Mystara: The Grand Duchy of Karameikos

[Thorf]

Thorf, those are awesome. just a little critque, I looked at my physical copies and on the old map the three tree forest is slightly darker, the sandy hills have just a touch of green, and to my eyes the swamp is a bit more purple than grey. but anyways that doesn't matter, there still awesome. keep it up, and y'know you need to do Republic of Darokin soon, one of my fav's. thanx man, here to help.

Thanks for the advice. I think I got the colour scheme from a scan, but it wasn't one I made myself, and I don't think the colours were quite right. I should go back and revise it now that I have a scanner.

Of course, matching printed matter with colours on the screen exactly is hard if not impossible. I don't expect it to be perfect, just to evoke a feeling of nostalgia for the originals.

In any case I'll post the revised version when I get it done, and thank you kindly for commenting. It's so much easier to criticise your maps when you see them through other people's eyes.

[Badger]

Ahh, yes X1 - Isle of Dread, or Basic D&D's answer to Let's do a King Kong Themed Adventure. I so loved that adventure.

I thought the king kong themed adventure was WG6 Isle of the Ape ...

[mathuwm]

Next, here is the latest version of my updated map.

You can see that I am only including the country in question. This is actually my biggest problem so far: how to include neighbouring countries without having to duplicate the same elements in every map featuring those parts. The reason I want to avoid duplication is that if I find any mistakes, they would then have to be corrected in all the files with the relevant part, as opposed to just one file.
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Why not make a huge map in illustrator with everything on it and save individual areas when needed as pdf files. the pdf file will be cropped to the page size

[Thorf]

Why not make a huge map in illustrator with everything on it and save individual areas when needed as pdf files. the pdf file will be cropped to the page size

This is exactly what I tried to do originally, but unfortunately my computer was not up to it. Illustrator (at least on my computer) really struggles and slows down to a crawl for the huge maps, meaning that any editing at all takes ages. I also tried making an Illustrator file with all of the maps placed as linked files, which worked okay until I saved it and tried to load it up again; it didn't load. It's frustrating when the technology isn't up to what you want to do with it, and that's the major reason why I took a break for the last two years from my mapping project.

That said, I've just ordered a new computer, and I'm going to upgrade to CS3 sometime soon, so I'll be interested to see how it deals with it then. It may yet end up being the solution I'm looking for.

[Redrobes]

Well i'll say it one last time. ViewingDale would eat this for breakfast. You would have unlimited mapping area and scale. It has hex maps which could be matched to your maps. It would probably work with your old PC if it had a graphics card with > 32Mb of ram on it. Theres a free demo and some movies to look at to see it going on the link in sig. You could map in illustrator or photoshop and export smaller parts of your map to keep your speed up when editing them and then align them up on a hex grid just like I am doing in the co-op map world here on this site using the square grid. Post up/me some big maps which should join up and ill make a movie demo...

[Arkkeeper]

Thorf I'll take some picture's of some of the maps you probably don't have, at least real images them at least. I just recently hung up my Hollow World world maps which show the outer world and the inner world. as well as precataclysmic outer world and post (the post has migration patters, yay!). and lets see... it's got a cross-section of the worlds mass showing how the pole holes work and it's got images of both poles, both inner and outer.

[mathuwm]

This is exactly what I tried to do originally, but unfortunately my computer was not up to it. Illustrator (at least on my computer) really struggles and slows down to a crawl for the huge maps, meaning that any editing at all takes ages. I also tried making an Illustrator file with all of the maps placed as linked files, which worked okay until I saved it and tried to load it up again; it didn't load. It's frustrating when the technology isn't up to what you want to do with it, and that's the major reason why I took a break for the last two years from my mapping project.

That said, I've just ordered a new computer, and I'm going to upgrade to CS3 sometime soon, so I'll be interested to see how it deals with it then. It may yet end up being the solution I'm looking for.

I upgraded to 2gb of ram from 1gb and it has made a huge difference

[Arkkeeper]

Oh dang see I got the idea you were doing this all from the online images. that means you have more than me. Now I'm all can I haz cheezburger much?

[Thorf]

I upgraded to 2gb of ram from 1gb and it has made a huge difference

I actually did the same in November, but at the same time I also got Vista, and although there is some difference, I think Vista killed most of it. But my new computer will have 4 GB of memory (even if it can only use 3 and a bit due to 32 bit Windows) as well as a fast Core 2 Duo processor, so I'm hoping that it'll allow me to do much more.

[Voll-ka the Deceiver]

You're timing couldn't be better ! I've recently rekindled my interest in hex style mapping. After some comparison, I see what you mean about slight inconsistancies in the various older products. Still, it seems you have so far done a competent job of mediating - surely, no easy task. When it all comes together as a completed map, I may have some helpful feedback for you on those pesky boarder-zones and scale comparisons between regions derived from playing on these actual maps over the years. Some of my old players derived some pretty crafty solutions towards making the many small maps into one large workable one. Unfortunately, all I have are hard copies right now, but I'm hoping my admittance into the "guild" will eventually fix that. For now, keep up the good work.