The World of Mirica

[riplox]

Okay, so I've taken on a rather large pet project for my local D&D group and am making a world along with it's history and location specifics. I'm having a hard time finishing the map though because I've kind of run out of creative steam. I know there are some things that need fixing on it as far as terrain continuity goes since this is my first serious try at a world map, so I'm open to any and all suggestions and critiques (terrain additions/changes, names (I'd like some less generic names if I can help it), map/font style, history, etc.). Heck, if you want to illustrate your changes you'd make on the map, feel free to download it and work with it as you see fit. NOTE: The scale on the bottom left is off and should go to 1,000 instead of just 500 (the world is supposed to be twice as large as the scale alludes to). If you have any questions about any area, don't hesitate to ask. Heck, I'll even link the source document my friend and I are working on for this thing so you'll know what I know. Oh, I'm also going to be doing city maps, but that's for later.

Mirica World Map (I linked to my deviantart page for it since the image is rather large and was unsure of how this site would handle it.)

Mirica Source Document

[- Max -]

Cool one. Be careful of your white labels, some are not really readable. Also you have some rivers issues, go check tutorial sections and you will find helpful threads about it there. Have a bit of rep for a first post with an overall good looking map.

[riplox]

Thanks. I appreciate the compliment and the critique. I am aware of the river issues, but I would love to know if the other geological features seem realistic in placement, such as the mountain ranges. Also, which labels specifically are you concerned about with readability? (The actual image is even larger than what's available on the DA page (6000x4000px) and is 7200x4800px is size.) Perhaps you didn't zoom in a second time? Either way, I have changed the link in my OP to the full-size image. FYI, I'm only about 1/3 of the way through with this thing.

EDIT: I realized I think I may need to change the fonts for better readability all-round and add a legend as well as a little info box near the world name or something.

[- Max -]

Kjeldor and its related labels are less readables than the others imo. Nothing's really wrong but it may be improved (maybe an outglow rather than a drop shadow?) Others geological features seems ok for me but I'm not an expert at it. Also I'd work a bit on coastlines/waterlines, border and sea texture (which is probably a bit size-increased and have poor resolution) to make the map better

[Diamond]

Looks very promising so far. The three things bugging me are:

1. The Crystaledge River. It flows out of that lake, up and over the mountains(!) then splits off into another river. Generally, unless there's magic or engineering involved, rivers flow from higher to lower elevations, and merge together instead of splitting.

2. The texture you used on the oceans looks very low-res, pixellated, and ugly compared to the great work you did on the rest of the map. It looks fine on the un-zoomed view, but on full zoom... ugh.

3. A couple of your labels (specifically the Miradius and Arndar Ocean) seem way too small for the area they're representing. Sizing labels is difficult; my theory is that you need to balance the space being labelled with a label that complements the size of the space, and the only way to do that is to experiment until it 'looks right'.

Overall though, great start! The terrain placement looks good.

[riplox]

@Diamond
Thank you. I have been working on fixing many of those issues and am actually redoing all of the foliage and terrain since I increased the map to the size I wanted. The background has been changed, but it's difficult to find a single piece of parchment scanned at the resolution I need so I have to stretch it. Also, it's not meant to be an ocean texture, but rather dyed parchment and it's going to eventually be printed and won't look nearly as bad as it does when fully zoomed in. Anyway, since I resized the image it makes for slow going because Photoshop seems to need a ton of RAM for this project. Who knew a 4-foot image with hundreds of layers at 300dpi (14400x9600px) would use so many resources? So until I can get some more RAM I'll be putting this off for a bit longer, not too long though, since I get paid soon and will be able to afford some more memory (looking at adding 16 gigs or just ditching all my "old" ram and upgrading to a full 32gb). I will also be adjusting the fonts used and their sizing and placement, but I usually consider that to be later in the steps before finishing something like this. I really just want to get all the content in there before finalizing everything.

[Will Brawner]

Absolutely incredible. Nicely done. Thank you so much for contributing to the Guild.

[arsheesh]

I agree with Diamond and Max: this is a lovely map with allot to recommend it, but the low resolution texture and the white labels are the fly in the wine for this map.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[vorropohaiah]

not much to do with the map - though the source document looks very interesting.