# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Building/Structure Mapping >  Battle map for oriental setting (ancient China)

## mogul76

Hello!

I've been a member for quite some time but haven't so far posted any maps.

Below you'll find my first digital battle map ever. Please let me know what you think  :Question: 

RPG: Qin - The Warring States (ancient China, around 240 BC).

Scale: 1 square is 1m2.

Mapping software: Campaign Cartographer 3 and Dungeon Designer 3.

Symbols: Devin Night's brand new "Map Objects: Qin Dynasty" art pack (fouruglymonsters.com), CC3/DD3/SS2 symbols, Dundjinni forums, rpgmapshare.com, greytale.com as well as the Gamemaster Syndicate Ruins Pack for CC3.

Thanks,

Mogul76

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## Redrobes

Welcome, and a plug for Devin too. Cool - Man he is ugly !!!

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## someguy

"Drool"

Love it.

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## mogul76

Thanks for the feedback.

Devin is a nice guy and in my opinion a very talented artist.

But let's focus on the looks of my map, shall we?  :Wink: 

Here are some of the symbols which I've used: http://fouruglymonsters.com/downloads/qinsamples.zip

I'm sure that there are things which I could have done better.

Any ideas? As I've mentioned, I use CC3/DD3... I'm not a PhotoShop/GIMP expert at all...

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## loydb

I love the maps -- and they caused me to go buy the Qin symbol set as well  :Smile:

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## RPMiller

Is this for a VTT or for print out? The resolution of the pic you posted is badly pixelated and hard to see detail even when zoomed in.

Can you point out what some of the objects are such as the large "stones" or "puddles" that I think the chickens are at. Also what are some of the objects in the rooms?

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## mogul76

@ loydb : Happy to hear that! :-)

@ RPMiller: The links to the following two images should answer your second question:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?tci9qjyzmx0

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?vxoskwilnwc

These are pretty large files... ca. 14 MB... I hope you don't mind...

As to the first question, this is actually a test map and I don't intend to use it in my upcoming campaign.

Devin and I invested approximately 4 months doing this project. I sent him literally hundreds of screenshots from movies, he drew the symbols. I needed to check whether they work well in RPG maps. At the same time, I had to learn CC3/DD3. It was a lot of work, but I took great pleasure in doing it! :-)

If you'd like me to post VTT versions of the map, let me know. You may want to tell what to remove, though ;-)

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## RPMiller

Much better! The larger versions make it obvious that those are puddles of water. I like the little ripples. Nice touch.

I would definitely be interested in VTT versions, but it looks like I'll need to buy the Qin symbol set to make it useful since the majority of the furnishings will definitely need to be removed and probably the animals as well. Pretty much anything that isn't "fixed" in place will need to be removed including doors, and if I could get the roofs of the structures as separate images that would be great as well.

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## mogul76

OK. I will take care of that during the weekend.

If you want to, I could remove the grid as well.

Unfortunately, I cannot provide the roofs as separate files: (1) I created those directly in CC3/DD3 and not in a graphic editing program, (2) I used commercial textures.

It's very hard to find good textures for Chinese roofs. If you point me to royalty-free ones, I could export the map containing only the roofs and a light green background as a png, cut out the roofs and make those available as separate symbols.

By the way, you can find high-quality pictures for oriental / ancient Chinese VTT tokens at:

http://kongming.net/11/portraits/

There are about 250 of them.

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## RPMiller

> OK. I will take care of that during the weekend.


No rush on this as it isn't something I would need right away, however, you might want to consider posting it over at the RPTools forums where they will likely drool all over themselves and worship you like a god. Well maybe not that last part.  :Wink: 




> If you want to, I could remove the grid as well.


Absolutely. Also make sure that the overall map scale is posted somewhere in the form of # pixels = # feet/meters/yards/whatever




> Unfortunately, I cannot provide the roofs as separate files: (1) I created those directly in CC3/DD3 and not in a graphic editing program, (2) I used commercial textures.
> 
> It's very hard to find good textures for Chinese roofs. If you point me me to royalty-free ones, I could export the map containing only the roofs and a light green background as a png, cut out the roofs and make those available as separate symbols.


Not a problem, I'm sure PhotoShop's selection tools can remedy that just fine on my end.  :Wink: 




> By the way, you can find high-quality pictures for oriental / ancient Chinese VTT tokens at:
> 
> http://kongming.net/11/portraits/
> 
> There are about 250 of them.


Those are excellent!! They could easily be used for an Exalted game as well. Thank you for that link. You should *definitely* post that over at RPTools, or I'll do it for you if you don't want to.

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## mogul76

> No rush on this as it isn't something I would need right away, however, you might want to consider posting it over at the RPTools forums where they will likely drool all over themselves and worship you like a god. Well maybe not that last part.


I like the worshipping part  :Razz: ... but don't want those people to drool on me  :Surprised: 




> Absolutely. Also make sure that the overall map scale is posted somewhere in the form of # pixels = # feet/meters/yards/whatever


Sure, will do that.




> Not a problem, I'm sure PhotoShop's selection tools can remedy that just fine on my end.


OK. I could give it a try as well and learn a thing or two in the process.




> Those are excellent!! They could easily be used for an Exalted game as well. Thank you for that link. You should definitely post that over at RPTools, or I'll do it for you if you don't want to.


I can post that link in conjunction with the map. I'll also add the link to the FUM online store containing the Qin symbol set. In that manner, readers will get information on all available resources (character tokens, symbols of furniture/items and a map) in a single threat. Does that sound like a good plan?

MapTool seems to be an excellent piece of software. I have tested it once with the above map. And of course, I like that $0.00 price tag  :Laughing:

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## RPMiller

Sounds like a great plan, and yes, MapTool Rocks On Toast! as I like to say.  :Very Happy:

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## mogul76

Here's the VTT version of the map. I had a lot of fun doing it and playing around with MapTool. It's a fantastic utility (... however, I seem to have a problem with the function "add to resource library" & need to deactivate my firewall to use it). The images include one basic map and several tiles of the upper floors and roofs. You can place them on top of each other in the background layer of MapTool (... as can be seen in the below screenshots).





This time, I imported the furniture / items (i.e. the symbols of Devin's Map Objects: Qin Dynasty) as well as the doors directly into MapTool. I also created a few tokens from the portrait images on http://kongming.net/11/portraits/ using TokenTool. It went really fast... Trevor's software is very intuitive indeed :-) Okay... I'm off to post this stuff on the RPTools forums now.

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## mogul76

And here are the stables...

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## RPMiller

Great to hear and see! Thank you!

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## CC_JAR

interesting, yet I figured you would try to use a pagoda style roof, those look like shingled or clay tiled roofs.

very nice though.

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## mogul76

Oh... and old post which I have only discovered now... Sorry for the late answer, CC_JAR.

I am actually quite happy with the roofs but I'm prepared to experiment  :Smile: 

Any suggestions where to find more textures for Chinese / Asian roofs? They are difficult to find.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

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## Konrad Oldenhaller

Thank you.  Your maps are great.

There are very few resources for asian themed rpgs, and these are very useful.

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## Ed Rollins

Is the Oriental Symbol set available anywhere?

Sorry for the cross posts, but I have one question and "Friend Computer" insists I post five times before I can ask it...

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