Hi Guilders, [xTrain project]

[pavelvon]

. Hi everyone in this comunity!
Developing a game requested to make me a cartographer. Without any previous knowledge about carthographing I set on this task.
Finaly I found you, Guilders . I studied the forum first to get rough knowlegde on map-making.
My primary goal is to create a map for my current game xTrains. It should be an Island with "rails" and "stations."

In this thread I want to put my progress on this, so others can see, what can be achieved by following the knowledge of this comunity.

Thanks for all the help so far and looking for the carthographic future

PavelVon

And here is the goal, rough sketch of the map:
xTrain01 draft.jpg

[pavelvon]

Actually I used "Not so random coast line" tut by RobA. This lead me to:

xTrain02 land.jpg

Next I applied the "Using GIMP to Create an Artistic Regional RPG Map" tut, where I got the idea on how to add sea level.
Even if I didn't use exactly the same way, the result have been sufficient for me:

xTrain03 sea added.jpg

In various tutorials, there have been pointers to the pattern usage, unknown to me till this tryouts:

xTrain04 grass land.jpg

Oh yes, the mountains. Very mysterious area full of "Bumps" and "Embosses", multilayers, etc.
Here I read so much threads, that I cannot say which influence have been the most usefull.
Maybe the authors will see their techniques :-).

xTrain05 mountain.jpg

Forest added using the pattern style:

xTrain06 forest.jpg

[pavelvon]

Actually I'm at the stage of adding the Game layer. Here I'm still searching of applying something "nice to map", but still diferenciable enough for the gamers to look for the right place on map.

Here I would appreciate any Ideas, as I was not lucky at finding some usefull thread on this :-(. (maybe a link will be enough for me )

xTrain07 Including Game details.jpg

ps.: oh yes, I used text layer in ENG, (draft is in CSY), for World to better understand

[tilt]

well done pavelvon and welcome to the guild. For future reference make a WIP thread (in the respective section) for a Work In Progress, since many people won't check back on a member introduction thread.

[pavelvon]

Exactly this positive kicks I deserve, will do tilt!
Thanks for quickguiding and wellcome :-)

[Lyandra]

Welcome to the Guild PavelVon! This is developing into a very nice map. I especially like your sea, it's very artistic. I think that you should do something with your labels to make them more legible. Parts of the text that don't fit into the red circles are hard to read in places. On your terrain I can also see some strange lines, (artifacts from your sketch?), like the ones over the station called Corn Fields. If I were you I would try getting rid of them. They are a bit distracting. Overall a great start.

[arsheesh]

Welcome to the Guild Pavelvon. Looking good so far. The labels don't really stand out all that well though, the white of the text sort of disappears against the light green backdrop, and though the red icon helps it pop out better, the icon only sits under a portion of the text, which to my eyes is rather distracting. You might try either making the red icons more oval in shape (so as to lie under the entirety of the text), or using rectangles or something.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[pavelvon]

Thaks for the tips, based on hints from tilt I created a WIP thread instead of in introduction section.

From now on, I will update the WIP thread only. I hope to implement your ideas soon.
Thanks so far,
PavelVon