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The map discussion

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
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28,024
The map discussion!

First, here is the full screen map:
http://img512.imageshack.us/my.php?image=map05ane3.jpg

As for my goals, they are simple and shallow: give you guys something pretty to look at while you are choosing which location to raid and burn down next. You don't travel manually. You click on one of the known locations and are magically transported there, assuming that your journey wasn't interrupted by a not-so-random encounter.

From that point of view, I really couldn't care less if the mountains are in a perfect alignment with the craters, but apparently many of you do care, so give me specific instructions on what you'd like see tweaked/changed and I'll see if it's doable. Saying "teh craters are all wrong!" won't help me/you. Detailed instructions or, better yet, your own photoshop sketches, based on the picture above, will.
 

hiciacit

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I've been there

MF

The Boar Studio
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For me it's not the perspective so much as it is the photorealistic look versus the artist-drawing look of the mountains. Something like this might go a long way :

map2.jpg
 

cardtrick

Arbiter
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Apr 26, 2007
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Maine
I like the direction that MF's edit is going in, but not so much the execution. It's too obviously a Photoshop filter. The map is fine as it is - it certainly makes me excited to explore, which is all that really matters.

I only think it's worth changing if you were going to completely revolutionize it, in which case my preference would be for a pre-apocalypse map in which the basic land structures, oceans, ancient cities, etc. are drawn beautifully by a master cartographer . . . and in the intervening years, some hack has badly sketched over it, crossing out towns, drawing in craters, perhaps scrawling warnings about dangerous areas.
 

galsiah

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Montreal
callehe said:
how the hell can a river start to form in a forest lowland? To the best of my knowledge, rivers starts as rainwater falling on the mountains. They often start out small from many branches and then gathers up to a wider river until they reach the sea, and maybe form a delta.
make the river start from the mountains up north, that would make much more sense.
The way I see it, part of it did. What do you think all that white stuff is? To me it looks like dried up lakes/river bed - with the northern tendril heading to the northern mountain range. It's probably intended to look odd - in the same way that the craters and that gash in the North-East do: the land has been torn apart by magical war. The map is supposed to show the extent of the carnage: the power was enough to change the course of rivers, crater and gash the landscape etc. etc.

In fact:
Iron Tower Website said:
The cities lay in ruin, the rivers did no longer flow, the mountains had tumbled, and the dead did strew the whole land.
It looks to me like the artist actually read the world background.

(Oh, and I'm pretty sure the current river is supposed to be flowing through the forest - only you can't see it because the forest is in the way. Maybe that's not credible (it'd have to be a narrow river). Maybe the forest obscures an enormous forested delta.)
 

Jora

Arcane
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Mar 14, 2003
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Finland
After staring at the picture for a long time I have come to the conclusion that the perspective isn't wrong. It's the irregular forms of the craters that creates the illusion of inaccuracy. I think it should be kept as it is. The craters aren't too different from the rest of the image, and the painting look is much more... immersive? romantic? inspiring? than a straight top-down view would be.
 
Joined
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Messages
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The region somehow does not look real. Most things seem placed, instead of evolved. Or maybe the word is organic? They do not seem to be here by accident or cataclism, and it does not flow. Also most "damage" seems to be concentrated in just one place that looks pasted over the map, instead of the natural result of some massive force over the landscape. And why are those craters so well aligned? Make them slightly more random and spread out.

Also, there seems to be a focused area, and some filler. The detail level changes greatly between them. If you can, stay with the crater area and those placed west, northeast, and south, and take out the rest of it. It looks like after that part the artist ran out of ideas, and just went adding cliches: River? Check. Mountain Range? Check. Big Forest? Check.

Sumary: Looks fake. The style lacks cohesion, too. And the area surrounding, and including, the main craters looks like a diferent artist/world/setting than the rest of it.
 

galsiah

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PseudoIntellectual Snob said:
Most things seem placed, instead of evolved. Or maybe the word is organic?
Much of it isn't supposed to be organic.

They do not seem to be here by accident or cataclism, and it does not flow. Also most "damage" seems to be concentrated in just one place that looks pasted over the map, instead of the natural result of some massive force over the landscape.
It's not the result of a natural cataclysm. It's the result of a magical war - targeted, not random or natural.

And why are those craters so well aligned? Make them slightly more random and spread out.
Presumably there was something to aim at in that area. Again, it wasn't a random event, so there's no reason to suppose the craters ought to be random. [Just fyi, randomness frequently does give some clustering - appearing random to the human eye is not the same as being random. Humans find patterns everywhere - e.g. yeti prints, faces..., even in random data.]

