Wilderness Battlemaps
Using Dungeon Designer 3 for making dungeon encounters is nice, but does Profantasy have anything to aid in building wilderness encounters? For example, if my PCs are battling enemies in a mountain pass, over a river surrounded by hills and trees, on an icy lake, etc.
If there is, please point the way for me. If not, I believe Profantasy folks need to get a new pack for just this sort of thing!
If there is, please point the way for me. If not, I believe Profantasy folks need to get a new pack for just this sort of thing!
Comments
Some suggestions when you do work on it are definitely enscarpments, to help relate elevation (all from bird's eye view of course). Places like hills, deserts, mountains, etc. are all areas where knowing what terrain is elevated, and how high, is important. And of course, different types of trees, brush, snow, flora, landscapes and other terrains, mundane and fantastic, which are probably found in some of your current symbol add-ons.
Personally, my games encounters take place half the time in dungeons and the other half in wilderness or urban areas. The last 2 encounters took place in a hilly area and a forbidding mountainous one.
Here are some examples of outdoor maps with well-done escarpments and cliffs that would be awesome to emulate in an annual...
http://www.beastsofwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/GC_Wilderness.jpg
http://doomedtoreality.com/gallery/albums/d-d-maps/roads-battle-maps/30.jpg
http://forum.profantasy.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=4535&page=1#Item_0
wilderness test map
Overall, I'm happy with how it looks. The beveled edges on the elevations do give the impression of escarpments, albeit rather glossy ones. I added a blur effect to try to minimize that, but the one thing I would say is that using bevels tends to make everything look like it's made out of plastic.
This is based on the Jon Roberts annual. He has some nice vegetation in his symbols, but I've been looking for a good way to draw in vegetation using bitmap fills instead (two reasons - it makes the map file smaller and it's a lot easier to draw than placing bush after bush). On this map I did it with the darkest green terrain in that annual, with a bevel and glow applied to a fractal edge. I don't hate it, and in very small batches it looks good, although I'm not terribly pleased with the look on a larger scale like here. I'm wondering if there's another bitmap out there that would do a better job of looking like dense vegetation (I tried pulling in some from overland annuals, but they all just crashed CC3, not sure why).
Ha!That was the one. I guess it made a good impression on me since it's from 2012 although I'm sure I saw it more recently than that because it's part of the "return of the csuac" thread which I have as a favorite on my browser.
pauldj,
I like the overall clean look of your map but would take the bevel off the vegetation. It reminds me of tabletop hills that wargamers would use as opposed to the more 'realistic' looking map Shessar has. Each map style is exactly that, a style. I can't tell you which bitmap would work better for you but hopefully you'll find a good one. Show us the finished product if you can.
Now - is there any good way to make a decent looking escarpment (I daren't hope that there are tutorials for it :( )?