Wyvern
Wyvern
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A Monastery by the Sea
Often, shadowing problems like this can be improved by softening the appearance of the shadows, to make them more subtle (increased transparency, reduced size, altered colouring, adjusted blurring are all possibilities).
The bridge shadow's showing an odd gap, and its presence illustrates that a shadow effect stacked on another one starts to look odd - the bridge is further from the sea than the cliff bases, yet its shadow is more distinct, for instance.
One option to escape that double-shadowing trap might be to use the existing shadow effect lines and areas to redraw the shadow as a separate polygon, and then turn off the shadow effects entirely. Using one of the "Solid" bitmap fills might work for this, or just a normal darker grey polygon with a suitable transparency effect.
There's also the possibility of adding some extra shadow effects to the little rocks in the sea, as they currently don't have any shadows, which makes them look a little odd where they're exposed to the light. If they're all only low-lying rocks though, they'd cast negligible shadows from this viewpoint anyway, so that may be a shadow effect too far ๐.
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Looking for ships wheel png
You could simply draw your own, using polygons of the wooden bitmap fills in the Sailing Ship Annual (CA27). There are some odd symbol omissions from that Annual issue in general, which could perhaps be remedied by a future updated version (pretty please!) ๐.
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[WIP] Community Atlas: Temple of Nidag, Stormwatch, Emerald Crown Forest, Alarius
Returning to the Stormwatch map, I copied the positions of the rooftop chimneys to a new BITMAP sheet in the Nidag Temple Surface map, so they'd appear above the wall lines, using simple purple squares:
Since these only illustrate the rooftop flue outlets, the actual locations of the internal fireplaces can be a little different to this, and of course two fireplaces might even use the same flue, so allowing for some flexibility. Zooming-in to just the two buildings with the internal walls shows how I opted to set-up the fireplaces in these, based on where the purple squares were:
This also provides a clearer view of exactly how the interiors were being set-up. All very basic still, with just the essential main structural elements.
My initial aim with the interiors was to lay out just the access-points for the lower level dungeon design, as the next two snapshots illustrate:
It's possible other properties may yet link with the subterranean places, because, as commonly, more ideas were forming regarding the general layout, beyond the vaguer ones I'd already had - such as the angled section containing parts of an inn-like structure, with separate rooming-houses, loosely mirroring the higher-class rooms of the underground directly beneath them. Surface houses too for some of the priests, to help keep up the pretence, as well as other houses for the ostensible religion's followers above the various underground areas, who wouldn't be reporting unusual sounds from below to the authorities, of course!
Today's final shot shows that part of the area linking several properties has been dirt-paved, where there was once just a track, given that vegetation would be unlikely to long survive repeated foot-passage by priests and worshipful members of the Fellowship, aside from the relatively brief spring and summer at these northerly latitudes. Plus one more property has been "developed" with its initial internal fitments:
And yes, this does mean another surface map level will be needed for the new upper storey to this property (and others to follow!).
The thinking at present, incidentally, is that there'll be two priestly residences "above" the temple entrance ones (that's actually west, remembering north now lies to the right in this map view), and the new two-level building north of them will be a follower's house. In the angled segment, the only building with an interior thus far is a kitchen for both the surface inn and the subterranean kitchen, to disguise regular food deliveries below, and so forth. The long property below-right of the kitchen will be the dining hall/bar, and the rest of the properties along both sides of the track there will be other parts of the inn. These are not intended to be all connected, although some may be. Ideas are still developing...
Not sure I shall get much more done next week, but I'll report back on progress at some point soon(ish), with luck.
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Live Mapping: Cosmographer System Map *** NEW second attempt ***
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Returning to mapping





