Recent Development

To make a long story short, when the January Mapping Challenge started, I thought it'd be pretty cool to have one of my maps professionally printed and hanging on my wall. If I'd been smart about it, I'd have focused strictly on the town of Hævenstadt instead of trying to develop both the town and the region surrounding it. And, of course, it didn't help when family emergencies and work related problems pulled me away from the project. But I still tried to give it my best shot and as much effort as I could spare. Unfortunately time has worked against me and forced me to pull out of the challenge. But that isn't going to stop me from working on the development. Like a number of creative folks I know, the project has consumed me so to speak, and I feel this need to see it through to the end. Besides the sense of accomplishment for finishing it up, it will give me an even better idea of what the story based characters are seeing as they travel in and around Hævenstadt.

So I've put in quite a bit of work on the regional development over the last few weeks, finding a world in FTPro for Hævenstadt to exist in, editing that world to a point and then realizing that Hævenstadt would fit well in another world I've been working on. Of course, that means more world editing in FTPro on my part, and it might mean some slight changes to the regional map of Hævenstadt, but, on a whole, it should remain fairly close to what I've already developed. In the long run, I'll probably end up with two versions of everything, one rendered in Terragen for an "in-world" view point and one rendered by hand or in PSP for a more global, "out-of-world" view point.

To that end, this thread will continue with the aspects of both view points in mind and, at times, a mixture of both processes with Terragen rendering some of those "out-of-world" views such as this;



A larger, slightly more detailed version of the above is available for viewing in the Challenge Forum
At this point, I am going to continue focusing on regional development and look forward to any comments made by you, my fellow cartographers, whether they be compliments, criticisms or helpful suggestions. Different sets of eyes see different things, and sometimes, I get so focused on the trees that I forget about the forest as a whole.

GW