The Big One.

[ravells]

OK, I think I'm ready for this. Am I mad? Yes! Will I get even madder after I've done this? Definitely!

I've essayed in the craft with a few smaller cities and towns...it's time for the big one. If Serif Drawplus takes one look at the number of nodes involved, it will laugh at me, thank me very kindly for my interest and shut down, so I'm going to do this one in Photoshop.

Here's the base image which is an RPG City creator generation (that program just rocks), the guy who wrote it was a genius. I've exported a sliced image with the final composite being 6400 px on each side.

First win! There's no antialiasing in the RPG city export! This means to separate all the elements into their own layers is a simple magic wand job. Fantastic, I can work without anti-aliasing and deal with that at the end if I need to by using a bit of gaussian blur.

Wish me luck! I'm going in!

[Zeta Kai]

The looks like a massive undertaking to turn that into a semi-realistic urban map. The best of luck to you, Rav. Also, how can I get a copy of RPG City Creator? Is it freeware? Lastly, what do each of those colors mean in the map? I imagine that the blue is a river, & the black are buildings, but are the yellow/red/green lines all different kinds of roads? Are the orange areas parks?

[ravells]

RPG city creator is sort of semi abandonware.....the guy who wrote it gave it out for free and I know that someone at the guild has popped a copy of the install file on server where we can still find it. Ah found it You can download it from here.

Yeah the yellow / green lines are all roads but I probably won't use them (the buildings define road edges) the oranges are meant to be parks but I just wanted something to break up the city and they were good to do it with. I'm probably going to use another generated city with very small and windy roads for certain parts and drop them in somewhere.

Enjoy it, it really rocks - and with a bit of clean up produces stunning results.

[ravells]

screenie_01.jpg

Steps taken:

Didn't like the town centre inside the river bend so I put a more compressed and windy road town centre there. I wanted a super compressed bit in the middle so did the same again with a more compressed road network. The bridges didn't work at all, so got rid of them. Stuck in a google maps screenshot of carnaefon castle to give me an idea of scale. Popped in a castle map I'd made previously on another thread.

I think I now need to sit down and try and work out what sort of personality I want the city to have before I do anything else...

[Aval Penworth]

Yay. This looks like it could turn into a super-cool monster map. May the universe bless you with the time and inspiration to create a marvel.

[ravells]

Cheers Aval...I'm not so sure, but thanks for the best wishes!

[LonewandererD]

Sir, we have a straighjacket with your name on it because this map is insane !!!

Bravo!

-D-

[jtougas]

You can't have my cookies....*drools* Just awesome already Rav

[torstan]

Wow, I think you might be certifiable for this. I'm already amazed by the progress. It's looking great.

I'd link those bridges up with some arterial roads. Even the earliest town will have a power center and straight(ish) roads leading from it. Looking forward to seeing how this comes on (and monitoring your deteriorating mental health!)

[Gandwarf]

Give my condolences to your life, Ravells