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The map discussion

Helton

Arcane
Joined
Jan 29, 2007
Messages
6,789
Location
Starbase Delta
Vault Dweller said:

The craters seem fully 3d, even to the point of having shadows. The mountains all only show a single side. The mountain range at the top of the map doesn't bother me so much because of where the viewpoint is (if they had shadows, or the craters didn't, I think they would be fine). The mountain in the forest and the range at the bottom of the map stand out a lot more. The angle should be different.

The mountain in the forest, being more in the center of the map and by itself, is a bit of a sore thumb. Giving it dimension seems the solution, and a plateau could be roughly the same size while showing depth.

If you're asking why it would be simple: the base is already drawn and the forest texture doesn't seem all that complicated to adjust. You'd just need to change the peak to a top.
 

User was nabbed fit

Guest
I can't wait to explore the asscrack on that map.
 
Joined
Jul 17, 2007
Messages
26
Galsiah said:
Jolly good (though hardly true in general - there are many islands for a start).

That's nitpicking ¬¬

I am sure there's quite a few valleys around, but that does not negates the generalization of the world being a continous entity.

Galsiah said:
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.

But the borders of the self-contained story can be thematic, instead of physical. If the game is about the great pyramids, then there is no need of going outside certain parts of egypt - Even in P&P there is a limit to the "freeform exploration" a GM will suffer before just saying "Ok, you left and went on with your life. Make another character."

Most people live through self-contained stories. Most never go beyond two or three cities without even knowing how the country in-between looks like. They are not contained by geographical accidents, and everyone knows there are other places beyond the corner. They just have more interesting, immediate, or critical things to do - The rest of the world is little more than background fluff for them.

Ergo, the emphasis i added to your words: It should be reasonable, yes, but within context. If it is the story of a siege, the keep and surrounding lands are reasonable. If you go beyond that "contextual" border, then you are out of the story. If it is a CoC-like supernatural horror mystery, then the area related to such mystery (the town and surrounding countryside, for an example) are the reasonable area. If you want to abandon insmouth half-way through and go tourist in Boston, then you are either going to die or manage to abandon the story. Make a slide show ending and be done with it.

Also, a border can be political instead of geographical.

On a side, joking note: I was just playing Perimeter. If you have the game, look for the mission were Harback fights the imperial viceship, just after they reach the original worlds and have to go back. The world were they fight, called Sota in my version, reminds me of this discussion. xP

Vault Dweller said:
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.

I imagined they were concentrated for a similar reason. On the craters i was just arguing they looked very symetrical on their location. The southernmost cluster looks perfectly aligned ( "O:." ) and the six smaller craters on the central cluster are separated in two groups with the exact same spread, just tilted: "Two perfectly aligned craters with a third one in the middle, towards the top."

If you want them like that for some reason, then great. I am just pointing things that seem weird from where i am standing. It is your game. Ergo, you know better by default.

Vault Dweller said:
Your expertise on the subject is appreciated. However, the artist followed very specific instructions and nothing was left to his imagination.

Well, sorry about that. That line of mine you just answered came along quite in-character, but was not my intention. I may seem to be a bit overly critical about your game, but i am really just try to be helpful and make myself useful.

Thinking about it, all the post came as being aloof and snobish. Again, i am sorry about that.

Vault Dweller said:
Then the artist succeeded. The war destroyed what used to be a normal, fertile land and created this desolation.

I was under the impression it was an "in-character" map, like in "The map the little guy on the screen carry in his bag" - made by some cartographer inside the setting, and not an artistic rendition trying to focus on such contrasts. If it is the latter case, then it is all well: The two styles actually come along as one being very objective and detailed (the areas i mentioned as "focus") and the other being more idealized/abstracted (the ones i mentioned as "Filler") - since i was under that impression mentioned ut supra, i saw the second one as not being coherent.

Also, if you are in a revealing mood - What is that chasm northeast of the central cluster? It looks quite interesting, and huge. Also, is there concept art on that location that you can show?
 

galsiah

Erudite
Joined
Dec 12, 2005
Messages
1,613
Location
Montreal
PseudoIntellectual Snob said:
...It should be reasonable, yes, but within context. If it is the story of a siege, the keep and surrounding lands are reasonable. If you go beyond that "contextual" border, then you are out of the story...
Yes - but the point is that the contextual border doesn't work when there are perfectly good solutions to the contextual problems just across the border. If the best way to tackle the problems of the context is to pop over the border into the adjoining civilization, achieve X, Y and Z, then return, it doesn't hang together as a story.
It's important that it wouldn't make sense for the best solution to lie outside the current context. If the lands concerned have suffered some kind of apocalypse, you can't expect that to be true if there are greener pastures just around every corner.

That people tend to live in a fairly restricted context is irrelevant - they have the option to look outside that context for solutions to their problems whenever it makes sense. In a game world, the PC can't look outside the game world for solutions, so it has to make sense that he wouldn't be able to find any there (even if those areas were all simulated).

