Sagitarii - practice city map

[Azélor]

Lots of buildings and the layout seems pretty convincing

[Caenwyr]

And this is your first city map like this? Huh, you're amazing.

Oh stop it, you! You're making me blush

Lots of buildings and the layout seems pretty convincing

Glad to hear that! I was kinda concerned. I had to size down the big monuments (hippodrome, odeon, baths, ...) a bit so as not to overwhelm the map - I just hope they don't look too small now compared to the houses!

I did some work to the map yesterday and saved it in my Dropbox folder to share with you guys this morning, but it seems I closed my home computer before it got uploaded... so you'll have to wait for that update a lil' longer .

[Ilanthar]

Hey, great work on this Caenwyr! You should have tried a city map before! I love the layout of the city and the shape of the coast, both very realistic. I love the way you did the city walls. Definitely looking forward to the next steps.

[Falconius]

Dude, this is... this is a really good city. I agree, you clearly should be doing more city maps. Great.

[Caenwyr]

Hey, great work on this Caenwyr! You should have tried a city map before! I love the layout of the city and the shape of the coast, both very realistic. I love the way you did the city walls. Definitely looking forward to the next steps.

Dude, this is... this is a really good city. I agree, you clearly should be doing more city maps. Great.

Thanks guys! I hope I can keep that impressedness going in what's coming. I still have a LOT of changes in mind. See below!
But first of all, an update! Progress is a bit less than in my previous updates, but I did do the hippodrome details, some streams and some villages on the left bank of the river and some squigglies around the bridges and the left waterside.

Still to do in the linework section:

• a shipyard (no idea where I'm gonna put that yet)
• a handful of ships and sloops and dinghies in the water and on the beaches
• a monastery (shown in yellow on the annotated map below)
• a water palace (the playground of the leading nobility in peaceful times - also in yellow)
• some forests on both sides of the river
• some farmland
• a swampy bit on the left shore (just south of The Olde Bridge)
• a forum or a big marketplace right smack in the middle of the city. I just discovered that type of place was missing in the current map (I might widen the square SW of Zaridion's Baths all the way towards the round temple close to the Odeon, throw some official-sounding buildings in for good measure and adorn the place with columns, fountains and that kinda stuff. Fun!).

And then the linework is done, I guess! The map will be seriously close to completion. Still to do at that point: colouring, labeling, and adding the typical mapping must-haves (border, scale, wind rose).

• Labeling seems pretty straightforward,
• the must-haves can't be too difficult (I'm aiming for something like what I did on the Tesset Gallí map),
• but I'm not too sure about the colouring just yet. I'm definitely gonna experiment with that for a bit - it is after all a practice map - but in the end I want to deliver something decent as well, so if colouring really doesn't work out I might just declare it finished in all its nude B&W glory. Maybe with some greyscale shading to denote the terrain (which is still largely invisible). We'll see.

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Alright. Enough blah di blah already! I'm sure half of you skipped the text bit completely, and I can't say you're wrong, because what this post is really about, is the map! And this is where I am at the moment:

The linework-only version:


And a very preliminary annotated version:


And that's it! All that's left is for you to shout out your opinion. You have one - I'm sure. Just spit it out!

EDIT: some double letters in the legend seem to have gone missing. Photoshop was slow this morning! Meh, just preliminary anyway

[Josiah VE]

Looking super great!

Interesting names... cod gate..

You should make this a town on your plot of the Guild World!

[Tom]

Seriously
I love the circus and the bridge (it reminds me Baldur's Gate!), and this wip is reeeally promising! keep up the good job!

[Bogie]

Very nice design

[Caenwyr]

I love the circus and the bridge (it reminds me Baldur's Gate!), and this wip is reeeally promising! keep up the good job!

Thanks man! I'm not familiar with Baldur's Gate, but I did get inspiration from somewhere: the old London Bridge!



I especially like the drawbridge, and the fact that the bridge acted as a weir, rendering the waters behind it calm and navigable. Almost lake-like. I have no idea whatsoever how I'm gonna display that once the colouring starts, but I assume that's the fun part

[arsheesh]

This is looking very promising. I like the city layout. About the legend, I wonder if it might not look better to display that info in a separate section, such as for instance placing the title, scale and legend all in a frame below the image itself. Just a thought. Either way, nice work.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh