# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Town/City Mapping >  WIP : Town of Fière-Muraille

## Narolas

Hey there, for a homebrew campaign happening in the Rostland plains of Brevoy (Pathfinder setting), i'm making a relatively small town (about 1000 population) in the middle of the plains, calm, quiet and surrounded by fertile plains, farms and fields.
The town itself is fortified and at the center of a long line of fortifications, old ruined walls and watchtowers. These stretch west to east and cut the plains in two, dating way back from when Rostland was a small Taldan settlement focused around Restov and the Shrike river (before the expansion north and west), and was often the prey of barbarian tribes, bandits and their rough northern neighbors in Issia.

I've quickly sketched the layout of things, the terrain elevation (in shades of red) and the wealth (in shades of green), although that will likely change.

I'll be making two versions, a focus on the town itself (zoomed in) and a slightly zoomed out map (like this WIP) for the purposes of my campaign.

The area itelf is pretty good for me, i'll be tweaking the farms and small paths criss-crossing them, the one thing that's nowhere near final is the town itself (its shape, layout, content, etc..), its all very vague at the moment and will probably change quite a lot as i'm figuring out exactly what to do with it.



A bit vague for now, but i'm open to early criticism and guidance in making an interesting and realistic city layout (right now it's too straight, I prefer the "by accretion" type of streets and density, and given the age of the place it would fit).

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## Larb

I like the idea of tying the settlement into much older fortifications. It is possible some of the more intact towers along the old line of defence might be repurposed into watch towers or farmsteads while the rest of it has probably been recycled to use the stone to build the town and it's walls.

Where is your water source though? That is pretty important.

Also I forgot to add. If your settlement is built on the site of a big major fort or similar along the wall (a bit like the ones along Hadrian's wall) then your settlement might mildly conform to whatever plan the fort had with a bunch of changes to account for the new culture/people. It might also include reused structures in the plan. So I think it might be worth considering what did the site look like BEFORE this town appeared. The elevation suggests this is a good spot for just such a previous site.

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## Narolas

Thanks, I was getting annoyed at the official map sources because no river seems to be going through the plains. I'll be putting little streams going through and eventually joining back to the main rivers, or maybe just have wells ?
The re-usability of old structures is definitely a cool thing, i'll be using that.
The big question that remains for me is, did the settlement exist before or after the fortifications ? Its spot suggest the fort existed first, while I originally thought of the village being there first then reinforced to respond to the constant threats. I like the first idea better though, I can have a more interesting shape for the town and cooler locations if it's re-using the old fort's stuff. The problem is, the town is much larger than the fort would have been (Unless it was a massive fort, which i'm not too keen on doing at this spot), so I'm now thinking of having the town forming around the fort in the center, by accretion around the roads and ruins of the wall, which would be a much more interesting landscape.

Thanks ! That gave me some really good ideas to make this place original.

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## Larb

Well the original fort may have had it's own settlement next to it. That was the case with the major ones on Hadrian's wall - Vindolanda was a big fort with a big settlement beside it to provide additional services. Not saying you need to follow the roman model just that they are good examples of how settlements pop up alongside big defensive infrastructure like that. Perhaps a few streets or something may have survived from any settlement that may have existed by the fort even if it is just the "high street".

For water sources you could just have springs coming out of the nearby hills or some small brooks or if this whole area is in a much bigger valley, lots of deep wells. Or an Aqueduct (that might run mostly underground like a qanat.) You can make pretty much anything fit I just thought it was an important consideration.

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## foremost

The sketch you've provided and the background you seem to be working on are quite interesting. I agree wholeheartedly with the point Larb made (about taking into consideration the land before the town). A town of 1000, though, might be bigger than you think; you should certainly take into consideration what the population might need in terms of local resources.

I'll be following this as you make progress. Good luck!

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## Narolas

Here's what i've got so far :



So, small streams running around the plains, but not too many, this one happens to have shaped the surrounding land into this hill the fort was built on. the rest of the plains has similar small streams joining the larger rivers to the north and south, but also many wells (some of which are on the hill) (i'm assuming the fertility of the region would come from underground water sources).

