NDotW: World Map

[AslanC]

I for one like the Onions, but that's me

[LonewandererD]

I know I'm not the river police but I did notice something. In the southwestern part of the eastern landmass, across from the mountain penisula of the desert area, you have a river that is headind towards the sea but breaks off at the last minute and head a bit inland before exiting further down the coast. This might not be a violation, I'm no expert, but it does look a little strange. Also, to the east of that river, a small river joins into/breaks off from the main river that runs along the mountains, it just looks a little out of place.

They're are also some little personal nit-picky things I've noticed but they don't really matter and I don't quite have a lot of time right now.

But all in all great work, really looks like a satelite image. Bravo.

It has probably been mentioned before but I the borders. They're beautiful and decortaive and they don't draw attention away from the map whilst looking great. Who do you do them, my attempts have been quite basic so far.

-D-

[Coyotemax]

The rivers have been adjusted, there were a few artifacts that my brain tuned out from when i erased most of the generated ones. Anything else in there is left intentionally, as there are a few wierd anomolies now and then in actual terrain

I'm ok with taking nitpicky notes, without feedback it's difficult to imporve and avoid erros in the future bring it on, if/when you get the time. Can't guarantee I'll follow up on them in this map after this point, but things definitely get kept in mind for future maps.

[Karro]

Okay, overall I think the rivers look great now. A lot more natural looking now that the straight-as-a-canal rivers have been removed.

[Coyotemax]

Well, in all honesty, I would say my Wilbur experiment was a failure for my purposes. I was looking at using Wilbur to reduce the time it takes to do the rivers, and have them come out more natural. While it seems to do wonderfully on terrain generated within the tool, it's taking too much effort to set up the height maps for imported images to work well - if you think those canals were bad, you should have seen some of the ones I erased

If I started a map as a height map in photoshop first, before adding the landscape features, and using the heightmap as a guide, it might work out a bit better.. but really, in terms of timesaving, it's a bust. Any of the previous maps where I drew rivers in by hand looked as good if not better than my experiments, and took less time when it all boils down.

I think AslanC and I are getting our feedback-and-forth technique down to a fine art, this map didn't take NEARLY as long to iron out the finer details, though that may be in part because it's not quite as developed as the West was in terms of what goes where and local politics Plus I got a lot more creative license on this one.

And Lone, thanks for the comments about the borders, too. in some ways I put even more effort into those than i do into the maps themselves It may sound odd, but I actually put a fair amount of effort into having them accentuate without distracting from the map. I especially wanted to keep the similar style to the last map, I do believe the entire series will be placed in similar frames (I'm starting to think of them more as picture frames than borders now, heh). Different regions have a different overall theme though, I don't want to just re-use the same border - this is half the fun, for me! Part of the work on this one was deciding between an arabic/muslim look (which is what got decided on, obviously), Slavic/Balkan, Ukranian, Chinese, Japanese, or Mongolian. I thought of incorporating a bit of each, but it would have been too much, I think.

Part of the reason I use the borders is to hide any bevelling and other layer artifacts at the edges of the map - that was the original intent, until I found other ways to deal with it, but by then I decided I just like making them.

[Coyotemax]

Work proceeds, though sometimes slowly.

The entire continent landmass has been mapped at this point, though in separate files. Considering I was looking ahead when doing the new areas, and copying in adjacent areas to continue the terrain seamlessly, I decided now was finally the time to test that theory. And it worked out great, there were only two spots that I had to tweak to match.

This is by no means the final version of the fullsize map, instead it's just a test - there are quite a few issues where I forgot to hide some layers before compositing and the atlantis island is not done for the regular map yet either. However, it's good enough to test the Zoomify export, and took minimal time and effort to put them all together. at 9000x5500 pixels, it's quite a hefty map - no way will the site let me post it, heh.

I know there are a few people working on smaller regional maps that are part of a larger world - so I'll say that it's worth the effort to have them match up to put together at some future point

http://home.cogeco.ca/~msutter/maps/overall.html

[AslanC]

OMG

That is amazing dude

I want to rep you but I have to spread it around.

[Steel General]

The zoomify works quite nicely I must say...