Tatsuyama - 龍山 - Empire of the Dragon Mountain - A Map for Minecraft (WIP)

[Wooraah]

Update 24/06/11:

V1.0 of the Map now complete and downloadable at http://www.planetminecraft.com/proje...agon-mountain/

----------------------------------

Updated post with latest progress and planetminecraft link (11/06)

Several schematics of elements of the map are downloadable from the links shown below, and I WILL be releasing the full map to download once I am happy with it. I'll look to update this post with the latest work in progress and screenshots as I approach completion.

The Project:

This is by far biggest project in minecraft so far. Tatsuyama, the Empire of the Dragon Mountain is a fully detailed Feudal Asian (Japanese/Chinese) RPG Style map which currently stretches over more than 1100x1200 blocks with many several districts and many unique features you will not have seen before.
Tatsuyama, (龍山) means "Dragon Mountain" in Japanese, and felt the most authentic after searching around for a few appropriate names in Google translate.

The texture pack used for all the shots, Woocraft, is my own 128x128 pack Asian flavored pack and is linked below.

Latest Status:

A full thread detailing the status of the project since I first started is here: http://www.mcschematics.com/index.ph...;topicseen#new

Overall Status (80% Complete)
Time Spent so far: Around 270 hours
Date Started: 5 April 2011

- Find appropriate map seed - Complete (using "torey0")
- Custom Texture Pack 100% Complete - See http://www.mcschematics.com/index.ph...;topicseen#new
- Town Centre Design 70% Complete
- Town planning and layout 85% Complete
- City walls and towers 80% complete
- City Gates 4 of 5 complete See http://www.mcschematics.com/index.php?topic=2482.0
- Basic terraforming 95% complete
- Main Palace 50% complete Main Palace exterior complete, Summer Place to complete.
- Temples and Pagodas 75% complete
- Residential Districts 70% complete
- Fishing Village 80% complete - might add one more building.
- Commercial District 95% complete
- Docks, including at least 2 Asian ships 50% complete
- Ruins of an ancient culture (Angkor Wat) 100% complete See http://www.planetminecraft.com/proje...of-angkor-wat/
- Gardens 25% complete
- Farms 100% complete
- Bridges 100% complete
- Theatre 100% complete Download here: http://www.planetminecraft.com/proje...d-art-gallery/
- Mausoleum Not started
- Minecart system Not started

The final map will also include my Angkor Wat project, already downloadable here: http://www.planetminecraft.com/proje...of-angkor-wat/
Additional Details
The project has involved heavy use of World Edit, MC Edit and even some Binvox for the Buddha and Dragon (although I did create the Dragon myself in the 3d program Blender), and I'm proud of it. I wouldn't be playing this game at all if it was just Vanilla.

[Ascension]

Your post ended up as a moderated post, which means no one can see it until a community leader approves it...so I did.

[Wooraah]

Yes I saw the message after my 2nd attempt at posting, thanks for the approval.

[Wooraah]

Well this didn't generate much interest last time I tried, but I've been a busy boy, plugging away at the map, now over 250 hours spent on it.

See the latest simple map and some renders below:



1) The Full map




2) The Town Centre


]

[jtougas]

This is very impressive. I know nothing about Minecraft so I can't really offer any useful feedback but it really is neat to look at.

[moutarde]

That looks like a ridiculous amount of work, but very impressive so far!

[Wooraah]

Thanks guys.

Y it is, but there are plenty of evolving tools that help, some that may be of interest to this community include some Mapping Tools:

- Worldpainter, currently in Beta, but very useful for massive scale terraforming: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/...k-in-progress/
- MC Edit - Great All purpose Minecraft Editing tool: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/...r-mc-beta-165/
- Rivergen - http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/...settings-gold/
- World Edit (also integrated into the single player commands mods - This is the one I use the most) - http://wiki.sk89q.com/wiki/WorldEdit

Renderers:
- MCExplorer: Uses Ray Tracing, can get some impressive results, but it's pretty slow - Used this for the shots above: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/...er-raytracing/
- Eihort OpenGL World Renderer: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/...-updated-1511/
- Techtonicus World Renderer: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/...-renderer-gui/

[Wooraah]

Ok so I've been playing around in Photoshop all day after watching a few tutorials trying to create an aged map of Tatsuyama.

The base map is from a render using the same tools show above, the rest is all done by hand using various Photoshop techniques which I'm sure you guys are familiar with.

Does anyone have any feedback on what could be improved please?

Thanks

Woo

Aged Map v1.png

[Ascension]

At this size, the colors blend together too much so I'd like to see something larger to provide anything more than "looks pretty good so far".

[Wooraah]

Yeah fair point. I was sort of restricted to that size because the renders take about 3 hours to complete. I think I'll do a double size one overnight and use that as the base instead. Thanks for feeding back anyway.