WIP: Community Atlas Competition, The Lost temple of Ankun-za

jmabbott

Hi Folks,

Here is my WIP of the 1st level of this temple in the Kaballa Ruins of the Shifting Sands Region. I'm leaving it open for future mappers (myself included). Who knows it may become another mega-dungeon. You can never have enough of those!

This level is based on a Watabou Random Dungeon

Thoughts, comments and critiques welcome as always.

jmabbott

Hi Folks,

Firstly, Merry Christmas to you all. I sincerely hope you all remain safe and have the best Christmas possible given the circumstances.

I won't be doing any more until probably the 27th. Got the family coming over and need to re-organise things somewhat, so the Mac will be having a rest in the spare room.

I've done a little bit more this evening. Though I must admit, I'm a tad perplexed.

Secondly is an overall update, Thirdly there is some weird stuff going on here.

a) The wall is only half filled, why? All rooms and corridors created with DD3's room and corridor tool.

b) The first time I tried to place a door here (at the junction of the half-filled wall and room), it would only do so at 90 degrees. Then I deleted the corridor, same thing. Then I turned of snapping and it wanted to cut the entire wall around the room, but then everywhere ele in this room, the tool works fine. I even deleted and re-drew both the corridor and the room and the same is happening. Even the wall cutting tool doesn't work. Any idea's? I've included the .FCW so someone more experienced can advise.

Update

Weird stuff

Lost Temple of Ankun-za.FCW

Monsen

a) This is a bug that happens rarely, but do show up every now and then. The fastest way to fix it is to just use Extract Properties on the existing wall, the erase it, and then draw a new one with the Path tool. Note that the dungeon corridor tool adds a little notch of wall at the end there, overlapping the meeting perpendicular wall, this is to get a full corner there.

b) Not sure. I didn't have any problems at all placing a door and cutting the room there once I turned off snap. If you have trouble with the behavior though, the workaround is to Break the wall manually instead. (Hide the floor first to make sure you work with the right entity)

Wyvern

So is Ankun-Za the Heir of the O'Glyphs (a previously unknown Irish-Egyptian dynasty)? ???? (For all the extensive list of new emoticons available now, there still isn't a mummy or a pyramid, so this last item is the best I can manage - squint from a distance, and it'll sort-of do...)

jmabbott

@Monsen I tried that with breaking the wall but that didn't work for me either. Must be something weird with my machine. I'll try again and if it doesn't work I'll delete and copy a similar sized room...

@Wyvern Yes, he is. In my version of the world civilisation started in Ireland,and rightly decided to spread out as it's too bloody cold and they were all sick of potatoes! You cheeky bugger... P.S: Any Irish readers, no offence meant. I'm Scottish by birth so feel free to have at me!

[Deleted User]

Consider yourself as having at you, from a proud Aussie with massive Irish ancestry. LOL☘️

JimP

I'm Scot-Irish, Netherlands, with bit of Comanche for a calmer me.

jmabbott

Hi Folks,

Here is a bit of an update. Added the wall mask, fixed up those weird walls and the typo so graciously pointed out by @Wyvern. Added room labels and a couple of pits. Now to figure out the contents of each room bearing in mind the fire/ice theme, this one is obviously going to feature fire for the same reasons as @Quenten. Though with the weather over here at the moment you wouldn't believe we he had such a disastrous fire season last year. We picked up our eldest Grandson after visiting my sister's and copped a wicked storm on the way home. Unfortunately I'd left our party gazebo up (which was pegged down but not guyed down) after having Christmas Day at our place yesterday and it got uplifted and is now ruined...

[Deleted User]

Quite a cool Xmas here in Tassie as well.

jmabbott

Ok. This is going to be published on Drivethrurpg and I'm halfway through writing the text. As it is being designed to easily integrate with VTTs I need to replace the pit symbols (and anything else that needs to be a 'token') with custom ones so I don't breach any EULAs.

Is there anyway to 'rotate' the wall fill? I drew a 2ft square floor tile, then created a polygon wall drawing tool and drew one side of the pit wall (horizontal wall fill). When I tried to rotate it, the fill didn't rotate 90 degrees. HELP!!!

Loopysue

If you right click the polygon tool on the right you will find "Shaded Polygon (Angle by edge)"

Use that tool, and click the edge you want to align the fill with.

This will also cause the polygon to be shaded like a pitched roof. You can get rid of the shading but keep the fill alignment by typing EDITSHADING and hitting enter. Check the command line. It will ask you for the entity to edit. Click your polygon and a dialog will pop up. Don't be put off by all the controls. The only thing you need to do there is check the little box called "Shade Only Copy", and OK.

