Day 200 of 2023 seemed an apt moment for a fresh update on this project, so here we are, whole map first:

Further tweaking of labels and minor map features has proceeded apace since my late June update, and the type-up of my notes is in the early part of the University, area 259, currently, while the hand-scrawled preparatory notes are nearing the end of the Manufacturing District, area 293. Still a way from the area 360 end, but well up on the area 200 the day per area idea might have indicated otherwise 😁. (And yes, I STILL haven't got round to adding a symbol key or map title...)

For today's closer look, following last month's minor temptational mention, we have the extracted PDF notes for the less-well-off living areas of the Hall in The Dell, areas 191-224:

All being well, still more to follow!

Meanwhile elsewhere, most folks I'm aware of who were trying the D23 project seem to have been struggling to continue it of late. Some recent discussions on one of my more active Discords, where D23 was A Thing earlier, have indicated no one there's still persisting unfortunately, although a couple of folks on a separate Discord server were still posting occasional updates into early July at least. Certainly, having the base map and ideas for every area randomly generated in advance, as I did, seems to have helped keep my attention focused at least, so that might be a way to go for anyone contemplating something similar later this year or next, or on a smaller scale, for instance.

The East Wing runs to a mere two vertical Levels by contrast, based on images of a couple of layouts on the DF Discord, combined here with the usual additions and amendments, for all the final plans are much simpler than for either of the preceding pair of Wings, and clearly show their rectilinear original forms rather more. This was though quite deliberate, as part of the concept of the various Wings was to show differences between them, suggesting they could likely be put to different uses, and that this area was probably still largely under construction. Plus it wasn't only the layouts that had been getting figuratively tied in knots with some of the other maps!

Simplicity only counts for so much though, so the entryway from the Palace this time isn't on Level 1, but on the lower Level 2 (which is also a somewhat larger map than the others):

Yes, it's coming up to that time isn't it? So here's my final version of Cloven House, firstly with the secret cave hidden, and then revealed:

This will be winging its way to Remy for the Atlas shortly, with its text and PDF notes, but in case anyone might be interested, the PDF description is here as well, should anyone wish to be "enlightened" further on the nature of this haunted house:

Worth noting though that a few comments are a trifle "adults only", concerning a couple of the potential apparitions and other ghoulish elements.

Place 2 is the "famous" Red Picket Golf Course (given Embra is, extremely loosely, derived ultimately from the real city of Edinburgh in Scotland, it proved impossible not to include something relating to golf in these maps of the Faerie city):

This time, there is the option to hide the labels for the course separately from any other map labels, to make the various hazards and obstacles easier to see, although the labelling is essential to work out what is meant to be where in terms of trying to complete the course:

A small key has been provided with this map as well, to better clarify what the recurrent features of the course are meant to be. The PDF and text files for this map describe in detail the Faerie elements of the course, which plays as something like a cross between "real" golf and miniature or crazy golf, with fantasy aspects to-boot. Of course, those descriptions also explain why the course seems both a lot smaller and shorter than real-world golf courses (key word "seems"...), and that it may take players, non-Faerie players especially, days to complete a round of the nine holes. Benefits may accrue for those who do persist and finish the course, however. And they may find their time has not been nearly so wasted as they may have felt while still playing (Faerie time-dilation can work both ways, after all).

There are just a couple of buildings on the map, and these have been provided with internal-layout drawings via a couple more toggles in the Atlas FCW file for the ground floor, and the upper storey of the Clubhouse (only):

Completing the circuit is Embra - Summerset in the northwest, with its small village of single-storey properties, the River Clack with a bridge (albeit the bridge seems detached from the village rather), both the main Clack Valley tributaries, plus a curiously unlabelled third tributary stream, which seems more significant than the named Silverburn (a deliberate choice!). However, dominating the map's centre are two substantial lakes and a marsh:

Next-up will be the first of Embra city's contents, the Enclosed Places.

It's certainly a very beautiful map, and I know well how difficult it is to find a suitable real-world base map from which to draw this region, so I think you've done a splendid job with it!

As Sue said, the seas look a little "double-exposed" currently though.

How historically-accurate were you intending to be with it?

