CA style development - "Darklands City" (issues for September and December 2021)
Loopysue
ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
Hi Everyone! :)
Welcome to another new style development thread!
This time I will be working on a City style that is intended to be similar to the Darklands overland style in flavour, and to be published as two parts in September and December this year.
So, first off, I would love to know what you would like to see in a city version of this style.
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Here is the 'basic bones' list of buildings for a standard annual issue city. For 2 issues there will be quite a few more than this in the end, so suggestions for other inclusions are welcome, as well as suggestions about the look of the style.
This is a combined list of all the suggestions so far:
Boats
Statues, with separate pedestals
Fountains
Gallows
Prison
Blacksmith/foundry/forge
Inn, small and large
Barracks - perhaps 2-3 parts, so different combos can be made
Quarantine station, with lots of guards warding off spiky looking round aliens
Theatre/opera house
Stadium / coliseum complete with lions and Christians
Courthouse
Market stalls with variable colours
Uncollected garbage
Restaurants/taverns
Ruined buildings
Funerary monuments and buildings – mausoleums and sepulchral vaults.
Tombstones and graves
Monastery for the evil monks of the Order of Unnatural Science
Access to sewers (sewer caps, grates, dry sells, stone stairs and ramps)
Windmill
Watermill
Sawmill
Grain silo and mill
Gardens
Brewery
Bits of shops
Stables/corrals
Wooden palisades
Stockades/gibbets/crowcages
Walls/fences
Vegetation other than trees
Dead vegetation
Different flavours of hut
Mud, mud with straw
Street tools with sewage channel down the middle
Tannery
Circling crows/vultures/pigeons
Insect swarms (flies, roaches)
Flames (for burning buildings or trash)
Various additions to houses eg awnings, gables, chimneys, extensions, chimney smoke
Will there be a matching style for the house tool so we can use it to draw odd-shaped houses as well as using the random street tool with it?
And since you mention a pier, there obviously need to be some ships and small boats available.
@Monsen - yes, I should think so (the house tools are Ralf's speciality, but he usually does one or two with a new city style), and yes, I will add boats to the list.
Statues, with separate pedestals
Fountains
Gallows
Prison
Blacksmith
Inn, small and large
Barracks - perhaps 2-3 parts, so different combos can be made
Quarantine station, with lots of guards warding off spiky looking round aliens
Theatre/opera house (so Phantom of the Opera, a truly dark fantasy musical can be performed, especially given the dark villain Lloyd Webber himself)
Stadium / colisseum complete with lions and Christians
Soccer field, given it is a dark fantasy city, and a soccer match crowd must be anyone's nightmare
Courthouse
Market stalls with variable colours
Uncollected garbage - when I was in Athens 18 years ago (my first time), they had a garbage strike lasting 3 weeks - OMG!!)
Various additions to houses eg awnings, gables, chimneys, extensions.
Indian restaurants (with snake charmers and naked gurus)
MacDonalds (of course - a definite dark fantasy horror)
Some of these are perhaps not to everyone's taste for dark fantasy - ah well.
Lovely list. My top pick from that one is the market stalls.
@Quenten - loads of good ideas - thank you :)
And now I realise it might get really messy if I add all the new ideas to the first comment, so I will let the longer lists like yours stand as they are in the original comment ;)
If you want to add lots of stuff to a post without making it messy at first glance, a spoiler tag is a great way of doing things:
Quenten's list:
Statues, with separate pedestals
Fountains
Gallows
Prison
Blacksmith
Inn, small and large
Barracks - perhaps 2-3 parts, so different combos can be made
Quarantine station, with lots of guards warding off spiky looking round aliens
Theatre/opera house (so Phantom of the Opera, a truly dark fantasy musical can be performed, especially given the dark villain Lloyd Webber himself)
Stadium / colisseum complete with lions and Christians
Soccer field, given it is a dark fantasy city, and a soccer match crowd must be anyone's nightmare
Courthouse
Market stalls with variable colours
Uncollected garbage - when I was in Athens 18 years ago (my first time), they had a garbage strike lasting 3 weeks - OMG!!)
Various additions to houses eg awnings, gables, chimneys, extensions.
Indian restaurants (with snake charmers and naked gurus)
MacDonalds (of course - a definite dark fantasy horror)
How did you do that?
And a Starbucks. An evil place like this needs a Starbucks.
Looking forward to this as I find the overland style eye-catching.
Given the propensity for volcanos, having an eye towards a town that is on the boarder might give ideas for the style. Ruined versions of buildings for example. Something to show the darklands are creeping into the city (grime, blend of life filled areas with the darker colors).
