How do I make castles?

[bryguy]

Im trying to make some castles for my map for conquerclub.com, but they dont look like castles basically cause they are to symmetrical, and however hard i try they only are looking good symmetrical. So I was wondering if anybody knew how I could make unsymmetrical castles, that would fit with my map



If anybody wants to see the map, then ask and ill pm you a picture of it. Id post it here, except I dont want my fellow members of conquerclub.com seeing it yet

[Gamerprinter]

Im trying to make some castles for my map for conquerclub.com, but they dont look like castles basically cause they are to symmetrical, and however hard i try they only are looking good symmetrical. So I was wondering if anybody knew how I could make unsymmetrical castles, that would fit with my map



If anybody wants to see the map, then ask and ill pm you a picture of it. Id post it here, except I dont want my fellow members of conquerclub.com seeing it yet

Send me a PM with the link to your map - I can forward it to other castle mappers here for their opinion. All done on PM - so you can keep the secret!

GP

[Ascension]

What kind of scale are we talking about here? Small icon castle to denote a town. Full blown all details castle down to the inch (or centimeter depending on where you're from). Or something more like a city style map castle here from the city forums? I guess what I'm saying is world size, regional size, city size, or encounter size (according to our subforums)? For something full blown check out last months challenge winner Vry and his tavern encounter map. For a world size castle icon or regional size small castle there is probably something in the Mapping Elements subforum.

[bryguy]

i sent you the picture

mostly cause i have NO clue what you meant...

[Redrobes]

The shape of a castle generally depends on the terrain its built on. If great big king dude starts from scratch on flattish ground then they did tend to be generally symmetrical. Otherwise they tended to follow the natural river, cliff, or other natural defense. Also, there are many types of castle. I am lucky enough to live within a good drive of many traditional medieval type ones. I would say about 50:50 to those that made an attempt to be symmetrical.

Wales has some of the best castles around so check this long list out and see if you can get some inspiration from them.

http://www.castlewales.com/listings.html

Edit -- top tip. If the list hasn't got at least 10 photos, its probably no more than a pile of rocks...

[Tancread]

If you have access to them even the piles of rocks can sometimes be very inspirational. I 'found' several small ruins in towns that were all but forgotten and still had some elements of interesting character to them.

[Redrobes]

If you have access to them even the piles of rocks can sometimes be very inspirational. I 'found' several small ruins in towns that were all but forgotten and still had some elements of interesting character to them.

I might agree but that site is how shall I put it... somewhat anal, and half a stone jutting out of a buried wall counts to them...

There are about 10 really great castles in Wales - the sort of place people not into castles can go to. Another 10 or so which are good if your a bit enthusiastic and generally enjoy that sort of thing but leave the others back in the car. The other 80 or so on that list takes a really special kind of imaginative person to appreciate them I think.

Edit -- Also ought to add that there is a Keyword Index here with Castles on it. Might be worth running through these posts.

[Ascension]

Here are those scans I was telling you about. From the book "The History of Castles" by Christopher Gravett. No idea who did these floorplans since there are too many illustrators and artists listed in the book. There many more but I thought these fit the bill the best as they are easily identifiable as being irregularly shaped.

[Steel General]

You might even check out the website for Stronghold Heaven, they've got screen shots etc. of various castles used in game and created by players.

[torstan]

That's precisely what I was going to suggest! They did a good job of recreating a lot of classic castles. If you fancy it, I'm sure you can pick up a cheap copy of stronghold 1 for next to nothing these days. They have most of the major UK castles already built in and you can zoom around them and get a good idea of the basic layout.