Also, a border can be political instead of geographical.
Many borders are both - the politics follow the geography.
In any case, using mere political borders would probably make things even more contrived. You'd need to have every bordering country have some xenophobic policy, and to explain their role (or lack of it) in the cataclysmic events. If they aren't significant parts of the story, it needs to make sense that they aren't - bloody great mountain ranges and oceans help to provide this sense.

A p&p DM should only prevent players going outside the context when they aren't aiming to pursue any related subgoals, or solve the current problems laterally. A game designer must always prevent players going outside the game's context, so it needs to make sense that no good solution would lie there. Otherwise the game's story is a load of nonsense.
 

Noceur

Liturgist
Joined
Mar 23, 2006
Messages
199
Location
Tar Pits
Love the map. And if anything's going to be changed for the sake of coherency in design, I'd rather the craters were changed than the mountains. Simply because I find them more artistically appealing than the craters. Redrawing the more pronounced craters while keeping the "background texture" of that region would probably make the style coherent enough.
I'm not sure if a change of perspective is what's needed though. More like making the craters look painted, as the mountains do. If the artist's using Painter, suggest he go at them with the palette knife (or a brush of that effect, preferably heavily loaded), especially the slopes/edges of the craters. If he's using PS, the same brush he did the snow on the mountains with should do as well. More sloppy and wet are the keywords (in so many things in life).

Anyway, I like it the way it is.

EDIT: I was wrong, changing the perspective seems to be imperative to make the craters look more painted. Anyways, I took the liberty to make a quick test.

http://www.noceur.com/aod/noceur_edited_map.jpg
http://www.noceur.com/aod/map_comparison.jpg

Fixing perspective of the craters + adding the same kind of texture and detail of the mountains should probably make the map more coherent.
 

Claw

Erudite
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The center of my world.
Project: Eternity Divinity: Original Sin 2
So.. any clues on what the area around the forest is meant to be, and what those parallel bright/dark areas at the border are supposed to signify?
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
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Messages
28,024
No idea what you are talking about, but if you mean the pale green area it represents plains.
 

Blue

Novice
Joined
Oct 13, 2006
Messages
23
EDIT: I was wrong, changing the perspective seems to be imperative to make the craters look more painted. Anyways, I took the liberty to make a quick test.

http://www.noceur.com/aod/noceur_edited_map.jpg
http://www.noceur.com/aod/map_comparison.jpg

Fixing perspective of the craters + adding the same kind of texture and detail of the mountains should probably make the map more coherent.

These changes make all the difference in the world. I agree that the craters had a top down view and the rest of the map had different perspective. It looks fixed now. Excellent job.
 

mytgroo

Scholar
Joined
Jul 6, 2006
Messages
373
Location
Land of Dreams
The mountains look wrong, they don't follow a natural cycle-- water falls on top of the mountain, rivers flow down through scrubland or forest, then into desert. Scrubland or prairie is missing from this map. It looks a little bit wrong. Also the river leading to the sea looks like it should be connected to the main mountain.

There are no cities placed on this map. I would assume the cities follow the rivers or mountains.

The topography is odd. What is the big stained area-- deadlands, or swamp it is not clear.

There are no topographic indications. It looks like major meteor strikes, those would be some kind of metal falling from the sky-- in clear kill zones to destroy cities.

It looks apocalyptic with apocalyptic weapons. I can't imagine what the tears in the earth are from.
 

Elhoim

Iron Tower Studio
Developer
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Oct 27, 2006
Messages
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San Isidro, Argentina
Blue said:
EDIT: I was wrong, changing the perspective seems to be imperative to make the craters look more painted. Anyways, I took the liberty to make a quick test.

http://www.noceur.com/aod/noceur_edited_map.jpg
http://www.noceur.com/aod/map_comparison.jpg

Fixing perspective of the craters + adding the same kind of texture and detail of the mountains should probably make the map more coherent.

These changes make all the difference in the world. I agree that the craters had a top down view and the rest of the map had different perspective. It looks fixed now. Excellent job.

I agree that giving the craters a side perspective makes them look much better. :)
 

Joe Krow

Erudite
Joined
Feb 16, 2007
Messages
1,162
Location
Den of stinking evil.
I don't know if theres any way to make those mountains look right on a map. They are done from a (roughly) ground level perspective... maps tend to use an overhead view. Of course you could draw out the craters from ground level to match the mountains. That would give it that "drawn as it was discovered" look some early maps have. As long as the perspective is consistant it will be fine.
 

galsiah

Erudite
Joined
Dec 12, 2005
Messages
1,613
Location
Montreal
Elhoim said:
maps tend to use an overhead view
That´s not the usual view in fantasy maps....I think that the map maker was trying to capture that style.
Sure - that's why the craters look odd. They don't use the conventional fantasy map style, whereas the mountains do.

