City of Cerdain - Critique wanted.

[Darryl Holmes]

Hello! A quick introduction: I'm working on a small text-based Fantasy RPG for Android. The game is called Siege of Cerdain, and is entirely based inside the city while it is besieged by Undead. Instead of just text and options, I wanted to make it more in line with how Pen & Paper RPG's work, which generally involve battle maps and more visual reference materials. So I've basically been lurking on here for the last month or so, admiring your communities hard work and reading your material. This place is an absolute treasure trove of information! So I was wondering if you guys and girls wouldn't mind helping me out some more, by giving me a bit of critique on my first map.

For people new to the thread: There's a new, updated version of the map further down!


[Click Here for Full Sized Version 3200x3200]

• The main thing I've found wrong with my map so far is that it's incredibly small for a city (probably more town sized). There is a genuine reason for this though, mainly to save me work on the programming side of things.
• Another thing I'm not happy with is that the rocky areas look more plastic than rock. I've not been able to figure out how to fix that... I've found some great tutorials on here, but unfortunately, I'm artistically challenged.
• Also, there's no lettering at this point, since this is the version used in-game (this version is before the siege starts). I will be adding lettering when I'm happy with the actual map.
• And I think the Tree's look terrible, but can't figure out a way of doing them better.

I'm looking for any critique about the map and geological layout (you can be as harsh as you want, I won't take it personally). I really want to make this look as good as possible, so anything that I've done wrong that you can point out or any hints or tips you can throw my way to improve it will be greatly appreciated.



Short About the City of Cerdain:
The city is a rural East-Midlands community, which has built up over the years around the Ealdorman Landgrave's Manor. (The Red building, walled off in the centre). It's a fairly new community, only beginning construction in the last 100 years, who had (luckily for them) only just finished construction of their walls around two years ago.
Their Midlands location, as well as treacherous waters, makes seafaring trade impossible; leading to the city becoming mostly self-sustainable, as well as walling off their rivers.

[johnvanvliet]

roads ?
they look to be a bit too much

a bit like a pile of Spaghetti noodles , some of the small ones

[Azélor]

Yes, too many roads and many do not make any sense. Also, the size is fine but there are not enough building density to justify a walled city. It cost a lot to build and maintain, they need to make it worth the effort.

The rivers also look random. Naturally they tend to converge and rarely diverge.
Having the walls passing over the rivers can be a problem unless the river is just a stream.
Having trees near the walls is not a very good idea. It gives cover to the attackers, reducing the effectiveness of the defender's archers. Unless your in a place were dry seasons are common is summer (Mediterranean climate) and planed that the enemy will use them for cover before putting them on fire. Depending on the direction of the winds, it could be a good idea maybe.

[Darryl Holmes]

All good points. The city was meant to look a little "ramshackle" but it does certainly need a bit of a cull on the paths. Building Density is something I can look at improving as well, especially with fewer paths. Replace some of the little paths with buildings and that should do the job I reckon.

Very very good point on the Trees though! I hadn't thought of that. A complete oversight on my part, they certainly don't want them anywhere near the walls.

Thank you both for your input .

[Larb]

I have to agree about the roads - you have basically got a really high road/trail to building ratio.

Also what might be making it look more town-like isn't the size of the city (I think the city footprint is quite large actually), it is that it is not very dense or built up. It doesn't feel like an urban environment. There are no narrow streets or city blocks so it feels more like a walled enclosure full of scattered buildings.

You wouldn't need to densely pack the entire city map to fix that. You could get away with just making that north-west section around the large black walled building more urbanized. If you did that though I would also have an inner wall for the "old city" running along the river to surround it. Defences tend to get built in stages over many years.

*edit* just realised you said the city grew up around the red building. So you should perhaps make that the urban core of your city instead!

[Darryl Holmes]

That's quite a good idea Larb. It would definitely make sense for it to be quite dense in the centre! Would reinforce a few story elements as well. Thank you. I'll get started cutting out some of the roads and adding a much denser urban landscape in the centre.

[Midgardsormr]

• Another thing I'm not happy with is that the rocky areas look more plastic than rock. I've not been able to figure out how to fix that... I've found some great tutorials on here, but unfortunately, I'm artistically challenged.
• And I think the Tree's look terrible, but can't figure out a way of doing them better.

For the rocky areas, the reason it looks like plastic is because you have shiny white reflections. While rock will throw back a white reflection (the materials that don't are all conductive metals—don't ask me why; it's got something to do with electrons), it will only do that if it's very smooth. At this scale, what you'll be more likely to see is a diffuse highlight that is the same color as the stone. I recommend you look at some aerial photography of rocky areas to get an idea of what that would actually look like.

For the trees, you have a texture that looks like it would be good for forests in a regional-scale map, but you're trying to get it to work as individual trees. I think you need a stamp of a tree instead of the texture. That would also save you from the faded edges.

