Thread: The city of Marash

this is the forest brush I've been using lately for my satellite style maps

(i just realized it's 5 megs, yow. i don't remember the texture being that large, what the heck! the site won't let me upload it. so drop box to the rescue.. turns out that the compressed version is almost the exact same size, so i'm not bothering with a zip file..)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8723617/scatterforest.tpl

Assuming you're using a tablet and photoshop, pick out your clone stamp tool, load tool presets from wherever you saved the file and then click on the "forest" brush. If you're using a tablet, it's all set for pressure sensitivity, if a mouse, you may have to tweak a few of the brush settings. If this is on it's own layer set to multiply then it should work nicely - at least it does for me.

Basically it's a 17px torn edges brush with a moss texture built in with size jitter and scatter properties attached to pressure sensitivity.



As to bridges, the only city map I've done in a similar style utilized Ascensions city tutorial, might be worth looking into

Thanks Coyotemax, I'll give it a whirl.

It occured to me I should probably give you a look at the results that the brush gives Different textures will give different results once the multiply takes effect of course, but this should give a good idea..
http://www.cartographersguild.com/at...8&d=1273495378

Make the bridges change the road's colour.
In medieval periods, most roads were packed dirt (mostly packed by the carts and horses travelling along them) and a rare few were paved stones (mostly Roman Leftovers). Some nobles would add coarse gravel to their packed earth roads, to make them more traversable during the wet.

So, keep your "mostly sand yellow" roads out in the countryside. Change the road to a grey (possibly cobblestone) colour at the bridge. Back to sandy yellow and then use maybe a subtle 5-10% grey inside the city. It will give the impression that the city roads are mostly stones, and the same for the bridges. Alternatively, if you have timber bridges (significantly cheaper and easier to build by hand) then use a suitable brown.

Hi Guys,

Took me a while to get back to it, but I have updated the map



What do you think?

It definitely has me trying to zoom in, come on! Zoom you sucker!
When I look at city maps I usually find myself trying to deduce the evolution of the place.
Here we have a river crossing type origin. I would imagine that the large water expanse is a large lake rather than an ocean as there are no indicators for tidal action.
Trade must be good, the place is busy and wealthy enough to "afford/need" considerable defenses. I imagine there will be fields around and docks to come?
Some aspects don't quite seem to "fit" as it were?
I could easily imagine that the city originally started on or around the little island. It would likely be the easiest crossing place (e.g. shorter bridges) and is defensible from the start. There's no reason why the city wouldn't migrate downstream as it grew but something in me would like to see, at least, the remnants of the old?
City gates. I don't quite see the leader(s) of the city building two gatehouses so close together - in two places. Gatehouses represent possible weak points in a defensive perimeter and would be minimised. Maybe just have a single bigger one with two gates one after the other? It's more logical to raze a few buildings to "tidy up" the street design than build two gate houses.
When is there gonna be a zoom feature!!!???

The city itself is on the east coast of a fairly large sea, I haven't figured out how to do tidal action yet with Photoshop. The town itself grew from the "docks" region, which has been rebuilt twice as the city has grown (houses turned into warehouses). The 6-fingered tower is a recent addition, it is the home of the local wizards guild, and the island is fairly hilly/rocky (in the original when I added the tower these features were visible, but made it look too "busy"), so it wasn't an ideal starting place for the town.

As for fields, they are planned, not sure as to the best approach yet, and the docks may be hard to do on this scale, the city has some 30,000 inhabitants (Marash is one of two major cities on the east coast of Astorian, the contient Marash is on)

As for the gates, it's more for an "left-in right-out" arrangement, as the city does large amounts of trade, and building a single huge gate would be leave the city more vulnerable to attack than two gates (each gate is on the scale of the main gate to Minas Tirith!)

The next changes (when I have time!) will be to widen the river mouth, and remove some of the rocky area near the mouth to put the main docks in, and add some representation for the sea (any help for that will be welcomed!).

Rob