WIP - Walf's Gate - Acania

[The_Buce]

Walf's Gate (a Work In Progress)

Following on from the country map I've made on my Samsung Note 10.1 tablet - The Island of Acania and the Coast of Murtail - I've been working on a town map of the small crossroads town between the capitol city of Mur Lennek and the port at the edge of Lofruf's Bay.

I started this at about the same time as the country map but have actually been drawing it on my Samsung Note 3 phone (it's a phablet, really ). I've not gotten as far along with it because I've been working on the larger Acania map, but I'm going to get back on it now. I'm using a technique that - to be frank - I'm making up as I go along! I've never really done anything like this before so any creative criticism is most welcome!

I've gotten to the point, now, where I'm starting to add little details to the buildings, but I've not even begun to paint it yet.

Part 1 - Layout

First, a little background...

I imagined that there used to be a single road from the port to the city and that a toll-house lay across the road with a heavy gate so that travelers would have to pay to use the well-maintained road up to the city (natural features would, I assumed, have prevented people from going around the toll-house (which would have had a palisade wall running out from either side for some couple of hundred yards) so they'd need to pay and use the gate).
Over time, I thought, the buildings would build up around the gate, before and behind. Eventually, houses would spread along the line of the wall and - when the roads came in to connect Froluff to the West and the mountain pass to the East - a new toll-house was built like a vestibule on the front of the city wall and the little palisade and toll-house in Walf's Gate became obsolete.
The toll-house became an inn and the village grew into a small town.
Eventually, farmers began setting up around Walf's Gate and other sorts of business began there.
Now, the town is happily prosperous as trade continues to bring wealth into Walf's Gate.

I started with a basic layout - I knew that I wanted the roads to form a cross and that there should be a square of some sort in the middle. Then, I dropped in some commercial areas, then residential areas surrounding them. There are a very few suburban houses ringing the town, then, on the outskirts, the farms begin.