Plausible Distances & Populations

[Karro]

Kudos for doing this research! This kind of depth is, to me, always worthwhile.

[Sigurd]

Check out the website from the first post for a list of over 100 a hundred castles in Herefordshire. Some have maps and pics. Most of the pics are of surviving sites. Its actually a really great site.

So Back to detail.

We've talked of Towns. For our purposes Towns are bigger than villages and have some sort of recognition. "Town Air is free Air"

The first is a map of over 100 fortifications.

The second map shows locations mentioned in Domesday Book. This is before the plague of the 14th century. 312 separate places are mentioned for Herefordshire.

http://www.smr.herefordshire.gov.uk/...s_domesday.htm

The population is listed as 4453. The Domesday book was a taxation book and its likely that number is low. Who doesn't want to hide from the tax man? But as it is, that number gives us a round figure for a civilized land. 40km diameter - and 5000 people - approx density. Don't forget this is after a war and without magic.

I found this quote very interesting.

The Old English word "tun/e" is often attached to a placename and denotes "settlement", "village" or "enclosure", eg. Winetune. "-tun" has also been interpreted as "outlying farm", which might account for the fact that some Herefordshire Domesday places are today only individual dwellings or farms.

[Sigurd]

So what is in this 40 mile diameter piece of land?

If we overlay all the 1500 or earlier locations from all the maps together, and place them on top of a modern physical map, we get this....

Pretty clear that there is a heavy stamp of civilization on this shire.

If we look at the development we see some standard things.

1. Most of the fortifications are on the borders of the shire with the capitol in the center. Mottes were built mostly on hills and more frequently than castles (They're cheaper and easier to build). Norman invaders built Mottes and then eventually Castles - the Saxons didn't build castles. If a site was important enough for a castle it mostly stayed important - most castle sites are on or near modern roads.
This lets us reason a defensive plan. The largest castles are in the center of the region and at the end of river systems connecting to the main castle. Mottes are built readily where there is high ground especially if the land borders the regions opponents (In this case the Welsh).

2. Domesday sites are mostly placed in valleys without much regard for castles or fortifications. The land qualities were the deciding feature for a successful farm or manor.
The exception seems to be river banks. The southern border has a river snaking through a mountainous region. Domesday sites are common there as well.
I think this sort of reasoning is helpful if you remember that the Domesday book was a tax document. These sites might not have been grandios or militarily important but they produced revenue and contributed to the economy of the region. I imagine a more suppressed population would need more, more local fortifications.

[Sigurd]

If I continue my blank map and paint on friendly trees to my own personal sense of scale I come up with....



This is a pretty map, if I say so myself. But consider the level of detail from Herefordshire. If I overlay the collected detail at the same scale I see that my pleasant map is way too serene and empty. The circle is 39 mile diameter or approx 62 km.




Unless my forests are gigantic and my earth incredibly flat (could happen - this is not real) I need to rescale the map or increase the detail to be plausible. I have to rethink how I represent detail to fit the scale. My tendency is to draw forests as an area where trees are distinct from grasses. Clearly if I'm drawing at this scale I have to talk about mixed plant densities. Most stands of trees will be indistinguishable from the surrounding grass.


If I want something like the same level of detail for my maps its pretty clear my serene map should be only a couple of km across, not 82!

Detail is Important.

High ground is important for defensive structures.
Valleys and river banks are important for manors and farms.
Depending on your scale, you should have both.

Mountains and valleys are different than plains. They concentrate water in regions making it easier to farm. My broad friendly map would probably be very dry if was very flat. Its not enough to have flat land for farming. Besides being visually appealing, hills and mountains suggest usage patterns for a region. Compare the dry prairies of Canada to the temperate rain forest of British Columbia.


Sigurd

[Sigurd]

I think there's no getting around the painting of the ground to make detail.

To make the job easier I made up some more cut up trees to give me something to work with. I'll think twice before I start cutting up or working on space below the trees. .

The problem of course is that the better this region looks the more difficult it will be to combine it with the other regions at other scales.

I am going to select out the plateau at 60m for the primary fortification I will start with. The plateau is 2 or 3 km across so it is much bigger than it appears on the regional map. If I zoom in I can begin to think in different closer scales. I want to work as big as possible but achieve fine detail. The broader I can work the file the easier it is to reuse or adapt. The more specialized I make any individual piece the better it will look, by itself.

I have been doing all of this at 72 dpi. This is where I begin to pay for that.



Sigurd

[Sigurd]

I still am not correct for my scale.

If I capture the rough outline of Herefordshire and scale it appropriately I get this. Both of these images are at the same scale. Look at how bumpy Herefordshire is. This is a physical map - something like what I'm aiming for.

Notice that the bumps in the google map are small and plentiful. My map is smooth with a contour to show me general outlines. The contour is a start but you can see that, overall even the contour is too flat.


Sigurd

[waldronate]

The default FT settings do not function well for maps much less than 100 miles across or so. The target purpose for the product was world and regional maps.
You can sometimes get better results by increasing the number of octaves in your generation. Use Map>>World Settings to bring up the World Settings property sheet. On the Fractal Functions page, click the Parms button. Change the Octaves settings on the dialog and click OK, then click Apply on the World Settings property page.

The below picture shows the before and after of changing the octaves from 13 to 20. There is a slight increase in redraw time when doing this as each pixel has the fractal algorithm iterated 20 times instead of 13 times.

[Sigurd]

I will try that, thanks.

I've been attacking the situation through Wilbur and Photoshop. Some excellent tutorials and grim stubbornness. I'm even READING MANUALS!

Wilbur has an 'other' map that draws rivers. I found at this scale, I was better off exporting the rivers as lines and then working with the rivers, the height map and some noise to build a more detailed bump map.

Bottom line, for anyone reading this, you can't really paint a bump map with any cleanness. Photoshop's lighting affects - or similar products give you a believable texture.

FT does a great job at the scales it was designed for. As this thread has stressed though, different scales give you new challenges. Part of my problem is that I'm not really using FT and Wilbur fully.


Here's the current more bumpy beast.... Hopefully you can still see the original elevation scheme in the ground. (I removed the contour lines because there was just too much data.

And another bump map.

Any Constructive crits welcome. I Can already see that I'm going to want to vary the tree foliage colour more and...


Sigurd

[Steel General]

I'm even READING MANUALS!


Sigurd

Good God Man are you INSANE!

This whole process has caught my attention, usually I just kind of skim over these as I'm not overly-interested in the "science" behind it. But this time its different.

Looking forward to seeing more.

[Sigurd]

Took way too much time. I had to depart from my tree method and lots changed.

This however looks like the scale. Its mostly accurate to the original, for comparison.