Thanks Ralf; as we've discussed before, it's always best to make sure about these things!

Very kind Sue. I'll have a rethink and maybe PM you if something occurs. I had a couple of other ideas, but the TT one came to me earlier today as a simpler possibility.

At typical overland map-scales, the second version of the gum tree could also pass quite well for a silver birch.

All looking great, as usual! ?

Great looking map so far.

I'm not keen on the altitude scale being on the later version though, as it's hiding part of the ocean current flows there.

Stating the scale of the map (1:XXXXX - whatever it is) might be more useful than a physical scale that's accurate only for the equator, but the latter could be helpful to give a rough idea of the planet size involved, as Monsen noted.

I just gave simple "Drift" names to a couple of the main currents on my Errynor/NW Alarius map, based on Earthly examples, so inventing more names for the major currents elsewhere would seem very reasonable.

Similarly, continent names for the larger landmasses would seem in-keeping with this pattern.

I suspect most prior mappers, like myself, have tended to assume similar major prevailing wind patterns to Earth's. So, NW Alarius is essentially Europe, and Alarius overall would probably see weather patterns similar to Europe-Asia. Beyond that though, things become a bit trickier, as the parallels with Earth aren't so exact, particularly the smaller seas between most of the continents. Be interesting to see what you come up with, however!

@WeathermanSweden: I think Quenten's provided you with more real-world ideas than you can likely use right now for ocean current names, though of course the names have changed over time in places, and a lot have regional (local language) variants too. The latter might be interesting to explore for Nibirum, perhaps.

I picked "Drift" names for the two main currents I showed, partly because the North Atlantic Drift, the northern part of the Gulf Stream, is relatively familiar from my own time studying geography from/in the UK, and partly because I was dealing with relatively near-coastal areas, where less-active oceanic water streams seemed appropriate. I have much interest in mapping the ocean floors in fantasy terms, and the civilisations based there, so adding some current activity was largely automatic.

With aspects like the altitude colour-key, I tend to add them on a map only where they won't be hiding anything that should be better shown. [It irritates me when published real-world maps aren't given the same consideration!] Otherwise, I simply set them in a separate side-bar of their own alongside (or below) the map. That has the further advantage they can be expanded to be easier to read, and other features, such as a scale, or notes on the map, can be added there as well. So here, you might add a key for the current arrow colours (and possibly the prevailing wind arrows, if these will be added to the same map), for instance, and maybe quantify what the different line thicknesses refer to, if relevant.

As Nibirum has more-or-less Earth-like seasons, is it worth considering a pair of maps for the alternate half-yearly views of the currents and weather systems? There are differences on Earth like this, though it does mean a lot more thinking-through of ideas than maybe is warranted for a fantasy world.

Thanks Remy. That's a bit disappointing, but trade-offs like this have to happen, I suppose. I'm still just using the Rich editor (that was the default originally, as far as I recall). Don't have a lot of spare time/energy for further experimentation currently...

Unfortunately, the fills aren't included with this Annual as far as I can tell. From the Mapping Guide with this issue:

"If you do not own Dungeon Designer 3, you can still use the png and pdf versions of the maps, as well as the adventure description of the ship. To create your own ships you will need a copy of DD3 though."

The missing fill is definitely a DD3 one, Water Blue 5 Bitmap (or if not that exactly, it's one from the same Bitmap group).

DD3 is indeed a separate ProFantasy product.

@Medio: I think you should probably post whatever you're comfortable in showing. I don't really do WIP threads myself, as I tend to chop and change things while I'm mapping, and that's all done offline, but it is interesting to follow others' process in this regard.

The size of the trees you select should ultimately come down to whether they make the map easier to read quickly, or not. Personally, I like the mix of sizes, and the background colouring for the forests, in your second Sep 20 map posting above.

To my eye, the forests in your Sep 21 map no longer look as clear. However, you need to go with what works best for you ?

Finally got round to watching this on catch-up tonight, and very good it was too!

Nothing particularly new there for me for once, but as Sue said in the chat, it's an excellent resource now to point out for other people regarding importing fills and symbols into a different style map, for example.

And I never cease to be impressed by how much you and Ralf are able to suppress yourselves when something goes awry! There's a lesson for the rest of us there too, perhaps ?

You could use the map divisions as your scale, though as the map's rectangular, you'd need to pick the one that works best only for that, and just add a note on the outside edge of the map border to say what the scale is. Adding a scale bar - it's easy enough to draw your own if the symbol option for the style doesn't appeal, for instance - might be a better alternative here though.

Are the different land colours intended to show approximate contour levels? Or are they for vegetation background effect? If the former, maybe think of adding a height key. If the latter, then I'd agree with Sue that the trees may need adjusting, as they seem too sparsely scattered for clarity otherwise.

Sorry @jmabbott; didn't intend to make it look like I'd ignored your Oct 7 reply to me, but for some reason (and I think Sue's raised the point previously), it didn't show up when I visited the Forum yesterday, and indeed I only discovered it today because there was a new Notification about it which weirdly wasn't there yesterday, or when I first came to the Forum today! Oddly, the bitmap discussion posts, including that with your grey-dot PNG WERE there though then!

The early D&D maps everywhere were a real mish-mash. The very first one I ever saw, before I even saw the rules, was published in the May '76 issue of Games & Puzzles magazine, part of an article on D&D by Steve Jackson (of the original Games Workshop). That was beautifully hand-drawn, with nice scribble-sketched filling for the solid rock, but there wasn't even a scale on it, let alone a grid! The sample dungeon level on page 5 of "The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures", Vol.3 of the original three 1974 booklets (white box for me, in '76!), was sketchily hand-drawn with solid black for the rock, and plain white passages and rooms, but again, neither scale nor grid. Then the maps in Dave Arneson's extensive "The Temple of the Frog" wilderness and dungeon adventure in Blackmoor Supplement II (1975 - mine's the '78 5th reprint!) each have a hugely invasive square grid across all parts of every map - to the point where some parts of the map become more or less illegible, because even the parts with squared walls are slightly offset to the grid, and the grid's just so dominant. Yet even there, none have a scale! There are a few corridor and room sizes mentioned in the text details, though the place-names mentioned in the text aren't always shown on the maps either. I think I came to the decision the squares had to be 10 feet across when I ran part of it. Seems incredible looking back though - and can you imagine the uproar online if WotC did that now?!

On the black-background PNG, I've noticed for some time that the default Win 10 image viewer, "Photos" currently, I think, has an irritating tendency to add a black background to any transparent background PNGs that are fairly light-coloured. While this is handy for white-on-white images, it's off-putting when you see the thumbnails in File Explorer suddenly with black backgrounds you know you didn't put there. I wonder if something like that's happened here?