[WIP] Deadfellows, frontier mining town

I've been working on my first city map, and I would welcome any suggestions or feedback. This is a map of Deadfellows, a frontier mining town in the Lost Lands campaign setting from Frog God Games. It's located at the base of a mountain range at the highest navigable point on a river. It's rough-and-tumble and filled with prospectors and trappers making and spending fortunes in gold and furs.

I've been experimenting with textured backgrounds with mixed results. I wanted to emphasize that the center of town is mostly mud and that the river is very treacherous this close to the mountains. For the area outside the town, I'm thinking about adding some fields and possibly a forest north of town. Perhaps some scattered trees as the mountains climb to the west.

Comments

  • I'm not sure a frontier town would have such a neat rounded palisade. Also, what about the odd house/shack outside the walss. But I like the concept
  • Hi drflounder! The town itself is wonderful and the texturing is looking interesting too. Will you be texturing other parts of the map also?

    I agree with qwalker on the palisade though. The effort to make a perfect curve like that would be quite difficult with the simple tools available to a frontier town. It is easier to string a straight line for laying out a wall than to get a perfect curve. Of course, it's your town and can look however you want it to, so only change it if it makes sense to you. :D
  • If it is a traditional western town, you may want to think about the outhouses. Not to many people could afford the watersheds/indoor toilets.

    Most towns through western history were square due to simplicity in construction.
    If you do plan to have a lumber mill, you'll need a water wheel which means either one on the banks or a river diversion through town.

    Also a frontier town would have lots of stock pens and stables within the town itself to protect the stock.

    These are just a few observations by all means not neded for your town at all.
  • Thanks for all the comments. Point taken about the palisade. I'll make it more linear.

    I'm going to try to add more texturing. It looks weird having textures on part of it and not on the rest. I tried to add separate textures for each tier, but the patterns didn't match well. I tried to add one single background texture, but the contours didn't stand out. I think I'm going to use a single background texture with transparency to make it more subtle.

    It's hard to see with such a zoomed out view, but the two buildings just upriver from the docks are a mill and a sawmill. Eventually I will do a detail map of the center of town where that will be more apparent. Thanks for the idea about the stock pens.
  • GatharGathar Traveler
    edited November 2016
    I don't think circular fences are strange. It's actually far easier to draw a big size circle than a square, you just need a rope... Stonehenge is a circle, not a square... Asterix village is surrounded by a mostly round palisade.
    However, something looks strange to me. I would expect either houses very close to each other blocked inside a the palisade (but then, no space between the palisade and the houses), or if there is enough space inside the palisade, more gardens, orchards, pens... very close to the houses.
    It also looks like some houses don't have access to the road.

    Your river looks very wide, which is a little bit surprising since you say it's close to the source. Maybe you could draw a kind of swamp to the other side? Or some island?

    I like your ground texture. It makes the whole town nitty-gritty.
  • The difference in walls is simply due to a few factors.

    A round wall encompasses the maximum area in sqaure footage in relation to materials used for construction.

    Round walls are much more difficult to construct with walkways. Each log or timber has to be tapered.

    Square walls make it easy for walkways and other attached structures like guard posts. Especially useful in defense.

    A little Cliff Claven useless knowledge for you.
  • And since in the case of this town:
    - Structure are far away from the wall
    - The wall does not seem to have any walkway
    - The wall is large, compared to the town size, meaning that materials must be of importance

    I really think that drflounder can keep the wall the way he wants! (of course, he can always do that, my comment are just here to try to give another point of view, not to coerce anyone in doing something they don't want)
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Its a nice map, drflounder :)

    Are you going to add any hinterland details? I mean things like mine head's dotted around in an area that I presume would be largely forested apart from a bit of necessary agriculture immediately around the city?
  • Thanks everyone for your comments. Work has been crazy, so I haven't had much time to work on it. Here's the latest version. I made the palisade more linear and added a walkway. I replaced the gatehouses with more suitable wooden gates. I zoomed in a bit so the river seemed narrower. I've added an orchard and some livestock pens to fill in the space between the houses and the palisade.

