Highmoon - First attempt at a town map

[Redrobes]

In a very technical sense you should acknowledge the trade mark with the TM logo - but god help us the day that a fan based free map site gets its collar felt for creating original art based on role playing campaign settings.

[Gandwarf]

Good to see I inspired some people. I love city maps, so the more, the better!
This is also a great opportunity for me to study different styles and stea... eh borrow them for my own maps

What I really like about your map is the forests and the farmland in the clearings. I also like the layout of the city walls. They look organic (they are not placed in straight lines). Seeing forested areas inside the (stone?) walls does look a bit funny to me. It's very expensive to build city walls... so why enclose forest? But hey, this is a fantasy map

Some things I would change:

- The texture of the walls. This texture looks really "rocky" and has lots of color differences and patches.
- Make the towers stand out more. The walls and towers look too much alike right now I think.
- Add different looking houses, as the roofs all share the same colors. Houses are often built using the same materials that can be found in the surrounding area, but a few houses should look different to make the city look more realistic.

Also, is it possible to upload a higher resolution version of your map?

Anyway, keep up the good work. I did about twenty maps with City Designer 3 and as you might have noticed I did improve my skills with each map (and I think there is still room for a lot of improvement, so I am never done ).

[goatdealer]

Thanks for the comments, I have tried out some of the changes suggested by Gandwarf and posted the result.

I have left the trees in as Highmoon is in the centre of the Dalelands and I saw them as an extension of the forest. Some Elves may even live in them (!)

I have changed the walls for a lighter grey and removed a lot of the blurs, I watched the tutorial and used glows instead. I think it looks much better with the red important houses and I may even write a 'Volo' (TM) style guide when the city is done.

The video tutorial also showed me how to save as a rectangular jpeg (I was using screen shots ).I think that the house style is probably wrong as it seems to be the detail that makes the map look blurry.
Anyone have a preferred house stlye they would like to suggest?