First city map: town of Maraudin / C&C welcome

[Fabrice]

After a first go at an overland map with CC3, now has come the time for me to experiment with CD3.

I went through Gandwarf's tutorials, picked a small town from the overland map mentionned above and jumped in the fray.

I selected the second bitmap style of CD3, so that the map would not be too similar (as far as the symbols are concerned) to the tutorial examples, as this first try will not stand the comparison to even the lesser of Gandwarf's works... The superficial similitude would only highlight the defects.

The image posted is obviously a WIP, as quite a few blocks are still missing and the surrounding lands are utterly empty. The city is sitting at a crossroad in the midst of rocky terrain. Underground water sustains it, but wells are few and the control of their access means influence within the city.

There are few resources or farm lands to exploit around the town, so the trade routes are the main source of income for the locals. This creates a perfect breeding ground for thieves' guilds.

About the map:

- this CD3 style uses bitmap fills. I am not quite satisfied by the way they look, because they are very repetitive. I could not find a setting to improve this.

- CD3 seems to assume that the standard is the individual house. This may be Ok for smaller villages and settlements, but in cities there would probably be no space between most buildings (any space would be used as a narrow street or alleyway). To create the blocs, I used the random street generator, setting the space between buildings to 0, and re-drawing the houses in corners or bends by "hand" (using the house drawing tool).

- I have just used the standard sheet effects, so any suggestion to tweak and improve them will be welcome, as I am not yet very comfortable with many of them.

While this is but a first try at CD3, I can already say that this piece of software is quite an intuitive tool, and the customisable street generator works great.

Sorry for the long post and thank you for your comments and advice for the improvement & completion of this map.

[Steel General]

It's a nice start (especially for your first time with the software), you already mentioned the 'tiling' of the background. Not a CC user, so can't help with that.

Looking forward to see where you take this from here.

[Hoel]

I use CC3 to make roofs and some shadows, the ground texture is added in PS.
My notes:
-Houses too uniform (try some different roof types)
-Roof color artefacts (those are a bitch, I've tried getting rid of them but I think it's down to rendering and rerendering til you can cut and pase the good buildings)
-Ground texture inside the city (render separate layers and use PS/GIMP to combine is my best tip)
-Effects (you have a lot of options for making good sheet effects that you might try out, but see above, try CC/PS hybridization)
-Layout too uniform (try breaking up the rows of houses a bit as you have in the SW corner)
Now, don't think I'm shooting your map down, It's a good first try at CC3, much better than my first attempts, even when i used Gandwarfs AWSOME tut!
Keep it up!

[NeonKnight]

Looks Good for a first time. All you need to do is find your own voice.

[RobA]

This might be an odd question, but would roofs of connected buildings/rowhouses (from the front) look like this:

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

I would think the rain would pool badly in the spaces... would it make more sense for the roofs to be sloped to the front and back, possibly with dormers if you need windows in the attic area?

-Rob A>

[NeonKnight]

This might be an odd question, but would roofs of connected buildings/rowhouses (from the front) look like this:

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

I would think the rain would pool badly in the spaces... would it make more sense for the roofs to be sloped to the front and back, possibly with dormers if you need windows in the attic area?

-Rob A>

They 'could (and often did), look like this:

/\_/\_/\_/\

[Fabrice]

Thank you all for the good advice.

>> RobA, NeonKnight: I tried to create more "bars" of buildings rather than rows for the last blocks. That should make the roofs better at evacuating rainfall. However I do remember seeing in Scandinavia (Bergen comes to mind) many instances of roofs following the pattern /\/\/\/\, but they were probably built after the Middle-Ages (end of Renaissance?) and there were maybe some pipes to help evacuate the water.

>> Hoel: tack sa mycket for all the advice. I did not have the courage to re-do all the rows (and I actually meant to have an uniform-looking street on the main streets). I tried to complete the last blocks a little bit more chaotic.

As for the textures, I found myself unable to apply a satisfying pattern via the GIMP (which tells a lot about my skills with said-software). I applied the present textures with CC3: the backgrounds were changed to solid fills of different colours, and I applied the "texturise" sheet effect on their respective sheets, using some texture files from the "Shadowed relief" annual.

Next will be the adding of index and labels to identify the different blocks and important buildings... and applying the valuable recommendations that this assembly may provide, of course.

[Hoel]

Looks nice. It has a nice layout.
And about /\/\/\/\ roofs, I think they are common, at least for short stretches.
iirc it was those houses with stone base and upper floors of wood, they put the gables out to the street to be able to put windows in or something.
I don't know when they started with gutters thou...
In colder climates as here in scandinavia the big problem and reason for high peaked roofs is snow. When it melts and starts dropping off the roofs it's a big problem. People are struck down by falling snow and ice every year. It would be safer to have it fall off the streets..

[Gandwarf]

I was on a holiday for some time and have some catching up to do on this forum. So a short comment:

I like the city Fabrice (the second version is a lot better!) and I especially like the fact that you went with your own style after reading through my tutorials. Unfortunately I cannot rep you at this moment, as I need to rep other people first.

The only thing I don't really like at the moment is the muddy background. But I am used to seeing green backgrounds on all my maps, so maybe this is personal

[Sigurd]

I really like the colour scheme sort of like a gem.

Sigurd