[Region 1][Map 29][Town 01] - Port Kahardi

[ravells]

Right time to make a start! The placeholder was easy!!

Need to do some research about the area now.

[industrygothica]

Eagerly awaiting...

[Gandwarf]

Yeah, show us your progress

[ravells]

Sorry....zero so far...I'm currently too absorbed in my photography. But here's a picture of swan I took yesterday, and one of a couple of horses standing in front of my house (lol! I wish).

[ravells]

OK, you guys guilted me into making a start. I've drawn up a splatter diagram of how I see the city (it's going to be a huge job). I'm thinking about how I can break it down into discrete bits so it doesn't get too overwhelming. The interesting thing about doing the splatter diagram (which is how I generally approach city mapping). Is that it gives you an idea about what is important to show about the city before you begin to map it, which affects the style. It's almost like doing your own design brief.

Not sure I can work swans and horses into it though...maybe as undead creatures? Undead swans...now there's a thought. That one up there was giving my dog some seriously (un) deadly looks and went into aggression mode (the semi-furled wings), which was what gave me the shot <g>.

I'll spend a few days thinking of more ideas about the city and having mental walks through it, which will hopefully help me fill it out a bit more in my mind.

p.s. What do we know about the plague? I know that Torq kind of generally defined it, but do we know what it actually does to people and whether it affects only people or animals too?

[Midgardsormr]

I recall somewhere that someone said the plague does affect some wildlife. Wolves, I think, so probably all canids. Since it's spread relatively slowly and hasn't popped up in multiple places, it probably doesn't affect any migratory animals, like birds, or hitchhikers such as rats or other vermin.

We know from Torq that an infected person develops a gray pallor. Other symptoms include physical weakness, perhaps a reduced constitution.

We also know that the aboriginal people of southeast Ansium seem to have some degree of immunity, which raises the possibility of a vaccine of some kind if whatever protection they possess can be isolated and reproduced. The epicenter at the moment seems to be somewhere in the vicinity of Lake Medre in the Tawaren Basin.

Torq's description of the Grey Watch also implies that there is some kind of dark presence manifesting in Tawaren, turning previously loyal Groamen against their countrymen. The plague does not produce significant quantities of undead, though the significance of the Grey Watch's change of allegiance has not yet been explored that I am aware of.

[ravells]

Thanks Mid, that's really helpful. I think plague victims might just constitute 'food' in this city rather than any political force. It's an interesting situation....large city starts dying of the plague and politically implodes, the undead/flesh-eaters move in as there are not enough humans to protect it anymore and then the flesh-eaters themselves start getting the plague, which means more food for the flesh-eaters ... when they get hungry enough, which makes them prey themselves when they get the plague.

Anyway, I'm having a go at mapping the city proper and trying to find a lazy way of doing lots of streets / negative space quickly (I think I've found it - it's called the eraser). Here's what I have so far. The large buildings on the hills represent large palaces (not sure who is in them). The large building in the middle is the necropolis (undead central). the road network to the NE are my efforts at making a quick but believable road system with squares, nodes etc. The resolution is huge so my puter is chugging with it - this is a small render.

[Steel General]

That's an interesting and cool start Ravs.

[industrygothica]

I hadn't seen that tutorial before. I'll definitely be taking a look.

Oh, and glad to see you've gotten started on the map. Can't wait!


-IG

[ravells]

Bit more time to work on the city today. I'm trying to get convincing positive & negative space and building distribution. I started by just using the eraser tool to carve out roads from the main piece, but it still didn't look right. So to give the negative space some definition (rather than it just being squares, circles and roads) I merge some random rectangles and circles together as a seperate shape and then subtract it from the main blocks from which I've already carved the roads. I think the results are begining to look quite good but I need to look at some reference material to check. The larger buildings are just place-holders for now. I'm also thinking of ways in which I can give the city some individual character.

It's interesting that to the right of the image the dark positive space is dominant and to the left the light negative space is how the shapes are defined.