Zibor [WIP]

Henrie61

The continent of Zibor, part of my game world.
As you can see this is still under development.
Suggestions are very welcome.

This is going to be a work map. From here I am going to do other, more local maps with more detail.

anomiecoalition

Its a really nice land mass to build on. Did you create it with CC3? or FT?

Henrie61

Its copied from the paper and pencil drawing I did years ago.
Scanned it and drew the major langmass in following the edges.
Most of the islands are "new" .

Henrie61

Update.

The is 5500 by 4000, this is just a rough sketch.
Later I will do 500x500 and later form them together to one map.
Problably in the Herwin Wielink style.
Waiting for the november annual to see what new symbols it has.

Henrie61

Another update, this time with "borders"
the borders mark the areas where one race is dominant.
Orange for the humans. Blue for the elves, Yellow for the dwarves and green for the orcs and goblins.

Dogtag

Looks fantastic!

Henrie61

And another update.

Think I will stop here, at least for now.
Will await the november annual and then start on regional maps.

[edit] The new "save as" setting I am using are making the PNG's quite a bit larger, sorry for that [/edit]

Shessar

This has a very fanciful feel to it, and inspires the desire to explore some of the more unique features.

I've not played with this style before but you're certainly making it look appealing. Wonderful map!

Ralf

Indeed, a great map. I would perhaps look into making the forest fills a little smaller - they do look somewhat large compared to the mountains. To adjust the fill size, open the fill style dialog and reduce the width and height for the "CA28 Forest..." bitmap fills.

Henrie61

@Ralf, Didn't even know I could do that.
You learn something new every day :-)

Dogtag

Wow, that really made a [good] difference!

Modric

I haven't had much luck with the style, but this is a great example of how the style could work. I'm still not sold on the curvy mountains, though.

Henrie61

@Modric, the mountains aren't my favorite part of this style.
But I can live with it since this is a work map.

Modric

@Henrie61- I was actually playing around with the style this morning before work. Your map inspired me to try and give this style another try. Cheers.

P.S. What is the scale of your map in miles (or km)?

Henrie61

@Modric, the map is 5500 wide and 4000 high (miles).

The landmass is more or less the size of europe though in square miles I think its a bit less.

Henrie61

The first local map of zibor.
Well, local, its still 500 miles squared.

Not relally satisfied yet with the result. Overland maps have always been hard for me.
So any tips are appriciated.

Nils

Hi,

I think that map is pretty good. Maybe on the north coast (glaciers?) you could add some fractalization/fjords?

I am wondering whether it might be better to include the whole group of islands in a regional map, so you can treat them as a connected archipelago, which they probably are, with more small islands between them, etc.

Nils

Henrie61

@Nils, normally you would be right to map the islands together.

But I added a 500 mile grid to the original map and am going to map each square seperate.
And yes, that means that sometimes islands get seperated onto different maps.

Monsen

Do you really need a map in the same scale of each of these squares? Usually, this approach leads to very artificial and unnatural locations for the map edges, and you might find yourself mapping areas you really don't need a detailed map of. Usually, I find it far more useful to create detail maps of the regions I need them for, and live happily with the fact that I will have some overlaps, and some areas without a detailed map. This approach ensures that important details that belong together do end up on the same map, and gives me full flexibility where to center the map, and the exact scale of each one.
Bottom line, just be very sure that you really want to map regions like this before you start.

Ralf

I agree with Monsen. Do you ever see a real world atlas, where the whole world has been so artificially divided into regular portions? Each individual map should (ideally) be useful and practical on its own.

The beauty of CC3 is, that you don't need to have all the sub maps in the same size. As long as you keep the symbol scale consistent and use a common origin point, you can still piece them together as needed.

Henrie61

Actually, I think you are both right.
Have been thinking about it myself and too much of the lines run right through significant parts of Zibor.
So I guess I am going to abandon the idea of the square maps.

Thanks for the advice.

JimP

I have thousands of rectangular maps on my Crestar site... but if you don't understand how they relate to each other you can get lost. So, country maps with enough so the person looking at them can see the nations/bodies of water bordering them is better.

Dogtag

A really nice CC2 example of this is the Forgotten Realms Atlas, which I still love dearly.

~Dogtag

Monsen

Posted By: DogtagA really nice CC2 example of this is the Forgotten Realms Atlas, which I still love dearly.

I love it myself, but man do I get frustrated over where some of the local and regional maps cut of. Trying to go from Evereska to Silverymoon for example (Waterdeep to Baldur's Gate is another example); . If you want both on one map, you need to zoom out to the planetary view to get both location into view, even if none of the pairs are that far from each other. That's perhaps one of my biggest issues with the atlas, it basically only digitized version of a vast collection of old paper maps with no greater plan to them. I still love the product though, and I primarily mention this shortcomming more as a tip to mapmakers when planning local maps, rather than a complaint against the atlas.
Of course, the atlas being Campaign Cartographer maps, it is very easy to do some edits to get past many of the shortcommings.

Dogtag

Agreed. But I also like the way that regional and local maps aren't divided into a rigid, arbitrary grid. Instead, it's divided more by areas of focus (even if they aren't necessarily what *I* would have focused on or want to focus on). As I work on my own world atlas, I plan to use that approach myself. :-)

~Dogtag