The final stages of mapping took a bit longer than expected, as that top area, still incomplete last time, had been allocated more ruins and features than many other spots. Along with this, the additional minor stream channels were emplaced in the swamp too, with a few more shrubs and trees in places:

I'd always intended to replace the map border with something more rustic, like that for the Snakeden Swamp map earlier, and settled on the angled fence-line symbols from the options available in the CD3 Vector Shaded style. They also look like sharp teeth a little, a happy accident. Getting these to look right took quite a degree of trial and error though, and while the corners don't perfectly match on this final version, I was happy with that, because I didn't really want the frame to look too perfect anyway - Lizardfolk fences, after all!

After which it was time to start thinking of labelling the map, adding a north pointer and a scale. Unfortunately, there aren't options for the latter two in this style, so alternatives from what symbols were available had to be drafted-in, again with some experimentation, and tweaking of effects:

At this point, the pale brown lettering seemed fine. However, when some place-name labels started being added across the map, it rapidly became clear that both this colouring and the black shadow and glows were interfering with the effects on the mapped symbols, creating irritating bleed-through lines on parts of the text. More experiments followed to adjust both to something that was still sufficiently clear, yet which wasn't equally causing such problems. Which turned out to be this:

With this map finished, it's now time to head underground, since although the little square surface map with the cliff-line (the area now labelled as "Undercroft") was the original dice design that prompted these maps, it was obvious to me from the outset that the two cave entrances in the cliff would demand more attention - as to be shown next time, if all goes to plan!

Here we see the first segment of "new" ruins being added, around the originating dice-map segment in the lower centre-left:

It was at about this point I realised it was growing harder to define the road lines, and where the hill contours were, a problem that worsened when the vegetation scatter began to be added around those previously clearer areas. Thus a lengthy spell of experimentation, changing the effects and colouring involved, followed. That in turn needed more features adding elsewhere, using the central section adjoining that already completed, just to make sure everything still worked OK. The results of all that:

Which only brought up a further issue, as it's obvious that the reduced-resolution images are all looking rather too dark and messy now, especially over those ruined structures. So more experimentation followed with higher-res images and some antialiasing, to get to this degree of clarity (same image as above):

Following all of which, there wasn't much time to do more than a few further additions ahead of today's postings, which is where things are currently:

Not too far from completion now, at least, albeit still with the labelling to begin, not to mention those extra streams!

The surface map for Snakeden Hollow presented an unusual challenge, as there is no equivalent to the old CC2 style for city-type maps available with CC3+. Source Maps Cities - City Map is perhaps the closest we get, although the symbol options for that alone are rather limited, and don't have options to easily show, or create, ruins, which I'd need for what this map's to illustrate. Instead, I opted for the CD3 Vector Shaded style, using the Vector Classic symbols. These provide a very large range of options in a clean, simple, drawn look; in fact if anything, it's difficult to hold in mind exactly what's where among the series of extensive symbol catalogues in this style. There are five different sets of options just for trees, for example, each in a separate catalogue (there is a sixth, but I think that's a duplicate). As this wasn't a style I've done anything with before, I spent some time - the equivalent of a full mapping session - simply exploring the range of symbols available, and also the drawing tools, to get a better feel for what was available.

In the meantime, I'd also sketched out a general layout for the ruined settlement. The Inkwell dice design was to form one tiny segment of that whole, as I was influenced by the symbol from the Lizard Isle map that showed there to be a substantial ruin here. You can get an impression of the Inkwell design's appearance and original size from the Seer's Hall Village map in Ezrute (as this is the intact version of the Snakeden ruin die-face), discussed on the Forum here earlier. However, during the planning process for this map, I decided it might be better to double its size in this case, partly to stop it from being lost here, partly to make the surviving buildings a bit larger and more imposing. The Inkwell dice designs aren't specifically scaled, although there is a basic assumption that the subterranean ones will be scaled to around 100 feet per side.

That settlement sketch-plan was determined initially using the standard Shadowdark RPG's system for randomly generating settlements, as far as its layout and some additional major structures were concerned, with more additions from the old Judges Guild ruins system, presented almost 50 years ago now (groan...) in their first "Wilderlands" products, all tweaked appropriately. This led to the sketch-map becoming so cluttered and confused that even I'm not sure what all the scribbles mean now, thus I've avoided showing it on any of the following WIP images! I have though left the little Ruins dice sketch design on the first two screenshots, to help give a degree of orientation and scaling.

