# Gallery > Cartographers Choice >  Britannia by Hai-Etlik

## ravells

*Map*


*Created in: Quantum GIS / Inkscape / Fontforge*

*Review*
Hai-Etlik specialises in using 'real world' mapping software to make  fantasy maps. He also writes his own code to place forests. This is a  map of the world of Britannia in the popular Ultima series of games.




> I started out in Quantum GIS by tracing my old map, switched to OpenJUMP  to convert the data to a format I could load into JTS easily, and then  processed it though some custom software written in Java using the JTS  library. That produced an SVG image with the stipples and an initial  tree and mountain placement. I loaded the result into Inkscape to clean  up the positioning and add further elements like the labels, and  whatnot. The basic algorithm I used is as described in this paper  presented at SIGGRAPH 2006 which uses Wang Tiles for high speed blue  noise generation. I didn't implement the recursive aspect though as I  didn't need it.
> 
> The symbols were all either drawn in Inkscape, printed in light blue at 5  times their final size, inked with a sharpie pen, scanned, cleaned up  in GIMP, and then auto-traced in Inkscape. Or I drew them directly on  paper with a coloured pencil, and then inked and scanned them the same  way.
> 
> The small font was created the same way: I printed a sheet with  reference boxes, wrote in the runes in sharpie, scanned, traced. picked  loaded the result into Fontforge, and then largely used automatic  metrics generation as I'm not really a typography expert. I did manage  to build some ligature substitution for the combination runes like TH  and NG. The larger double struck lettering was just improvised over top  of the basic one scaled up and doesn't exist as a font.


*Original threads*
Click here to view the Finished Map thread.

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## Clercon

Congrats Hai-Etlik and a really great map!

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## Galendae

I ganked a whole lotta people in that world.  Good Times!

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## arsheesh

Great map!  Congrats Hai-Etlik.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

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## Hai-Etlik

Wow, thanks everyone.

I do intend to clean up the software I wrote to do this and turn it into something that normal people can use at some point but I've been rather busy with my new job.  I will be doing a presentation on wang tile stippling for map symbolization to some of my co-workers and I'll be sure to post it to it here afterwards.

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## Larb

Well deserved, my Ultima fondness aside. Very well executed!

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## Diamond

That is one sweet map, dude.

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## Bog97th

Very nice!

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## Map-man

Britannia, WOW; does that ever bring back fond memories.  Hours spent running from seeking arrows... followed ya' right into town...
Great Map Hai-Etlik !
Ultima... <sigh>  Those were the days...

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## Kier

Fond memories indeed. Ultima III, IV, and V were the ones I played for like forever. 

Great Map!

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## Majere_Draven

I wanna be this when I grow up.

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## PolarThebiBear

Wow! This is really incredible. I'm gonna try to incorporate the detail in your mountains and forests in my next hand-drawn map!

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## lmbarns

Very cool. I'm fond of the world of Britannia, spent years of my life playing Ultima Online and have covered every sq ft of the world, explored dungeons, tamed dragons, placed houses, countless adventures. It's still my all time favorite game, by a long shot. From day 1 it had more than every game since. You could be a merchant and get rich just dealing stuff, and the world was dangerous since you could be killed by murderers outside the guards protection when you left the city. Maybe you wanted to hunt murderers, maybe you wanted to go dig up treasure from a map you found, it was so good...

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## Erkas357

Great looking map! Brings back fond memories from the years when I used to play Ultima Online.

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## Ride

Great map..

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## goucher

Good work.

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## Patrick_1886

That is an awesome map, great work.

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## Ilunar

I love b/w maps. Very well done  :Very Happy:

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