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Mega Fantasy City Map - My latest project


keithcurtis

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The City of Tallon

 

This is the project that I have been working on for the last few weeks. It is a map of the campaign city from my Savage Earth setting. Although some of the material was there before, I've more than doubled it with new stuff. It displays side-by-side with a high-resolution map of the city. Everything is hotlinked between map and text.

 

Comments? Criticism? Editorial volunteers?

 

Keith "Now I've GOT to get to work" Curtis

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Re: Mega Fantasy City Map - My latest project

 

Good point. I had meant to add in a warning about the file size and figured that the "high resolution" description would tip folks off. Still, ask and ye shall receive.

 

Here is just the city description:

http://www.savageearth.net/tallon.html

There's a toggle near the top of the page to show or hide the big map.

 

And here is a lower-resolution map:

http://www.savageearth.net/tallonmap.html

Although this map is now very much out of date, it should suffice.

 

Maybe I should put in a directory page for those with different connection rates to choose?

 

Keith "Mr. Accomodation" Curtis

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Re: Mega Fantasy City Map - My latest project

 

I split the image map into slices so that I could optimize the slices separately and reduce the download time. Also, the items in the test are linked to pop you to roughly that spot on the map if you click on one of the left-pointing arrows. Basically, there's an anchor at the top-left of each slice. I didn't know another way to link to a specific location in an image.

 

And the image map is not that difficult to create with the Adobe CS package.

 

Keith "Kartografy R Us" Curtis

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Re: Mega Fantasy City Map - My latest project

 

I can only say "Wow!".

 

That is truly impressive, both in scope of design and in the web page display. I think the only thing I would change is to allow the frame to be resized to get a better picture of the map (by pulling the frame border to the right) and then a good look at the information, by dragging the frame border back to the left.

 

And did I mention "Wow!"? :)

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Re: Mega Fantasy City Map - My latest project

 

Beautiful work. I am presently planning a fantasy city project of my own, this one is a little different in that I will be doing individual buildings (exterior outlines of them that is). This however is gorgeous.

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Re: Mega Fantasy City Map - My latest project

 

Frameless version for those with Psych Lims:

http://www.savageearth.net/Tallon-Rendered.html#02

 

EDIT: If I haven't said it already, great work on the map. I especially like the drawing of the city at the top of the text. It's not as useful in a game as a map, but this sort of thing really brings the city to life. More game supplements should have resources like this.

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Re: Mega Fantasy City Map - My latest project

 

Good use of lighting - clouds and Photoshop?

I'm wondering now if something so clean would work for New Crobuzon :)

 

The concept of stairs I find odd in a city. It really negates the use of wagons or other forms of non-magical transport.

 

I like the use of metric :)

(I think it should be encouraged everywhere - there is no English Empire anymore)

 

I wonder why Little Tallon is built around the road, and yet you've shown no dwellings on the banks of the river.

 

Anyhow - very nice.

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Re: Mega Fantasy City Map - My latest project

 

Good use of lighting - clouds and Photoshop?

I'm wondering now if something so clean would work for New Crobuzon :)

If you mean the textures, they're all done in Illustrator.

The concept of stairs I find odd in a city. It really negates the use of wagons or other forms of non-magical transport.

It was something I had always wanted on the map, but it wasn't until I did the map for Elweir that I figured out how to show them properly. (Thanks, Allen!) Actually, there is no place that has stairs that cannot be reached by cart by another route. The cart routes on the western hill (which is much steeper) tend to gradually rise while following the contour. (Again, thanks, Allen!)

I like the use of metric :)

(I think it should be encouraged everywhere - there is no English Empire anymore)

While I agree in principle, Tallon actually uses a horrible mish mosh of measurements. There are 3,200 feet to the klik, for instance.

I wonder why Little Tallon is built around the road, and yet you've shown no dwellings on the banks of the river.

I had been thinking the banks of the river too steep at this point, but that would make for some interesting hillside architecture. I might add something like that.

 

Anyhow - very nice.

 

Thanks!

 

Keith "Answer for everything" Curtis

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Re: Mega Fantasy City Map - My latest project

 

If you mean the textures, they're all done in Illustrator.

Kewl. I'm just Photoshop-biased :)

 

While I agree in principle, Tallon actually uses a horrible mish mosh of measurements. There are 3,200 feet to the klik, for instance.

Very true. But the average reader doesn't know game-related cultural references.

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Re: Mega Fantasy City Map - My latest project

 

concept of stairs I find odd in a city. It really negates the use of wagons or other forms of non-magical transport.

 

Umm... Feets? Beasts of Burden?

 

Seriously, many cities - even in the modern age - have staircases. San Francisco has many. Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, and Napier, where my wife comes from also have many. So does Hong Kong - hell, Hong Kong even has *escalators* on some hillsides. There are even a few places in the latter three cities where you can only gain access by stairs - the slopes are simply too steep for many roads, and the houses are built cantilevered out into space or crammed onto whatever flat space is available.

 

They were even more common in medieval cities which were often built on steep places for safety and which had very high population densities. In Harar - a very well preserved medieval city - there are far more street WITH stairs than without. Goods, even today, are moved by porters, donkeys or camels - even though the main road through town has plenty of auto repair shops and motorised traffic. Siena not only has many stairs but also streets that run through tunnels and in a couple of places through or under houses...

 

The lack of wheeled vehicles doesn't mean that much - many cities in medieval or ancient times forbade the use of wheeled or animal-drawn vehicles in daylight hours or even at all, because of the damage caused to roads and buildings and because of the danger they posed if the animal should bolt.

 

I'm reading the Valdorian Age book at the moment which spends lot of time on Elweir, the city setting - Keith mentions the stairs on the map there, but one of the things that struck me when reading it is how little it resembles a medieval city, both in layout and description: it's more like a city from the 17th-19th century (which may be intentional, of course).

 

cheers, Mark

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Re: Mega Fantasy City Map - My latest project

 

This is an awesome map Keith :) How do you do the textures in Illustrator?

If your Illustrator doc is in an RGB color space, there are all manner of effects that can be applie to the vector objects. The urbanized areas was given a specific color, transparency type, and texture with the Texturizer effect. The effects are not as robust as the ones in Photoshop, but they are scaleable and editable. A big plus for an insatiable tinkerer like me.

I was thinking however of doing a shadow overlay to indicate elevation. Not sure about that one yet. The file's pretty unwieldy as is.

 

Keith "one more thing" Curtis

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Re: Mega Fantasy City Map - My latest project

 

Thanks for the stairs retrospective, MarkDoc. I always find your knowledge of history impressively deep and broad.

 

Another thing I'd like to point out that cart roads directly up very steep hills are only practical once you have motorized power. Can you imagine making a little donkey pull a cart up some of the steeper streets in San Francisco?

 

Keith "Stairmasters of the Savage Earth" Curtis

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Re: Mega Fantasy City Map - My latest project

 

I always tend to presume large fantasy cities have magical transport of goods, anyway. Primarily for the "wilderness teaming with random encounters" that occurs so often, and GMs constantly wanting large cities without worrying about feeding the population :)

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