The World of Predica - WIP

[RPMiller]

Now that I have a tablet I've decided to go back to an old project that I shelved long ago. This was the campaign world for my old GURPS campaign. The game ran for about 3 years and the players were able to cover a lot of ground. The setting is Fantasy, but there are a lot of scifi elements mixed in as well as the players began to discover when they encountered their first robot guardian and later delved deep into a subterranean city that had been buried millennia ago.

I originally created the world using Civilization of all things and its built in map editor. I don't even remember what version of Civ it was, but it was good enough for me to get the ball rolling. Then later I did a real hack job using PhotoShop back before I really knew how the tools worked and I didn't get very far. Still later I dropped it into CC2 and began tracing the coastlines and fractalizing them, but gave up due to lack of computer resources and it wasn't real easy using just a mouse. Plus I didn't like where it was heading.

This time around I used RobA's excellent random coastline tutorial to get me started. I like how it really changed a lot of the shapes of the continents and feels more organic to me so I think this is now heading in the proper direction. I had to go back in and draw some of the elements that didn't make it into the threshold modified version, but thanks to being able to use a pen rather than a mouse this was a breeze.

So stage one is complete. The image I'm posting here is scaled down so that I can upload it and so that it won't suck bandwidth:

[ravells]

Enjoy the tablet!

[RPMiller]

Just learned from a terrible mistake... Before you edge trace, save the layer to make coloring of the land and sea easier.

I'm going to go back and redo the clouds and threshold. Otherwise I'll be coloring for days.

[mmmmmpig]

Before you do anything globally to a layer, make a copy of that layer. only delete after you are satisfied.

I have deleted waaaay too many things that I shouldn't have in my days.

[RPMiller]

Yup, I know the rule very well. Unfortunately I didn't think far enough ahead; however, I had a serious save on what I thought was an error. It turned out that my selecting was leaking through an area that I had modified and didn't go back and seal up. I found the leak, sealed it and was able to move forward and finish up the layers of colors.

Up next this is essentially a flat of the land and water. Flatting in coloring lingo is applying a solid color to each entity that you will be working with later to make it easier to select and mask of. As I move forward I'll be flatting various terrain types and such and these separate layers will make modifications easier and faster later.

At this point I'm going to stop for the night and post up the horrendously colored map. To quote a great movie: "Watch your eyes!" "Too late"

[Midgardsormr]

I like the level of detail you're putting into your posts. Keep it up; I'm anticipating learning a lot!

[mmmmmpig]

what a wonderful horrendously colored map.

I am interested to see this progress.

[Redrobes]

There is a free tool that can gen up this sort of stuff really quickly. It also has a similarly garish color scheme !

http://www.viewing.ltd.uk/cgi-bin/vi...nstant_islands

You could clip bits of these islands in. There's zillions to choose from. It also dumps out a rough height field for them too if thats interesting to you.

[NeonKnight]

I for one, am looking forward to a better colored map as well. As it stands, with only two colors I see, a Teddy Bear, a Bird-thing, and a Cat/Dog thing.

[Gamerprinter]

I saw the bird too, but maybe the "great primal animal gods" were involved in this world's creation mythos, but only those with the greatness to view the land from above the sky can see evidence.

Where do you separate the geologic from the philosophic?

I'm trying to defend you, RP...