Some ruined buildings are a great idea. Also a monastery where evil monks of the Order of Unnatural Science abide.
@Loopysue I just picked spoiler warning from the paragraph formatting options.
Thanks Remy :)
I will maybe do that when the thread gets a bit longer and combine all the suggestions in one spoiler.
I'd love to see funerary monuments and buildings, such as mausoleums and sepulchral vaults. Even tombstone and grave overlays to create your own cemeteries. I think they are thematically appropriate for ths style. Also, accesses to underground structures (sewer caps and grates, dry wells, stone stairs and ramps, and so).
Good luck with your hard work!
First of all, love this idea!
Second, I really like the idea of more specialized buildings. Quenten's list is a great base for all sets. (I would love it if past sets got some if they don't have them already.) Other ideas are outdoor entertainment stages, amphitheater, windmill, watermill, gardens, tavern, distillery/brewery, and maybe multi part things for shops so I can make my own?
Third, I really want to stress his ruins! I think there are only a few sets that have ruined buildings and I would love to have ruins in every set made! That might be asking too much for past ones but at least going forward. Of course, I have no idea on the effort it takes.
Thanks!
Jon
aka evildmguy
aka edg
I like the gallows, sewer access, and the funerary item suggestions
I would also suggest stables, wooden palisades (the sort that stab outward) and maybe additional punitive items like stock(ade)s or gibbets.
Wonderful Idea, I love styles that fit well with other styles.
Most of what I would love to see is has already been mentioned (Marekt Stalls for the win!)
What I would like to see:
smaller Walls/Fences (maybe more of a drawingtool thing, that a symbol)
some vegetation other than trees
dead vegetation.
I hope the huts come in different flavours, i.e. thatched, shingles and so on.
I've done two maps (well doing the 2nd) with the overland style, it looks really good...
This is going well! Thank you all for your contributions. I have been surprised by some of the suggestions, but that was the whole point of the thread ;)
I've always found that the way to start a new style is to get the textures right. With this style the colours are more or less already dictated by the fact that they must be similar to the overland style. That just leaves me with the task of getting the actual texture correct.
Here is a first shot at the 4 grass textures. Those are Bitmap A buildings for a sense of scale. The Darklands ones will be nowhere near as clean and well maintained. The grass is probably long grass, but then - who is going to mow the grass in a Darklands City?
I think the ones that stab outwards are barricades.
As an addition to house extras, what about some outside stairs to upper stories, as is common in Mediterranean cities. Great for unwanted guests and quick getaways.
Here’s my list in no particular order:
stables/corrals
mud, mud with straw
street tools with sewage channel down the middle
pillory/stocks
crow cages/gibbets
tannery
chimney smoke
foundry/forge
circling crows/vultures/pigeons
insect swarms (flies, roaches)
flames (for burning buildings or trash)
sawmill
grain silo and mill
watermill
(I’m sure I can think of more to add later)
Thanks Daisho :)
If you think of more, be sure to add them as a new comment or I might not see them.
Because as the guy says.. War.. War.. Never changes.
If you can get Discovery's Science channel, that have a program called 'What on Earth ?' that shows abandoned and/or ruined areas throughout the world. They start with a satellite photo, then try to come up with an explanation of what it is. Sometimes they send people into the area where it is located for a ground level view. Another one they broadcast is 'Mysteries of the Abandoned' which isn't the same locations, most of the time.
Excellent!
Thanks, Sue, for expanding on this beautiful style.
My List which I hope I can add to as time goes on:
'better' Hill making drawing tool. I don't know how to describe this properly, but the ones we have now are hit or miss. This may simply be due to the hassles I'm having with the program lately, but I'm getting all sorts of strange artifacts whenever a lighted bevel is used. Sorry, not doing tech support here, already got a ticket in. So, a 'better' Hill tool, please :)
more to come
thanks
Cal
This isn't an expansion of the overland style, but a new city style on the same theme, so I'm not sure if you are talking about overland hills or city hills.
If you mean hills like the ones you can draw in SS5 (city scale top view hills), then that is the only way to do them easily. Most other techniques are a lot more complicated.
Pictures of Gaza strip would fill those ideas, @thehawk
@Calibre Have you put a Pink copy of the hill with lighted bevel on a sheet underneath the hill one. It should have no effects, and this will get rid of acne. Unfortunately, as you zoom in or out, the lighted bevel changes - I get over this by putting a 'lid' on the hill on a sheet above the bevel hill. or else a separate bevelled sheet. I do find that bevelled hills just don't really work for city maps.