The fort was built first as a defensive position, along with a small settlement at the bottom of its path, the wall came soon after (and yes, hadrian's wall is a perfect example to what it would look like now, most of it being ruined or its stones repurposed). Along the years, the northern part of the plains grew powerful, the region became safer and trade more important (especially after the founding of Stetven, a city on the shores a large lake, to the north-west), so the village that had grown south of the hill and nesting against the wall started to develop more along the main road connecting to the north, which gives the town its modern layout. the "old town" is still there, to the east at the bottom of the hill, although didn't grow nearly as much as the new town center.

After centuries and centuries, the wall became a shadow of what it once was, its stones re-used and its towers falling apart. The streams themselves, once easily tamed and going through small gates under the wall, have now carved large holes through the mostly destroyed structures.

Rostland now mostly being the breadbasket of Brevoy, the landscape has changed radically from what it used to be, once a barren defensive position in dangerous wilderness, now safe, quiet and fertile, a simple life for simple people.

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## Narolas

Some progress !



I started lining the slopes of the hill, I'm pretty happy with the result so far.
I really love how people like J. Edward do those cliffs, so I tried something similar. It's my first time figuring out how to line specific elements, so i'm not quite sure what's good or not for now and hopefully I can find my own style after a few tries.

Tell me what you think !

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## Larb

Looks like a good start. I look forward to seeing how it develops.

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## Narolas

The cliff lines are done, the rivers are placed and I've started working on the grass shading.
I tried a bunch of different techniques for the shading, all with various advantages, and this one I quite like.
Now to add a darker/lighter shading around the rivers and curves of hills to make them pop out, colour the cliffs, then the city planning finally starts.



Thanks for the people following this, I keep thinking my stuff is mediocre but it looks like people like it.

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## Narolas

Had some more free time and made a bunch of progress.
Cliffs and rocks finished with colour and shading, grass done for now (might work a bit on the shading later) and rivers coloured and textured.



Now to start the city planning, that's going to be a lot harder !

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## Ilanthar

> *By Narolas*
>  Thanks for the people following this, I keep thinking my stuff is mediocre but it looks like people like it.


Are you kidding? No surprise that people like it (as do I), it's very well done. The shading is very good and your colors work well. I would only rework a bit the river banks : the line seems a bit strong compared to what you did with the cliffs and rocks.

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## Narolas

Some progress on the buildings !
I've prepared the main roads and streets and outlined the building clusters, walls, etc.. , i'll be redrawing the lines more cleanly on each cluster/building once i'm colouring and i've already tried it on some gates, towers and a bit of wall.



Next, I think I should have a rough placement of farms and farm buildings/houses so i can make sure everything fits, same for the few trees here and there and small details, then I can begin re-drawing and colouring each element.


On another note, while re-measuring the scale and population density, i've realised i've transformed this town (which was supposed to be a small 1000 pop town) into a pretty large city, about 9000 to 10.000 pop  :Razz: 
Welp, It has a ton of good ideas and i've grown fond of it, so i'm keeping it this way and i'll use it as the major city of the area instead of the "small local town" type of thing it originally was (an opportunity to make another, very small, map !).

Tell me what you think of the progress !

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## J.Edward

That's looking really good Narolas.  :Smile:

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## snodsy

Really nice start, nice line work. It has a very strong diagonal emphasis, I'm wondering if one of the smaller hill tops might move off the diagonal axis or have a stronger North to South shape. Look forward to seeing this evolve, thanks.

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## ChickPea

Looking good!  :Smile:

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## Narolas

Thank you everyone.
Snodsy, yeah it does. It kinda was the goal from the start, the line of fortification being built mostly along a very small line of hills (remnants of a very old mountain range, something like that).
If it feels too diagonal, I might move the top-right hill a bit south and change the shape a bit.

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## Narolas

I just realised medieval farming is ... complicated, to say the least.

So far I have fields (divided between spring planting, autumn planting and fallow), some pastures and hay meadows, and wooded areas.
So my question is, is there anything else i'm missing ? I've found some example on google images, and there's things such as "closes" and "waste" that i'm not really sure mean, and i'm not quite sure i've got the other things right either.