Once you have done that you should be ok.

jmabbott

Thanks @Loopysue, I don't think I ever would have worked that out on my own. I'll try that tomorrow, I'm off to bed now, gotta be up in 6 hrs...

Once I get this map finished, it's being...difficult. I deleted all the walls to re-do them without patching, so I can change the scale of the doors, and for some reason in certain areas the corridor tool just does not want to behave.

Loopysue

I have found that when the corridor tool fails it is sometimes easier to delete the walls It generated and draw fresh ones. There seem to be a couple of stray nodes sometimes, and it's quicker to redraw than find and delete them.

jmabbott

Hi All,

Even though I missed entering the competition. I'm still working on this but I've had RL interupting my map maling and adventure writing.

Here is an update, it's quite a bit different and the layout is 100% me and not a randomly generated one. This to better suit what I've written thus far.

To get to this stage I drew a sketch on 5mm graph paper to equal 165ft x110ft and then copied that on a construction sheet & layer (thanks @Ralf ). I then created a drawing tool using the Floor 1 fill and Wall 1x1 and then proceeded to 'trace' my construction lines, I used the actual TRACE command for the semi-circular bit. The I drew in the internal walls with the line tool and brought the external walls 'to the front'.

The image below is done at 70ppi to facilitate VTT play.

jmabbott

An update.

Unless there are any suggestions for how to improve this map I think it's done!

Wyvern

This is a fine-looking map!

The doors could maybe use some kind of shadow or glow effect, as the doorways all look open currently.

Maybe add some heavier shadows, or an Inner Glow to the floors in the Training Arena (7) and its connected areas, as they seem meant to be lower than the rest of the layout.

Perhaps label the stairs down in this section too, and move the "S" secret door symbols off their walls for better clarity?

Mind you, for a lost temple, those beds seem awfully neatly made...

jmabbott

Mind you, for a lost temple, those beds seem awfully neatly made...

Well, it's only lost because the villagers that used to look after the The Blades of Ankun-Za, a sorcerous, warrior cult of Ankun-Za that were destroyed by their own God for reasons that you'll need to buy the module to learn, have become cannibals and folk that come looking for it are invited to stay for dinner. Thus far none have refused... They also happen to be fairly fastidious - just because they're cannibals doesn't mean they need to live in squalor...

The floor and outer walls are drawn as one big polygon, that may make it a bit harder to increase the depth of the shadows within CC3+. I'm guessing the only way to separate that western section would be to explode the walls, select the appropriate bits, and move them to a duplicate wall sheet with changed effects parameters?

I suppose, I could also just draw a grey filled polygon and overlay that section mucking about with the effects to achieve a similar result, probably an easier option...

Wyvern

You could just copy the edge of the necessary floors to a new Sheet above the floors one, and make them into very thin (but not-zero thickness - that can make its presence felt at different view resolutions sometimes) lines at the edge of the floors. Make the lines a suitable colour - a mid brown might work in this case - to help disguise them, set an appropriate Outer Glow on their Sheet and see how that looks. You might need to try other Effects too, but it's worth experimenting. You don't need anything very solid to cast shadows, for instance, because all CC3+ looks at is edges.

You might also find it works better if you only have the lines in some places and not others for shadows, but once you have the concept, you can play around with it as much as you need. I find it's helpful for making stairs look differently shadowed sometimes - as if they're partly below a floor level. I used some of this technique in my ongoing Wyvern Citadel castle maps, for instance.

jmabbott

Oops. Forgot to decorate the floors! Stay tuned...

Wyvern

Maybe they shouldn't be too decorated - lost temple, after all. Maybe someone took anything worth removing when they left? And there is that big, faded circled pentagram in the Arena.

jmabbott

They didn't leave my friend, they were rebuked, in a very permanent manner, by a very angry deity who did so with holy fire...

jmabbott

Hi Folks,

I've taken @Wyvern's comments on board and aslo increased the size of the pit traps, 5ft is just too damn small. Here is the finished map. Next job is to save it in various versions for the module PDF and art pack.

@Monsen I'll post the .FCW file on the atlas thread for inclusion.

JulianDracos

What map style did you use for this? Or did you make everything yourself?

jmabbott

@JulianDracos Glad you like it. This is the Ancient Tombs annual style for the base map, text and hieroglyphs. The symbols are a mixture, most are DD3, the cots in room 6 are from SS4 Dunegons of Schley and the compass rose is my 'signature'. The scale bar is just straight lines drawn using CC3+ line tool.