, but not rotate a large piece?)

Anyway, I will DEFINITELY do that next time. (And the treee thing instead of trying to add each one !!

Well, here's my "process" on the mosaic.. it really is tile by tile, one pixel at a time! (Yep, Imma noob).




And the finished product, added to my map (Though I think I should put it somewhere else?!)

[Jalyha]

Um. Help?

So, I saved my work (thank goodness!) and closed Gimp, cause my computer was screaming at me. Then I went to open it again and my computer freezes (completely) every time I try to open Gimp!

I dunno what to do D:

[Gamerprinter]

Remove GIMP from your computer, reload GIMP.

I'm not a major GIMP user, but that's what I'd do, unless there some other obvious fix, I kind of think you will need to do that.