(example map i mentioned HERE)

So basically, given my map (a fairly important city on a hill but still pretty calm, surrounded by a bunch of smaller farming villages, right in the middle of a large fertile area of plains, some areas along the wall being abandonned/unsafe), how would the farms look like ? The area is pretty safe, and it's in the center of a nation, so the majority of the terrain is being used. It's a temperate area, it gets pretty cold winters and some mist in the winter from the Lake of Mists and Veils. The area its in (rostland) is considered the breadbasket of the nation of Brevoy.
I'm wondering if they'd have, on top of the farm fields, pastures, meadows, fallows, closes and wastes, because i'm not sure what those exactly are. And if yes, how would those be placed, why, how do they work in relation to placement, elevation, proximity to a village or the big town (pollution ?), rivers, etc..

If there's any medieval expert reading, help  :Razz:

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## Pixie

Not the medieval expert, but when I was a kid I still helped around with ox ploughs and the sort at my grandparents village, during summer holidays. The region is now much less populated than 100 years ago, but while methods have changed it just didn't undergo industrial farming as its population is old and retired, while the younger generation left the villages. A satellite view of it will give you a good idea, I think...

https://www.google.pt/maps/search/co.../data=!3m1!1e3

The area is composed of little fertile valleys and granite outcrops, which you can spot easily. I think you can use it as a source for your map. I know the forested area was nearly 0% when my grandparents were young (at least, in way of thinking, that was middle ages!)

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## Larb

Not an expert but have had cause to look up the open field system in detail in the past. =P Closes are small privately owned fields and vegetable patches and stuff. I can't remember exactly what wastes refers to exactly. Pasture is just land for grazing livestock, fallows are the fields left empty for the year (it will be a third or a half of all the farmland depending on how inefficient your people are but I'm going to assume the three-field system so only a third will lie fallow), and meadows are grassy fields for growing hay and such if I remember right. 

Oh and a few other odd names for crops you might come across: Dredge is wheat and barley planted together, and Mixtill is oats and barley planted together. Planting them in that way apparently made them more resistant to disease and things.

Pixie's link is pretty good - you can see the fields are separated into long thin strips like on the example map you posted. That is so you don't have to turn the plough around as much. People will probably use as much arable land as they can while leaving the not so good stuff for pasture.

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## arsheesh

Just wanted to chime in say this is looking very nice.  I'll be following the progress on this one.  Looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

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## Narolas

Slow progress on the fields !
I've done the major lines on the northern farms/pastures/meadows (with rough temporary colouring for planning).
Yellow/orange is planting (summer, autumn and fallow), bright green meadows, faint green pastures, dark green woods. I'll probably tweaks bits here and there when i'm doing the detailing, making maybe a small vineyard or wastes, or some other interesting variation.



Next on the list, the southern ones, woods, paths/bridges, then detailing and adding the village lines.

So far, I quite like how its looking, but i'll only know when I detail and colour them properly. My only worry is that the result might be very busy looking, so i'm planning on making the inside of the fields simple and revealing a lot of the grass background. If anything, I can always reduce the amount of seperations.

Also thanks to the people following this, i'm glad you like it  :Smile:

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## Narolas

Looking at it again, I think i'll redo it. Most of those fields look too small and i'm not happy with the look. More work  :Razz: 
I'll update when I have good looking farms.

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## Kiba

I love your colors and linework! This is coming along nicely!

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## Narolas

Farms !

As always, the colours (and detail) of the farms, woods, the walls and buildings are *temporary* (although the buildings are pretty close), and will be cleaned and tweaked when properly done.
Now that everything's in place, I can start going over each element and finishing it. The farms will take a while (making little stone walls, small paths, trees and the variation of fields), as well as the buildings (making a bunch of premade to copy-paste could make it easier) and walls.

But, as far as the planning/placing of each element goes, i'm happy with how it's looking!



Like last time, thanks for the feedback  :Smile: 

PS : just noticed i didn't include the village markers (just rough red circles for planning), you can probably guess where most of them are, usually at crossroads with space around it, between fields.

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## Kiba

Looking good! I love how the different shades of green are clearly meant to be farmland/pasture or forest!

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## Narolas

Haven't had much time to work on this lately, but still, a bit of progress.
Tweaked the farms a bit, they didn't really fit the elevation well, and I felt like the map was too crowded.
Added the forest lines (and some super rough colouring).

