[MAP] Parganos remade !

[Arralen]

Reworked the map to make it more colourful, added some marker for impassable borders (If someone comes up with a better one, I'll redo the map again. But I coudn't get the "usual" bigger line to work ok.)
Corrected the still missing "no starts" and changed some province terrain features that I didn't like.

If you like the map and no one finds an error, I'll submit it to Illwinter next weekend.

Stefan

[Arralen]

[Endoperez]

Wow... 8-) That is awesome! The detail is wonderful, the colors are great, the borders are not jumping at ones eyes but I found them easily enough... As I said, WOW!

You are right in that the impassable borders might bee too weak to be seen at glance when planning moves, but it looks so good I'm not complaining!

[Gandalf Parker]

Im not sure about the program you are using but for impassable borders before dommap did it, this is what I was doing. I would disconnect the ends of the border and use the "edge" tool on that one border line. Or I would "lasso" the area to get a limit on its travel, then "edge" the border color. Sometimes "blur" that one piece of border looked good also.

[PashaDawg]

What a great map!! I have "map making fever", and I am curious to know what sort of software programs you used to create and decorate the map. Any advice would be helpful (and thanks to Gandalf for advice given earlier). I am new to making maps on computers, but since 6th grade, I have loved to make up maps on paper (and I am now 30 years past 6th grade).

PASHA

[PashaDawg]

BTW - - - I am using Windows XP.

[Arralen]

Hey folks, I only reworked the colours. Original map is by Jason Lutes - so if you're fond of the details, thank him for his great work, 99,5% of them where already there.

After all, it where the details (and the ideal size) of the map that made me think about doing something about it's colours - the original was somewhat pale and bleak IMHO.

Impassable borders are a prob, because borders are drawn as an overlay with less than 100%, so the background shines through. Unless I can figure out which colour to use with what %-age, if colour values have to add, subtract, multiply or whatnot, I won't be able to redraw border lines as they currently are (It wouldn't even be of much use to know the original colour, obviously, as I moved everything about in the colour space, and can't really remember every step )

I don't know what Jason used to make the map, but I'm using "The GIMP" (Gnu Image Manipulation Program, v2.0.1 for win32). You can get it for free at http://www.gimp.org/. It's running fine on my P2/400-384MB box on W2kSp2.

It's the same prog that the devs are using for graphics. On Illwinters site, there "is a xcf file (Gimp) with trees, forests, mountains and some specials from the Orania map. " Download mapstuff.xcf

That ain't the same map features that Jason is using - obviously he drew them himself. I already have extracted some from the Cradle and Parganos Maps, but it's tedious work to either remove the texturing or fit background colour/texture with those at the place where the cut-out feature is placed. So I won't recommend that for any one new to mapmaking and the prog in general.

Nice to see you like the map.

c.u. soon
Stefan

edited: .. spelling ...

[Gandalf Parker]

In addition to mapstuff.xcf (which you can see here but dont use THIS image. The original works better).
http://www.dom2minions.com/~dominion/mapstuff.jpg

There is a also great games artist on the forums (he did most of the avatars and post icons you see here) named David E. Gervais. Presently he is involved in the sequels to some games. I tried to get him interested in Dom2 but it just didnt seem to bite him like it did us. But he DID say that anyone who wants to use his game tiles from older games to add some features to mapstuff.xcf or as mod tiles is free to do so. You can find them here.
http://pousse.rapiere.free.fr/tome/index.htm

There are 4 styles of "starting maps" that I know of. The terrain generators such as are in GIMP. Here are some examples:
http://www.dom2minions.com/~dominion...ects/gimp1.jpg
http://www.dom2minions.com/~dominion...ects/gimp2.jpg
http://www.dom2minions.com/~dominion...ects/gimp3.jpg
http://www.dom2minions.com/~dominion...ects/gimp4.jpg

There are also "found" maps such as the Faerun one, or the World map. They can be real maps such as from here...
http://www.arhs.net/related/usgs+maps
or they can be fantasy ones found Online such as here..
http://www.pewfell.com/world/Midworld/midworld_map.html

There are also the dommap generated ones which can be used as a starting point. Especially if you would rather mess with the artwork of it and less with the .map file settings and putting in all of the #terrain and #neighbor commands. Either blanks such a Targa used to do his map..
http://www.dom2minions.com/~targa/blanks/
or the fully colored ones which can be touched up or have things from the mapstuff file added to them..
http://www.dom2minions.com/~dominion...andomMaps.html
Leif also does a batch each day..
http://home.Online.no/~rmoldskr/Domi...nion_maps.html

There are alot of levels. People can just snag one and touch it up and flesh it out so we all can use it adding reasonable provinces, names, starting positions, victory-point locations. Or they draw one out completely. Or any level in between. Personally I think I would want to work up to a totally manually created map. I wonder if we havent lost potential map makers who tried to tackle the whole subject all at once.

[PashaDawg]

Thanks for the advice!! As you say, it would be better not to try to do too much to quickly. I want to work on the art part first.

PASHA

[Ironhawk]

Heh. I actually remade paraganos in almost exactly the same manner for a game some of my friends and I played a couple of months ago. I submitted it to Illwinter but never heard back from them. Guess I should have posted it here instead :}