# Mapping Resources > Tutorials/How-To >  [Award Winner] Town Map Tutorial

## Larb

I intended to do this quite a while ago but only got around to doing it now. I hope someone finds it useful. It is in PDF.

*edit* Better quality version now attached.

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## jfrazierjr

Very nice tutorial...good job on it as well as the recent towns you have been doing!

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## Yandor

love it, kind of wondered how you did your work. Yes I still lurk, just no time to do mapping saddly. But I really wanted to comment on the fact that your "A dreary windswept town." looks very very familiar =D. Best remake of a UO city if I've ever seen one. Got any others?

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## Larb

I wondered if someone would recognise that one. I do have a bunch of UO maps (some of which are here including the one of Skara Brae) I have done for my guild/alliance in a variety of styles including one I'm currently working on of all of Britannia. Most are of player towns though.

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## Yandor

haha those are great, never actually considered redoing those maps, even though, those were the reason I got into cartography... I take it your playing the OSI side of the game, saw the sketch of the new trade port thing on the Britannia map. Great stuff!

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## Clercon

This is a great tutorial! Thanks a lot, now i just need to find some time to try it out  :Smile:

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## arsheesh

Hey thanks for the tutorial Larb.  I've only had a chance to look it over briefly but so far it looks really good.  

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

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## Larb

Quick question: How do I go about replacing the PDF with a better one? There's a few typos and stuff still in there and also some of the images are a bit fuzzy. I fixed them and improved the image quality a bit. Indesign can be a bit funky with any options outside of high quality pdf to print which is superhuge file size.

So I just want to replace the one above.

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## arsheesh

Go to the advanced editing options, click on the "attachments" icon, and then click on the "X" for the pdf attachment.  Then just upload the new version.  That should do it.

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## Larb

Thankyou. I have attached one with better quality images and some typos fixed.

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## Azassino

Wow, really Great. That will help me a lot, thank you.

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## rpgmapmaker

You have done very well with this tutorial.  I love this style and while I do things somewhat differently... you have a lot of great information here and I learned some things that I will use.

THANKS!

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## Quin

Thanks so much. I love your 'cartoon'-ish style. Your tutorial is great. I actually followed it in GIMP which required some translation and a little improvisation, but here's my nearly finished WIP. Taught me a lot about graphics manipulation.

I don't have your eye for art, but this is the second map I've created, so I pretty happy with it. I hope my players are too.

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## irwallace

This may seem silly, I have got the Just Add Bison.gtx... But I cannot open it in Photoshop. Can anyone help?

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## Larb

irwallace: Don't use the .gtx, use the .jpg instead (here is the direct link: http://www.spiralgraphics.biz/packs/...dd%20Bison.jpg). The resolution isn't great but it's fine for these maps.

Quin: That looks great. I'm glad you found the tutorial helpful and I'm also glad you managed to follow it using GIMP too. I look forward to seeing more of your maps!

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## irwallace

Thanks Larb! I shall use that!

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## Dannyl

Just came across this tutorial and it looks great. I'm trying it out right now but it made me think... Assuming I'm actually going to want to print my maps out on large sheets of paper, what kind of resolution should I look to work with? I started my map as 1500x1500 but it is still just 72 dpi. On my document scale, it actually shows as over 50cm wide, which is larger than an A3 sheet.

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## atpollard

72 dpi is a general viewing on a screen resolution.
150 dpi is a more typical resolution for normal printing
300 dpi is typical of high quality printing

1200 dpi and larger are for those glossy photo / artwork type printing.

So I would boost the 72 dpi resolution to 150 dpi and keep the 1500x1500 size as a starting point (and take this slowly since it is easy to get too big for the hardware when you start dealing with oversized sheets at 600+dpi).

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## Hai-Etlik

> 72 dpi is a general viewing on a screen resolution.


It was, once but current desktop and laptop screens are typically around 100 dpi.

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## Dannyl

Kk thanks  :Very Happy:

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## Dannyl

Alrighty, I'm almost done with my town map. I just have one question about the ground textures in this tutorial. It worked out really well, looks amazing but I'm thinking of my future map projects and was wondering, is there a way to insert a another layer, or something, to make the ground look more dry? I'm not talking a lot, just some textures, here and there that would indicate the ground is dry and less green.

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## Commander Freddy

This is a wonderful tutorial, it's helped me immensely with the mapping of a castle.  :Smile:

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## aquarits

really nice, just got it now and praticing!

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## Schwarzkreuz

lovely tut

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## Consortium11

Excellent tutorial; has been a vast help in my tentative steps into map making.

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## Meshon

I'm starting on a new town map and will definitely be trying this out. I am just reading over the tutorial and in step 9 you use a trick where you set the fill for a layer to 0%. THANK YOU! I just never figured this out on my own and it solves mapping issues I've been having for years! This is like a proverbial light-bulb going off. This really makes a huge difference to me, I can't say thank you enough.

Just goes to show that even if you think you know your software, there's always new things to learn.

cheers,
Meshon

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