Still not sure what to do with the "final" version of the farms, do it super detailed (stone walls and trees to seperate them, realistic filling for each type of field), or more conceptual (kinda like it is right now, with a bit more detailing).
Also wondering if I should add a lot more detail to the building clusters, maybe just lines to seperate the buildings and some slight shading, but I don't really feel like making each individual building, probably only the important locations.



Feedback welcome as always  :Smile:

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## Larb

I have similar struggles when doing farmland.

I am wondering if it might be worth adding some shadows to your building clusters to give them a bit more depth. You have the cliff which looks very three dimensional but the wall and buildings look very flat in comparison. You could also try shading and lines but maybe just start with some shadows.

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## Narolas

That's planned Larb, but thanks anyway  :Smile: 
The buildings are coloured mostly for me to get a feel for them, the only thing "done" about them is the lines. Once I decide on a final look, i'll colour, shade and add shadows and other details to the streets.

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## Narolas

Alright, progress progress !
Roads, the central castle, walls detailed. 
Forest coloured and textured, will probably add more shading/little things later on.
Building clusters and farms have now drop shadows as to give a better effect, BUT those are still far from being in their finished state.



TODO :
Detail and colour the building clusters, add street detail (like different ground textures for the streets, right now it's all the same path which isn't ideal) and main "points of interest"
Add villages and other locations in the region
Work on slight shading/shadows for forests, buildings, etc..
Work on the farm and decide what to do with them in terms of detail (little stone walls, some trees on the farm seperations, little details, variations on the field contents.

Then the finishing touches, details, a scale + compass, legend if needed, title, and wrap up !


Thanks again for the interest in the map and the advice, even if a lot things people suggested were already planned it helped me confirm they were needed and figure out the best way to do them.

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## Larb

The castle looks nice. I look forward to seeing it after you have done the rest of the buildings.

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## Jayharchitect

I am liking where this is going.  In regards to the struggle with representing the farms, you might try faint cross hatches in the fields to give the impression of plowed rows.  You would have to alternate directions in each field to avoid it becoming to monotonous.  Worth a shot at least!

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## Ilanthar

I agree with Larb, very nice castle. It makes me want to see more  :Smile: .

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## Narolas

Slow progress on the buildings, not exactly sure how i'll handle the variety and unique locations. So far, i'm slowly shifting the colours depending on the type of area (dense/not dense, rich/poor, for example), but i'll probably stay close to wood colours. And unique locations get a slightly different shade (and i'll add numbers or letters on them, referenced on the legend).



There's a small area north-west of town that's done, with a few unique locations i'll be labeling later. I quite like the look of it, as long as you don't zoom in too much (very pixely, I should have calculated the image size better at the start, I wasn't expecting my city to get this big and have buildings this small in comparison).
A few other little things like street texture and a few tweaks here and there.

Feedback appreciated!

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## foremost

Looks like you've been working on this pretty steadily; I admire your consistent dedication.

I would stay close to wood coloring for the buildings, but if you need color variation for variety maybe the richer areas could be less dense and feature stone buildings.

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## Solice

Not to be the inspired new guy but, I'm inspired and mystified by the intricacy of local maps illustrated in this manner. Just so many variables that I don't know if I could tackle myself. I commend thee! I also will be watching this glorious piece, its coming along so nicely and it looks like you are making good, solid decisions with each update. 

Inspiring.

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## Narolas

Slow progress yet again.
Houses are progressing, taking care to make everything look just right and to add little details and unique locations here and there.
Added some bushes/sparse trees around the forests and in a few places in town.
I'm really starting to hope that, once I add the drop shadows of buildings and hills, the map won't look like too much of a clusterf*ck, it would certainly help give the central hill and keep some depth though, I should do some tests.



Here it is, feedback appreciated as always.

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## Meshon

This is wonderful! I really appreciate the detail you've put into the buildings, it's a lot of work with no easy way to get around it, and your hard work shows.

When I zoom out, the different contrasts in the the fields is kind of jarring and I'm thinking that the surrounds might benefit from a narrower range in values. Pick one colour for the fields and then adjust it only slightly up and and down to get your three colours.

Also, medieval fields tended to be long and narrow, often with one narrow end bordering a stream or river. The idea was to turn your plough as little as possible. There's an example here that's not too bad. Absolutely NOT necessary to incorporate this into your map, but if you're looking for ways to change the fields, that might be one option.

