The Great Rift

[bambua]

I love this map so far, the mountains look especially good!

[Will Phillips]

A smallish update. I am so in love with TheImperial's SLUG map that I decided to try and do the text on this similar to the way he did his (hope he doesn't mind! ). I also fixed a couple of the rivers in that plains section, and added the rest in. It's a pretty arid, land all around, so there's not too many large rivers, and not too many forests (still trying to come up with a good way of doing those). I also experimented a bit with city icons - what do you guys think of them? Yay or meh?

Thanks for the compliments, Diamond.

I like the icons. Probably I'd make the star a little bit darker to match the border - it's easier to see that way.

I really, really dig your mountains. I'm trying hard to get mine to look as cool as yours but it just isn't working out too well yet.

[Diamond]

Oh, I see what you guys are saying. Yeah, the icons are a little more oval than they should be; my initial circle was lopsided. I'll do some further experimentation.

@TheImperial: I used a modified version of Pasis' mountain technique; the bevel/emboss settings are substantially altered, sometimes even in the same chain they vary from place to place. The pattern is from a photo of a random cracked stone surface, although I had to change the scale & depth to get it to look right.

[Diamond]

Another update: Added in all country names, tried out a better city/capital icon, and added in borders. I'm not really liking those borders, to be honest; I like 'em better as the muted gray color I had earlier. The problem with that is that they don't show up at all over the mountains. Meh. I'll experiment more with that.

[tilt]

I'm reluctant to point out that the star doesn't look centered in the capital icon ... the city icon still looks a bit oval. I think the borders are nice, but a lot more dominating than the grey ones - perhaps you could make them a little thinner?

[Diamond]

Ah, good point on thinning out the borders; I'd used a 3 pixel brush originally, which was fine when they were just a light gray. Maybe I'll try it with a 1-pixel and see what it looks like.

As for the roundness of the icons... well, I used the standard hard round 60-pixel PS brush and just sized it up to 150 pixels do the detail work before shrinking it back down again for placement. So if it's lopsided, it's Photoshop's fault, not mine.

[tilt]

LOL ... I would probably have made a round selection and filled it - but perhaps you've let go of shift when you scaled it down?

[Eilathen]

Man, you can't make a bad map, can you?!

As always, great work. Will you fill it with history for us to read? Or is it more a map-map (yeah, sounds silly, i know, but i think you know what i mean ^^ )?

[Boslok]

Awesome map Diamond, excellent use of colors it feels as if it has a very light touch about it.

[Diamond]

@Tilt: I used a filled selection originally, but my eyes are bad and I'd had too much to drink, hence the lopsided-ness. This new one looks even to me. The star is centered; I think what you're seeing is a more prominent black left edge to the circle - a result of a bevel that didn't show up too well when I placed the icons. I'll work on 'em some more.

@Eilathen: Thanks! As for history of the world, I started this just as a 'map map' (I know what you mean), but the more I work on it, the more ideas I get for it. I've started jotting down some notes, and I'll post them when I put up the finished map... which might be a while, because the damn forests are killing me.

@Boslok: thanks!