Ethran: Merelan City

[Neyjour]

Love the new updates!

The Isk Point settlement is definitely my fave little area so far. Love the buildings there, and all the boats pulled up onto the rocks! And that boat turned onto its side in the cove! The amount of detail that you're putting into this is just... amazing.

I agree that all the "round-and-round" roads look a bit... odd, but I think that's just because those areas are un-populated at the moment. Once you start filling them out, I don't feel it's going to be an issue, and they'll make much more sense (in terms of placement and how many there are).

Awesome work on this. Truly. I love watching as it's being "built", but I'm also so looking forward to seeing the finished version!

[Mouse]

Thanks Neyjour

I am quite literally going around and around in circles with this one right now - trying to get it finished... LOL.

[Mouse]

Version 23

The weekend 'burn' is going well, but I will have to sleep soon. Its 4 am. At last - a new section of the city: Cherrin, a combined boatyard/fishing port (needs more boat paraphernalia lying around, but the basics are there). The buildings in this section are biased towards large merchant houses and small industries associated with the dock and the fish market - glue factories and so on (need some smoke plumes I think), so they are larger than the buildings elsewhere on the island

[- JO -]

HEy ! I was sure it would look better and better as soon as you put houses and details ! Still looking forward to see the next WIP ! Great work !
And I'm glad you like those boats !
You've made a good job with the streets too : I liked the paths the way the were (lots of little paths), but I think it was more suitable outside the city, where people walk more freely. Inside a city, the streets makes people walk more on the same path, less freely. Keep up the good job !

[Mouse]

Its Ok Jo. I don't like the nasty straight wide roads either. They really are starting to get to me, even though I've only had them that way for a couple of days. The paths are going back IN!!!

The only place those horrid roads are going to have to stay are in the densely built up areas on the lower levels of the island, where you can't really have that many meandering paths through all the buildings

I just have a few other things to sort out first, but there will be another WIP much later today, with all your boats featuring quite heavily on my ocean. They do the job just right, and will look far better than the one and only tall ship symbol I have been using for all the tall ships in the map!

[Mouse]

Version 25

Ocean

I really meant to bash on with adding a ton of buildings to the city, and I have added a couple more, but I got a bit distracted by the sea. Its been in my mind a lot lately due to some of my friends drawing underwater maps for the current Challenge. When I stepped back from the screen and took a critical look at my own ocean the first thing that struck me was that I had no obvious patches of seaweed, which at this scale would be visible down through the water near the shore. I found a suitable texture and started drawing in the weed, only to discover that the water wasn't really transparent enough to see it to the correct depth. A couple of hours later, and after many wiggly patches of seaweed, and fiddling about with the Sheet effects, this is the result.

I have also replaced the rather inappropriate battle ships that I had turned into fishing boats with some of Jo's rather more attractive and far more appropriate fishing vessels, and added a couple of wrecks for interest

[- JO -]

Wow ! Amazing what a bunch of seeweed can do :-D

Really great !

And I LOVE what you've done with those ships : the two sailing along with the net : Great idea !!!!!

It's getting better and better !!!!!!!!

[Mouse]

Thanks Jo

I'm glad you don't mind me turning your lovely fishing boats into trawlers! I did wonder about it for a few minutes before I went and drew in the net, but I had to make it clear that the Merlish boats are more than capable of feeding a city, and even more importantly (to the plot) that they work in pairs - like it used to be in the real world before everything to do with fishing got so technologically improved that it was easy enough for boats to work alone.

I really meant to sort out those horrid road things while I was at it, but the sea took up a lot more time than I had planned! LOL. I'll be glad when I've finished all the tiny little jiggly lines in this map!

[Katto]

This is by far the most impressive map I have seen with CC so far. Keep on the fantastic work. I'll watch this WIP.
One question Mouse: is CC3+ much more superior concerning speed than CC3? I've worked with around 50 layers on a city map and when turning on the effects it was a PITA.

[Mouse]

This is by far the most impressive map I have seen with CC so far. Keep on the fantastic work. I'll watch this WIP.
One question Mouse: is CC3+ much more superior concerning speed than CC3? I've worked with around 50 layers on a city map and when turning on the effects it was a PITA.

Thank you Katto , and thank you also for the rep and your very kind comment

The answer to your question is not as easy as it might at first appear, since I have a total 86 Sheets and 167 effects on this map, and the size of the map is 5000 x 5000 CC3+ map units (which makes it large for its type). It is also repeatedly combining a 16 MB bitmap file through a set of Sheet effects to generate the relief (by multiplying the product of the underlying sheets and their effects by the tonal shades of the bitmap, pixel by pixel) every time the screen is refreshed.

Taking all those things into account, and the fact that I can't see to work without the effects turned on, or 'live', its no small surprise (to me) that I may have to wait a few seconds (about 5) for a response to a mouse wheel zoom.

Please note that before the file became so large and complex zoom was instantaneous.

What I can say without any doubt in my mind, is that it is certainly a heck of a lot faster than CC3. There is no way that I would even have attempted this map without CC3+! LOL

I hope that helps