This is going really well, and I'm glad to see you're keeping at it!

cheers,
Meshon

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## Narolas

Oh yea, the farms are the next big thing on the TODO list, they're pretty ugly atm.
Also i've been using that example you linked, all the little plots you see on my map are like the ones on the example, I simply haven't drawn the rectangular linear fields INSIDE the plots yet, but now that you mention it i'll make sure to draw those rectangles while following roads/rivers and make it consistent.

I've been trying my hand at adding shadows to the cliffs, and it's already looking a lot better with a lot more depth, so that's good. Once I'm done with all the little buildings i'll have to add shadows to those too, as well as the walls and towers, not looking forward to that  :Razz: 
Then, the fields .. still hoping those'll turn out alright, so far i'm thinking of a few different ways I could render them.

Thanks for the encouragement !

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## Kiba

Looking REALLY good!

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## Narolas

Some tweaks, some little changes.
Added shadows to the hills and the castle, increased the drop shadow effect on the building clusters (i'll be manually adding shadows to the towers and high/special buildings later).

Slow, slow progress on the building details (It's hard to find the motivation to do those !).



Still going well, i'm enjoying making this type of map (although I do think I could have picked a smaller one to make, this being my very first town/city map).

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## Bogie

Loving this map!  Great progress.  Looking forward to seeing it finished.

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## ravells

This is such a labour of love! I really like the style you've used. It works so well for those little details that makes the map fun to pore over, like the little market stalls.  Lovely colour use. Do you think it would be worth making the edges of the forest a bit more scalloped / crinkly?  It's a beautiful map, Narolas!

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## Narolas

Pheeew.



Welp, next time i'm doing a city this big, I probably won't draw as much detail for the buildings. It's incredibly time consuming.
Anyway, city buildings done, now onto the small villages (piece of cake compared to what i've done), the farms, details, some locations, maybe redraw/polish the forests.. Easy !

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## J.Edward

Well, I think it's worth it Narolas.  :Smile:  It's looking really good.

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## Larb

> Welp, next time i'm doing a city this big, I probably won't draw as much detail for the buildings. It's incredibly time consuming.
> Anyway, city buildings done, now onto the small villages (piece of cake compared to what i've done), the farms, details, some locations, maybe redraw/polish the forests.. Easy !


Yes you will. That is what makes a project like this so grand. It is a huge millstone around your neck but it is so worth it. =P

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## snodsy

This looks awesome the more detail the better. It reads on a macro/micro scale. You get the overall impression and then zoom in and get some beautiful details that really bring it to life. I wouldn't simplify it any, the level of detail is good, but not overly. This is one you'll always be proud of, anyway what else would you be doing instead?

One small critic, can you figure out a way to make the building against the cliffs fit together better?

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## Narolas

Wow, thanks everyone.

Snodsy, I'm not sure what you mean with the cliffs. It's true that some of the clusters against cliffs look a bit weird but i'm not sure why they're weird, i can't put my finger on what the problem is.

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## Ilanthar

Hehe, welcome in the harsh world of city mapping  :Smile: ! It indeed requires obstination and patience... and I agree with others, it's worth it. You city is just getting better each  post.

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## J.Edward

> Hehe, welcome in the harsh world of city mapping ! It indeed requires obstination and patience... and I agree with others, it's worth it. You city is just getting better each  post.


I totally agree with Ilanthar.  :Very Happy:  City mapping is like pleasant torture. Self torture.
But the rewards are many. Like climbing a mountain and looking out at the view.  :Smile:

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## Abu Lafia

Hi Narolas, followed the progress you made from time to time, without writing anything. I have to say i'm really impressed by your work. A lot of things have been said already but i love the overall city layout a lot! The colouring of the buildings in brown/grey/terracotta looks just awesome.        



> One small critic, can you figure out a way to make the building against the cliffs fit together better?





> Snodsy, I'm not sure what you mean with the cliffs. It's true that some of the clusters against cliffs look a bit weird but i'm not sure why they're weird, i can't put my finger on what the problem is.


