Remaking the Maps

[Indirik]

I woul pretty much give up any hope of major geographic changes, or redrawing regions, etc. But minor visual changes shoul be ok.

[Perth]

I woul pretty much give up any hope of major geographic changes, or redrawing regions, etc. But minor visual changes shoul be ok.

That's all I mean, really.

[Tom]

If an effort is about to be made into making better maps, perhaps we should consider naming certain geographic features and make the names displayed on the maps. Such as rivers, mountain ranges, seas, and stuff like that. It would add to the roleplaying flavor in my opinion.

That's a good idea. The new dynamic map allows us to put arbitrary "features" on the map, so we can do that. And of course we would use names that are already established.

[GoldPanda]

I'm going for a very incremental approach here. First step will just be to replicate the base hex map of the Colonies. No features like mountains, roads, trees, or cities.

I spent an hour trying to just eye-ball everything. That didn't work out very well.

I'm out of time this weekend. Next weekend, I'll try to actually overlay a hex grid over the original map, so that I can actually tell what the distances are.

Edit: One more thing. Could someone with the AoW (the first one) Editor open it up, and take a screenshot of the hex grid for me? You can post it to the wiki and give me a link. I just need to know how big the hexes were. AoW2 has a different hex grid size.

[Lefanis]

Just to clarify- Shadow Magic Editor, or Wizards throne editor?

Wizard's Throne editor


Shadow Magic editor


The most evident difference is in the coastlines and trees. But I found shadow magic a little crisper overall, though I like the beach effect in Wizard's Throne. But I think the beach effect can be tacked on SM as well, with the tiny brush...

@GoldPanda- Ill upload the original AoW grid soon.

[Tom]

Shadow Magic of course, the latest. I think it has a highe resolution, doesn't it?

[Surrealialis]

I'd also like to give this a try in the map editor. I have all the versions of AoW's here and LOVE making maps. I'm new to contributing to BM so I think I'll start small and try to do an artistic re-print of the Far East style map we have. I think remaking Dwilight and Belu should be saved until we have an artistic style and size ratio and all that jazz down.
For instance.. everything is 'bigger' in the new editors.. which means we should have to place more land and textures for each item.. like a 1:2 type idea.
But I will play around with this as well and try to post some results.

In the meantime, would you guys mind if we leave the naming geo features discussion until someone here feels like they have a good grasp on physically remaking a map? and then we can hash out more details.

[Lefanis]

Shadow Magic of course, the latest. I think it has a highe resolution, doesn't it?

It does and extra races as well, so more city variety.

[Lefanis]

http://i.imgur.com/ZAokl.jpg

Warning- Pretty large image.

Rough attempt to make part of a continent. Yes, i know, badly pasted together, and i added fluff and filler stuff.

Do we want something this scale, or smaller?

Goldpanda- is this what you want? http://imgur.com/a/gBLB6

[Tom]

That's a pretty good start.

[Arrakis]

That looks pretty awesome. Can't wait to see the finished maps (although it will take a while I suppose).

[Penchant]

One thing I would like to bring up is this thread though it might be a while until they get to Dwilight. http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,1872.msg0.html#new

[Fury]

Atamara (original)
Atamara (Fury edit)

[Perth]

Atamara (original)
Atamara (Fury edit)

What's the difference? The edited one just looks dark and harder to make out the details from my end.

[Penchant]

I think you will notice much better the differences if you zoom in by clicking on it. It does seem better to me.