Also, there seems to be a focused area, and some filler. The detail level changes greatly between them.
Again, it's natural that most of the cratering would focus in particular areas. What exactly do you want in the rest of the map? More craters for no reason? Hills? Is flatland evil? Is a change in detail level necessarily a bad thing anyway? Could a somewhat vague context not be a useful aid to understanding the detailed parts? I'm not sure it particularly matters either way.

Also, consider that most early real-world maps were detailed and (relatively) precise in known areas, and vague and hit-and-miss outside known areas. If the aim is to depict the world as it is known by the inhabitants, then it absolutely should get vague towards the edges. I'm not sure this is the intention, but it'd be a reasonable approach.

...and just went adding cliches: River? Check. Mountain Range? Check. Big Forest? Check.
A river is pretty much a necessity for a coherent settled area. Mountains are a natural border - either you edge the map with mountains (cliché), water (cliché), desert (cliché), or you have it stop for no reason in the middle of nowhere. These clichéd natural borders are a simple way to have a country/empire be reasonably self-contained geographically - making a relatively self-contained history the more reasonable.
These clichés have become clichés because they make sense. Most of the real world looks fairly clichéd too.

Looks fake.
In many ways it should.
The style lacks cohesion, too. And the area surrounding, and including, the main craters looks like a diferent artist/world/setting than the rest of it.
That's true - I'm just not so sure that's a bad thing. Perhaps it ought to be eliminated or exaggerated.
 
Joined
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Galsiah said:
Much of it isn't supposed to be organic.

I was unsure about using that word, and i said it. I meant "an existing, alive place that went through a cataclismic ordeal." It looks like no "real" place, but a place existing only to have a cataclismic ordeal pass through it.

Galsiah said:
It's not the result of a natural cataclysm. It's the result of a magical war - targeted, not random or natural.

Yup, i know.

Galsiah said:
Again, it's natural that most of the cratering would focus in particular areas. What exactly do you want in the rest of the map? More craters for no reason? Hills? Is flatland evil? Is a change in detail level necessarily a bad thing anyway? Could a somewhat vague context not be a useful aid to understanding the detailed parts? I'm not sure it particularly matters either way.

Also, consider that most early real-world maps were detailed and (relatively) precise in known areas, and vague and hit-and-miss outside known areas. If the aim is to depict the world as it is known by the inhabitants, then it absolutely should get vague towards the edges. I'm not sure this is the intention, but it'd be a reasonable approach.

That's not what i meant. I actually was refering to the mountains and forest looking out of place, not the "empty" areas. The forest and mountains seem to be just filler, and again that is not conductive to a "real place" feel. Is like a map saying "What for do you want to know what is outside the place the bombs fell? That's side-quest land, at best."

So i said there is a focused area (cataclysm land), and some filler (the rest of the world). A real map is not so, or at least not so blatanty so. It looks like made for a story that focuses on the central crater cluster and the areas immediately (??) west, northeast, and south.

I'd prefer the "unknown" parts, if they are really so, to be left blank, or just sketched but in the same style than the rest of the map. The way it is now is just saying "Nothing to see here." Also, jugding by the river and the mountain, the region is not that big. It is hard for me to believe someone with an interest in those areas couldn't go for a stroll or some trekking and then sell the info to the cartographer. Daring, desperate, and stupid souls are always at hand for humanity to capitalize on. And, if anything, they fill their stories with all bells and whistles they can instead of saying "Big, green forest. Mountain in the middle. Nothing to see here. Gimme my gold."

And my problem with the craters is that they are almost all very well aligned, not that they are too few. The secondary cluster south of the central area is just a joke. Very polite explosions, or whatever they were ._.

Galsiah said:
A river is pretty much a necessity for a coherent settled area. Mountains are a natural border - either you edge the map with mountains (cliché), water (cliché), desert (cliché), or you have it stop for no reason in the middle of nowhere. These clichéd natural borders are a simple way to have a country/empire be reasonably self-contained geographically - making a relatively self-contained history the more reasonable.
These clichés have become clichés because they make sense. Most of the real world looks fairly clichéd too.

I have traveled a bit back in the day, and when i need a map of the area where i am going to no one fill the borders with mountains, deserts, and oceans to make it self-contained. Regions are a part of an ongoing world. They are not self contained. The map ends where it ends because the area they depict ends here. If you are going outside that area, then you buy the next map in line and be done with it.

Point with the river, though. Mea culpa.

Galsiah said:
In many ways it should.

There you have another point xD
 

galsiah

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PseudoIntellectual Snob said:
And my problem with the craters is that they are almost all very well aligned, not that they are too few. The secondary cluster south of the central area is just a joke. Very polite explosions, or whatever they were ._.
They do vary. Most craters on Earth / the Moon are pretty well aligned. Also, they weren't necessarily formed by traditional explosions - probably from the same sort of magical impact that does this (picture at the top). That wall doesn't look like an impact/explosion - it looks like the missing section was melted/vapourized all at once.