    I originally wanted there to be some space between the city and the wall as I envisioned the city as springing up quickly. I reasoned the builders would want there to be room to expand. It does look strange having all that open space inside the wall, though. I may try adding some fields, as well as more orchards and livestock pens. I'm open to bringing the wall in tighter though.
  • I like the location of the stock pens stables. The location makes sense.
  • Actually, space within the wall also makes sense if livestock are kept there in large numbers from time to time, or if there are other things that need storing (even temporarily) - like house and road building materials, or bulky crops (e.g. timber, hay). Whatever it is doesn't need to be there all the time, just that it needs protecting from whatever outside might want to steal it. Plus it's equally possible the wall has just been expanded outwards because the old town had already outgrown the previous wall (even if only in places - and assuming there even was a completed one). That seems to fit the curving, yet regular, northern and eastern housing limits.

    Looking good though. Maybe needs a bit more detailing on the landscape beyond the wall, or maybe reduce the area outside the wall on the map if there aren't going to be features of great interest there. Is there a burial ground within the wall? Civilizations often like to set up dedicated areas with markers of some sort for that, but others go with cremation, which leaves far fewer remains to be stored alternatively.
  • I think historically most burial grounds were just outside of towns for the wild west. Well where I live anyways. I don't think there is any reason to let the land outside of town go to waste it could easily be farmsteads and croplands. Especially since the close proximity to water, trade and transportation.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    I agree with Wyvern about the space being necessary, particularly at night time. You might have stock pens within the city walls and shepherds that take the animals out to graze during the day, then bring them back in at night to be safe from wolves and rustlers. It would also be a good idea to have pens in the city where the animals could be a ready food supply in the event of a siege.

    As cobra mustang suggests, burial grounds would be better outside the city. The dead are not in need of protection as much as the livestock and grain stores.

    I'm glad to see that you have opted for straight lines. Curved walls are a lot more difficult to build, and in a defensive situation are not a very good idea as they tend to obstruct the line of view. Its easier to see if the enemy are scaling the wall at a glance, if you can see all the way down a nice long straight section. As has been pointed out several times before now in other threads defensive walls tend to be built in straight lines linking towers - the towers themselves marking the ends of segments of the city, so that if one segment is breached, the breach can (with any luck) be contained in that segment and the spread controlled. The presence of each tower forms a barrier against the enemy simply running all around the wall and dropping down anywhere they please.
  • With the burial ground idea, I had three things in mind. Firstly, burials can be concentrated around a church, so if the church is within the town wall, so will be those burials. The second was that if the wall has recently expanded outwards, burials once outside the wall could now easily be within the new one. Thirdly, burial markers can add a degree of variety to the layout and appearance of a settlement map, aside from perhaps dictating where future houses are less likely to be constructed (necromancers excluded, naturally...).
  • Most English villages have the graveyard beside the Church, often in the middle of town.
  • Thanks again, everyone. Here's the latest iteration. I'm not ecstatic about the trees. I tried to use the Fill with Symbols command, but it seems to work better for areas with complete coverage. I wanted the trees to be more scattered, so I tried to place them by hand. I'm not sold on the fields either, so any suggestions would be welcome.
  • Fields are usually more structured. Just for ease of farming. Usually angular. Unless they have to go around terrain changes. Farmsteads usually have lots of assorted outbuildings.

    The trees could be much larger, they look like shrubs right now. A tree's canopy could easily be bigger than a house in a western setting. Old growth trees could be even more massive.
    In my opinion if those two changes are made you have a winner.

    A small stream from North down along the farm steads would make irrigation and plausibility of the farm locations pretty awesome.

    These are just my opinions. Do what is best for your setting.
  • I must admit I'm not sold on the trees either... I think they are laid out too randomly. And really sparsely. First, I would suggest following your relief, for instance placing a densely populated forest at the bottom of a hill, and then just a few isolated trees (maybe different species) on the hill itself. Then, maybe you could have some rivulet coming from the mountain and flowing into your river. And you could surround this rivulet by trees.

    You could also have a place inside of a densely planted area with organic shapes that is totally devoid of trees. This place would have a very regular shape with sharp frontier, and a road leading to it, and would represent where they cut the trees to create the wall.