Noceur's edits are ok, but they don't really fix the perspective. If you chopped the top off one of the mountains at the back, you'd get a clear ellipse. The craters are still almost circular. The perspectives aren't the same.
I'm also not too keen on the way he's built them up to help get a non-overhead look. They look more like extinct volcanoes than impact craters to me. That's fine if they're intended to have been mountains/hills that got blasted, but not if they're impacts in flat land (as they appear in the unedited version).

If the craters were made elliptical, it wouldn't be necessary to play with elevations and shadows in order to fake the right perspective: they'd already be the right perspective. Circles have no place in anything other than a top-down view.
 

Noceur

Liturgist
Joined
Mar 23, 2006
Messages
199
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Tar Pits
galsiah said:
Elhoim said:
maps tend to use an overhead view
That´s not the usual view in fantasy maps....I think that the map maker was trying to capture that style.
Sure - that's why the craters look odd. They don't use the conventional fantasy map style, whereas the mountains do.

Noceur's edits are ok, but they don't really fix the perspective. If you chopped the top off one of the mountains at the back, you'd get a clear ellipse. The craters are still almost circular. The perspectives aren't the same.
I'm also not too keen on the way he's built them up to help get a non-overhead look. They look more like extinct volcanoes than impact craters to me. That's fine if they're intended to have been mountains/hills that got blasted, but not if they're impacts in flat land (as they appear in the unedited version).

If the craters were made elliptical, it wouldn't be necessary to play with elevations and shadows in order to fake the right perspective: they'd already be the right perspective. Circles have no place in anything other than a top-down view.

Yeah, I made them a bit eliptical... I really just fiddled with the perspective, plus removed the photoreal details so VD could get an idea of how it'd look with changed perspective, etc. My work was in no way intended as final.

Btw, craters do have a raised edge around them... you know, the impact of whatever made the crater pushes the ground outwards. Granted, I've made mine too high. Then again, the mountains are an artists impression of mountains, so the craters should be as well.

Another problem is that while the mountains don't really mark individual mountains (it's an iconic mountain range... the peaks in the map aren't nescessarily there in the real world), the craters might actually mark out real craters. Then it might not be wise to fiddle with the perspective too much either, since it's like charting ocean or something.
 

Claw

Erudite
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The center of my world.
Project: Eternity Divinity: Original Sin 2
Vault Dweller said:
No idea what you are talking about, but if you mean the pale green area it represents plains.
Clearly, words fail me. So I'll try this again.

wtfisthatshitwd5.jpg

What am I seeing here?
 

nihil

Augur
Joined
Jun 11, 2006
Messages
490
Location
Sweden
Project: Eternity
While I understand the point of conflicting perspectives, I don't think it matters a whole lot. Satellite-style mountains probably wouldn't be very esthetically pleasing, so if anything, change the craters, in my opinion.

However, looking at the map, I kinda get the feeling that it's a number of more or less independent areas that are just slapped together. It's not a huge deal, I like the look of it in general, but one way to improve it would be making the desert a bit more contained by extending and merging the fields south and east from it. This would probably make more sense anyway if the desert is the result of a war. With my highly limited Photoshop skillz this is the result:

aodmod.jpg


Something along those lines. Just a thought.

EDIT: This looks rather awkward, since I just added some color, but I hope it proves the point. In a real update, you'd probably want to change the shape of the big field slightly and extend the greens of the field to follow the edges, so that the shape has a better flow.
 

Amasius

Augur
Joined
Sep 24, 2006
Messages
959
Location
Thanatos
I think a glance at the NWN2 map could be helpful. The style is somewhat similar (except for the post-apocalyptic stuff - craters, chasms and such) but better executed. I don't like the smoke, but the rest is very well done. Especially the transitions between land and sea, between the plains, woods, hills and mountains are excellent. The sea and the coast are almost realistic while the woods and mountains are quite blurred.


NWN2map.jpg
 

Elhoim

Iron Tower Studio
Developer
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Oct 27, 2006
Messages
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San Isidro, Argentina
Even tough I like it from an artistical point of view, I didn´t like the perspective of the NWN2 map very much. I made everything feel as it was crumped together, with no real sense of distance.
 

galsiah

Erudite
Joined
Dec 12, 2005
Messages
1,613
Location
Montreal
I much prefer the AoD map (any version) to that NWN2 map - or rather to that NWN2 picture, since it really isn't a map at all. A map's primary purpose should be to provide functional/contextual information and an interface; pretty pictures are secondary. The top-down view does a good job of putting clarity and function first.
I'd rather see the mountains changed to fit with the top-down view, than the view switched to accommodate pretty mountains. That needn't mean making the mountains top-down - it could mean finding a way to make their current perspective feel more natural/right (e.g. by changing their style somehow - I'm hazy on specifics).
 

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