A range of scales with a prize.

[Redrobes]

As everyone must be tired of hearing by now I write ViewingDale and I am willing to ship a copy out to anywhere (that I am allowed to) as a prize so I thought that it would need a relevant challenge for it.

What I would think would be a great idea would be to have a world, a region, a city or town, a building and a token that fit together.

Gasp what all of those ? No, you can steal all of them from anywhere including these boards and the CWBP but you must create just one of them new.

The point of the challenge is that they must all be viewed top down and should all match up so that they fit together.

So you could create a new token for a fighter character and put him on an existing map of a castle then choose a town, a region, and a world for them to go on.

Or you could take the CWBP world, pick a CWBP region and create a new town for it. But you should also find a suitable building and character token for that building too.

You may substitute the building for a battle map scale bit of terrain, or a boat for the building etc just as long as there are there is a set of items at those approximate scales. For example, you can substitute a monster as the character token if you feel like.

You could create more than one of the items but you should select one part as the challenge entry.

Entries will be marked on quality and originality plus the ability for them to all fit together.

[Antony]

This sounds very interesting to me especially as I could do something which would fit in my own game world (see http://karnorthe.skaran.net) if you are interested.

[Jkaen]

Problem I have with this is you will end up trying to judge apples with elephants nevermind oranges, I just don't think there will be a consistant enough feel to the challenge

[Gamerprinter]

Problem I have with this is you will end up trying to judge apples with elephants nevermind oranges, I just don't think there will be a consistant enough feel to the challenge

The only problem with that argument is that most challenges older than a few months ago were very generalized (my preference) like the Nov 07 challenge -create an Old West map with a required list of objects: butte, mountain, hill, cactus, railroad, etc. or consider the Dec 07 challenge, create a map with a cavern system near water (river/ocean/lake) and create it start to finish in 4 hours.

It wasn't until "Not my Father's Dungeon" challenge (Mar or Apr ??) that the challenges forced us to rely on a specific floorplan or arrangement of structures like this month's challenge.

I prefer "apples and elephants", I like room for creatively even to develope the idea, not just the particulars. I'll go on a participate in the challenges as I can, but the recent flavors of pigeon-holed map challenges are too restrictive for my tastes.

GP

[Sigurd]

Hey, You supply the prize you can pick the challenge. ViewingDale looks amazing, a review copy would be sweet.

I'm in the middle of a mapping challenge that would be great in viewingdale. Take a look at.

http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...6409#post36409

One of the huge issues is how do you represent something like a continent on a 'normal' machine. I'm planning on 'pasting' my mountain tops on an FT world - I'd love any advice you care to post in the forum.

You're the next step, seemingly anyone can make a detail but how do you integrate it into the whole ?

Sigurd

[Redrobes]

I saw your huge map and its cool and you have chosen one 'island' and started on that too so theres two of the scales done already.

I wouldn't care what maps people chose even copyrighted ones where you just post a link to it and submit one new bit of work. But it would be better to have stuff we can reference like CC stuff and even better if its a set of maps that you have done yourself - theres more incentive to fill in something thats missing.

That's really the point of my suggestion actually. All our maps on this site bar CWBP are maps out of context. You get a post about a whole world but know nothing about what it looks like inside or you get somebody's battle map with no idea about where that is in relation to any world so thats what I would like to fix. It might be good to see if people can trawl this site and tie up lots of bits of maps together into a collection which would almost certainly need some 'glue' which is what you make for the challenge. The judging ought to be on quality of map / art but also strongly influenced on the selection and integration of the set. The best would be two unrelated maps 'glued' in scale with an excellent in between 'filler' entry.

It would be like the sum of the 5 maps/art would then be more than the individuals because of the relation between them. Or its like getting 4 maps for free by making another 1.

[Sigurd]

You know on reflection this is really an ideal challenge for the Mapping Project: we have big tiles (and the rights to them), we have millions of miles of space to fill (and the project could use the support.)

Why don't you tighten the criteria to say the entries have to be start from the world project, zoom once regionally, and then again into a new town or location.

You can judge it any way you like, but I'd consider, artistic success, visual interest, and world project contribution.

If you want to prep the contest to create something you can display why not take the most developed square (Grome?) and use that for everyone. They then have to come up with two new zoomed sections. That'll give you a single context with lots to see. Maybe even demo that square on your site?

If we're friendly enough to work together it could make the project more interesting by showing what can be done.

If the task is daunting make it a 2 or even 3 month contest.

I'd be interested to see that.


Sigurd

ps. What are the hardware requirements for the new version?

[Redrobes]

My take on it is that if you don't have a world then use CWBP but there might be many people out there with their own campaign setting and they could enter a map that they need or have just completed which works for them.

If you do go for the CWBP then your almost bound to go for something in Ansium like Groam and you could even take one of the great city maps of Torq and map out just one of the tiny buildings in it. That would be good. Or maybe take one of the inns from the July challenge and make a new town for Groam and ensure that the inn was somewhere in it.

But its just as valid to do your island map or a city in any number of the host of campaign maps that we have been presented with by the members. I dont think we should artificially restrict it to our world here.

Whats the hardware req ? Well, windows 2K thru to Vista64 but not 98,95,Me etc. You need a PC with at least about 500MHz CPU so really anything but it should have a decent graphics card with at least 32Mb of video memory. Every graphics card that you can go out and buy today is easily powerful enough, even the bottom end ones and they are pretty cheap now. The only PCs it has some issues running on is older laptops with on board graphics chips not designed for games use. Its not for Linux or Mac tho - sorry. Theres a functionally limited demo on the web site if you want to try it - if it doesn't run like you think it should then there is a test and fault find app there too to help out - else mail me cos then I'd need to know why.

[torstan]

I think this is a great idea. It would be perfect for all those people out there who use VTTs and as many people are still in the early stages of mapping out new 4e campaigns it makes a lot of sense to have a challenge like this. I'd love to have a shot at this as it would tie directly into the mapping I'm doing anyway for my 4e campaign - unlike some of the more recent challenges that have been a little too specific for me.

[industrygothica]

This idea has merit. I'm fairly confident that my machine doesn't have the video capabilities to run ViewingDale, but I'd enjoy the challenge anyway.