Advice for a Cyberpunk Map
Recently, I started a for-fun worldbuilding project that takes place in an alternate 1990s, where the Cold War is still going on but the world has advanced in various ways while maintaining cassettes, cartridges, and so on. Retrofuturistic cyberpunk. The vibe is very much 1980s-1990s action sci-fi movies - think Demolition Man, Judge Dredd, and War Games.
I decided I wanted to make a neat map of this world, using an Earth Map. But I am struggling to conceptualize how this would even look or how should I present it. One part thinks "just get a wikipedia map and adjust it to 1990s in your world, but that seems really boring. I want to try and make it look old, techno wise but I am struggling to visualize or find examples (probably because I don't know what search words to use) of an old computer screen with scanlines and pixelated graphics that still looks good and details information.
Any advice or is this a lost cause?
I have a pretty powerful PC and I've started using GIMP and Paint.net, no photoshop.
You could find inspiration in old 80s 90s movies about scifi tech , from alien to matrix, from wargames to terminator, represent the map instead of a traditional paper map , make a tv monitor with tme map in center and all around squares or portraits of whatever u like with scanlines and stuff, season everything with cables, led lights or retrofuturistic stuff.
Yeah, if there isn't a map in Wargames, look at some CRT displays from warships and submarines in movies, you know, green lines, with a square grid overlay.
That is a great ideia, TrueUndeadHero! However it is also a challenging one... I will give some of my personal views on the subject. First I think the mercator projection fits better, like a large rectangular map. Second, I would focus in a really cool retrofuturistic frame, maybe some radars/sonars, some hint to nuclear bombs, concrete, old computers, I know you see the same as me.
Ahh As for the map style... I would go for something more crude and brutalistic. Like raw efficiency.
I'm thinking of something like the map from Cyberpunk. Using a nap that blackens the water and uses a rough topography layer with just an overlay of countries on top and major cities Depicted as well as major locations and using a scanline/CRT overlay.
I thought these were interesting examples/inspirations:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/for...#post-20429650
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/69/88...84334b763f.png
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