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Royal Scribe

Royal Scribe

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Royal Scribe
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Birthday
February 5, 1968
Location
San Francisco, California
Real Name
Kevin
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Mapmaker
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16

Latest Images

  • [WIP] The Octopus' Garden

    Okay, here are the changes I made:

    1. Added patches to the murkiness to break it up.
    2. Added more bones on the right side and a pile of plundered treasure on the left. (Still not a lot of debris, though.)
    3. Adding/increasing a Glow on the walls wasn't putting the tentacle corridors in a shadow like I wanted -- to get the shadow strong enough, it caused the contents in the sucker rooms to be too obscured. So I did add a shadow over the interior rooms and corridors after all.
    4. Changed the Glow settings on the solid rock area of the cavern, so that the edges don't look so sharp. (I will also post the FCW in case anyone wants to recommend adjusting the settings.)
    5. Moved all of the "above" rocks and weeds to a special layer that can be hidden or shown.
    6. Added an entire layer of rocks to that new layer of varying sizes (up to 5x or 6x, I believe). I used the "symbols in area" function to scatter weedy rocks around, and then filled in.
    7. Added a wall mask so that the constructed walls no longer cast a shadow on the excavated cave walls. Midway through, I realized that I could simplify my painstaking efforts by copying my constructed walls to another wall sheet above the mask, this one with no effects. The walls below the mask cast the shadows and glow; the wall above the mask has no effects, but allowed me to be a little sloppy in drawing the walls mask. (At the very end, I realized I could have simplified it even further by copying the cave walls to the Walls Mask sheet.)

    Thoughts?


    Thoughts?

    QuentenLoopysueWyvernCalibre
  • [WIP] Haunted Mansion

    Here's level 4 of the mansion. There were only supposed to be three floors of the main mansion plus the tower, but when I was halfway through the third floor, I noticed that the main mansion has a central section that rises above the others. I decided to make that more of a rough attic storage space with a few rough servants' rooms. The tower doesn't connect here, but you can see it has been turned into a wizard's workshop. It extends up one more flight.

    And I just noticed that I never posted the third floor.

    Third Floor

    Fourth Floor


    QuentenLoopysueRickoCalibre
  • [WIP] Greenwood Falls (CA211 Watabou City Revisted)

    I was a little intimidated to attempt this without seeing a Live demonstration first, but since I have the day off, I decided to dive in.

    My first attempt was just a small village (152 buildings, population of 920), but I can see how a lot of the conversion goes quickly regardless whether you have a population of 500 or 5,000.

    Here's what Watabou generated for me (converted from PNG to JPEG for size considerations):

    And here's what I was able to create in a few hours:

    I didn't export the fields or the trees, just added them myself. Didn't do much in the way of adding furrows, etc., to spruce it up -- I can see why, even though it speeds up the process, I could still spend many hours adding lots of flourishes.

    (One oddity from Watabou: The exported heraldic symbol that was exported ended up being different that what was shown, one deer instead of three, but no big deal.)

    @Quenten and @Ralf, you did a magnificent job with this! What a tremendously helpful service you have done for Game Masters!

    LoopysueQuentenRickoC.C. CharronjmabbottGlitch
  • [WIP] Town of Kukaar (Ancient Cities Annual)

    Finally had a chance today to add some names and some trees.


    LoopysueQuentenMonsenWyvernroflo1
  • [WIP] City of Wolfwell Falls (CA211 Watabou City Revisited)

    Following my test runs with the village of Greenwood Falls (population 920) and Redway Hill Township (population ~3,500), here's my attempt at a major city: Wolfwell Falls (population ~55,000).

    This is what Watabou gave me to work with:

    And this is what I came up with:

    Here's a close-up of the Castle District, which I figure is a bit more upscale.

    (I kind of messed up the river there. I when I did the "Change like drawing tool" command, I accidentally wasn't on the River/Water sheet, and I think when I fixed it I messed up the top layer or something.)

    The nicer neighborhoods have a lot more greenery. Most neighborhoods have more dirt than greenery, and the area by the docks is muddier.

    As predicted in the Redway Hill Towship thread, the longest part was redrawing the secondary roads. According to the Info: Count tool, there are 59 paved roads and 948 unpaved roads! I hope I successfully converted and/or deleted-and-redrew all of the roads. I had to do all of that, and also create a handful of special buildings, before being able to convert everything left to be the regular buildings. If you see any really weird buildings, it might be something I didn't properly convert to whatever it was supposed to be before turning it into a building.

    I should draw a lot more fields -- the ones on the north side of the city won't be enough to sustain a city of 55,000 people! (Also, I just noticed that I call it "Wolfwell Hall" on the map instead of Wolfwell Falls. Gotta fix that.)

    C.C. CharronLoopysueQuentenCalibreGlitch
  • [WIP] 1972 Travelogue (CA93 Modern Journeys)

    And here are some zoomed-in closeups:



    QuentenLoopysueC.C. CharronRaiko
  • [WIP] Playing around with Sinister Sewers

    Realized I didn't have any stains or scum, so added a bit. Really love how this template includes so many different effects options for adjusting the coloring.


    MonsenLoopysueRickoJimP
  • FT3 Question

    Ralf does demonstrate it at the end of this "Fractal Terrains to Parchment World" tutorial (around the 38 minute mark), using a full world Parchment Map that he had created the week before.


    JackTheMapperJimProflo1
  • [WIP] Community Atlas: Kumarikandam - SE Tiantang Region

    Here are the five above-ground levels of the Zhao Guang Si Temple (the basement will be separate).


    Toggle: LIGHTING layer to show/hide the red glow throughout most of the temple.

    Description

    At the Zhao Guang Si monastery, a five-story pagoda temple rises through the mists and clouds. The wooden walls are painted with a dark lacquer, and the lanterns are covered with a red gauze that gives the interior an ominous red glow. A center oaken beam rises through every floor, providing structural support for the temple. 

    First Floor

    The first floor is dominated by a 40-foot statue of a man sitting cross-legged. Although there are four windows, two on each wall flanking the statue, they generally remain closed and shuttered so that the only light comes from the red lanterns.

    Second Floor

    This floor consists primarily of a balcony overlooking the temple floor below. The statue is large enough to still be higher than the monks standing on the balcony. As with the other windows throughout the temple, the windows here are generally shuttered.

    Third Floor

    Except for a few closets for storing equipment, this floor primarily consists of a training room where trainees can spar with each other until they drop from exhaustion.

    Fourth Floor

    The library on this floor is the only room where the lanterns are not shrouded in red gauze, and the windows may remain open to allow for reading by daylight. 

    Fifth Floor

    The grandmaster has an office on this floor, but much of the floor is dedicated to the Chamber of Rituals, where it is said that senior monks may perform dark magic to enhance their abilities.


    LoopysueRickoJuanpi
  • [WIP] The Toy-Maker's North Pole Workshop

    Had to make some tweaks -- my originals were in a 4x5 ratio but in looking at card options, a 5x7 ratio seemed better. Decided the Christmas tree lights popped more on the nighttime version (especially after I moved the sheet they were on to render after the Point Light Finalize effect). And I decided to go with the stars instead of the galaxy so that the sky wouldn't draw focus from the rest of the image.

    Let me know if you spot anything weird before this gets sent off.


    LoopysueMonsenQuentenC.C. CharronCalibre