a new hempisphere for Crestar

JimP · August 2011

I know I don't have enough spare time as it is, but I decided to come up with a Northern Hemispihere for my game planet.

I shrank it down to 747x375 pixels to post it here. Some rather large bays, but I'll add more in as I have time to plan I out.

Haven't decided on nations yet. Just drawing in some of the geography. A few rivers are on there, may not be visible at this shrunken scale.

yet another edit: for those who wonder just what Crestar is, Crestar

I'm also redoing the menu at the top of my site. Not sure I'll get done this weekend.

Terraformer_Author · August 2011

Niceness!!!!!!!

JimP · August 2011

Thanks, and I did improve the nav menu on my Crestar site.

JimP · August 2011

One continent, with two other continents peaking in frmo the left side. Removed earleir rivers, didn't like the placement. Added a lake and a Falls.

Ralf · August 2011

Thanks for posting your maps, Jim. Here's a few suggestions:

- Make the sea contours stay outside the land polygon and don't make them cross each other.
- Give the coast a little more fractal details, that way it will look more like a continent and less like an island.
- Also, the continent looks a bit "stringy", I'd expect a bit more solid landmass from a continental shelf.
- Spent some time on terrain features, rivers and mountain ranges to add some more information.
- What does "Zor" mean and why is it at two points on the map? That's not clear from the map.
- Add some sheet effects (or activate the ones already in the map) before export.

Here's an example of a real-world continental overview map.

JimP · August 2011

Zor is the name of the continent.

I removed details from this map. I'll add more back in later on.

The first map shows a FT2 output. I left out some of the smalller islands. Zor is more of a huge island continent.

JimP · August 2011

Going somewhat after the Peloponnesian Penninsula look. I am tweaking it a bit, but I may go back to FT and do another random world.

JimP · August 2011

Made some changes. Made more of a narrow penninsula connection on the Zor continent. Under 200 miles. I had to go back to an earlier save as due to various problems as I had over fractalized and found it too difficult to edit the continents.

I added some details, the lake on Zor for example. At this scale rivers I drew in don't show up very well.

The map is 24000 x 12000 miles.

JimP · August 2011

I'll attach the map. You'll need the bitmap fills on my site to see something besides red Xs in the CC3 file.

JimP · August 2011

Since the bitmap fills are 3.1 megabytes, I'll post the link rather than the file.

Natalya Faden's maps and bitmap fills

Color chart and template for my surface maps

JimP · September 2011

Well. As I have been working on the Northern Hemisphere I noticed the categories and the menus need lots of work. Somehow pages i used to have menu link to, don't anymore.

So, I'll add that into the work I'm doing on my Crestar site.

JimP · September 2011

I'm rather embarressed to find that my site nav menu for Crestar was badly done. I found thiso ut as I was working on adding the Northern Hemisphere pages to the menus.

Adding pages of information, and no links to them in the menus.

I'm working on that. This will be an extensive redo of the menus at the top of my site.

Hopefully done before the end of October of this year.

My apologies.

JimP · September 2011

Ah... Monsen has pointed out my nav menus at the top of my site were broken.

They have been mostly fixed. I'm not certain why the last one on the top row, under Internet Explorer, shows a larger square than the rest.

So far, I don't see the same problems in my redone versions. I doubt I'll get the redone version done this weekend.

They work for me under FF 3.0.19 and IE 9.0.7.

edit:

Due to various legacy things when my site was all html, I have about 6 copies of the menus and sometimes a broken version gets through... eventhough I save as on top of the previous versions to prevent such problems.

JimP · September 2011

Barrow Islands. More detail. I've been thinking about redoing the hills, but then I would have to redo the large scale map as well.

JimP · September 2011

Wild Castle is named after the Wild Horses.

JimP · October 2011

I've installed a tentative change to my site nav menus. I have spotted some duplication. I'll continue to work on it as I have time. Hopefully this newer version will help, rather than hinder, anyone looking for things on my site.

edit: and I used FTPro 2 to come up with a continent and ocean area to cover the 63 columns for the southern hemisphere so it will be the same size as the Northern hemisphere. I'll post the orignial and the changed drawing, so it matches the rest of Crestar, to this subject.

I won't be dividing this new continent into 180x234 mile rectangles.

JimP · October 2011

This is the ftpro 2 file I started with for the new southern hemisphere continent.

JimP · October 2011

And this is the CC3 drawing so far. The land masses haven't been fractalized yet, no rivers, nations, etc. Just some bays, and possible areas for ships to anchor. The name of the continent is Sharn. too small to see, but there are a few snow covered peaks there.

jaerdaph · October 2011

Very cool stuff - glad to see your baby Crestar still going strong!

One of these days, though, I'm going to convince you of the joys and virtues of applying sheet effects. You've got most of the pieces there in your maps already.

JimP · October 2011

Maybe after I retire in a few years I'll add sheet affects.

JimP · October 2011

I would like to get some ideas on where to put the rivers.

In order to not get lots of red boxes/Xes, you need to get the bitmap fills I use. Natalya Faden's Oljan maps and texture files

Attached is the map. Next post will be the zipped fcw file.

JimP · October 2011

fcw file, WinZipped

The bitmap fills/texture files are large. So I'm not posting them here.

JimP · October 2011

without landmass, coast, blur.

JimP · October 2011

with blur, 90

Monsen · October 2011

To much blur. You probably don't need blur on the main landmass at all, but some edge fade, inner on the height and sea contours should make them blend better with the main landmass, avoiding the sharp edges.

JimP · October 2011

I just took the default for the blur. I'll look at it again with several different values.

I realize what you mean by sharp edges, but Crestar's oceans have raw edges on the sea contours. Not smoothed by erosion.

The land mass contours do have erosion.

JimP · October 2011

I have uploaded the changes to my site nav menu. Still doesn't have everything posted in the cms, but it is an improvement.

JimP · October 2011

My next monumental task will be to convert/move/something all of my 180x234 mile maps into one large fcw that is the same basic scale as my other two large ones. One for the Northern hemisphere and the other for the partial southern hemisphere. Whoosh.

I could add them to the partial southern hempishere I created with FT2.

I would have to remove/hide the map border frame. Then adjust all of the contours as not all of them match at the edges, but are under the map border frame.

Not sure when I'll be able to start on that.

JimP · October 2011

One 10x10 map area so far. Not all of the rightmost column is complete. As you can see, the details sort of vanish in the larger map.

JimP · October 2011

I figured out what I am going to put on the new hemisphere. Local game store has a used book section, so I looked them over and found Forgotten Realms material. Not a huge amount, but enough to get me started. So that is what I'll be putting there.

I'll post some of my maps as I get them done.

Monsen · October 2011

Just make sure you are careful with how you get inspired by that Forgotten Realms material. Remember that FR is copyrighted by Hasboro, so if you simply copy something from an FR map, you can't publish that map, since it contains their material (Same reason why people who create CC3 maps from the maps in published modules can't share them with others). Using it for inspiration should be fine though, but avoid copying directly.

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a new hempisphere for Crestar

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