Thanks Wyvern :)

I really meant the right look being similar enough to DD3 that the styles wouldn't clash and could be used together. It's a fine line between getting it too close, and not close enough. I want to be able to show a certain amount of detail, but too much makes them look too different. For example, the existing amphora is pretty homogenously coloured and textured, so if I start adding too many stains and too much dirt (though I will try to add some at least) or go too authentically grey-pink or white instead of orange, they just won't look right with DD3 assets.

I looked into how they used to seal them because I was concerned about that as well. It seems that back in the beginning they tried straw and wool and such, but later they were cork bungs. They couldn't really use much else because most of what was transported in them was wine and olive oil, and wine in particular goes bad really fast if too much fresh air gets into it in transit.

The inside walls were often waxed, or glazed in later times, and if they weren't then the inside walls would be even darker than you might expect with all that wine and olive oil soaking into them.

These are all too pink by far, but retexturing is nothing compared to adding handles, and I only have one more to do. I picked the 5 most variable amphorae. Doing more than that would seem to be a bit excessive - especially since there will be 3 versions of each one. Whole and lying on its side, whole and standing slightly on a tilt as if stacked in a ship's hold, and of course broken. That's 15 symbols that are all amphora!

Regarding the use of the pointy end bit. It is said that they were pointed like that to make it easier to stand them in sand, and one source suggested that ships stood them upright in a bed of sand! That I find seriously doubtful, since adding a large enough volume of sand would be such a huge amount of ballast as to be likely to sink the ship without adding the cargo itself. However, if you look at the shape of them you can see that it wouldn't be too difficult to store them in wooden racking, possibly built around them during loading, and if you look even closer you can see that a double row end to end would interlock if they were lying flat or against the inside of the hull and all the same type.

There's a second one on the way now I've worked out all the bugs involved in creating them, but that one will be smaller. Big urn and little urn :P

Posh memorials.

When mummifying things you need all kinds of stuff, like loads of salt to start with. We have lots of barrels already in DD3, but only one amphora. Since these were still used to transport and store stuff in the middle ages, I'll make a couple of them too, so you can have a bit more variety than just the one currently in DD3.

As for the amphorae, they will be easier and faster to make (I hope) since they aren't so highly detailed and completely unpainted. I just have to decide how many of these to do. I guess it depends how many I can finish before the end of tomorrow. Time limits are important, or I just go a bit crazy creating lots of one kind of thing.

A couple of nice looking maps :)

There's nothing wrong or lazy about using CC3 assets in an alternative app. I used to make a lot of hybrid CC3-GIMP maps myself before my time was swallowed up by asset creation. However, I draw the line at Inkscape, which I loathe with a passion! Personal preference, though ;)

Another work of art, Ricko :)

If I might suggest something, though, it would be to use a related but more simplified font for the legend. Very ornate text can sometimes be a bit difficult to read when it is all packed together like that.

I imported them at 200 px per map unit, so you can make them larger if you want, but I think they might be a bit obvious at full size if you are trying to hide them among the fragments. Full size would be if you want them to be noticed straight away.

I think it looks pretty good :)

You can change the colour of the cliffs using either an Adjust Hue/Saturation or Colorize sheet effect on that sheet. While these effects don't normally work with symbols they will with the cliffs because the cliffs have map files.

You're welcome :)

All I did was draw the white polygon. That's the only difference. I figured that I could sort the sheets into a more logical order for you, but I decided not to mess with them, because my logical order probably won't be the same as your logical order.

If you want to make the screen broader I recommend temporarily changing the view window colour to something other than white so that you can see what you're doing. Go to View->View Window Color and pick it.

Look at the command line and it will say:

"color #[15]:"

That's white. Remember that so you can go back to it.

Type 0 (zero) and hit enter. That will turn your view window black, so that you can see the white polygon on the SCREEN sheet.

Now that you can see it you can use the node move tool to pick the corners and move them outward to wherever you want them to be. Turn snap on and you can have everything neat and tidy.

I don't recommend using huge fat wide screens because if you zoom to extents you will get an awfully wide swathe of white space and your map will be tiny. It may be worth the time and effort of editing that one piece that sticks out to tuck it under the existing screen.

When you have finished adjusting the screen you can change the view window colour back to white the same way that you turned it black.

Asian Town

If you try to use the House tool to draw a long thin building it crashes every time.

Here is an FCW showing at what point the crash happens. (I saved after each successively longer building and attached the file once it crashed).

The limit seems to be somewhere around 120 feet long.

The reason such very long buildings are quite likely to be drawn is that the Mapping Guide indicates using them to draw the city walls. I noticed that the example map for that style has a building that is 175 feet long. I was trying to separate it out from the rest of the wall to take a screen shot of it with a result of the Distance tool to show you, when moving it caused a crash. Maybe it is something that has happened since the publication of Asian Town in November 2018?

That's a good idea, Quenten.

@jmabbott I would put a modified selection in front of them made up of all the ones you think would be more suitable, and explain the problem with using a more detailed style printed so tiny.

Hi everyone! :)

Ralf's back from a distant and slightly soggy holiday in the Outer Hebrides, and ready to take on another Live Mapping session. This week he will be demonstrating the Creepy Crypts style from the June Annual issue.

Come along and join in the fun! :)