Mapmaking / help wanted
 

by the way, i'm looking for some help for my next one..
this time i did a new map from scratch, but i'm really not sure on how to cut it into provinces, how many of them, places some ports, farms, etc..

maybe some of you, who have much more experience on dominions than i have, want to collaborate for this map with me?

i join you the jpeg of the raw map, and you can place some line on it for defining province borders, and other details and we can discuss of it.. (maybe i can create a new post for that..)

(the full resolution file is in the archive)

Re: Isle of Thrones revamp version
 

Beautiful image. I look forward to the final map.

Generally most people (and map generators) like to draw borders around terrains to start with, and then chop those up if there is room.

The number of terrains can depend on how "large" a map you want this to be. Consider the number of nations in the eras, and in an average game how many provinces would each nation get before being forced into combat. The game considers small/medium/large maps to be 10/15/20 proves per player. If we look at early era its 24 nations. 21 land and 3 water. If they all played in a small game then the map would need to be about 240 provs, 210 land and 30 water. Here are some general numbers to consider...
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomizedMaps.htm
All of that is very general of course. All maps of all sizes are welcome.

If you want the games map editor to guess neighbors then it "sees" red no-transparency borders easiest. I like to set the borders to red, get an initial map, then change the borders to something more comfortable to look at. The editor also seems to be abit smarter with fat borders (which I hate) so for big maps it might be worthwhile to make a second image and an "edge" tool to add red to both sides of the red borders before running it thru the map editor. It can save alot of tweaking the neighbors later.

By the way, an edging tool in a paint program can often be set for a range of color then told to edge the water, the mountains, the plains. It can give a start on provinces. And avoid working in jpeg. Thats only for displaying the final product.

Re: Isle of Thrones revamp version
 

thank you a lot for these details gandalf, very instructing!
i didnt't know at all that the map editor guess provinces with red borders.. it can save a lot of time to work this way..

i see that a lot of MP games are run into ~200-240 provinces map.. maybe i will try to begin with this base.. and cut the province numbers into aproximately 1/3 for the top continent + island, and 2/3 for the south continent.

But i'm afraid it will be hard to make an equilibrate map with the continents setup..

edit: maybe it can be more clear if a moderator/admin can move this part of the discussion in a new topic, called "mapmaking / help wanted" or a thing like that..

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

done :)

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

i'm still working on my map, and really need some help with the borders drawing :D

here is the current state, with big red ugly borders..
i feel some of the borders / provinces connections are strange or need some workaround.. what are you guys thinking? any advices?

(higher definition file in the archive)

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

It looks fine.
Other than, why does a province in the lower right seem to have 2 white pixels?

Im guessing that the borders will be made prettier in the final product?

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

Borders are a bit too aggressive. Try using lighter color for it, like white, but make sure that it's not 255,255,255 kind of white as the game will interpret each dot of them as separate territory. Some light shade of white, maybe even gray color could do. Also, try to make borders a bit thinner. It should still make them visible but it won't disrupt much of the map's beauty.
The borders are only there for player to make territories easier to see, game doesn't care for borders and only uses territory dot's. In a way, you could say, that game is 'blind to borders'.

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

i explained it bad, sorry..
this is a working version to define the border.. i used these big red ugly lines so i can clearly see what i'm doing..
in the final version i will make things more pretty

edit:
in fact, my question was more about the shape of the provinces borders, number of neighborhoods, things like that..

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

Well, that part looks fine to me. :)

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

here is a preview of what i will do for the final version..

i can't decide myself for the medieval cartographic style, or the more "google earth" style.. both took me aproximately the same amount of time to draw (a lot.. :smash:)

i will begin with the cartographic one and see if i have enough motivation to finish the other one as well.. (i placed the forest/mountains not in the same place, so it will change all the borders...:doh:)

to come back to the province border drawing, i think it needs to be a little thiner.. and i will put the provinces names by hand, so it can have a nice medieval font..

mmm still a lot of work to do..

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/

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

in fact it was the non-existant water province with random aquatic nations.. but thank you anyway

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

I just loaded the map in Map Forge and it seems to do fine. It sounds like you might be running out of memory. If you have not tried it yet, close any additional, open programs and try again. If you receive the same error, give a system reboot a try.

Let me know if you are still having problems.

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

Many thanks for pointing me in this direction. :)

*watches free time go up in smoke*

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

Looks amazing!

Suggestion: Perhaps Screaming Forest should be broken up into say three provinces?

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

I think Screaming Forest is already 3 provinces, but looking at that I see some strangeness with the mountain provinces 61 & 68. They appear to be on/within the borders of Screaming Forest.

As a side note, provinces 4 & 18 seem to be missing a neighbor connection. They share a small stretch of border in the northeast corner.

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

I posted that link two years ago in the Tools and Tutorials sticky... :p

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

Yes, well, two years ago I had my hands full with other things related to Dominions, much more so than now. I have a good memory, but not that quite that good... :p

Thanks, though. :)

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

thank you, you were right, it was a memory problem, i had photoshop and illustrator open at the same time and the map file is huge with all the different layers, names, etc..

i worked a bit in mapforge (great utility, by the way) and put a first version of the map.. then i saw some missing province connections and wanted to open it again and i come to this error message "Unable to load map image /path of the file/.. Can't create autoredraw image"

any clue of what i'm doing wrong?

here is the file if it can help:
http://www.audioactivity.net/lain/et...ars_beta03.rar

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

"Can't create autoredraw image" once again sounds like it is related to a memory shortage. I loaded up the map several times on my pc with no trouble.

Hopefully it is just a matter of closing any unnecessary programs. I will try to find a solution with more tolerance for low memory machines in the next version.

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

mmm strange.. i run it on a 4gb ram laptop, approximately 3gb of free memory.. it must be more than enough..

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

I agree that is strange. :confused:

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

ok i resolved the problem by uninstall / reinstall mapforge.. maybe it was an error in a temp file somewhere..

and another question now :D
i inserted all the provinces names in map forge, but when i save the .map file, they are not inserted.. i was scary of having lost 2 hours of tedious work, but when i open the file again in mapforge, they are here.. strange.. any clues?

edit: nevermind, i opened the wrong file.. you can delete this post.. -_-'

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

Well, the best way to learn these things is doing something wrong once, because then the lesson stays with you that much better.

Glad you got it sorted out. :)

Re: Mapmaking / help wanted
 

thank you edi!

here is the last beta version of the map before i release it..

what i still need to work:
- the aquatic provinces seems a little bit unbalanced for now.. too much connections..
- maybe add a small forest or two, same with wastelands
- find any missing province connection..

don't hesitate to post your impressions / comments if you play a SP game on it!