*** December 10 Mapping Challenge - Map a planet ***

[tilt]

In the light of NASA's latest discovery we thought to go to space... or at least look down from it

Your challenge is to produce a planetary scale map.
The map should be drawn and labelled to provide as much information as you can about the planet while keeping the map legible: Examples of information you might wish to include are:
Topography
Climate
Political boundaries
Places of Note
Major geological features
Cities and towns
..and much much more

This may be a map of our planet earth to present to recently discovered alien life forms, or a map of your home brewed campaign or it might be a roadmap for Santa Claus. The choice is yours.

Any member of the Cartographer's Guild is eligible to enter the monthly challenge - one map per contestant.
No update to an entry will be permitted once the threads are locked for voting. Moderators will inform members of the impending lock down whenever someone remembers, which is somewhat iffy.
Challenge will be locked down on december 31st
so we get a clean start for next year.
All are encouraged to enter the monthly challenge. Only one (or maybe two) win the challenge each time, but everyone who enters learns something about their craft and makes the event more fun for all involved.

To enter, create a new thread in this forum and use the attachment manager to upload your works in progress. Precede every image with the text:
### Latest WIP ###
to allow the forum to pickup the thumbnail for the challenge thumbnails page.

Now go map and good luck all

[VincentAlliath]

I've never done one of these challenges before... Could you explain what you mean by the "### Latest WIP ###"? Is that in the filename, or in the post title or just in the post?

[Gamerprinter]

Once you post your Work-in-Progress map at any stage of development, post an attachment through the attachment manager as an upload from your PC or from a linked online location. At the end of the text portion of your post enter this: ### Latest WIP ###.

No its not a file name, you have to literally type that out exactly. A thumbnail scraper script is built within the Challenge threads, that when activated search through every Challenge Entry thread, and hunts for the last keyed ### Latest WIP ### - whatever the last image posted under that as an attachment will be captured and posted onto a Challenge Entry Thumbnail page that is created for each monthly challenge. This way visitors to the Challenge forums can view thumbnails of all available entries - with direct links to each thread so they can read the specific entry thread that features a particular thumbnail.

Savvy?

GP

[VincentAlliath]

Got it. Thanks.

Hopefully my internet will reset soon and I'll get my download/upload speed back again so I can actually upload my WIPs.

[Diamond]

Hurrrrm.... I think I will enter this. Hopefully it'll go better than the NYC entry...

If I'm interpreting this right, it looks like our first WIP/thread has to wait until the 10th to be posted?

[waldronate]

Or any time in December 2010, perhaps?

[Diamond]

Or any time in December 2010, perhaps?

Heheh, that too. the lack of a ' in '10 threw me.

[VincentAlliath]

So, uh... my WIP is 20MB (8400 x 4000 pixels, .jpeg format) and that's just a parchment texture, an overlay (black where water is, white where land is), and a 1 pixel thick grid...

Should I just upload it to my own server (vincentalliath.com) and link to it?

I don't want to lose any of the quality, but I don't know of any better compression rates than what .jpeg provides.

I had a smaller map that was 4800 x 2400, but it was too small for me to get the icons and labels and actual land masses the way I wanted. I don't really want to go back to that one...

So yeah... upload it to my own server, I guess, and miss out on being on the thumbnails page properly?

[RecklessEnthusiasm]

Vincent - You could perhaps post a lower quality version WITH a link to the high quality version, otherwise there might be an issue with the thumbnail scraper (it is always a bummer when one's image is a broken-link icon on the thumbnails page) . I also found a super cool web-based image zoomer here: http://zoom.it/ which might help people browse such a big/detailed image in a neater way.

[Gamerprinter]

Well the board can host a thumbnail of that size of an image. Really 4000 pixels is larger than what the board can show, so 8000+ pixels, no way. Also if you look at the upload guide on the Attachment Manager, it will tell you 4.6 MB (?) is the largest file it can take, 20 MB, again no way. Since your image is that large, perhaps you can resize the map down to 1800 x 3600 pixels (approx) so we can view it here, but keep your original at your intended size. When you are finally done with the map, then upload to your site and provide a link to it.

One thing though, if you're file size is that big, chances are not many people will actually look at it, and if there's no thumbnail to view (at the sizes I mention above) then nobody will be able to give it a good chance for voting at the end of the month. You might not win, just because of that, which isn't fair perhaps, but your map size is forcing this upon you.

Honestly I create and print huge maps myself, but challenge entries... I never go over 3600 pixels x 2400 pixels ever. And I save all my files as JPG files with medium compression, so most files are less than 2 MB in size.

I get it, that you want a certain quality of map yourself, makes sense, but your size requirement, might not help you in the challenge

GP