Twin Falls Island

[DaltonSpence]

You know, in a fantasy world there are all sorts of reasons why a castle could be as large as it currently stands. However, if you do want to bring it down a touch, a real simple fix would be to modify the scale from 50 feet per square to 25. That would cut the square footage to 1/4 its current size.

The tower is ... well ... central to the purpose of the design, so changing its dimensions wouldn't work too well. Since the castle was mainly supposed to be residential and not military in purpose, I decided to remove the outer curtain wall and connected structures making the inner octogonal base the outer wall. This let me move the castle much closer tp the island's western tip, making it a bit more defensible. The ditch, pond and Castle Ditch Road were also moved west.

Also, as it stands, your bridges are a full 20 - 30 feet wide, enough for heavy vehicle traffic (wagons or something similar) to be going in both directions at once. If there are hundreds of vehicles crossing the bridge each day in both directions, or the builder was extremely aggressive, that makes sense. However, if you mean for this to be somewhat out of the way, then a reduction in scale could work for you here too by decreasing the bridge width to 10 - 15 feet, limiting vehicle traffic to one direction at a time.

The two lanes (16' between bridge walls, wide enough for two 6' wide oxcarts to carefully pass each other) were quite deliberate; I see this as the major trade route between the two nations. There is another fording place 50 miles upriver, but beyond that the Dioscuris is fed by the Great Freshwater Sea that runs eastward for hundreds of miles to the foothills of the Greater Divide. Trade to the west is impeded by the Lesser Divide and hostile Lowlanders.

One of the main duties of the gatehouse keepers is traffic control; if a wide-load wagon (larger than 6' across) is waiting to pass, an extra toll is levied and a flag goes up signalling the gatehouse opposite to halt all oncoming traffic. Since they have to wait until the incoming traffic already on the bridge arrives, such wagons usually travel in small convoys for convenience. This is only permitted at off-peak periods, and never at night for safety reasons.

EDIT: Changes to Tower.

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Dalton "who has no clever tagline right now" Spence"

[Eru]

Very cool - sounds like you've given this quite a bit of thought! I really respect that level of depth and verisimilitude in design work.

If you're interested in publishing the setting so that others might appreciate and even use it themselves, check out http://eruvian.com. The site, while still under development, is designed for world-builders to post settings and pieces of settings (locales, characters, items, spells, deities, vehicles, and so on) for other gamers to rate, review, and use. The component data is all structured, compartmentalized, and searchable to make for a consistent layout and navigation across multiple settings and also so that GMs can go there to find individual components for their own settings.

For example, you can go there and use the search engines to find a half-elf 5th-level rogue/3rd-level assassin, a map of a large town, or a magic amulet that automagically casts cure minor wounds on you if you fall below 0 hit points. The content is limited, and the site won't be promoted until its Beta launch in early July, but the existing features are fully functional and there is a small group of users actively building content every day. Given your attention to detail, any content you'd care to contribute would be most welcome!

As a member of the dev team, I'd love any feedback you might have to offer...you can reach me at contact@eruvian.com. Thanks and great map!

[DaltonSpence]

Added chimneys and a flat roof to the tower. See above. (My birthday present to you. )

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Dalton "who just celebrated half a century on the planet" Spence

[RobA]

I switched from Dungeon to Overland scale fills to fix that. The trick will be finding the correct Dungeon scale fills to match the Overland ones for the detail submaps. I'm also experimenting with sheet effects to define the edge of the Gorge. Currently I have a black overlay with an "Edge Fade, Inner" to produce an inner shadow and a white outer Glow to soften the edges. Not quite satisfied yet, but I'll keep working on it. Any ideas?

I don't know what can be done in the software. I pulled it into gimp briefly and did a quick touch up at 2/3 scale...

I'd make the gorge water darker than upstream and apply shading to the walls to make them darker as they get deeper.

I also added a cloud/mist of white to the downstream area, and streaks to show flow/slight turbulence upstream. These get heaver as the edge is approached, but that would really depend on the river

I don't know how much of that is useful, but HTH.

-Rob A>

[Eru]

Hey, very nice...I really like the effects on the water. I'm going to try something similar with my map of Hydanham to create storm clouds....

[Robbie]

This is a prime example of how important postwork can be when it comes to mapping software and the ART of cartography. Its one thing to create a great map in CC3 or DJ...its another to take that map and apply post-work to it to kinda "finish it off" I love it...

My only critique at this point then would be to adjust the levels or contrast of the image...its a bit too evenly colored or too pastelly to me...but I'm color blind...really, so feel free to ignore me or refute me on that regard.

[DaltonSpence]

I switched from Dungeon to Overland scale fills to fix that. The trick will be finding the correct Dungeon scale fills to match the Overland ones for the detail submaps. I'm also experimenting with sheet effects to define the edge of the Gorge. Currently I have a black overlay with an "Edge Fade, Inner" to produce an inner shadow and a white outer Glow to soften the edges. Not quite satisfied yet, but I'll keep working on it. Any ideas?

I don't know what can be done in the software. I pulled it into gimp briefly and did a quick touch up at 2/3 scale...

I'm not really that good with paint programs, although GIMP has been very useful to me for creating variant bitmap fills. I'm more of a numbers person, making vector graphics perfect for me.

I'd make the gorge water darker than upstream and apply shading to the walls to make them darker as they get deeper.

Done! Looks much better. (See above.)

I also added a cloud/mist of white to the downstream area, and streaks to show flow/slight turbulence upstream. These get heaver as the edge is approached, but that would really depend on the river

I don't know how much of that is useful, but HTH.

Looks great! I'm not really near the post-production stage yet (I'm planning to add some buildings to the island, maybe on the riverbanks too, perhaps some trees and side roads ...), but this is very much where I want to go with this. Now if I can only figure out how to do this with CC3 sheet effects.

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Dalton "who may have jumped the gun installing that latest upgrade" Spence

[The Cartographist]

DaltonSpence -
Whatever became of this map? Did you finish it off? What about the actual castle plans?

Interested readers want to know!!

[su_liam]

Does the Castle Ditch fall off as a smaller cascade at the south west end of the island. I saw a picture by F. Kenton Musgrave on the cover of a computer graphics magazine back in the 90s, I think it was called, "Exalted State." I really loved the island. Basically the island gradually rose up from the sea on one side(let's call it the "east") and then dropped off in a big rocky cliff on the "west." I always wanted to make a map based on that island(wanted to call it Promontory Island with Castle Promontorium on the west side. That would fit in beautifully with this idea.