Storm seems to think I'm going to beat her - finishing Merelan City before she gets Cathoulla City done, but she's no idea the trouble I had this afternoon just getting this relatively tiny patch of houses sorted out!
If you're thinking of doing a city yourself, this has taken me more time already than anything else I've done so far.
Mind you - with your kind of whizziness you'd probably have it done in about half a day! LOL
You just had to tell them that, didn't you Sue? Lol... It's okay, I've actually been working on both maps this weekend. Setting up Trader's Market is slow going!!!
This is looking great! It's good to see the structures going up. Are those houses? Shops? Warehouses?
If they are people's homes...then it's my turn to make a suggestion :-D. Have you thought about breaking up the long line with differing shapes? Houses usually all that uniform... There are usually at least 3 or 4 different floor plans, then every once it a while you'll see a custom build.
Of course, if those buildings are something else then my suggestion has no meaning :-). And it's just an idea, really.
Sorry Storm - forgot which forum you said that on!
There are four taverns, a butcher and a brewery (needs a water source mind you) near the gate. The rest are housing because the government buildings are all on top of the island around the holy site.
Varying the house shapes is a valid point, but I also think the shape difference between buildings depends largely what you're used to, and how these particular houses came to be there in the first place. These particular buildings were built by Merlish slaves under the unimaginative command of a Blucran general who suddenly found himself charged with organising permanent housing for his troops once the king decided Merelan was the end of the road on their crusade to find the Pool of Life. As such they are probably more similar in my mind to the appalling rows of terraced boxes the mine owners and the government put up to house our poor Welsh coal miners - half my ancestors among them.
This is very typical of most Welsh coalmining villages throughout the South of Wales today.
However... I will reconsider my plan of being too literal and true to the story, for the sake of having a map that is interesting to look at
Storm? What Trader's Market? I've been very tired lately - insomnia and not more than 3 hrs sleep a night for the past week. I think I missed about 6 boats sailing past right in front of my eyes, never mind one!
In my Cathoulla City map... Southeast quadrant of my map... across the road from my warehouses. Those tiny dirt roads? That's a rather large market. Ive been working on it for over a week, placing each individual table and stall.
There will be able other, less chaotic version in the northwest quadrant...the Royal Bazaar. But placing each table and stall has been really slow.going...but I'm almost.dine with it, and I can get back to the actual city.
Funnily enough I have one of those - a market place that is, but its not even on the island. Its on the sand and the salt marsh. I just haven't got around to it.
Long and flowery names are the privilege of a well educated cartographer/explorer, but in this case the Flats have been known as such by the common folk for several centuries, and that's all they will ever be.
Thank you Medio I sometimes wonder if I'm not trying to put too much detail into it for a city map, but I just can't seem to stop myself.
I've had a bit of an accident with it today, so the next one isn't gong to look much different to this one. I'll be able to put it up in about half an hour (I hope). There are now over 80 Sheets in the file, so it takes quite a long time to render out
Had a disaster earlier. I spent a long time trying to create a hill shadow (its not good enough to be called relief shading), only to discover that the nice thatched cottages I had put on the first tier up the slope were causing "transparency acne" in my nice new hill shadow. I then spent about three hours trying to work out what to do, and finally settled on turning the buildings 1% transparent, which for some strange reason cures the problem.
However, having already deleted all the offending thatched cottages I had to start putting them all back in again, at which point I realised that I had scaled all the buildings too small.
So I put the thatched cottages back in, slightly larger this time, and then set to work on the previously established wooden shale buildings in the bottom of the valley and up the opposite slope. (Funnily enough the wooden buildings from the Vintyri Collection weren't causing me any trouble at all!)
Its not even as finished as it was yesterday, and the render took nearly 1 1/2 hours because I now have over 80 Sheets, but here it is.
I just wanted to know if this relief shading goes with the artificial terracing. Please feel free to say what you really think. This map is about to go irreversibly either in this direction, or along the original course with just the layer cake shading.
A corrected version (the relief isn't leaking into the sea this time). I think I may go with this now, failing any horrified remarks against the relief shading
Heya Lorelei! You just ninja'd your way in there while I was busy uploading the last one.