As with the area map, on creating the new CC3+ file, I found there were several sheets with effects already on them, so again this was going to be a more relatively sophisticated map than I'd earlier anticipated. The shots that follow are also of a reduced size, as previously, as they're really little more than impressions of progress at this stage. This one's with the base terrain colours and main streams sketched-in:

For a bit better clarity, I've turned off the transparency effect on the bitmap sheet with the dice-design sketch. The yellow-green towards the edges is the general swamp terrain, the darker green where the jungle-woods are going, and the "other" green is the basic background.

Next came the road-lines:

Again, these are simply to indicate the general layout at this point, and their relative widths. These were soon to be altered, as the widths were simplified here to get the lines drawn quickly.

Next, some contours were added to help suggest the "Hollow" aspect from the place-name - hence why those swampy patches were drawn as they were too - and the first elements from the Inkwell dice-face were added as well:

There are no suitable escarpment symbols available to fit what was needed here for the cliff-face, so I simply dropped one into the map at an appropriate scale size nearby, and drew a set of suitably-spaced and sized lines for the cliff-face as sketched, and then discarded the symbol.

Moving on, the rest of that small square segment was completed, a process that included finding and testing various of the rubble, ruins and similar options spread among several symbol catalogues. The perceptive may notice too an experiment in adding a second height contour to some of the hills. Ultimately, that was dropped as showing nothing useful, once more symbols and elements were filled-in elsewhere. It does feature on the next couple of images before that decision was made though.

There is a reason too why the ruins are chiefly on the southern side of that little square area, which will only be revealed later!

Various fresh symbol elements were added at this stage, including where the main Lizardfolk groups are situated across the settlement (hut clusters), a few more ruins and still-standing buildings, some of which were from the main new features randomly added during preparation, and the start of the vegetation symbols.

Of course, at this point, nothing is too firmly-fixed, but I was liking how the trees worked with the whole. Wasn't so sure about leaving the base vegetation colouring behind the trees at this point, although this was the stage I realised the higher contour colours just weren't working with the tree cover.

So this is where I'm up to currently, with all the trees set-up across the woody areas (there will be more elsewhere in time, though less densely), the higher contours gone, and decisions to be made next as to how best to show the swamp vegetation. More to follow...

Fascinating to see this discussion.

I did something similar to what Sue describes (without using the Blend Mode option), while taking advantage too of Sue's Transparent Dome symbols, a couple of years ago for the Faerie City of Embra in the Community Atlas. I used both round and square variants on the theme to "mist-out" the edges. This topic, on the village versions of the city, shows the circular variant, and all the maps can be viewed and downloaded via the Atlas website, of course (Embra Official Guide page). You can find all the other topics discussed with images on the Forum as well, should you wish - just search for "Embra"!

That adjustment process mentioned previously ended-up spread over several days, as time wasn't available to try to do everything together otherwise. Thus there's just the one version showing the end product of all that, after some further vegetation and streams had been added. I did at least manage to slip in a couple of streams that simply vanish into the swamps though, instead of continuing off-map, which is something I wanted to do from quite early on.

I'd thought initially that simply the faded outer ring of basic terrain would be sufficient to indicate the fully-mapped central zone. As the mapping proceeded though, it grew more obvious that that wasn't enough, so I'd started thinking of alternatives from quite an early stage, without settling on anything definite (hence the continued absence of anything like this so far). Now, I felt what was needed was a new frame of some kind, yet one which wouldn't have the hard cut-off of the traditional map border, because it was going to go inside the whole map, surrounding that middle square.

What I chose was a heavily rescaled version of one of the bamboo symbols, with separate X and Y axis adjustments, placed as if done quite casually. That though also made the original outer frame redundant, so it was swapped out for a simpler coloured line instead to give this:

The bamboo poles were placed on the CARTOUCHES sheet, which already had a helpful Drop Shadow effect on it, which with a suitable adjustment, is what we see here. When I began adding labels to the final map version though, I found this new bamboo frame - which already looks a little too awkwardly small and close to the feature markers in places - needed a further slight enlargement. After that a few further changes were needed on the map, to help get a better placement for the labels, and also to correct a few errors in the symbols when checking again with my descriptive notes. Plus some extra embellishments were added to complete the map - as I just couldn't get away without adding a couple of those CA monster symbols after all!

Eventually, there will be text and PDF files on all this for the Atlas version, once I've fully deciphered my hand-scrawled notes, as there are still more maps to prepare in this area, as we zoom-in to Snakeden Hollow and those ruins that started it all...