Greyhawk: Atlas of the Flanaess

[Anna]

Publius I can understand your frustration with limited resources and all doing a project like that against a deadline. I could never make this project against a deadline, it has taken me well over 10 years to come this far.

The worst part when I started was to work out a procedure to achieve a result I was satisfied with. Now the worst part is to see all new cool tools and techniques available and to stay focused and finish this, before moving on.

People here in Cartographers guild biggest asset are their talent but I think mine is to never give up! I’m sure that everyone here could have made what I’m doing and made it look better if they just had kept on doing it for half as long as I have.
But now I feel like I’m getting somewhere.

Here are some examples of my early work
Anna

[NeonKnight]

I split my terrain bitmap in half a while ago because it was becoming too big, only joined it again to make the overlapping areas easer. Now I will split it in half again and continue working on each half.

I’ll run into the problem again when I’m expanding north but I’ll deal with that then, it will not be until 2009 anyway I think, so there will be at least one upgrade in hardware and probably software too before then.

Hopefully the attached map can fulfill your desire for a map of the Duchy of Urnst. Here is a link to my webstorage where you can find highres copies of all my Atlas maps I have done to date:
https://lagring.storegate.se/user/Fi...&Folder=753149

It is thanks to you and others who researched the area before me that I could have made the map the way I did.

Anna

WOOT! What is really cool, is the the village of Thallin (East of Nesserhead) was the name I made up for the small forestry village for the Year Duchy Module I wrote: Never the Same Thing Twice.

Its nice to see little things I did years ago in others work

[Publius]

What a gorgeous map, amazing work. I have not done any work with 3d as of yet. Just amazing.

[NeonKnight]

Also, I think you have misspelled the name of Castle Seh to Sen (On the Duchy Map, west of the Spurned Vale in the Celadon Forest.

I will see if I have my detailed CC2 map of the Duchy of Urnst kicking around still and post it up for you if you wish.

[NeonKnight]

So here are the two maps, the first shows the locals of the Modules from Year One for the Duchy, and the second is just the map.

As I thought, you have labeled Castle Seh as Castle Sen. Also, uou have placed Thallin further north than I originally placed it. It was within the small forest there, and not on the river, closer to Aldon's Watch, which actually is located on the Nesser River almost directly across from Hammersend.

Also, the Spurned Vale was located outside the Celadon, not within, as the Elves of the Celadon are not very welcoming of Humans and others, and while the County of Unrst runs guerilla warfare with the elves trying to Log the forest, the Duchy is viewed as friends of the Celadon.

Finally, Salt Harbor was located on a small Island off the coast of the Duchy.

I love the map tho, and please don't take me notes above as complaints. They are just the ramblings of a player who has played in the Duchy for almsot 5 years and had a hand in creating it through writing modules and what not.

[Anna]

Wow

This is exactly the kind of input I need, thank you soo much for the maps and corrections!

I’ll update my maps accordingly and post the updates here and on Canonfire. If you have any more maps or other info that you think would help my mapping I’d love to have a copy.

Thanks again!
Anna

[NeonKnight]

Not that I know of. I'll look into the Duchy Websites and see if there is anything new there.

[monks]

Hi guys, very interesting convo, great site too.
I'd love to see the old rpg maps become 3D models with viewers such as Google Earth and WorldWind. The advantage of having a heightmap is that you can generate contours from them and use those in your maps. I've had many convos about this over the last few years with rpg/ terrain folks- GreyHawk is one of the maps that came up.
A guy who is involved with NASA recently suggested an offer of server speace fro the ME-DEM data and indeed said that he'd like to see more fantasy worlds using their technology as a viewing interface (WorldWind).

The worst part when I started was to work out a procedure to achieve a result I was satisfied with. Now the worst part is to see all new cool tools and techniques available and to stay focused and finish this, before moving on.

Yes, I can totally appreciate this Anna If you don't stay focussed you end up like the Duke Nukem Forever devs- always waiting for the next great wizzy engine to come around. At ME-DEM we've had to wait and get involved in terrain tool development with guys like RedRobes.
I'd recommend running some procedural erosion over your heightmap- this has the single biggest impact in terms of terrain visual realism.

If you're into terrain, then the best apps to use to take advantage of 64 bit for modelling are:
GTS: fully multi threaded, 64 bit. Secret weapon: texture output which is directly output from the physics sim. Of the terrain modelling apps this Thas easily the best physically correct water modelling- enabling glaciers and lava flow.
Water is a heightmap.


World Machine 2.0 -fully multi threaded, 64 bit-in beta, not yet released but it will be within weeks. This has multi threaded right down to the device level so you can run erosion multi threaded- that's a massive step.
image overlay (alows tracing over imported maps)

L3DT: MASSIVE terrain capability. multi threaded in parts, 64 bit.
image overlay

Geocontrol 2.0 Again not yet released, it's in beta; release date on the horizon. There are plans to include a tiled terrain manager and output. Not x64 or threaded yet but it's secret weapon is it's Procedural zoom. check it out.
Water is a heightmap.
image overlay

Wilbur: an amazing app for the price- that is, for free. There are plans to release a Wilbur 2.0 but no definite time frame on that- next year. I do know that the dev is working on some pretty major things.

If you're into mapping as well, then GlobalMapper is numero uno imo. There's now a workflow between the GIS worlds and the terrain modelling worlds with the new hf2/hfz terrain file format hashed out here: http://terrain.cg-arts.org/forum/index.php. At the moment we have L3DT and Global Mapper supporting it. We've asked both World Machine and GeoControl to implement support.
Google Maps, kml, WorldWind output. If your into tiled terrains/ maps, GM is the Gold Standard imo.

I'd also like to see the Middle Earth underdeeps mapped, in fact this is how I got into terrain modelling/ mapping; I digitised my floor plans for Mt Gundabad (Goblin city) from many years ago. I looked into using software and standards from the caving industry. I'll upload some screenies when I get the chance.
GIS is the perfect vehicle because it deals in vectors. We plan to have a layer in our maps that shows underground networks.
I'd like to have something like GTS to erode natural passages- that's a version 2.0 or 3,0 methinks. You have to get around the volume problem.
We also need a workflow to create VAST underground networks which can be read into a 3D viewer. I would go for a vector editor/ interface (much like some of the more user friendly interfaces in speliology) which is converted on the fly by a 3D engine into tunnels, rooms, etc. It would be better as a procedural engine because if you're mapping vast areas- then there's a lot of
redundancy- who wants to walk down a mile passage? with enough procedural content/atmosphere I think maybe I would!- but you certainly don't want to store that as a static model- just the vectors. Then of course one could avoid the boredom by simply having a click interface to teleport around the map. Lots of possiblities.

monks

[ravells]

Interesting read, monks, thanks. Forgive my ignorance, but what does 'multithreaded' mean?

Ravs

[Valarian]

Interesting read, monks, thanks. Forgive my ignorance, but what does 'multithreaded' mean?

It means it can do several things at the same time.
Technical Answer