I have traveled a bit back in the day, and when i need a map of the area where i am going to no one fill the borders with mountains, deserts, and oceans to make it self-contained. Regions are a part of an ongoing world. They are not self contained.
Jolly good (though hardly true in general - there are many islands for a start). Game worlds, however, generally are self-contained. They are self-contained geographically to make it credible for them to have an isolated history/story.
Unless you want both to explain half the world to set the game in one country, and to deny the player any access to that half-world which he should reasonably be able to use, you need a degree of isolation. It needn't be that every world region is self-contained: it's just that the ones that happen to be tend to be the most conducive to self-contained stories.
 

Claw

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Project: Eternity Divinity: Original Sin 2
It looks pretty nice overall, although I really like Amasius' edit. It makes it look a little more homogenius, maybe.

My main problem are the green-grayisch areas with a dark border to the east and around the forest. Instinctively, I see it as a large valley, which would make the river run upwards at the edge.

callehe said:
nitpick #2:

how the hell can a river start to form in a forest lowland?
It could've been running underground. There is a mountain in the forest and more to the southwest, so the spring might actually be located there.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
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PseudoIntellectual Snob said:
The region somehow does not look real. Most things seem placed, instead of evolved.
Quite possibly. What matters to me the most is design. The mountains are there for several reasons: they block access to an important location, forcing the player to find one of the two possible ways* to get there. There is a barbarian army on the other side of the mountains and the "mountain pass" location provides a good opportunity for a smaller force to stop the army :300:

*
gateib5.jpg


Also most "damage" seems to be concentrated in just one place that looks pasted over the map, instead of the natural result of some massive force over the landscape.
That's where a number of pre-war towns were located. This area was hit very hard, which is why it's a desert now.
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/2100 ... g03hk6.jpg

If you can, stay with the crater area and those placed west, northeast, and south, and take out the rest of it. It looks like after that part the artist ran out of ideas, and just went adding cliches: River? Check. Mountain Range? Check. Big Forest? Check.
Your expertise on the subject is appreciated. However, the artist followed very specific instructions and nothing was left to his imagination.

Sumary: Looks fake. The style lacks cohesion, too. And the area surrounding, and including, the main craters looks like a diferent artist/world/setting than the rest of it.
Then the artist succeeded. The war destroyed what used to be a normal, fertile land and created this desolation. Here is one example (see the NMA interview for more details):
http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/album_ ... ic_id=1650
 

almondblight

Arcane
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Aug 10, 2004
Messages
2,549
Don't change the perspective, it's good as it is. It's a drawn map, not an overhead photo, and the mountains give it that feeling. Besides, I've seen it done that way before in fantasy...mountains are put that way to show they are mountains (top down would look strange).

Amasius' edit is good though, I like the more drawn feeling. Besides that, I think the map is good as is.
 

Jasede

Arcane
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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut I'm very into cock and ball torture
That writing in that sceenshot sucks, and I say this as a proud author of a furry story of dubious quality.

Don't forget to work with that editor/proofreader, VD! Text-quality is a lot more important to me than, say, the map.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
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Jasede said:
That writing in that sceenshot sucks...
Quite possibly. Well, it's an old screenshot, and I tweaked the text already. Out of curiosity though, why does it suck? Maybe I can learn something here.

Don't forget to work with that editor/proofreader, VD!
It takes time and I don't have a lot of it at the moment.
 

Helton

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Starbase Delta
Vault Dweller said:
...so give me specific instructions on what you'd like see tweaked/changed and I'll see if it's doable.

I think the simplest change would be to make that mountain in the forest into a plateau.

I don't know anything about topography, if there's any reason that wouldn't form -- or if the story would require it to be a mountain... But it appears to be the biggest offender. Maybe it just needs a flat top.

edit: I'm hesitant to show my pathetic ass paint skills, but basically:
http://s3.photobucket.com/albums/y60/Helton/?action=view&current=c68ec079.jpg

You could almost just cut off the top.
 

Jedi_Learner

Liturgist
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Jun 11, 2007
Messages
894
I love the map as it originally is, but if I had to make a change or suggestion, I'd properly attempt to make it black and white, and make it look all faded out and crumbly or something like that, you know, like a old map or something. But I love the original map, so please don't change it. Please. Or else.

Edit: This is a fucking stupid idea. Why did I post this?!
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
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Helton said:
Vault Dweller said:
...so give me specific instructions on what you'd like see tweaked/changed and I'll see if it's doable.

I think the simplest change would be to make that mountain in the forest into a plateau. Maybe it just needs a flat top.
Why?
 

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