Greetings, artisans.

[Mayhem66]

Hello. I found this site while doing some research and I am very impressed. I am currently writing a city setting book for an rpg and am in the middle of creating the city map for it. I searched for various resources to help me out and it appears that I've found the only one I'll probably need.

My experience and tools are limited, but I look forward to digging into the accumulated wisdom here and garnering as many tips as I can.

[arsheesh]

Welcome to the Guild Mayhem! There are several City tutorial guides over in the Tutorials section that you might want to check out. Also, if you haven't already done so, you might want to go ahead and post up a WIP of the map you are working on so as to be able to receive constructive feedback. At any rate, look forward to seeing you around.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Mayhem66]

Thank you very much. The current version of the map is very basic; just the city outline and districts. once I get a little more detail into it, I'll post it for feedback. The setting is superheroes in a fantasy-medieval world, with the focus on a large independent city-state. I envision the map being mainly the districts, street layout, and locations of important sites mentioned in the text, and not focusing as much on terrain coloring and building details; probably along the lines of the Mutants and Masterminds Freedom City map in their sourcebook. Each of the districts has its own history and character, so I want the street layout to reflect that. Unfortunately, it's the streets that are giving me the most difficulty, due to the sheer amount of them. I've tried various tricks to try and create them in groups using filters and such, but I fear that the only good way will the long, manual one.

[Gidde]

Welcome to the Guild! City mapping is somewhat arduous, but they always look SO cool; I'm looking forward to seeing your WIP

[jbgibson]

Welcome, Mayhem ! While maps of big cities are tough, the result is well worth the investment of time. Some tools accomplish a given style easier than others - have you picked styles you like among the output of various Guild artisans, and cross-referenced that with what graphics app they were using? For that matter, what software are you using?

[Mayhem66]

I know the style I want to do it in, and have looked at various maps both on this site and maps in game sourcebooks and online. The program I'm used to using is Photoshop Elements, which is very basic, but has been good enough up till now. I used it for the character art for the game book. I have tried various vector programs, mainly Inkscape. I'm not sure if it's the interface or a cognitive disconnect on my end, but I find Inkscape to be very unituitive and seems to fight me when I want to do something. Currently, I am working with GIMP and enlarging the image to a large size in order to get the raster lines to smooth out as much as possible. I do like GIMP's functionality and hope to get used to it quickly. The image size makes the program lag a bit, but I think it's still the way to go. I don't really have the financial resources at the moment to purchase higher-end software, but I think that the ones I have will get me through. I'm going to put up a WIP thread sometime today with the bare-bones map I have now.

[Steel General]

Welcome Aboard!