WIP - New-Stetven, capital city of Brevoy

[J.Edward]

I guess it would depend on how you draw the main buildings.
You try to maintain drawing style across all buildings.
I'll have to see some other buildings drawn before I could give you a useful suggestion.
Do you have a version with a few finished buildings?

[Narolas]

Well I was kinda hoping to just draw the blocks, just smooth abstract shapes, a lot faster than making individual buildings.
Of course important buildings will be drawn differently to seperate them.

I think what I'll do is make simple rectangular shapes copy pasted for the individual slum buildings, no detail, any part of the slum that's a bit denser will be connected shapes.

I mean, i'd love to have detail on the buildings, but it would take me forever to do, and the result would be very busy looking.

It's still up in the air, so i'll have to think on it for a while.

[Narolas]

Wow, it's been a while!

I've been busy doing other stuff for a while, but I recently got a new computer and opened up this map again, I can now more easily work on it without having Photoshop taking 30 seconds to register every stroke, so that's helping.

Anyway, since I haven't updated this thread for a long time there's been quite a few changes !

Here goes :
WIP_11.jpg

It's a little low-quality, the psd file is freaking huge, I could only export the Jpeg to medium quality to keep it under 5Mb.

higher quality : HERE

I've increased the image size, so I now can draw each individual building, I'm still not sure how much detail I should put (don't want it to be too busy), but I can at least line the buildings in black, It's pretty easy to do on top of the existing blocks, and then probably some light colouring/shading to keep it subtle.

I definitely will go back and re-draw a bunch of stuff, because now that I've increased the size it looks blurry. A lot of the terrain (cliffs, forests) looks good enough (tell me if you think it's too blurry), but a lot of the buildings, details and such will be re-drawn (there's not a lot that's final anyway).

Feedback very welcome!

[Ilgoth]

Looking good Narolas.

Just randomly remembered your project, and after bit of searching found it from the depths of this vast platform you guys call "forum". Keep it up, I like the shapes and that wall line is pleasant.

[Ilanthar]

Hey, glad to see you're still working on this! Increasing size... indeed the best way to improve the information quantity, details and quality. Also the best way to increase the time required to actually do the map .

[Narolas]

Back again for my once-a-year update !
In all seriousness, I'm a lot more busy than I was when I started this, but I still slowly work on it every once in a while.

What's new (I think), some detail work, a few special buildings made, some streets/areas changed, graveyards added (I was DM-ing a session in the city, and realised there weren't any places to bury the dead except temples, whoops), a few other details.

WIP_13small.jpg

[snodsy]

Nice job Narolas; Really nice forests and overall layout. Coming together nicely. Your water rings are really subtle might want to bump that up a bit? You cliffs add a nice change of elevation, looking forward to seeing this develop, it's going to be a good one.

[Narolas]

BY THE POWERS OF NECROMANCY!

So yeah, this thread still exists. So what happened?
Well I got busy with things, but most importantly the campaign for which this map was going to be used happened. I started using it with my players in its unfinished state, and as things developped I added and improvised details, realized things were missing, weren't interesting, etc, etc..

And at the end of that I was left with a mess of a layer with "WIP" neon lines everywhere, and lots of notes.
That kinda made me "give up" and just let the map as is, especially since it was working fine and my players weren't complaining.
But, now I'm planning another campaign (following the previous one which lasted... around 5 years!), and this city is going to be a pretty important place again.

So, with all that said, i've cleaned up my notes and ideas, taken missing things and new events into account, and I've recently started going over everything and redrawing, cleaning, etc...

My last update was version 13 of the map, this is version 19, and there's a lot that's changed!
There's a few places that are still WIP (palace, a park, the two cemetaries, cathedral and carnival), and a lot of "unique buildings" are for now just the outline with a different colour.
The building clusters were recently redrawn and adjusted after having modified some places so much (I took the opportunity to fix and widen a few streets and other things). I'm still planning on detailing the clusters (or blocks) more, now that I have more resolution and everything is cleaner.

You might notice the buildings/clusters are missing the overlay texture, I forgot to put it back on for this export, it's easier to do things with it turned off. The clusters themselves have very pixelly lines for now, at least it's better than messy blurry pixelly lines.

I'd love some feedback on things, are things better, have I removed/added too much in some places, that kinda thing. I'm uncertain about the palace hill forest (the central hill) for example.

WIP_19(small).jpg

(High res version HERE)

[Narolas]

A quick little update with a slightly better looking export (a few texture changes and tweaks).

WIP_20(small).jpg

As an addition to the previous post, here's a list of changed things :

- Western hill now more of a hill, structured with winding streets going down the slope and lots of stairs.
- Western hill will now have a fort (WIP) connected to the lake tower and protecting the bridge.
- Eastern lake tower now part of a large military complex containing a prison, city watch headquarters and connected to the north to the "iron port".
- Most city quarters redrawn/tweaked, center of the city has larger main avenues.
-- North-east quarter remade, more recently built and "square-y" in blocks, contains lots of more industrial things and working-class buildings.
-- Southern village reduced in size and complexity.
- Ports cleaned up (straigher docks going slightly above the coast), boats still there as a WIP reference.
- cemeteries added, northern one on old stetven hill, southern one next to a new cathedral (WIP).
- a sort of "carnival" (WIP) added to the south-east edge of the city.
- Palace layout redone and detailed (WIP).

Not visible on those is a ton of notes and more unique buildings and quarters, which will become visible when individual buildings and details are added in.

I think the biggest thing to add once all those WIP things are done is shadows. Everything projecting a shadow, especially large/special buildings, will make everything pop out and clearly show the height of everything. I'm especially excited to see how the bridge, hills and forts look once the shadows show the elevation.

[Narolas]

Another update!

So a while back I increased the resolution of this project because I wasn't happy with the detail I could put on individual buildings. Since then I've been annoyed at the fact that the terrain (grass, cliffs, water, forests) still looked low-res, and it being the first thing I worked on was also kinda old and sloppy.

Soooo I redid the whole thing, and it took a while, and I went slightly insane re-doing all the little squiggles for the forests.

Overall, from afar you might not notice much of a difference, but the water was detailed with a kind of "depth" shading and higher res watercolour texture.
All the lines (coast, forests, cliffs) were redrawn and are a lot cleaner.
Forests were redrawn and tweaked, with a few bits of roads tweaked as well.
The entire light shading (not final projection shadows, just the shading) was redone based on the advice of Caenwyr with a light coming from the NW.

Most of the buildings are still WIP ("special" buildings or blocks) and haven't been changed since last time.

WIP_21(small).jpg