The Caverns of the Deepening Doom

[Steel General]

I once long ago had a nifty proggy that takes two fonts and "morphs" them together ... mixing a serif with a sans-serif generated some neat results. Oh, I remember the name: Font Chameleon! probably extinct.

Had a little time at work and exercised my so-so Google-Fu technique. Ares (the creator of Font Chameleon) was bought by Adobe and the software discontinued.

[Tom_Cardin]

coyotemax - Thank you!

toff - Good thinking. This update has some simple shading elevation to it. Let me know what you think.

torstan - Thank you! Another big font change. Now I am really happy with it.

Ascension - Yeah I work with type all the time and have a large collection of fonts. I was just lazy and threw something in there. This update has the benefit of me taking more time and finding one I was pleased with. I want to thank all of you for your suggestions because I often get lazy with things and call them done. Well not lazy but my focus is definitely on other bits, you guys help me look at all the aspects.

Steel General - Thanks for finding that out, I was tempted to go hunt for it.

And now my update: I changed the fonts again. Added elevation shading. Deepened the crosshatch pattern some and really worked up room 8. More still to do especially the Crystalline Vault. I may even revisit the mushrooms and give them more love.

[Coyotemax]

The crosshatching change is subtle but very worth it.

Eventually you'll settle on a font, I suppose (if yo haven't already, lol)

And remember - it's okay to love your mushrooms, but don't *LOVE* your mushrooms.

[torstan]

Nice work. Perhaps a little drop shadow on all those elevations in room 8? At the moment they're a little bare as lines in contrast to some of the lovely subtle colours and shades elsewhere in the map.

And you might want to look at the errant label in room 5. I think one of your old fonts is trying to sneak back in...

The crosshatching is lovely. Is it a repeating pattern you created?

[Tom_Cardin]

coyotemax - Thank you!

torstan - Thank you! Some shading in room 8 will definitely help and thanks for spotting my errant font in room 5 (nearly impossible to proof my own writing)

Here is the pattern I made for the crosshatching:

[torstan]

Good grief - how long did that take you?

[Tom_Cardin]

about 15 minutes.

I just made a 20 by 20 square with a 2 pixel wide line ever 2 pixels, added a slight amount of ripple to it.

Then I took the square and cut it into an irregular shape and made it a smart object so I could rotate it all I wanted without loss.

When I layed down a roughly 100 by 100 pixel patch of these shapes I merged them and made them a new smart object then did the same thing with the group until I had covered a 1000 x 1000 canvas.

flattened that out. Put it in the top corner of a 2k by 2k canvas and laid out 3 more so that it was a 2 by 2 of the big patch.

Used the clone stamp tool to get rid of the seams and then cropped the canvas down to the center 1000 x 1000...poof repeating pattern.

[torstan]

Okay, that's a handy little method. I might just have to walk myself through that. Looks like a very neat workflow to use. Don't think I can rep you again s soon, but I'll definitely try.

[Tom_Cardin]

Ok this might be final....let me know what ya'all think.

[Ashenvale]

Beautiful map! I'm late to the thread, and being a lazy bastard, haven't read everything, so if you've already addressed this, just tell me to shut up.

I'm not in love with the periods after the numbers on the map itself. Perhaps those would better fit in the key alone, not in the map rooms.

I'm also a tad confused by the capitalization in the key. It's probably just me, but I'm not sure I understand why some words are capitalized while others are not. Are they proper names? If so, why are some descriptions proper names while others are not? Because other viewers may be as obtuse as me, I'd be inclined to fall back on the usual title capitalization rules throughout your key (capitalizing all first words, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, relative pronouns over four letters in length, and all other pronouns, but not conjunctions, prepositions, articles and the like).