I also think the cliffs are the only(!!!) thing that falls off a bit atm. I'm not sure if it's helpful, but my first impression was, they look in some parts (mainly the most southern edge) more like a ditch(?) or a depression(?) or better: instead of this  """""(____  it looks more like this:  """""(_,-----   (not sure if the schema makes sense, but i find it pretty hard to describe such matters in english X) ) 
I'm not an expert in drawing cliffs but maybe it's just some shadows or some curved lines giving this impression?

Anyway, it isn't diminishing this spectacular piece of yours. Keep up the great work and have some rep!  :Smile:

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## Narolas

Progress !
So, I tried fixing the weirdness of the castle's southern cliff, I added a small step and moved/tweaked a few buildings, let me know if it looks better.

Apart from that, I've finally added the various villages and buildings scattered around the land, I might still add a few vague blobs here and there for small "place of interests" such as camps or weird looking stones, but I think it's best to leave that to the small numbers and labelled legend i'll add later.

Small tweaks on shadows, forests, water, ...

Next up, the farms and fields. I'm gonna have to try to find a good looking method to make them look more detailed without the map becoming too crowded (I can't add stone walls and trees on every farm border, i have to give that impression without overloading it).
Once that's over, i'll go around adding little bushes, details and little things like that to make sure, then i'll add a paper border, tweak the overall texturing (there's already a soft paper texture), add numbers, legend, labels, blablabla.

So, pretty close to finished with this, last stretch of real work before the final detailing.



As always, thanks for the support and tell me what you think.

EDIT :
A few things were off, a texture not visible, etc.. here's a tweaked version.

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## Glendower

This is a fantastic piece of work. The historical details of the old fortifications give the location a lived in feel, it really makes this map piece come alive.

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## Narolas

Alright, did a small test on a farm area, and it's worked pretty well !

So, i'll probably tweak it later, add some rocks or replace the stone coloured walls by some brown to suggest wooden parts, remove some trees (there's a bit too many), but for now i'm quite happy with it.
Now i just have to reproduce that on all the different type of farms and add some little details here and there.

As always, tweaked a few things (textures, shadows, etc), feedback appreciated!

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## snodsy

You should be happy with the farms, they are awesome.  Love the broken wall in places and all the details, very nice. What are the small items, some red, just above the castle?  Your cliff lines are really clean, how do you draw them? at 100% scale, what pixel size? Do you use the pencil or brush tool, just asking I'm really struggling with my linework, doesn't come close to yours.

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## Abu Lafia

Can only agree with snodsy. The fields look damn good! It's a pleasure to see this map of yours develop.

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## Narolas

Thanks guys  :Smile: 

The small multi-coloured shapes north of the castle are market stalls, it should be clear when the legend and labels are added to the map.

About the linework, I should say first that I use photoshop and the amazing Inking brush tools from frenden (I recommend this specific pack, but all the others are great!).
For most of my lines, I use the "nib" brush (from frenden) at size 5, and with my pressure sensitive tablet I can get some really smooth lines even at small sizes.
The result is that the average cliff line is about 2 or 2.5 pixels across if you count the low-opacity edges.

here's a screenshot :

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## Sarithus

This is pretty cool. I must say however it's odd that the lines look like they were done in paint as opposed to PS as they are all jaggy. (not referring to the most recent zoomed in image)

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## Narolas

That's what every line looks like in PS when zoomed in this close, it's all pixels.

If you mean from the map (which is probably what you meant  :Razz: ), Then i'm not sure which one you mean, the stone farm borders maybe ? I used a kind noisy effect on them to give the impression of small bits of stones, but it might be too much, i could tone it down.

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## Sarithus

> That's what every line looks like in PS when zoomed in this close, it's all pixels.


You beat my edit.  :Razz: 

I was referring to the ones above that zoomed in image.

I picked out a few places that stand out, and I hope this doesn't come across as rude or like I'm calling the map bad, but the jagged effect is on pretty much every line there is. Perhaps it's something to do with the way you save the file. I mean, it's not a big deal, but to me the effect looks similar to what you'd find in paint.

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## Narolas

You beat my edit too ! Then do you mean the stone walls (grey lines) ? If yes, then yea i'll play around with the texture and noise effect on that layer and see if it can be less jaggy.

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## Larb

OMG that swatch-based colour wheel is such a great idea.