[Kiba]

Everyone's covered the basic geography, so I'll just focus on the layout of the city.

1) Why is the city a nearly-perfect square? It doesn't make sense that they've got not just one, but TWO giant river-bends for a natural barrier and trade route--but somehow the founders went "oh, let's put the city a couple miles upriver where only one side will be defended!" It makes more sense for the city to start at either the bend or the fork, and then it grows either along the river or farther out from the banks for more space. The farms and pastures would obviously grow farther out from the river, but in times of siege or attack, the outlying people would either a) be shipped off entirely to a safer place, or b) cram themselves into the fortified core of the city.

That one little corner in the top left is going to be screwed if they get attacked nearby. Unless it's intentionally a result of urban sprawl or just people forgetting that they built along the river for many reasons, I'd say to cut that bit out and make the population more dense along the river to compensate.

2) You've got TWO river-bends--if you want a city, just build a couple of walls across those two giant horse-shoe shapes and put the core of the city by the river. Then you'll have a small city with the additional portions being farmland or sprawl as you wish.

[ravells]

Totally agree about what the others have said about the building density and the roads. I really like what you've done with the colour and lighting: gives it a dark and spooky zombie feel. I would probably pull back on the saturation of the very red rooftops unless there's a reason you want them to stand out so much. There is something wrong with the rivers, but I'm not sure what. I can see that the flow of the largest river is right to left and the tributaries feed into it, but if that were the case it feels kind of wrong that some of them run in parallel with the large river but flow the other way which would suggest that ground is falling in opposite directions in very close proximity. It's possible, I guess but unlikely (although I'm no river expert). What is the scale of the map? A medieval city more than about half a square mile was considered quite large in real life. As to the trees, try and find a way you can draw them without feathering the edges. Find a style that someone else has used here that you like and which fits and copy it.

Drawing cities and particularly convincing cities is not easy. Spending a lot of time looking at old city maps is really worth it. It's a great start though. Keep at it!

[Darryl Holmes]

Thank you all for the help and advice so far! It's been invaluable. Hopefully my second attempt is a little less spaghetti roads, and a little more medieval city:

[Click Here for Full Sized Version 3200x3200]

I've addressed the building density. It certainly needed a bit of compacting to make it more city-like. I'm trying to keep it a bit sparse around the city outskirts for ease of travel for the player, and near empty up north around the purple building (no one wants to live anywhere near that thing). Still not too sure if it's dense enough yet though.

Started culling the roads... still have quite a few that need deleting, but I'll get them as I find them.

I've changed the Tree's and Farmland. Wasn't happy that it looked kind of out-of-place with the rest of the map. Thank you Midgardsormr, unfortunately I couldn't find any stamps that I liked (that was also available for commercial use), so I decided to give it a shot myself using Photoshop's Wetwork brushes... seems to have done the trick, so I'll see what people on here think.

No groups of trees near the walls either! I hadn't considered the tactical implications of having tree's near the walls... so I moved them further off.

I've also changed the rock quite drastically (using a tutorial on here for Battle Maps), as well tweaking the building roofs (desaturating the red just a little made it look a lot better, thank you for that suggestion, ravells).

Redone the river as well, so it's a little more convincing. It still diverges (since it flows left to right, with the sea being eastern), but it doesn't look as crazy now.

What do you guys think to the redone map? Anything still look out of place or odd?

Thank you for the time you guys are spending going over it, it's greatly appreciated!

That one little corner in the top left is going to be screwed if they get attacked nearby. Unless it's intentionally a result of urban sprawl or just people forgetting that they built along the river for many reasons, I'd say to cut that bit out and make the population more dense along the river to compensate.

Basically, yeah, it's Urban Sprawl. It's not meant to be a planned city... More a case of people just happened to settle down there for various reasons.

Story is, a trade embargo between two cities resulted in traders from either side using the Manor in the middle as a meeting point for off-the-books trading... since it belonged to the highly reclusive Landgrave family, it was seen as a bit of a no-mans land free from laws of either city. This benefited the little fishing towns and hamlets along the river, since it shifted the trade-routes up along their roads and they started to see wealthy tradesmen travelling through. Along with the discovery of rare materials in the hills north-east... their growth spiralled out of control, and 100 years later you have a slap-dash city with no real leadership (as the Landgrave's are as reclusive as ever, 3 generations on). The captain of the guard is left in charge for the most part, but he's mainly interested in gathering taxes and bribes... so there's not exactly any building planning going on (especially since it's disputably three separate towns).

What is the scale of the map?

Hmmm... Hadn't really thought of scale (was more thinking image resolution and texture pages) so, let's see... It takes about 1 hour 15 for the player to travel from one side of the city to the other (in game-time), so I'm guessing it's around 3.5 miles across (inside the city walls). So it's round about a 5 mile by 5 mile square. Though I'm absolutely useless with measurements/scales, so I could be completely off there.