Town of Bath Medieval City

Hello Everyone,

Here is a map I have started that is in dire need of some help! I was trying to follow pyrandon's tutorial and it didn't come out so well.

I love my water :D. I know that pyrandon's tutorial was done in photoshop, but I am using paint shop pro 7 (my favorite tool) it has worked well in adaptation to the tutorial, but I didn't like the hills outlay I have done so far.

Please let me know how I can improve this map :)

Here is what I have so far:

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d1...h_critique.jpg

First, let me say welcome to the site!

Now then, you have a decent start, but I think you are trying to do too much too soon. I would back off a bit and first decide what you are expecting from the map. Is this a regional map, or an overland map? Next, I would stay away from adding the multicolored water and such until you have things looking good layout wise and then progress slowly using lots of layers to control how things come together.

Are you specifically trying for the same look as Pyrandon's map or looking to do your own thing?

Axle: Great start. First off, don't be too hard on it: this looks exactly like most early-staged works in progress. Easily workable!

I do agree with RPMiller's comments, too, because I know for myself that when I don't know where I'm going I have trouble getting there. :)

Personally, I think the main problem with your hills is that they are too stark: right now they look like big ovals of color because, well, they are ovals of color :) Hills on a basic overview map, IMHO, should be background suggestions only, so they need to be very, very subtle.

Below I've attached the process I generally follow to make hills. I've made it especially stark, too, because no hill in nature is a gigantic oval! Plus, I'm not sure if yPaint Shop Pro has, like Photoshop, blur filters, layers, & opacity settings. Does it? If not we'll have to figure out something else.

I'd figure out the hills first, then let's talk about the rivers/lakes.

I'm looking forward to seeing what my fellow Guildies have to suggest about your map, too!

Okay, quick second post: Our friends over at the Dundjinni Forums have long used a technique similar to mine, above, by simply creating a shadow overlay as a semi-transparent object & then plopping that on top of the ground. Basically the same, except without color variations for elevation--which most Dundjinni users don't need, since they import grass tiles (etc.) for their ground level rather than creating from scratch. Neat sstuff!

Here are tons of examples of Hill Overlay transparency objects:
http://www.dundjinni.com/forums/foru...D=1759&KW=hill

Here are three explanations of their process used to make the overlays:
http://www.dundjinni.com/forums/foru...D=2383&KW=hill
http://www.dundjinni.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=929
http://www.dundjinni.com/forums/foru...874&PN=0&TPN=2 (scroll down for this third one; it uses Photoshop's "Bevel" effect instead of colored shadows)[/url]

Hi axle-

Nice job so far!

A question on your map layout - it looks like the two lakes are on the top of hills (following the lighter land is higher model). Are they meant to represent spring fed lakes? If so, they might be a bit out of proportion to the hills they are on...

-Rob A>

I will try to create a basic layout. I had one but I had overwritten it when I started following Don's tutorial..

Yes, PSP has the same settings as photoshop, I just wasn't sure how the end result was supposed to be.

They are sort of like tiny springs shooting off the main river. This is meant to be a representative map of a city: Bath. Bath is surrounded by lakes and I meant to follow Don's tutorial because it was attractive to my eye.

I will try again to do the map :) and see how it goes...