The Valley

[Coyotemax]

I love that farmland texture, it's brilliant!
The icons work well.. no complaints here.

[ravells]

Looking fantastic. The farmland texture is showing it's repeats a bit.There's a little cluster of white buildings which stick out. Presumably you've got it down as a layer style. Might be worth committing it to a layer (merge down to an empty layer below) and the clone stamp out the repeats where they are most obvious.

[Michael Morris]

1 mile = 80 px means 1 sq mile = 6400px. 1 sq mile also = 640 acres. So at that scale 10 px to the acre. That's a very close zoom.

To get this back to grips with real world objects, a US football field without endzones is slightly larger than an acre (an acre taking up 90% of that space). This means any 9 pixels on your map is represents the area of a football field At that scale the outlines of forts, castles and the like should be clearly visible - as will be larger structures such as barns.

That is to say, you're zoomed in closer than you think you are. This is earth at approximately 80px / mile.

knoxville.jpg

Circled in red is Neylan Stadium and its clearly visible football field - for reference

EDIT: Here's Farmington Utah, which is the same general terrain type as you seem to be going for (mountain valley around a lake - in this case The Great Salt Lake in Utah.

farmington.jpg

The second map is displayed using Terrain mode rather than sat images because the water was hard to make out (it's more of a marsh in that area).

[LonewandererD]

Thnx, but another reason for switching to symbols was that I was having a some problems in making a good settlement pattern that would show up nice at this scale, the villages were all but invisible. Still, moving on. I've put in more symbols and pretty much all of the labelling, getting close to the finish line now. Most of the styles for the labelling was pretty much make it up as I went along, also, I'm sorry if some of the labels are a little small but I didn't want them overpowering the map features.

-D-

[Michael Morris]

The thing with villages and structures is they are specific. You are zoomed in so much you are in an uncomfortable grey area between regional and city mapping most fantasy mappers avoid.

You are at a scale of 10 px = 1 acre. A typical hamlet or village has between 10 and 15 structures on that footprint - a town or city may cram up to 30, but at that point they are so close together they visually merge into larger blocks.

Keep that in mind - even a farm house will show up as a dot on your map. You're that close. The field textures aren't quite working for me for that reason - at this scale they should noticeably follow the topography of the land. Fields are plowed along slopes, not against them, not because of some advanced notion of erosion but because it's just plain easier to do that way.

Your location icons denote the center point of your towns, just as the labels on the Knoxville map do. Knoxville is the entire map I gave, but they put the label on downtown Knoxville. Even in modern times with cars to blur distances there is a distinction, especially for urban dwellers who walk as much as they drive.

[Redrobes]

I have been following this for a while and since your getting close to finishing I thought id pipe up. Theres loads of nice things on the map and I like the pins in the map for the villages. What Michael is saying is probably true as well tho. Anyway the one thing that is sticking out for me and maybe your going to touch this bit up is the flat green between the fields. Since your fields have bits of forest in them it looks like the fields have cut from originally forested area. At least the flat green might have more rough vegetation in it. Although at the scale you have the roads look wide they do look really good. I'm not a huge fan of the very pale blue water but I know lots of people like it. Its an odd map between realistic and informational but it looks great. One other thing you might want to just try out is erasing the fade on the fields and walking around the outside field on the patches and making that last field opaque right up to the hedgerow and then it goes into wilderness. A fade isn't quite looking right IMO. Fields are always a PITA and really call for manual labor to do them all individually but I could not be bothered myself with them so kudos and some rep I think for trying.

[LonewandererD]

I am torn between going back and redoing the pins as actual settlements or keeping my pins, they're simple but I like them. So, if i were to reduce the scale, say to 60 pixels = 1 mile, would that make the placement of the pins a little more reasonable, I would have to scale down the fields to fit but that's a quick fix, things like the roads and the rivers will stay the same because they would be a pain to fix and besides this is more of a pseudo-real style instead of a straight up realistic style, I have no where near that skill. Actually this entire map was really only supposed to be an experiment, it kind of took on a life all of its own, so theres bound to be some problems with it, still I'm getting somewhat attached to it and will see it through. I am also going back on it and cleaning up the fade on the fields, although they will still have a light fade, I've been inspired by the fields and farms in Empire/Napoleon: Total War especially the rice farms in India. I'm also going to break up the large areas of open grass land with a few trees and maybe some rocky areas, just to get rid of the bright green patches.

-D-

[LonewandererD]

This map is complete and is now in the finished map section, thank you to everyone for their help.

-D-