New bigmaps: UMC needs

[zookeeper]

The actual development and feedback thread for the new bigmaps is in the closed forum, and the purpose of this thread is to collect needs and wishes of UMC authors regarding the currently mapped and unmapped portions of the world. I can easily change the geography of all the parts of the world not depicted in the maps I've already made, and even those I'm willing to amend if there's a good case for it. And of course the lands off the map to the east and south are completely open.

So, if your UMC requires a different geographical layout in a particular area or you'd want a particular feature to be added, this is the place to tell me about it. Naturally I won't promise to account for everything everyone comes up with and I'm probably not going to post a lot of replies to the requests; I'll just either do it or not. Rendering completely new areas not depicted on any mainline maps is a possibility, but will only happen after I'm done with mainline maps. In any case, I might eventually post step-by-step instructions for how you can make your own.

When posting a request, please make your edits to the attached image. You can crop and scale the image however you want or expand the canvas if you need to picture details outside the current bounds. You can add towns, roads, labels or such in whatever way you want, as long as it's clear.

Green = forest
Grey = hills
Black = mountains
Blue = swamp
Yellow = desert (whether hot or cold)

[Dugi]

Somewhere on the forums, I have found this (can't remember where, I just had downloaded it as possibly useful stuff some time ago). The northeast of the map is fairly incompatible with your map, but I don't know in which add-ons or add-on it was used.
Your map is better anyway, because the author of this map or the author of the source add-on somehow thought there are steppes far north from mild climate. Wesnoth is clearly situated in mild climate and when there is a desert south from it, there should be coniferous forests, tundras and other nordic areas north from wesnoth instead of steppes, that should rather be somewhere far away from the sea, probably east from Wesnoth.

[tr0ll]

Some of the UMCs (and mainline UtBS for that matter) take place after cataclysmic changes to the geography. For clarity, what general timeframe is this bigmap valid for? Looking at http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Timeline_of_Wesnoth it would appear to be 200BW to at least 858YW. Cities wouldnt appear until their advent in the timeline of course, but physical geography should be fairly constant over that 1000 year span

[zookeeper]

Some of the UMCs (and mainline UtBS for that matter) take place after cataclysmic changes to the geography. For clarity, what general timeframe is this bigmap valid for?

It's for before the cataclysm. If there's going to be a map for the post-fall world, it'll be a completely separate one (with great similarities in geography, of course), preferably with a slight difference in style.

[Crow_T]

Just wanted to say the new maps look great, I like the dimensional look

[Crow_T]

I'm damning my soul to Hell for double posting , but since I can't comment in the closed section-

what kind of textures are being used for the folds in the new maps? It may be simple to create these in Blender and achieve a real 3 dimensional look, with point lighting or whatever. 2 planes and displacement/bump maps + cycles could go pretty far.

[zookeeper]

what kind of textures are being used for the folds in the new maps? It may be simple to create these in Blender and achieve a real 3 dimensional look, with point lighting or whatever. 2 planes and displacement/bump maps + cycles could go pretty far.

I've exclusively used these for the folds (folded, not folded_and_wrinkled). Additionally there's one extra small wrinkles texture being used.

Anyway, I really doubt it's simple to create those kind of textures artificially. There's a lot of irregularities at the meeting points of the folds, they're not just regular grids of ridges. I suppose one could create a displacement map that way, because it might not be apparent if it doesn't follow every little bump in the texture. Having to use Blender or some other modelling app would make it too hard for translators, though.

EDIT: I've modified the east and southeast parts due to requests, latest version in the first post. The shape of the huge lake and the northeast shoreline are obviously not final.

[GunChleoc]

The maps look absolutely great

One thing that cost me a lot of time when localising the current maps was that I had to manually place & match the parchment for the labels. If you use something like that again, a layer with the labels in place would be a great help.

[zookeeper]

The maps look absolutely great

One thing that cost me a lot of time when localising the current maps was that I had to manually place & match the parchment for the labels. If you use something like that again, a layer with the labels in place would be a great help.

Yeah, that won't be needed. You won't need to work off a layered version of the map at all; I'll provide labelless versions of the maps for translators, and basically you'll just need to place the localized labels however you see fit, and then go through a few simple steps to produce an overlay which, when drawn on top of the english version of the map, will cover up the english labels in addition to adding the localized labels.

I'll put up a detailed guide once the maps are in.

[Kenpachi]

Dugi, a quick search found this

http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... 05#p512028

[Piko555]

A small request, Zookeeper: while You'll make a postapocaliptis map, can You do too a map of Southern Lands in similar style? I'm making a UMC which takes place a few years after the fall, and I would really need that. Please.

[zookeeper]

A small request, Zookeeper: while You'll make a postapocaliptis map, can You do too a map of Southern Lands in similar style? I'm making a UMC which takes place a few years after the fall, and I would really need that. Please.

Sure, if I'll make post-fall maps then I'll probably cover the same area as the "normal" versions.

[Telchin]

Well, I may be quite late, but this thread seems to be about geography introduced in UMCs, so I might mention that my campaign has a whole Pacific ocean archipelago near Wesnoth coast. That said I don't demand it being added to the map because: 1) the map covers only the continent, not the sea between Green Island and the Gret continent, so at least part of my campaign can take place in the unmapped area 2) tropical islands near Wesnoth coast are not the only part of my UMC that clashes with mainlne canon.

[Crow_T]

Looking at the restricted thread, there is the appearance of the map floating over the surface it is on- one way to solve this is to erase the shadow a bit in places so it looks like parts of the map are touching the surface.

[Groggy_Dice]

When I compared the Son of the Black Eye maps from 1.4 to the current one, it was interesting to note the differences. But I wonder: was the disappearance of the town of Buzom a conscious decision, or an oversight? On 1.4's main map, it is cut off by the frame, but on the inset it is near the mouth of the Bork River, between Bitok and Prestim. In fact, it is about where Bitok is on the new SotBE map in the closed thread.

My inclination is to believe that the current map of the Far North was drawn from the 1.4 SotBE main map which didn't have Buzom, and that it wasn't noticed that this town existed on the detail map. But was there a decision to get rid of it, since it played no role in the campaign?