Oblivion mod Dibella's Watch map

[Antiscamp]

The map I am presenting is nowhere as professional as some of the stuff I've seen here at the Cartographers' Guild, but I really want you to see this one, because this forum had a lot to do with its creation. The map was created to function well in the game Oblivion for my mod Dibella's Watch, and in-game, it's a sight!

I've been a member of this forum for 24 hours, and I've already produced what I think is a beautiful in-game map for my mod. My mod has lacked a good in-game map, since all my previous attempts have been feeble to say the least, but with the help of the Cartographers' Guild, I've now made a map I am proud of. One of the mod's fans (Xtudo) created and gave me a much better map to use and I was really inspired by his work to try and do something of my own, and so got started with map making. Thanks go to Xtudo for inspiration! I am crediting this Cartographers' Guild Forum and linking to it in my Credits section in the mod. I also credit Gidde, whose tutorial pointed me in some interesting directions and also taught me about and supplied me with brushes. Furthermore, Tilt is credited for the Compass needle. All properly credited and linked.

The challenge with creating a believable 2D map from an entirely 3D game world is interesting. I do not need to bore you with that though. In short, I took the land texture which is stored in several different files, cut and pasted them together to form the outline of my continent and then just painted the coastlines upon that and copied that coastline into a new, clean image. When drawing the mountains, forests and roads, I kept that land texture in the background as a layer, to know where exactly to put all my features on the new image. This means that the map is rather correct. The game adds map markers for all locations I've created in-game. All castles, villages, dungeons and the like have map markers and on my map they stick to their positions exactly. On the in-game screenshots here below, you can see how these map markers have been added.

My Oblivion mod has taken me ten months of hard work so far. I've so far created an entire continent complete with castles, villages, towns, monasteries - the lot - and written a bunch of quests for the player to be challenged by. Right now, I'm working on an expansion for the mod, called Västhelm, which will also feature this new map. Modding is done as a hobby and I share my mod for free with other Oblivion players. So far, thousands of players have enjoyed my mod and I've received a good deal of attention for it! For more information about my Dibella's Watch, check out its ModDB-page; there are descritptions, screenshots and video presentations of it over there.

[arsheesh]

Nice work Antiscamp! Most first attempts at mapping that I've seen tend to be fairly mediocre this one turned out really nicely. Welcome to the addiction.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[torstan]

Great first map - and it sounds like you've got quite a project on your hands there! Welcome to the guild.

[Jaxilon]

Very nice and rather incredible for a first map. Good job!

[Diamond]

Looks like your dedication and hard work paid off - that is great work right there!

[mearrin69]

Very nice. Sounds like you did it the right way to get it to line up properly with the 3D world...I've never attempted an Oblivion mod I imagine that took some sweat.
M

[Antiscamp]

Thank you all kindly for your encouraging comments. I built that map based on my 3D World, and now I'm starting to wonder how it would be to do it the other way round and build a 3D world based on a map. I need to do that for my next big landmass-mod, because the geography in my current land really stinks. The geography was only created to make for an impressive game, and not to be realistic in any way. Designing a map first, and THEN the 3D world, would mean that I'd have a lot more time to make the geographical considerations; like realistic and correct rivers, mountain ranges, city placement and those kind of things.

[Steel General]

Nicely done!

[TheRedEpic]

Looks fantastic to me