[WIP] Atlas Contest (potentially) - Arbor Hollow (summer, autumn, winter, spring)

Royal Scribe

I have an idea I've been toying with since literally January, and I finally feel like my skills may be up to the challenge. It's something that would be useful for GMs, but I wanted to check with Remy @Monsen to see if it would be appropriate for (a) the Atlas, and (b) the 1000 map contest.

The idea is to create a village and then render versions for all four seasons. I'm using Darkland City as the base with a lot of extras coming from Forest Trail. The idea would be to create the summer map and then vary it for the spring, autumn, and winter versions:

• Summer: If you count "Wet Meadow" as the darkest of the grass fills, there are five grass fills. The summer version would use the middle three. Coniferous and deciduous trees would go on separate sheets to make adjusting for the other maps easier. Deciduous trees would use the varicolor versions in Forest Trails, set to dark green shades.
• Autumn: Using summer as the basis, the grass shades would shift one shade to the drier side. The varicolor deciduous trees would have their colors switched to various autumnal shades of oranges, yellows, and reds (and maybe a few barren trees for the ones that have lost all of their leaves.)
• Spring: Using summer as the basis, the grass shades would shift one shade darker. The varicolor deciduous trees would use slightly lighter shades of green to show new growth. And I would redraw the rivers to be higher, reflect runoff from the snowmelt.
• Winter: This would be the most dramatic, as it would require importing the summer map into Winter Village, adjusting the river and terrain, and replacing the symbols with their winter snow-covered counterparts (and removing the separate tree shadows from the barren deciduous trees).

I think it would be cool for Game Masters to have seasonal versions of the same map, which is why I'd like if allowed to add it to the Atlas to make it more widely available. Here are my questions for Remy:

1. Would it be possible to have four versions of the same map in the Atlas? My thought is that summer would be the default, but then the other three could be accessed from summer, the way you'd link to different floors of a multistory building).
2. It would be silly to have all four for the contest, but would it work to submit one for the contest (probably the default, summer) and then the other three for the Atlas?

Here's the work in progress for summer -- I added a representative sampling of trees but need to add more. (The community is in the mountains between human and dwarven kingdoms, so I thought it would contain a mixed human/dwarven population. Although it's not a mining village, I thought some of the dwarves would like homes that delve into the mountainside, the way halflings have burrows into hillsides. The towers that are half-buried into the cliffs are meant to be the entrances into subterranean dwarf cottages.)

Quenten

I actually did that with my Druidhome in the Atlas.

atlas.cdn.monsen.cc/atlas/artemisia/hi/druidhome.png

Each of the 4 villages in this map represent a season. So I am sure the idea you have is very suitable for the Atlas.

Royal Scribe

Very cool! Just scrolled through your maps - very impressive collection!

Monsen

Would it be possible to have four versions of the same map in the Atlas? My thought is that summer would be the default, but then the other three could be accessed from summer, the way you'd link to different floors of a multistory building).

Sure

It would be silly to have all four for the contest, but would it work to submit one for the contest (probably the default, summer) and then the other three for the Atlas?

Sure

Royal Scribe

Here's a bit more for the summer version of Arbor Hollow. I've added some pine and deciduous trees (wanted them scattered enough to still show the terrain changes over the seasons). Also added label numbers and a legend. Just noticed, though, that I've forgotten to draw in the stone bridge and cliff shadows. Anything else I should address?

Hoping to get this submitted tomorrow because I'm not sure how much time I will have this weekend to work on it. If things go well tomorrow, I might have a chance to do some of the other seasons, but there isn't the same deadline for those since I will only be submitting Summer for the contest.

Royal Scribe

Added in bridge and cliff shadows. Writing up the description, and then I think I'm about ready to convert to Autumn, Spring, and Winter.

Royal Scribe

Here's Autumn. Each grass section has moved a shade drier. The evergreen pine trees remain green, but the deciduous trees have changed to oranges, reds, and yellows -- except for a few that have already lost all of their leaves and just have barren branches standing over piles of leaves. Oh, and I changed the cartouche as well.

Royal Scribe

Here's Spring. Deciduous trees are a little lighter, reflecting new foliage. Grass all shifted one shade darker, reflecting the lushness from April showers before they start to dry out a bit in the summer. Most dramatic change: the rivers are swollen with snowmelt, and the waterfalls are a little wider, too. Cartouche has changed, too, perhaps as a nod to the Hungry Ravenous Tiger Inn.

Winter will take more work, since it's the only one that will actually need to be imported into a different style, and then most of the symbols will have to be swapped.

Royal Scribe

Ooops, just noticed that I overlooked a change in Spring that I had intended: changing the farm fields to just furrows, since it's spring and the crops were just planted and wouldn't have come in yet.

