WIP : Town of Fière-Muraille

[Jayharchitect]

I am liking where this is going. In regards to the struggle with representing the farms, you might try faint cross hatches in the fields to give the impression of plowed rows. You would have to alternate directions in each field to avoid it becoming to monotonous. Worth a shot at least!

[Ilanthar]

I agree with Larb, very nice castle. It makes me want to see more .

[Narolas]

Slow progress on the buildings, not exactly sure how i'll handle the variety and unique locations. So far, i'm slowly shifting the colours depending on the type of area (dense/not dense, rich/poor, for example), but i'll probably stay close to wood colours. And unique locations get a slightly different shade (and i'll add numbers or letters on them, referenced on the legend).



There's a small area north-west of town that's done, with a few unique locations i'll be labeling later. I quite like the look of it, as long as you don't zoom in too much (very pixely, I should have calculated the image size better at the start, I wasn't expecting my city to get this big and have buildings this small in comparison).
A few other little things like street texture and a few tweaks here and there.

Feedback appreciated!

[foremost]

Looks like you've been working on this pretty steadily; I admire your consistent dedication.

I would stay close to wood coloring for the buildings, but if you need color variation for variety maybe the richer areas could be less dense and feature stone buildings.

[Solice]

Not to be the inspired new guy but, I'm inspired and mystified by the intricacy of local maps illustrated in this manner. Just so many variables that I don't know if I could tackle myself. I commend thee! I also will be watching this glorious piece, its coming along so nicely and it looks like you are making good, solid decisions with each update.

Inspiring.

[Narolas]

Slow progress yet again.
Houses are progressing, taking care to make everything look just right and to add little details and unique locations here and there.
Added some bushes/sparse trees around the forests and in a few places in town.
I'm really starting to hope that, once I add the drop shadows of buildings and hills, the map won't look like too much of a clusterf*ck, it would certainly help give the central hill and keep some depth though, I should do some tests.



Here it is, feedback appreciated as always.

[Meshon]

This is wonderful! I really appreciate the detail you've put into the buildings, it's a lot of work with no easy way to get around it, and your hard work shows.

When I zoom out, the different contrasts in the the fields is kind of jarring and I'm thinking that the surrounds might benefit from a narrower range in values. Pick one colour for the fields and then adjust it only slightly up and and down to get your three colours.

Also, medieval fields tended to be long and narrow, often with one narrow end bordering a stream or river. The idea was to turn your plough as little as possible. There's an example here that's not too bad. Absolutely NOT necessary to incorporate this into your map, but if you're looking for ways to change the fields, that might be one option.

This is going really well, and I'm glad to see you're keeping at it!

cheers,
Meshon

[Narolas]

Oh yea, the farms are the next big thing on the TODO list, they're pretty ugly atm.
Also i've been using that example you linked, all the little plots you see on my map are like the ones on the example, I simply haven't drawn the rectangular linear fields INSIDE the plots yet, but now that you mention it i'll make sure to draw those rectangles while following roads/rivers and make it consistent.

I've been trying my hand at adding shadows to the cliffs, and it's already looking a lot better with a lot more depth, so that's good. Once I'm done with all the little buildings i'll have to add shadows to those too, as well as the walls and towers, not looking forward to that
Then, the fields .. still hoping those'll turn out alright, so far i'm thinking of a few different ways I could render them.

Thanks for the encouragement !

[Kiba]

Looking REALLY good!

[Narolas]

Some tweaks, some little changes.
Added shadows to the hills and the castle, increased the drop shadow effect on the building clusters (i'll be manually adding shadows to the towers and high/special buildings later).

Slow, slow progress on the building details (It's hard to find the motivation to do those !).



Still going well, i'm enjoying making this type of map (although I do think I could have picked a smaller one to make, this being my very first town/city map).