    I also think the trees are a little bit too small, compared to the houses.

    Maybe you could also have some trees inside of the town, mostly next the the official buildings?
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    I agree with Gathar. I think they need to flocculate a bit - to stick together in clumps. Even though there are a lot of trees in this picture, there are very few of them stuck out in the middle of nowhere on their own.
    1.jpg 47.5K
  • Cool. Those ideas are very helpful. Thanks.
  • The trees do work now, but primarily if you think of them as scrubland bushes, in a fairly dry landscape, and I'm not sure that's quite what you were aiming for here.

    However, I'm not convinced the woods would still be all that dense near the settlement anyway. The wall and houses would have used up a lot of timber, as well as river boats, which would maybe leave only a few trees and bushes that weren't suitable, or needed, for construction work. Fruit trees might be left preferentially, for example. If you do go for denser woods though, it would be likely there'd be significant clearings where the best timber had been taken for building the town, and maybe just starting to regrow (if not used for more fields).

    The fields should definitely be regular in shape, as Cobra Mustang said. The ridge and furrow ploughing lines should also follow one of the straight edges (not so easy to persuade fill patterns of the need to do this, however, so you may need to look around for some suitable symbols, if you want to stick with this idea, or just draw the patterning yourself).

    In terms of field sizes, the old English definition of "acre", as being the area a man with a team of oxen could plough in a day, is perhaps a useful size to aim for in a pre-industrial context. That would be roughly an area 200 feet by 200 feet, if square. Wikipedia acre page link, should you need it, for other size and definition options (including metric values).

    Maybe some fencing for stock pens too, or hedging, as well as crop field fences (just can't rely on animals not to eat your crops or wander off elsewhere...).
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    edited December 2016
    You can make fills align with the edge of a field by using the shaded polygon tool.

    1. Draw your field in your chosen texture (making sure you have it the right shape)

    2. Right click the polygon tool on the right

    3. Pick 'Shaded Polygon (Angle by Edge)'

    4. click the field along the edge that best describes the direction you want your furrows to go in.

    You should now see that the furrows align themselves to that edge, but the polygon itself has probably also been shaded lighter or darker overall as a result of being automatically tilted like a roof. You can remedy this by right clicking the polygon tool again and choosing 'Change Shade Pitch'. Select the field and right click then 'do it'. Type in 0 (zero) on your keyboard.

    Hope that helps with the furrows and the fields.

    All the ploughed fields in my Bloodrock map were done this way with a single fill. Here is a zoomed in picture (you can't really see the lines on the lower res map I have uploaded here)
  • Well done, as ever, Sue! I haven't done a lot of this kind of manipulation, and could never have explained it so succinctly anyway; at least, not so someone else could understand it...
  • DogtagDogtag Moderator, Betatester Traveler
    edited December 2016
    CC3 prompts you for the pitch when you use the Shaded Polygon (Angle by Edge) command. The value defaults to the last pitch used. If you set the pitch to zero the first time you use the command then it will be set for you the remaining times you use it, until you need a different pitch for something else.

    The bottom edge of the fill style will align to the side of the field (polygon) you click in step 4 of Loopysue's instructions above.

    Cheers,
    ~Dogtag
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Thanks Dogtag :)

    I had that itchy feeling I'd got something slightly wrong. Its why I don't write too many tutorials ;)
  • DogtagDogtag Moderator, Betatester Traveler
    edited December 2016
    You didn't get anything wrong. Your instructions are correct. I'm just pointing out you can save a few steps is all.

    Also, a pitch of zero (0) will likely make the fill lighter than the original brightness of the fill bitmap. In my experience — and I admit it's limited, so this may not always hold true — a pitch of 25 - 30 is usually closer to the brightness of the original fill pattern. A pitch of zero is brighter, and a pitch greater than 25 - 30 is darker.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Ah....

    I see now :)

    I probably didn't notice it because I was also using an RGB Process Matrix to colour each field differently.
  • edited December 2016
    Lots of great stuff here. Thanks, Sue. Your field method did the trick. I like them a lot more now. The stream from the north was an inspired idea, Cobra. I still have work to do on the trees, I think, but they're getting better.
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