Ethran: Merelan City

[Mouse]

Aaaah! I see now. My brain is half asleep today. I only got 3 hours sleep last night.

If you wait about half an hour I will get you one. First I shall have to hide the sheet I've been having a laugh with - a trial run for actual relief shading (which really isn't working!) and set it back up the way I had it when I rendered it last time a couple of hours ago

EDIT: sorry about the delay. It took over an hour to render out the full size, but the full image is now also available alongside the zoomed section for you

[Neyjour]

Thanks so much! That looks amazing. Is most/all of the "island" going to be populated with buildings?

[Mouse]

Thanks so much! That looks amazing. Is most/all of the "island" going to be populated with buildings?

Thank you

The bulk of the city will be vertical - up the steep slopes, leaving the top for the temple and the Sayer's compound around it (also the Observatory), which is sort of like the Vatican. The other reason that its safer to live on the terraces is that the screamers (pterodactylian predators that can swallow an unwary man whole) aren't very agile and can't pick anyone off the steep slopes as easily as they can off the level.

The island is limestone and riddled with caves which are used as homes where the terraces are not wide enough to build cottages or huts. These will become obvious once I have finished the tracks and paths around the steepest part of the island, because they will each have a little tell-tale path vanishing into the hillside

I am sorry Neyjour. I'm so tired I can't remember what day it is. I have to go to bed now. Catch you tomorrow

[Mouse]

Version 19

Had a disaster earlier. I spent a long time trying to create a hill shadow (its not good enough to be called relief shading), only to discover that the nice thatched cottages I had put on the first tier up the slope were burning a hole right through my nice new shadow. I then spent about three hours trying to work out what to do, and finally settled on turning the buildings 1% transparent, which for some strange reason cures the problem!

However, having already deleted all the offending thatched cottages in the belief that I would have to find an alternative set, I started putting them all back in again, at which point I realised I had scaled all the buildings too small.

So I put the thatched cottages back in, slightly larger this time, and then set to work on the previously established wooden shale buildings in the bottom of the valley and up the opposite slope. (Funnily enough the wooden buildings from the Vintyri Cartographic Collection weren't causing me any trouble at all. they were just too small)

Its not even as finished as it was yesterday, and the render took nearly 1 1/2 hours because I now have over 80 Sheets, but here it is.

[Mouse]

Version 20a (and b)

I just wanted to know if this relief shading goes with the artificial terracing. Please feel free to say what you really think. This map is about to go irreversibly either in this direction, or along the original course with just the layer cake shading.

I haven't decided just yet...

EDIT: Still playing with variations on a theme - added a less intense version that I think would be better for seeing the city. There is a sacrifice for doing this to the map, in that the relief shading is produced as a bitmap and has a tendency to pixelate the underlying texture. But I can go quite a lot higher in terms of resolution yet. These are for draft purposes only.

EDIT 2: Added version c, which corrects the relief shading that seems to have melted and leaked into the sea on version b!

Even though my favourite is version a, I think I will probably go with version c, simply because the buildings tend to disappear into the darker shadow with version a, and this is after all meant to be primarily a city map, rather than a relief map

[- JO -]

I see the conflict... In the version A, the relief is much more present, and the cliff looks steeper... But due to the layers, I think we very well understand the relief with version B or C. It all depends if the cliff is very steep or not (and I think it's not, otherwise there wouldn't be a city there...)

[Mouse]

I see the conflict... In the version A, the relief is much more present, and the cliff looks steeper... But due to the layers, I think we very well understand the relief with version B or C. It all depends if the cliff is very steep or not (and I think it's not, otherwise there wouldn't be a city there...)

Well the short answer to that is - it is... and there is...

The cliffs are perilously steep and at the peak where the observatory is sited are nearly a thousand foot up from sea level. There are three reasons the people live there -

1. Its the most holy religious site on the planet (being the reputed site of the Sacred Pool of Life where Rusaar spawned the First),

2. The pestilent screamers (pterodactylian predators; capable of scooping up an unwary man and swallowing him whole - like a gull would a fish) are not agile enough to be able to pick anyone off the cliffs... and the third reason is related to the second.

3. Generations bred of the survivors of countless screamer attacks have left the humans of Ethran as agile as mountain goats, so living there is nothing to them. Its a natural place for them to be - safe, and close to their God.

[- JO -]

So, for thousand feet, you should go for the version A !
Even it the houses are a little hidden...
You feel really the cliff, with the shadows of the version A

[Mouse]

I want to do the dramatic one, really I do! Trouble is that this is a city map! LOL

How about if I do both of them? I mean, Its only the difference between which of the two relief sheets I use when I render. I will probably work with the lighter one first.

The other problem is - houses and things on top of the land. I have to cast a shadow on them, but if I use the relief sheet itself by placing the houses beneath it, some of them may end up coming out stripy in places where there are fine streaks on the relief sheet!

[Mouse]

Version 21

Having decided on the relief shading, I realised it was having an undesirable effect on the shade of the texture fills and started tinkering with the Hue, Saturation, Lightness qualities of all 24 closely related grass textures. As you can imagine, this is a bit like sawing the legs off a table one inch at a time, one leg at a time, to try and make it level. The end result is that I spent 4 hours sorting it out, and although I'm a bit happier with the colour of the map (Its not perfect yet) I haven't really added very much more to the city itself. The latest additions extend down the eastern arm of the island to Isk Point, which by Merlish standards is a rich area, with relatively large thatched constructions.

I have chosen just one version of the relief shading because attempting to keep the balance between all the fills and two types of relief texture was just too much to contemplate with everything else. I hope you will find that its a happy medium - neither too dark, nor too pale.