Kragmorta - Underground City and mega battlemap

[Invictys]

Hi all,

This is a map I made of the ancient underground Dark Sun city of Kragmorta from the Green Age. This city is part of a "Ruins of Giustenal" series of maps I plan to make. The buildings are more grown than built and some of the city is in ruins. The rivers that used to run through the city have become lava with the only crossings available using rope bridges made of fire resistant webbing of Wall Walker spiders.

The city is inhabited by first generation Dray (Dragonborn in Dark Sun) who were created by Dregoth the undead dragon king and banished from Giustenal as failed experiments. Their food source are the fire ferns and grasses that grown along the lava banks. Their source of water is the boiling hot spring lake.

Other inhabitants of the city include a fire giant cleric , hellhounds, a fire drake, a dark naga, and wall walker spiders nest (cave lair to the northeast)

The full size map is 10,000 x 5,392 and is sized for 50x50 grids useable as a battlemap on VTT if you slice the image up to make the size manageable.

Smaller preview
Kragmorta-small.jpg

Full size 10,000 x 5392
Download Link

Edit: I took Meshon's advice and dirtied up the floor some more to better reflect an ancient underground city. I took a grittier stone texture and added a layer mask using the Photoshop Difference Clouds filter to randomize the incorporation of it. I then added a brown layer mask to the floor and used the Difference Clouds filter to dirty the whole thing up.

Smaller with better looking messier floor (thanks for the input Meshon!)
Kragmorta-betterfloor-small.jpg

Full size 10,000 x 5392 with dirtier floor
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ujbv3l1gmj...etterfloor.zip

[Meshon]

This is great! Thanks for sharing it. I'm a fan of big battle maps, mostly because I use them in a skirmish game (on VTT) where the virtual size is up to 96x48 squares, representing a 4' x 8' game table.

cheers,
Meshon

Edit: Having had a closer look a the full size map, it strikes me that you could make it a bit messier! You've got some discrete piles of debris there, but right now it does look like the inhabitants might be sweeping it clean on a regular basis. Of course, that's allowed...

[Invictys]

Thanks Meshon,

I took your advice and dirtied up the floor a bit more with textures and Photoshop filters rather than objects since the .psd file was already almost 600mb. I also cleaned up some of the debris piles they had too much stroke on them and looked bad.

I forgot to mention in the initial post that I made the map entirely in Photoshop CS6 using layer masks for the floors/walls/lava/lake. And then I took some boulder objects I had that looked suitably organic. I added black shadowed doorways and smoke holes, then added some mushroom growths on rooftops. I made a few variations and these became the rockshaped buildings. The grasses on the shorelines are a stock Photoshop brush to which I added highlights/midtones/shadows coloration.

[Meshon]

I think you've accomplished a lot with your use of textures! A little mess goes a long way

cheers,
Meshon

[Invictys]

Thanks for the input, its appreciated. I think I may have overdone the dirt now but it's much better than before in my opinion so I am going to call it done =)