I ask, as ancient Mesopotamia is a particular place of interest for me, especially around the 3rd-2nd millennia BCE, along with the Black Sea and places adjacent around the 2nd-early 1st millennia BCE, and east to what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan and western India. They're places I've mapped and studied in some detail previously, and there are points I could make which might be of use, though only if you were wanting it to be more historical.

The river lines are very complex, particularly if you're going for that historical route, and a specific time-frame. The Tigris has pretty much held its course over the millennia, largely thanks to a stonier bed, but the Euphrates has drifted hither and yon across the silts of southern Mesopotamia especially, encouraged by deliberately-dug irrigation canals in places, beginning around the later 4th millennium BCE, for instance.

I know when I started out trying to map parts of this region, something that surprised me was how poorly different published atlas maps compared with one another as regards the modern watercourses, especially for anything other than the major river channels, even in the specialist (i.e. archaeological-historical) literature.

Thanks Jim!

And thanks for the explanation, Remy. I appreciate fonts can be problematic in CC3+ at times, although in this case, the two ocean labels seemed to have changed far less than the placement of the four numerals and their associated snowflake markers, which had moved closer to the labels - on the version above here, much closer - than where they were set on the CC3+ drawing. Interestingly, on the higher res printout I did, the texts hadn't altered at all, so far as I could tell, but the earlier placement of the four markers and labels was wrong; not by so much as the lower res version above, but very noticeably all the same. Which does make me think still that it's been primarily a proximity issue along the same horizontal lines (maybe because both the snowflake and ocean text labels were placed using the same horizontal snap-grid placement). Odd the snowflakes should have dragged the numerals with them all the same, as they're not grouped, just individually placed, and the numerals aren't all on the same horizontal lines. Just one of life's little mysteries, perhaps ?

I had another look at the Locations map again today anyway, and decided to try moving just the numerals and markers further out from the labels, and that seems to have worked OK:

The separation is now only about twice what it was previously, yet as you can see, the difference in where they appear is very much greater, and almost exactly where the markers currently are in the FCW file, as well as on the higher res jpg and printout I tried.

Final checking of the accompanying texts is still to complete, but I'm hopeful of having the set ready to submit by maybe tomorrow or Saturday.

When hunting for maps today to assist a colleague on an ancient history forum, I happened upon this page on Kemble: The Anglo-Saxon Charters Website, which has links to a host of beautiful, sometimes annotated, hand-drawn, black-and white maps of Anglo-Saxon England, all done by the cartographer Reginald Pigott for various books in the early 21st century. They're especially valuable, as some show the established, or best-estimated, extents of features like forests, marshlands, and coastlines, many of which have altered since the 7th to 11th centuries CE. They're free to download for personal use, and are well worth a look.

OK, maybe try this.

1) Set up a suitably-sized snap grid that'll let you draw squares of the exact size you need, and keep the snap grid turned on.

2) Draw an outline square of the size you require, with the line thickness you need it to be, using the snap grid.

3) Copy that square, and paste it immediately below the first one. Again, the snap grid is your friend.

4) Then paste another line of two squares to the right of the first two, with the half-square offset required. You may need to adjust your snap grid to allow this correctly.

5) This gives you a base of four squares in the correct pattern that you can then copy, making a larger area of squares with the necessary offset. Depending on how large an area of squares you need, once you have a larger part of the pattern available, you can simply copy said larger number of squares to speed things up. If you group the batches of squares too, that will make copying the groups easier.

6) Once you've filled the area you need with the offset squares pattern, save this as your base file that you can then open and re-save each time you want to draw a map using this offset grid.

By using the snap grid and basic commands like grouping the areas of squares, the whole process should be pretty quick to do, and hopefully fairly problem-free.

[Edited this where boldfaced, as I realised after posting that the pattern actually needs a four-square group, not a five as I originally suggested! (Otherwise you end up repeatedly overlapping the column with three squares in it.)]

Sorry to be late replying. The simple answer is "no", because the render export will always use the larger value for the larger map edge in a rectangular JPG export, and hold the other to the correct proportion accordingly.

This may mean having to switch the orientation before printing, depending on exactly how the image is to be printed, but when creating just the image file, that's irrelevant.

I always put the same value in both, because it save me worrying about which edge might be marginally longer in some almost square maps, or (and this is more likely!) me entering the wrong value for the obviously longer side because I forgot which box was which in the export pane!