Map making aid
 

I have just added a map making aid on the Illwinter site. It's just a xcf file (gimp) with some trees and mountains. Just cut and paste. I hope it will encourage mapmaking. I wonder what took me so long.

If you need the file in another format I'll make another one.

Re: Map making aid
 

Thanks much. I guess I should put up some of the palettes I did which make the GIMP rendering scripts work better. Between the two its a good start. Here is an example of a rendered map from GIMP.
http://www.techno-mage.com/~dominion/rendered.tga

BTW if no one mentioned it yet I do appreciate the different temple images for each race. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Nice thematic touch.

[ January 21, 2004, 21:26: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: Map making aid
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Me too ....

I already set my, ahem, "phase-in-my-life-attenderess" to make me some symbols/icons so I can get rid of those ugly DOM-1 style maps. She's quite good with pen&pencil&paper ..

Kirstens Sci-Fi and Fantasy Art Gallery
Kirstens Fan Art Gallery

Sadly, she's not quite that good when english is concerned. Check out here pages anyway ... while I'm doing some articles for a living and return to mapmaking afterwards.

yours,
Arralen

[ January 22, 2004, 00:00: Message edited by: Arralen ]

Re: Map making aid
 

I see you modeled for the Jack Sparrow doll!

Re: Map making aid
 

Sssssshh!!

It's pure coincidence that that doll looks like anything from some film. Or bears the same name. really. Otherwise there would be copyright issues... .

And o.c. Kirsten would never think about making such a doll for someone else, unless she may give it away for free ... .

same for the beanie dragons, by the way ...

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

A.

[ January 21, 2004, 23:20: Message edited by: Arralen ]

Re: Map making aid
 

O.k. gave it a try ..
Random map created by fu-script (GIMP), icons manually added.

A cutout from the map - the part I actually worked on.
http://people.freenet.de/stefan.weni...f_1cropped.png

The whole .tga for download - not that interesting perhaps.

The GIMP gradient file I used for generating the map.

Hope this works and the files don't get deleted too fast (it's 'free' server space, you know http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif )

A.


PS: We need hills!!

PPS: I occures to me that there are different perspectives used in this pic - the map is top down, the icons are from an somewhat angled perspective. I'll try to mod the map to fit this ..

[ January 22, 2004, 00:24: Message edited by: Arralen ]

Re: Map making aid
 

The Icons being slightly off top perspective isn't that bad. You just have to make sure you draw your borders correctly and it shouldn't be an issue at all. I prefer it that way.

Re: Map making aid
 

Bump - any comments if the colors are o.k. for most of you?

A.

Re: Map making aid
 

The colors look fine to me. Make a frosty mountain and a volcano, and maybe a jungle (if you have the icons) and post the pic, then we could tell on things like that. Also a river and a marsh? (Maybe make a Delta) for swampy effects.

Re: Map making aid
 

Looks pretty good...

Let's see. Beaches (pink-white or yellowish) would be nice. Hmmmm...

The size ratio of icons to landforms give the map an impression of being tiny.

Re: Map making aid
 

Looks good. I was playing in the same tools so I understand that this is a map generated automatically by script with some of the icons Kristoffer provided laid down. Looks like a good start.

Ive been playing with the high end of my palette to try and get it to do decent mountainous areas (brown climbing to a grey top).

How do you think swamp/river might easily be added? Just scribble a river with blue, select by color, then blur the selection?

Or maybe a palette gradually going green->yellow (beach), yellow->light blue (river), then back up thru beach to green? So its green on the sides with blue in the middle. Draw with an airbrush type stroke?

Ive been playing with trying to get "edge" to find the color boundarys as a starting point for provinces. Then just draw more across areas that are too big.

NOTE: the program used to do all this is the same as the devs use. A powerful Paint program which is free and available for most platforms. Its called GIMP

[ January 22, 2004, 13:52: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]