Blandine's Primaterra project

[ravells]

Hi both, I've now got the coastline ready to go, and will await further information on locations of mountain ranges, rivers etc.

blandline, is there a particular country you would like to start with after you've done the macro details?

Ravs

p.s. mojitos are Cuban, but I assumed they had made their way down to Brazil!

[Midgardsormr]

I'm sure he's also sent this to you, Ravells, but I like to keep my reference material handy, and it might be enlightening to those in the gallery, so here's the climate map.

edit: And the revised political map, with very dark blue water, the requested coloring changes, and temporary settlement symbols. When I finish the map, the cities and labels will be done in Corel because CC3's anti-aliasing is lousy. I also moved some rivers around a bit so they'd justify the locations of the cities.

[ravells]

Thanks Brian - now that Raphael had given us the climate / geography map we can make a start on the major features, yu may have to move some mountains around a bit!

I'll make a start on the purple area as a regional map and post up my wip anon.

[Midgardsormr]

Yep. How's this strike you? New mountains, rivers, and border, and now a temporary compass rose.

The neatline (border) measures the map in miles. When I take it into Corel, that should allow me to make a new scale bar in kilorods without having to import a CC3 scale on a separate layer. I had some trouble with scaling when last I attempted to export CC3 sheets individually.

[ravells]

Looking good...but maybe the blue needs to be desaturated and made more blue? Not sure if it's my monitor but it almost looks purple here. I know Raphael wanted a really dark blue / black sea, (Raphael have you thought about what this is going to do the ink in your printer?) but anyway it's early days yet and easy to fiddle with once the land masses get populated.

[ravells]

Everything is looking very alright now!!

Before I forget, Ravi, I'd like your part of the project to begin in Rublo!

Other elements now depend on how much effort and time all of us are willing to put on this map. I mean to mail you, within the next days, a map containing much more city spots, places and stuff. I was looking forward to see a very detailed map, if possible very polluted, and if possible very beautiful also ahaha

I'd like the borders to be rougher between the countries on the continent. They can have a different countour from the rivers' one. I also think I maybe have made a poor choice in indicating a yellowish colour to Rublo since it occupies most of the map. Maybe it would help if it was made a little goldier, or we could just forget the "political colors" altogether and pursue a realistic map, I don't know. I just wanted it to be really polluted and full of information, information I had yet to give you.

Do you have many "place icons" at hand, or the possibility to draw them? As I plan to print this map in very large scale, it wouldn't be bad to have lots of details. Terrains, forest textures, all of that. First thing off, I'll give names to all of those chains of mountains you placed. Some of them already have names by now (the Aesir Twins and the Barum Ridge to the north) and I'll name them all next.

This world also has a very particular touch to it. Astrologically, each single star on the heavens has a "spot" where it shines brighter on the world. That has to do with the cosmology of the game, in which the temples to the Avantesmas, where the pregnant women have to be taken so as to give birth, determine the places of the towns. Because of that, lots of constellations could be drawn over the map like a "skies map", where many spots would be the same spots as already placed cities and locations.

I have a great desire of having a very complicated map printed, full of textures and illustrations and overally hard to understand ahhaha

Tell me what can be done!!
All this can be done, we just require the details!

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Dear Raphael,

How big do you plan to print out the maps? This is important to know as if we are using non vector textures, we will need to make them at the proper resolution.

My interest at the moment is purely in Rublo and Bryan's is in the map of the whole continent. I don't intend to colour the local maps with a political border colour, I think that is best left to Bryan's continental map (although a bit of the political colour in the border may look nice). Don't worry about the names for now, just give us enough information to do the drawings, putting the names on is easy and can be done at any stage, but better left until the end so that we can place them properly. (I hope Bryan agrees with this!).

In terms of place icons, the choices are using something abstract, like a dot or a square, or representative, like a little city or town drawing. Or, if you want to highlight that a habitation has a particular type of building, for example a church or fort, we can use little icons to indicate this. It is probably best to do the main drawing first so you have an idea of the feel and then to attend to the details later - we can send you ideas you can pick from.

Another idea I had is that we can make each country in a different style (as if they had been drawn by different cartographers) which tells more about the country in question. For example, a place you want the players to know little about can be done in a sketchy black and white style, and places well known can be done in full colour. This would also be helpful as Bryan (who is using different software to me) can make local maps as well.

I'm copying and pasting this email to the board as it is a part of the thought process.

Ravs

[Midgardsormr]

I have roughened the borders. That took a bit longer than I expected; CC3's trace function isn't very efficient.

Now, I'm not sure what to do with the political color for Faris. You said "goldier," but I'm not sure precisely what you mean by that. Can you point me toward an example of the color you want on the web somewhere?

Working on some geographical features, but it's slow going at the moment--too many other obligations.

[Baziron]

If I may comment on the climatic map:
I am no meteorologist, however, something about this feels odd, especially when thinking that the whole place isn't really big (in comparison to earth). Do you have any indications for why, for example, the desert is placed right where it is? (Maybe there's magical influence mentioned in the background)

And yet, I don't have an exact problem with it - since you said that the place is flat, it was most likely created, with makes it easier to overlook any "flaws", since you already must suspend your disbelief.

[ravells]

I've made a start on Rublo. I'm playing with ideas at the moment. Raphael describes this bit as 'Great spring plains' (so no forests etc). The darker texture on the land isn't meant to represent anything in particular - it's just there to give the land a bit of interest.

Would appreciate thoughts on:

The dissolve edge mountain range?
town circle colours?
Or should I use icons for towns?
More rivers?
Should I use the mountain icons around the central lakes instead of the dissolve style?

cheers

Ravs

[Midgardsormr]

That looks nice, but it looks suspiciously like what I've been labelling Longinus, not Rublo. According to the original map, Rublo is the southern of the two large islands on the eastern edge of the world map. It's sort of a pink-magenta color right now thanks to the transparency I've got on it. I have yet to tweak the political colors.