Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

Ooh, really, really hard to decide, there, Lain. They're both gorgeous, and, aside from the burden on you, I'd cry out, "both!" But, if you *had* to go with one, I'd say the cartographic one seems more visually-tame and easy to see units and graphics and so forth against.

Again, though, in both cases, gorgeous work.

EDIT: Oh, and I think the borders on the cartographic one are perfect.

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

Cartographic one here as well. Both are great though.

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

Actually according to Johan, the game "sees" red borders. Mostly just if you want the map editor inside the game try to assign neighbors. So using full red with no transparency is a good option for working the map.

Of course, I always HIGHLY recommend remembering to change that before making it available to users. :)
My personal preference is a light semi-transparent green for land, and a light semi-transparent blue or cyan for water.

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

Once again linlin, wow!
Both are great, but if I had to choose one it would be the cartographic. :)

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

Hmm, I didn't know that. Is that something that changed with patches or was it in beta as well?

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

Like the others I can't offer any help or collaborative work on this, linlin, but I appreciate your efforts as well. Personally, I'd say that you shouldn't use pure red borders, they look ugly as they break up the graphics too much. The slightly differently toned borders that you use for underwater provinces are way better to the eye. I heard that the game does use some edge detection for pure red borders to automatically assign neighborship information, too, like it could be seen with early Dom1 maps already, but that algorithm is very inefficient and flawed anyway, so before you release the map you're better off with assigning the neighbors by hand in any case.

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

The cartographic version is what I prefer, though both maps are amazing. Stunning, actually. :D

What program do you use for drawing the maps?

And, if one may ask, would be willing to share possible graphics components? If not, please forgive the presumption.

The reason I do ask that is that I absolutely suck at drawing graphics of my own but have found myself in need of such things so I can create some maps of my own.

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

http://www.audioactivity.net/lain/ew_test_web.jpg

i assigned quickly the provinces so i can beta test the map before going to far..

but i don't understand something..

i defined 10 #start in the .map file, but i'm allowed to create a new game on it only with 5 players or else dominion crash with a message "can't find a valid starting province"

any clues?

and if i try to import it into the map editor by ballbarian, it says my image is not valid.. is it because of the large dimensions of the TGA ?

still a lot work to do:

- drawing the borders better with illustrator
- inserting some magic sites in the editor and visually on the map
- working the water provinces
- adjusting some borders
- i'm sure i miss some provinces connections..
- add some small rivers
- add some bridges (?)
- the east part of the southern continent is a little bit blank
- last finitions on the drawing of the map..

it would be great to have your advices/comments

the best would be if any of you would like to play a solo game on this beta version and tell me if there is any error / things to change.. :D

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

It has a preference for certain terrains matching certain nations. Maybe it cant find a swamp for ctis?
Im not sure if thats a crashing offense but its all I can think of so far

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

I begin with a hand drawing of the general shape, then work on it with photoshop and/or illustrator.. i collected a nice set of brushes for mountains, trees, and so..

you can find a lot of these brushes, and many amazing tutorials for map drawing in this forum: (it's from there that i get a lot of my inspiration..)

http://forum.cartographersguild.com/