a small town, with City asperations

JimP

Not much there, but they hope to expand later on into a city. A combination of CC3 filled City symbols and CSUAC symbols. The toll gate, upper left and lower right, I came up with is a default.fsc CC3 filled CC3 house symbol for cities and a CSUAC barrier. The borders are from a CC3 symbol set. I tried to do drop shadows... but they either didn't show well, or the symbols looked like they were floating in ther air.

Mateus090985

I just dont like the way the towers (castles?) were placed. It look a bit randon. The rest is all good

JimP

Those are watchtowers that cover the 4 roads. Farmland lower left, ruins off to the upper right. Upper left and lower right is where the area traffic comes through. Of course, without a wall around the town, they aren't exactly safe.

Mateus090985

Posted By: JimPThose are watchtowers that cover the 4 roads. Farmland lower left, ruins off to the upper right. Upper left and lower right is where the area traffic comes through. Of course, without a wall around the town, they aren't exactly safe.

But dont you think that they are a little too close? I think that a single tower in the middle wuold be more resources wise and would have a better look.

JimP

Well... this area has been invaded many times, but the lack of a wall is odd...

Shadow, with sun direction. The small brown rectangles in the park are benches I made for a symbol contest years ago. The benches, and symbols for Drive-In movie theaters, are on my site.

anomiecoalition

Its a really cool map and I especially like the border. And I personally like it better with the shadows you got in the last pic. The only suggestion I would make is to experiment with varying levels of shadows for different objects. In my maps, I often made 3-4 sheets (Symbol Low, Symbol Mid, Symbol High...and sometimes, Symbol Flat). Each with a different set of setting for the wall shadow. So, your crops should probably be in the symbol flat category, but your towers and trees would be the Symbol Tall category. Also, you can try to adjust the blur setting on the wall shadow effect. Smaller numbers mean a tighter shadow (so 1 would give you a black duplicate of your object) and bigger numbers make it look less defined (good for trees and large buildings).

Henrie61

Nice little map.

Add a bit of shadow to the bushes/trees.
Now they seem kinda flat.

Mobius

@anomiecoalition

I like the idea about different symbol layers, but am curious what symbol flat would be used for?

Henrie61

For the symbols you don't want to have any effect on them.
Like carpets, they have to stay FLAT on the floor.

Unless of course you have a flying carpet, but thats a different story.

anomiecoalition

Henrie61 sums it up...however sometimes I create a sheet for stuff on the floor with no shadow ("Floor Object" or something) and then create a sheet for stuff that I want to be placed on top of other objects without casting a shadow (i.e. say we place a table w/shadow and want to place a plate on top of the table - we need to create a sheet ("symbol mid") for the table and a sheet ("symbol flat") for the objects that would go on top of the table.

Of course...I find that I'm becoming increasingly neurotic with all this stuff...so feel free to not get into that kind of detail.

Mobius

It's a good idea, should have thought logically about the Flat layer :-p

JimP

Ah, the 3x3 objects are trees of an orchard. The farm land is off the picture to the lower left.

I do have the training ground and the compass on their own layer so they won't have shadows.

And thanks for the comments !

Shessar

This is very nice Jim! It is well laid out and the effects really make it pop and bring it to life.

I have one small suggestion, if I may. Use a slight glow on the roads instead of an outline. They would blend together better, yet still give the effect of making them stand out.

JimP

Ah... I see I'm still using the road types I decided on back in CC2. Hadn't really thought about it, color with a black outline.

I think the lettering has something like a glow on them... and I don't remember doing that. I could have selected something without realizing it.

I'll check into the road idea. Thanks Shessar.

correction: bitmap fill with black outline.

JimP

changed the road bitmap so it isn't outlined, and have a glow of one on the roads. I don't see it though.

JimP

sterngth of 1, radius of 0.7 or 0,7

Vintyri

The map looks better with each new version ... but I'm sorry you're using vector symbols rather than raster symbols!

JimP

It takes me a long time to change my styles. But I do appreciate the CSUAC symbols I used in this map.