Nice work, Ede :)

I think the black spots showing through are something we call transparency acne. It's caused by incidental match between the colour of an underlying pixel and the current sheet, so something under the grass sheet is causing bits of it to 'drop out'. It's a weakness of the current rendering engine - one that we hope to put right in the future, but for now I have updated the fills of that style to try and prevent this from happening.

It might be ok on this map, but if you want to make it easier to prevent this kind of thing happening again in the future on other maps, where it might not be so desirable, you could try re-downloading the issue and reinstalling it to get the improved textures.

If you have already done that, then the TA is probably being caused by a sheet effect on the underlying sheets. At present there is no cure for that except a separation sheet. If you need one in the future, a separation sheet works a bit like carpet underlay, if you imagine the dead grass as the carpet. You create a new sheet underneath the dead grass, copy the dead grass polygon to the new sheet, turn the polygons on the new sheet to solid, colour number 227 using the Change Properties tool, and add a slightly larger edge fade inner effect to prevent it from showing around the edges of the dry grass.

That's a good start, Glitch, though I recommend having a second look at how tiny the tree symbols are in relation to other things on the map. Symbols don't have to look like they are the correct scale compared to everything else. The more important job of a symol is that it is large enough to be easily recognised for what it is at a glance. That is why most fantasy styles have mountains that seem to be too small compared to the rest of the set, and trees that are larger than life. It's so that both can be easily recognised while only taking up as much space as they need.

The mountain range looks fine to me.

As with all art techniques, there are as many variations of ink and wash as there are artists who practice it. I googled it to pick up some examples, but really there are so many different individual styles that its just easier to paste the search.

I notice how the lines are changing colour on you there.

Have you considered putting the colours as the background and multiplying everything else (paper and lines) over the top of them?

No. I was suggesting a rearrangement of the sheets. But I don't think it would work because your lines are too pale to not pick up the colour and go bright green or blue.

Which blend mode are you using?

Another possible solution is to put the lines on top of the colour and remove any transparency, but I think that would probably cause new and different issues.

Don't worry about it too much, Hans. I think I woke up in an extra nit-picky mood this morning. The effect you have achieved is something amazing as it is.

Well, then - I was trying to solve a problem that didn't exist ;)

It's always a question of whether to design a template based on older templates, or to change the design in a way that better suits the style.

In the case of Darklands City it was easier to put the effects on the water generally, with the added bonus that you can run terrain under a river and not have to have a sandy beach the same width all the way around.

But if you prefer to swap things around to suit your map better, that's fine too :)

If you were using a vector style it really wouldn't matter what size you printed it, other than it being necessary to consider the Level of Detail. A town map printed on A4 would be better drawn to just show just the outlines of the buildings, whereas the same town map printed the size of a wall would look a bit blank if you didn't add all the chimneys, lose tiles and bird's nests. That's Level of Detail, and it's important to get it right for the size of the end product.

A style that makes use of bitmap fills and symbols is limited by the resolution of the fills and symbols, so you have to be careful not to print it so large that the individual pixels of the original artwork start to show. This has nothing to do with the resolution of the print. You can't print a symbol that is 100 x 100px at such an enlarged scale that it is effectively 1000 x 1000 px and expect not to see the enlarged pixels of that tiny symbol as little squares.

The best way to find out is to print a small sample of the map at the desired size and see how the bitmaps hold up.

Currently working on the ruiny bits for part 2...

Nice map with what is available so far, Remy :)

Hello Keth :)

The coastline is a separate polygon on the COASTLINE sheet, while the land is drawn on the LAND sheet. If you open the Sheets and Effects dialog |CC2SHEETS| you can pick either one of these, hide all the rest, and Apply to see what I mean.

If you are editing the land mass with the Change Properties tool, you may find that you are turning both of those polygons the same fill, so that it looks like you have lost one of them. Check how many entities are selected in the command line at the bottom just before you pick Do It.

If you really want the land base to be ice/snow, rather than the default green land, it is best to hide the COASTLINE sheet before you change it, and then show it again afterwards.