overland regional map
its a 400x400 region called "The Bowl" I haven't labeled anything yet, tho I do have area names but not city/town/village names yet
constructive criticism is welcome. this is my first effort at a regional map (ok actually after several false starts. its the first effort that I managed to go more than about 25% complete)
I know it can use a few more streams and a few bits here and there, but I think its pretty good for a start
constructive criticism is welcome. this is my first effort at a regional map (ok actually after several false starts. its the first effort that I managed to go more than about 25% complete)
I know it can use a few more streams and a few bits here and there, but I think its pretty good for a start
Comments
You have drawn a beautiful thing. The rivers really are superb, and I don't think you need any more of them at all.
If I have anything to say as a constructive comment, it is to bear in mind that it is terribly easy to regard the edge of the map as a boundary. You might like to extend the forest a few trees under the border at the southern edge to soften the cut-off just a bit. Right now there is a bit of a straight line of trees right there.
If... as I suspect... the drawing tool will not allow you to draw your forest fill outside the map border, you can move individual nodes with the move node button.
To add one constructive comment to Loopysue's, you might want to move the fertile terrain along the rivers to their own sheet, with an edge fade, or perhaps increase the existing fade a bit, they seem very cleanly defined compared with other terrain on the map. Unless that's the effect you were after, in which case, huzzah!
Your mountains look terrific and I especially like your varied terrain and how you placed a few trees here and there inside some of the scrub-type terrain. it looks great!
Cheers,
~Dogtag
To me the fields are a bit to much. Not sure of the distance scale but rarely will there be population all the way from city to city, village to village.
Just tiny nitpicking details. Overall really good!
It depends upon the population density, I suppose.
Go down to California, drive down the highway it looks like one huge city but it is like 13 cities all connected together. That is unreal.
Sorry qwalker!
Its because most of us live crammed up here in the northern hemisphere... except for Canada and Russia that is, so maybe I should have said that its normal for the majority of the rest of us
Looking forward to see what more you do with it!
Aside from some of the points made already, it's maybe worth thinking of a fancier font for the title.
Also, the big triangular lake seems to have a short stretch of river running into its southwestern side from the hills to its south, but the river seems to start right on the edge of the hills, whereas it looks as if there's a little valley leading to the small lake due south of where the river ends. Perhaps worth connecting the small lake and river up, flowing into the main lake?
edge fade, I am still struggling to understand what the numbers do so I am not sure if I need it more opaque or less, and if it should be a bigger edge width or smaller. I tried regular edge fade which seemed to do very little, and then inner edge fade which seemed to have more of an effect
I am really pretty clueless as to what fonts look good
Edge fades...
Edge Fade Inner is by far the best version of the three fades if all you want to do is make an area fade out at the edges. The numbers relate as follows:
[Image_7083]
The single most important one at the top (highlighted green) is "Edge width". This is the distance over which the fade is applied, and needs to be adjusted to suit your needs. You can do this more easily if you just hit the "apply" button each time you adjust it, so that you don't have to keep opening and closing the sheets dialogue to increase or decrease it each time.
The Inner opacity relates to how opaque the polygon is in the middle. Unless you want to do special water effects or create a relief shading sheet, I would leave this set at 100%
The Outer opacity relates to how opaque the polygon is right at the outer edge. Again - unless you want to do some kind of water or relief shading effect I would leave that one set to 0%
Lastly - make sure that you have "map units" selected (highlighted yellow), or the width of the edge will vary according to how zoomed in you are.
Fonts...
Fonts are more of a qualitative thing and very difficult to advise on, since they do depend on personal taste. I would suggest trying out a few alternative fonts side by side and seeing which one you think best suits the 'flavour' of the map
The south-edge tree line does look better, but still a little artificial. If you'd like to tweak it further, and assuming the forest is meant to extend some way off the southern map edge, what I'd suggest is the following, once you have CC3+ running with your map open in it.
1. Right-click on the "Default Terrain" icon.
2. On the "Select drawing tool" panel that appears, click the "Advanced" button at the bottom right.
3. This brings up the "Custom drawing tools" panel. Scroll down the "Tool name" list on the left side until you find the Terrain Default, Forest drawing tool you want to use, and click on it.
4. When the details for that drawing tool appear, click the "Drawing aids" check-box for "Restrict to map border" so it's no longer checked. Then click the "New" button at the left lower corner of the Custom Drawing Tools information panel.
5. This calls up the "Save current settings as..." panel, allowing you to rename the forest drawing tool in its non-default setting. I usually call the new variant "Terrain Default, Forest [Tree-type], Borderless, to remind me this tool will draw beyond the map's border. Then Click "OK" of the Save Current Settings As... panel, to save the tool in its adjusted state. Note that you still have the original default version of this drawing tool as well, which will not draw beyond the map's border.
6. Then click "OK" on the Custom Drawing Tools panel.
7. Now you can use the drawing tool to redraw your forest and extend it a little way beyond the southern map border so it looks more "real" when the "SCREEN" sheet works its magic and hides the bit of "new" forest that extends outside the map's edge, cutting through parts of the trees, as if the map border is genuinely as artificial as it is, compared to the actual fantasy world you're drawing.
NOTE: You don't have to redraw the whole forest, just add a patch which extends exactly to the shaped edges of the current forest, and extends it a little way beyond the map edge. The way the default tree fills work means you shouldn't be able to tell where the patch lies over the original forest when finished. There is a snag though, because the background single-colour border shading will look darker on the patched region than elsewhere. When you turn on the sheet effects, that may not be noticeable, but you can help disguise it further by drawing your patch to a point where the trees extend to the edge of this coloured background on the original forest area.
It is important not to extend the forest patch too far beyond the edge of the map, because the Screen isn't infinitely huge. However, if you find you have gone too far - so a bit of forest still shows beyond the edge of the Screen - you can easily go to the Screen sheet and add a simple solid white rectangle to hide that bit of "oops" forest in the completed map. Or just delete and redraw the forest patch instead (you can try adjusting the nodes to make the offending area of extra forest smaller too, but I find it's faster to simply go for a redraw!).
For the Edge Fade options, indeed any of the special effects, you may find that setting up a sample blank map on which you can try out various effects and their variant settings one at a time may be useful to get an idea of their capabilities. So much of getting the best from the CC3/CC3+ effects is down to trial and error. You'll often find that each instance needs adjusting slightly differently on an actual map anyway. However, it is useful to know in advance what the different command options mean in reality, so you've a better idea what it is you're trying to do. Even if you can't always get the program to cooperate as you might wish every time (well, that's what I tell myself)!
Man, someone else who can do rivers and roads and I can't :~(
Lookin good, sir.
Cal
got the geographical features mostly finished, will post an update when its to a point where stuff is filled in with towns and roads
Or maybe you did activate them, but the values on the effects are not optimized for that kind of view...
Also, you could extend the map on the left side, so that the landscape doesn't come that close to the map border. The map border is just as editable as any other entitiy. There are, however green lines, which limit the drawing tools. But they can be edited as well. But it can be hard to identify and find them, at least in my experience.
Keep up the good work.:)