I do actually prefer the darker one, but it interferes a lot with the visibility of the buildings. I might do two versions of the map - the only difference is a single layer
Heya Jo. I just saw a comment from you on the Guild version of this thread!
Thank you for the compliment, and I'm working hard on it right now (though I'm not planning on doing more than one WIP a day, which means the city will be fairly well advanced by tomorrow afternoon )
Hi Mark. I've decided to keep both - its only two sheets in the same file. I'll be doing my work with the last version active, so its the dominant one around which all other considerations will be made.
The blend mode is different between the two versions, so I will probably have to split the final map into 2 versions; "light" and "dark" so that I can make any adjustments I need to for the dark one to work properly with what I've got by then.
Having decided on the relief shading, I realised it was having an undesirable effect on the shade of the texture fills and started tinkering with the Hue, Saturation, Lightness qualities of all 24 closely related grass textures. As you can imagine, this is a bit like sawing the legs off a table one inch at a time, one leg at a time, to try and make it level. The end result is that I spent 4 hours sorting it out, and although I'm a bit happier with the colour of the map (Its not perfect yet) I haven't really added very much more to the city itself. The latest additions extend down the eastern arm of the island to Isk Point, which by Merlish standards is a rich area, with relatively large thatched constructions.
I have chosen just one version of the relief shading because attempting to keep the balance between all the fills and two types of relief texture was just too much to contemplate with everything else. I hope you will find that its a happy medium - neither too dark, nor too pale.
This is going to be the last 'daily' post on the Merelan City map. I have a heavy real life commitment to bear as of this morning, but I won't be leaving any map unfinished. They will all get done, just not as quickly as before. I'm hoping on 2 new versions of MC a week after this one.
Changes to this version from the last: a whole new underwater sea scape (which started with a bunch of rocks at Isk Point and just got thoroughly carried away!), a return to the orange marsh (I got fed up with everything being green and fawn), another re-scaling operation back to smaller buildings, an adjustment to the path brightness to stop them glowing quite so much on the new darker grass, and a clearing of the northern marina area, ready for a greater variety of boats, some of which will be the ones that Jo drew for his Alycrau map (thank you so much for those Jo, they're beautiful).
I promise I will try to get more than 1/4 of the rest of the city sorted out before I post again! LOL
The roads are in. I know! I promised you 1/4 of the city, but the roads are on 8 separate sheets and they've taken me all day. I only have this evening and tomorrow now to add a substantial amount of housing. Then its Monday again
Comments
Storm seems to think I'm going to beat her - finishing Merelan City before she gets Cathoulla City done, but she's no idea the trouble I had this afternoon just getting this relatively tiny patch of houses sorted out!
If you're thinking of doing a city yourself, this has taken me more time already than anything else I've done so far.
Mind you - with your kind of whizziness you'd probably have it done in about half a day! LOL
I love that a lot, when you can zoom in and all the details appears !!!
So precise !
Good job !
Makes the headache I got trying to juggle the path back and forth across six layers in tiny pieces, worth it
This is looking great! It's good to see the structures going up. Are those houses? Shops? Warehouses?
If they are people's homes...then it's my turn to make a suggestion :-D. Have you thought about breaking up the long line with differing shapes? Houses usually all that uniform... There are usually at least 3 or 4 different floor plans, then every once it a while you'll see a custom build.
Of course, if those buildings are something else then my suggestion has no meaning :-). And it's just an idea, really.
There are four taverns, a butcher and a brewery (needs a water source mind you) near the gate. The rest are housing because the government buildings are all on top of the island around the holy site.
Varying the house shapes is a valid point, but I also think the shape difference between buildings depends largely what you're used to, and how these particular houses came to be there in the first place. These particular buildings were built by Merlish slaves under the unimaginative command of a Blucran general who suddenly found himself charged with organising permanent housing for his troops once the king decided Merelan was the end of the road on their crusade to find the Pool of Life. As such they are probably more similar in my mind to the appalling rows of terraced boxes the mine owners and the government put up to house our poor Welsh coal miners - half my ancestors among them.