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## Narolas

Hm. I see what you mean, I'll look into it. It could be compression, or it could just be that I hastily drew a line and my image's resolution isn't high enough to compensate the pixely result.
If anything i'll go around and re-draw some of the ugliest lines, now that you point them out they annoy me  :Razz: 

I already know that for the paths and roads, it's photoshop's fault since i'm using the border effect on a layer, and that has a tendency to make very jagged borders, that's easily fixed so i'll work on that next time.

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## Sarithus

> Hm. I see what you mean, I'll look into it. It could be compression, or it could just be that I hastily drew a line and my image's resolution isn't high enough to compensate the pixely result.
> If anything i'll go around and re-draw some of the ugliest lines, now that you point them out they annoy me


By the looks of the image showing your PS document you have some effects on the layers. Probably not, but one thing that could be causing that is if you've got a stroke effect over the brushes lines.

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## snodsy

Thanks Narolas for the Brush link, I'll have to give it a try. I'm always amazed how open you guys are to share your tricks, it's really inspiring and so helpful. Thanks and great job on this map

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## Chashio

You'll be hard pressed to get very smooth lines with this much wonderful detail squeezed into such a low-resolution document. If you can, next time start with a bigger canvas and increase your brush size... and do most of the drawing at 50% zoom. But, really, pixelly lines aside, this is a fabulous map. You really are fitting a ton of fine details into this, right down to those lovely cobblestones.  :Smile:  And the colors are nice too.

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## Narolas

Yea, I realized halfway through the making of this map that my resolution was a bit too small, unfortunately photoshop slows down a lot when files get over 3-4 Go, so making a huge map is a challenge.

But hey, it's my first time making a map of this type, and my second time making a map of any kind on photoshop, so i'm still learning !

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## snodsy

Don't tell us it's only your second time doing a map in photoshop, that's depressing :Smile: . 

I've had the same problem with resolution vs speed. I did find a nice article on speeding up Photoshop, it did help the redraw and stopped the lag time with the drawing tablet. My map is 2GB with about 40 layers so it was bogging down pretty bad.  Here is the link for CS5/CS6.  http://www.adobe.com/inspire/2012/04...rformance.html

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## Narolas

Look at those farms and fields !
I'm very happy with the result on those, it can be very subtle and some of it feels like a ton of intricate effort (lots of layers, with effects, and tiny little touches) for something not necessarily seen, but I kinda love how it turned out.

Next and final step, map border, scale, labelling and legend.
This might actually take quite a while, not graphically, but because I have to go back to do some brainstorming and writing to come up with names for these vague places, and make it all fit into some coherent theme and feel of the region as well as narratively (using existing names of places and people, inventing famous names/people, etc..)

In any case i'll put the final result in a new thread in the "finished" board, and probably a link on this thread or something.

Even though it's not completely done, it kinda is on a purely visual basis (if you don't count the pretty border), so ... Thanks a ton everyone, I enjoyed and benefited a lot from all the feedback and encouragement, it's especially nice to receive critique and sometimes praise from some "big names" whose work i'm in awe of  :Smile: 


Phew, that project was much, much longer than expected, but very fun and rewarding! I kinda got to completely and entirely imagine the region and town of Fière-muraille as I spent so much time thinking about it, it'll surely help when i'm DM-ing it because i've now got a crystal clear picture of it.

PS: of course i'm sure some things can be fixed/tweaked, and I probably will do that as I come back to it later, notice something wrong.. so feel free to say/point out anything, but at this point it's polishing and doesn't really take any effort, so i'm kinda considering it "done graphically".

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## Abu Lafia

Man, these fields look great indeed! Congratulations for finishing the "map" part. Looking forward to see this beautiful piece in the "Finished Map Section" soon. Keep up the good work!

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## Larb

I've enjoyed watching this map develop. I look forward to the posted finished and labled map. A little lore in your finished post would be welcome too so we can learn a bit about the city.

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## viridianmasquerade

Wow, the progress from the initial sketch to the finished map is just incredible, what a journey this map has taken!

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## Tom

whoa man! this is an amazing WIP post, i really like your map, the way you designed the city and its surroundings! really cool!! keep it up!

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## RedKettle

Very cool. I am eagerly awaiting the addition of the final elements!

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## Narolas

Finished (finally) the labels and everything, all done!
Check out the thread in "finished maps" : HERE

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