Live Mapping: Sailing Ships
Loopysue
ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
Hi Everyone! :D
Tomorrow, Ralf will be using dungeon and floorplan tools to create a sailing ship deck plan, revisiting an old Annual issue from 2008.
Please feel free to come along and join in the fun.
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Comments
Half hour shout :)
Just finished watching the stream as VOD, since I couldn't catch it live. It was very interesting to see some of the issues Ralf ran into with this older drawing style. I recently created some ship plans as part of my efforts for the Community Atlas (they're finished, but the write-up isn't, and they'll only be submitted some months down the line, as I've quite a number of other items to submit ahead of them). I spent quite a bit of time tinkering around with effects to get things to work nicely, as I was constructing a more medieval style of craft than the circa 18th century vessels the style is better suited to. A lot of the work is done already with the fill style and drawing tool options, however, though more symbols - for things such as capstans, anchors, chains, ropes, and ship's boats - would have been helpful, and perhaps as Ralf hinted, we may get to see some of these in future if the style gets updated.
Beyond those, should that update happen, it would be useful to have a full range of wood-look fill styles, instead of just as planks, to better complement what's already accessible as those plank-formed fills. I ended up making and adjusting some of my fill style choices simply on the basis of which wood-look fills were available, which was a little restrictive, as these are fewer in number than the different fill colourings available as planks, for instance. Naturally, such things would have uses well beyond ship designs too, for any wooden constructions or items.
A greater range of ship options would be excellent too, again as Ralf mentioned very late in the stream. Personally, I'd like to see sample options showing pre-gunpowder vessels, going way back into the ancient era - Greek, Egyptian, Roman vessels, for instance, maybe even some "properly" ancient Mesopotamian river and sea craft from the 4th-3rd millennium BCE, say!
For inspiration, maybe these drawings from the latest digital pack from Handiwork Games for their new Beowulf: Age of Heroes (for 5e D&D) RPG, a "Dark Ages"/early Medieval longship might be of interest:
Tiny, I know, but the pack's only just been released to us KickStarter backers in the last couple of days (ahead of its more general release at some future point), so I can't show you more than this thumbnail at present! The originals are full-scale for 28mm miniatures. If the style, or topic's, of interest, there's a free PDF introductory scenario that was released early in the KS campaign last summer, The Hermit's Sanctuary, available for download still via DriveThru RPG (to which that link goes; no boats in that, however). Thus it's been a bit of a "ships" week here, as you may tell!
Just a quick follow-up here to highlight the brand new Cartographer's Annual issue, freshly issued (CA172), Ship Deckplans, which does indeed update the original Sailing Ships pack, much as hoped! Especially happy to see the sample FCW file for the Drakkar, personally. Thanks very much @Ralf !