This is very typical of most Welsh coalmining villages throughout the South of Wales today.
However... I will reconsider my plan of being too literal and true to the story, for the sake of having a map that is interesting to look at
There will be able other, less chaotic version in the northwest quadrant...the Royal Bazaar. But placing each table and stall has been really slow.going...but I'm almost.dine with it, and I can get back to the actual city.
They call it... The Flats
(how's that for an uninspiring name!)
I've had a bit of an accident with it today, so the next one isn't gong to look much different to this one. I'll be able to put it up in about half an hour (I hope). There are now over 80 Sheets in the file, so it takes quite a long time to render out
Had a disaster earlier. I spent a long time trying to create a hill shadow (its not good enough to be called relief shading), only to discover that the nice thatched cottages I had put on the first tier up the slope were causing "transparency acne" in my nice new hill shadow. I then spent about three hours trying to work out what to do, and finally settled on turning the buildings 1% transparent, which for some strange reason cures the problem.
However, having already deleted all the offending thatched cottages I had to start putting them all back in again, at which point I realised that I had scaled all the buildings too small.
So I put the thatched cottages back in, slightly larger this time, and then set to work on the previously established wooden shale buildings in the bottom of the valley and up the opposite slope. (Funnily enough the wooden buildings from the Vintyri Collection weren't causing me any trouble at all!)
Its not even as finished as it was yesterday, and the render took nearly 1 1/2 hours because I now have over 80 Sheets, but here it is.
I just wanted to know if this relief shading goes with the artificial terracing. Please feel free to say what you really think. This map is about to go irreversibly either in this direction, or along the original course with just the layer cake shading.
I haven't decided just yet...
I do actually prefer the darker one, but it interferes a lot with the visibility of the buildings. I might do two versions of the map - the only difference is a single layer
Nice to see the buildings, it gives an idea of what's coming... and it's full of promises !
Looking forward for the next WIP !
Thank you for the compliment, and I'm working hard on it right now (though I'm not planning on doing more than one WIP a day, which means the city will be fairly well advanced by tomorrow afternoon
The blend mode is different between the two versions, so I will probably have to split the final map into 2 versions; "light" and "dark" so that I can make any adjustments I need to for the dark one to work properly with what I've got by then.
Having decided on the relief shading, I realised it was having an undesirable effect on the shade of the texture fills and started tinkering with the Hue, Saturation, Lightness qualities of all 24 closely related grass textures. As you can imagine, this is a bit like sawing the legs off a table one inch at a time, one leg at a time, to try and make it level. The end result is that I spent 4 hours sorting it out, and although I'm a bit happier with the colour of the map (Its not perfect yet) I haven't really added very much more to the city itself. The latest additions extend down the eastern arm of the island to Isk Point, which by Merlish standards is a rich area, with relatively large thatched constructions.
I have chosen just one version of the relief shading because attempting to keep the balance between all the fills and two types of relief texture was just too much to contemplate with everything else. I hope you will find that its a happy medium - neither too dark, nor too pale.
This is going to be the last 'daily' post on the Merelan City map. I have a heavy real life commitment to bear as of this morning, but I won't be leaving any map unfinished. They will all get done, just not as quickly as before. I'm hoping on 2 new versions of MC a week after this one.
Changes to this version from the last: a whole new underwater sea scape (which started with a bunch of rocks at Isk Point and just got thoroughly carried away!), a return to the orange marsh (I got fed up with everything being green and fawn), another re-scaling operation back to smaller buildings, an adjustment to the path brightness to stop them glowing quite so much on the new darker grass, and a clearing of the northern marina area, ready for a greater variety of boats, some of which will be the ones that Jo drew for his Alycrau map (thank you so much for those Jo, they're beautiful).
I promise I will try to get more than 1/4 of the rest of the city sorted out before I post again! LOL
Thanks for the compliment
The roads are in. I know! I promised you 1/4 of the city, but the roads are on 8 separate sheets and they've taken me all day. I only have this evening and tomorrow now to add a substantial amount of housing. Then its Monday again