Superhero City Map

[Coyotemax]

And now for something completely different! (well, for me)... I've been a bit quiet as of late on the site, there's lots of complicated things going on, some of you know my situation, some don't - suffice it to say I have a lot less coherent free time these days Anyhow, we'll see how fast i can pump this map out.

I've been commissioned to do a map for a campaign set in a superheroes gaming system that is currently under development.

While I wait for a copy of the initial layout of the city, I figured I would start off with bashing my head against the desk repeatedly while trying to learn Illustrator. My prediction was correct - based on past experiences, I figured I would have a rough time overcoming the learning curve - and Adobe is not known for making things completely intuitive. Now that I have sacrificed enough pain to the Adobe Gods, Illustrator is now providing me with workable results.

This is a **very** rough test piece, just to get a few ideas in the works and see if it's feasible to continue. The next version will have much better street layout, this one was to test the street colours and strokes more than anything - and considering a single line in Illustrator can only be one colour unless you start to mess things around (calling it a Stroke implies to me that it should be a colour around the edges of the coloured line - but no, in this case it's the colour of the line itself.. wording!! it's all about the definitions and differences in percieved definition between tools.. the problem with adapting from photoshop to this which is 100% paths. ahwell, enough whinging for now).

I'm considering taking notes on this one to track what I do, maybe even turn it into a tutorial - there aren't many modern day city maps like this that I recall having seen on the site, maybe someone else will be able to benefit from my pain

[AslanC]

Hey there,

Yes it is for me

An to update his post, this will not be for BASH any longer but for my very own Super RPG that I am in the process of developing.

This is gonna be fun

[tilt]

the map doesn't load :.(

[Coyotemax]

That's peculiar. It's loading from here ok..
I've got the main streets and land shape done for the real map now though, I'll upload that and see what happens.

I'm planning on working in the onramps as well, that should be fun Once I have them in i'll start working on the surface streets.

[ravells]

Hi Coyote, I'm in the middle of doing a city map commission as well - there has been a lot of pain and headbashing at my end (I'm trying to keep everything in vector). There are two ways to get an outline to your roads. First is to have an identical layer below the 'coloured' roads but this time the stroke in black with a slightly larger width. Second is to convert your road lines to a polyline (I'm using Serif Drawplus so I don't know what the equivalent is in illustrator) so the road becomes an editable shape. There is a third way in drawplus which is to add a stroke 'effect' to the line, but that rasterises the line so you're no longer working in vector.

If you want to know more just holler!
best

Ravs

[Coyotemax]

Yeah, i've been doing the first method. I'm sure there's a way to do that poly-line thingy in Illustrator, but I've been getting excellent results now that I'm over the learning curve. I was concerned about editing, but I realized if I group all the paths together, i can still edit points as needed and catch all the relevant layers while they're lined up perfectly (outline and roads themselves). There's also a way to take the resulting outline and apply it as a style, but when i do that it doesn't handle intersections very well, so i stayed with the multilayer approach.

Sorry to hear about the headbashing on your end, though it's nice to know I'm not alone

[ravells]

It makes me feel better too.

[Ascension]

I gave up on the whole vector genre about 7 years ago because I got tired of bashing my head in. Someday maybe I'll try again but I doubt it.

[ravells]

LOL! Wimp!

One more method on roads (don't laugh) do it all using paths and then when you're ready, convert the paths into a bitmap and autotrace them. This has been a huge time saver for me on many occasions.

Only reason I'm here right now is that I'm waiting for drawplus to complete some bloody huge computational task in melding a load of hedges together....it can take up to half an hour to complete (there are about 33,000 objects)....why do I do this to myself?

[Steel General]

I'm with Ascension on giving up on the vector genre - so I guess I'm a wimp too

@CMax - Still early to say much, but it looks like it's coming along.

@AslanC - I haven't forgot about your map, works been crazy the past couple of months, but it finally looks like it's starting to return to "normal"