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.
Last edited by aiRo25; 12-28-2008 at 10:21 AM.
Ought to make a JPG
You ought to export your map as a JPG file at medium compression then upload the map directly with the "paperclip" in the Reply menu. Or go to Manage Attachments and upload directly. That way a thumbnail is generated and we can see the small version or click to view the full version. It makes it easier for us to see your work.
Just a suggestion!
GP
Gamer Printshop - We print RPG Maps for Game Masters!
http://www.gamer-printshop.com
Kaidan setting of Japanese Horror (PFRPG) Google+ community
Agreed, opening a DOC files makes me nervousOriginally Posted by Gamerprinter
Anyway, interested to see where you are going to take this.
Check out my City Designer 3 tutorials. See my fantasy (city) maps in this thread.
Gandwarf has fallen into shadow...
I look a look at your .DOC file and from what I could see you have a pretty good start on this.
I too would suggest what GP said... uploading the screen shots into your post is a much better way for us to see your progress give you feedback.
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Ghoraja Juun, my largely stagnated campaign setting.
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
I took a look as well, seems solid and thought out so far but I'll have to see more to really understand where this is going (style-wise). My only question at this point is how do you want your cliffs to be? Are they sort of sloping or are they more straight down?
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
Thumbnails
Yeah, by 10:45 I figured out how to do attachments finally, but I was too sleepy to change it, so here goes!
Continuing...
Last edited by aiRo25; 12-25-2008 at 10:22 AM.
Cliff Type
To answer the forgotten question. These cliffs are pretty sheer. Very little in the way of gentle descent.
I'm about ready to kill scale. I have NO clue what I'm doing on this point when it comes to the largest building. The capitol building is called the Emerald Dome. It dominates the city. You can see it practically everywhere because it's on the highest point. From standing on the edge of that middle cliff at the bottom, it looks like the whole city was built around it. My problem is scale. No matter how big I make it, it seems swallowed up by the surrounding map. If I calculate how big it is, it seems too big to me. Argh!
Would it work to ignore scale for one part of the map and have the rest be to scale? That sounds so wrong to me, but I'm having a hard time figuring out what to do.
Go with big for now.
Go with a too big a capital building for now. If you keep that as a separate object (?) you can always resize and replace. It will either work in its larger scale or you can have outer walls, a yard, garden or other landscaping between the rest of the city and the final building size.
Also if you insured major avenues all lead to the capital building from different sides of the city the capital building is further emphasized and kept from being lost in its surroundings.
GP
Gamer Printshop - We print RPG Maps for Game Masters!
http://www.gamer-printshop.com
Kaidan setting of Japanese Horror (PFRPG) Google+ community
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