Royal Scribe

Here is Winter so far. Still tons to do, but I've managed to get everything on their correct sheets, I think, and the imported sheets in the correct order. Converted the rivers to the iced-over versions. I will add breaks and cracks from Winter Trails later to the Spruce River and the lower part of Whispering Pines River, and then frost to the upper part of Whispering Pines River. Converted the paved roads to the default winter roads, and the dirt ones to the winter muddy roads. (You'll notice that one path at the ruins in #11 hasn't been converted yet. When I start to bring in style features from Winter Trails, I will make that into a path or maybe footsteps. Converted the crops to snow-covered counterparts. But the biggest changes are yet to come: swapping out the building, tree, and other symbols for their winter counterparts. I will have to look at the sample maps with the annual to get ideas for how to better display the label numbers.

Royal Scribe

Making progress!

I think all of the Darkland City symbols (tile and thatch buildings, walls, towers, stone bridges, hedges) have been replaced with their snow-covered Winter Village equivalents. The one thing that I don't think Winter Village has are the stone outcrops (Sue, please point me in the right direction if I've missed them), but that's okay: I have ideas for how to add little patches of snow to the outcrops. I also don't think there's a snow-covered equivalent for the derelict versions of the Darkland City buildings, so the one derelict tower I used (over in the ruins at #11) was replaced with a regular snow-covered tower.

One thing I noticed: when I used the Symbol Manager to swap out symbols, sometimes the replaced symbol was slightly off. In two instances, buildings were replaced with a 90 degree rotation from what I had, and in a number of instances, the buildings had been moved either on top of or too far off from the roads. I found it easiest to make one replacement and then check the map to move the placements if necessary before moving onto the next replacement. Slow and steady! Still better to do it this way than to manually delete and replace each individual symbol. Please let me know if you see anything that looks like it needs to be adjusted.

Still to come: replacing Forest Trail symbols (earth cliffs, deciduous and coniferous trees, ruins, rocks) with their Winter Trail snow-covered equivalents. And then adding breaks and cracks to parts of the rivers, and frost to the others. I had an idea for making ice skating tracks over the frost-covered parts of the frozen river. We'll see if I can pull that off.

Royal Scribe

Making progress on the symbols from Forest Trail. Cliff and river bank symbols have been swapped out for their snowy counterparts. Same with the ruins symbols, and the wooden bridge. Changed the trail on the western side of the wooden bridge to use the Forest Trail effects. Added breaks in the ice for the Spruce River, and as it continues down the Whispering Pines River.

For the ruins, there wasn't a snow-covered version that I saw. I thought about covering it entirely with a hill of snow, but discovered that I could make frosty patches using the "Terrain Default Cliffs Drifts" drawing tool, which I will also use (on separate sheets) to add a little snow to the rocky outcrops. This is how it looks on the ruins close-up:

Not sure I like the frost on the upper part of Whispering Pines River. Not sure if I should expand it, so it covers more of the iced-over part, or reduce/eliminate it.

Still need to swap out the trees and add snow to the outcrops.

Royal Scribe

Okay, trees converted. This was trickier than expected because these ones tended to be a little jumpy wumpy when I replaced them.

Currently debating what to do:

1. I could go through and move the trees that did something weird, like jumped onto a road or building, and move them, knowing that their final placement won't be exactly the same as the summer map it's derived from. or
2. Roll back to a backup FCW (fortunately, I've been making backups before every significant change in case something went wrong), and then replace each tree individually.

I'm leaning towards #2. It might be weird cycling through each of the seasonal maps with the trees in an identical spot for three of them and then suddenly jumping around for the fourth. And while it may seem tedious to go through that process, tree by tree, I'm actually finding it kind of peaceful.

But either way, it won't be finished tonight. Fortunately, this winter map was never intended for the competition and I've already gotten my contest maps submitted.

Royal Scribe

I went back to my previous save -- the last version before starting on the trees -- so that I could replace the trees individually to ensure exact placement. Having the coniferous and deciduous trees on separate sheets made it easier so that I could focus on the firs and the barren trees separately. (Another tips: make sure all of your original trees are on the Vegetation layer and then freeze the other layers -- before I did that, it was way too easy to accidentally grab other things unintentionally.)

Also (not sure if I mentioned this before), I used the effects from one of the Winter Trail sample maps on the white text. I think it makes them stand out nicely. One of the other samples used red text, which made for a nice contrast but felt a little jarring for this map. But I could do a dark blue like the legend if folks think that's better.

Royal Scribe

Here's a collage of all four seasons all together. (In retrospect, I should have widened the other borders to match Winter's.)