Work in Progress - Map of High City
I was instructed as a newbie to start a work-in-progress thread, so everyone could see my feeble attempts at capturing my first map. So here goes.
Objective: A usable map of High City, complete with sectors, flyways, key buildings, and surrounding geography.
Difficulties: High City is the capitol city of the only remaining country on Lavuon. The geography is rather unique and requires a more subtractive approach. Most of the land is a wide plateau known as the Clifftop Plain about 5 to 10 miles above sea level with a few mountain ranges rising significantlyhigher than that. (To put this in perspective, Mount Everest is about 5 miles tall).
Life runs in three types: on the Plain, in the cliff walls, and at the bottom of clifflines (long gorges). High City is at the foot of a cliffline.
Step One: I'm going to try to paint in my landscape and create some objects to work with. Let's see what happens.
Scale: (Ah! the decision!) I'm working with huge places, so I think I'm going to try a 53 pixel per mile scale—and hope I'm not nuts. 1 pixel = 100 feet.
Dimensions: The city is going to be approximately 37 miles long and 13 miles deep, slightly larger than NYC in sq. mi. This means (allowing myself some extra room: I'm playing on a 2385x2385 pixel canvas to start with. I want to show the Plain on either side of the Lowlands where High City lies.
[I'm starting to feel the wackiness set in. I feel way in over my head!]
Since beginning writing, I've been revising plenty, so be aware that these are the final dimensions I decided on after tweaking my initial lines a bit on my grid.
I'm saving the file as a .psd for working because it's unflattened and uncompressed.
Creating screencaps as I go. I think I'll just dump all these in a word doc and attach. I already do not like my Clifftop Plain's texture and will need to change, but will probably do that later.
I got excited and really got going, but here's what's in so far.
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