# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Town/City Mapping >  Ostwyc, the Lion City

## Caenwyr

Oh hey all! 

So while I'm waiting for my next commission to materialize (heh!), I decided to map another important city in my own fantasy universe. This one is called *Ostwyc, the Lion City*. 

Ostwyc is a really old city, one of the first there ever were actually. Villages were still a new and exciting concept in most of the world when the first stone was laid for Ostwyc's first citadel. This seed of the city was planted in a narrow valley overlooking the East Cilydd plains, an easily defensible position. The city gradually overgrew its walls and spread out along both sides of a long, narrow lake. The entrance to the valley is guarded by a large hill, more like a granite fist pushing up from the valley floor. A fortress was built on top and two walls were strung between either side of the valley and the walls of the fortress, with massive fortifications ensuring the safety of the city. Over the centuries, Ostwyc has built and maintained a whole network of guard towers in the surrounding country side, both in the plains and the mountains that surround it. Each is fitted with a very well equipped garrison, excellently trained and always at the ready (although in the lasting peace of the past century they might have slackened off a bit... Oooh, do I sense a plot device?). Because of all these precautions, Cilydd has never had its walls broken during all the centuries of its existence, and it is probably the only city of a certain age that can claim so. 

Despite its forbidding appearance from the outside, Ostwyc is actually a very pleasant city to live in. Most houses are pastel coloured and have real glass windows, the streets are clean, beggars are few and most seem actually pretty well-fed. There are parks strewn throughout the city, statues of old heroes, libraries, museums and temples, and entertainment for all layers of society. Small ferries move across the lake continuously, and at night, the thousands of lights from the city and the bobbing lanterns of the ferries create a starscape with no equal on the glittering surface of the lake. 

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Alright, so much for the sales pitch. Describing the city is the easy part (mainly because I've madly fallen in love with it). The hard part will be turning it into a map that actually reflects what I just wrote - and more importantly, what I have in mind. The idea is to create the map in a style similar to what I did for another important city in the same universe: Ganador. I really like how that one turned out, but I'm afraid I have mostly forgotten how I got there, so it'll take quite some testing (and peeking at the old PSD-file) to get it right. If I ever do!

The hard part with this map, and something I didn't have to tackle with the coastal city of Ganador, is the terrain. Ganador is entirely level, built as it is on mud flats in the mouth of a river. Ostwyc on the other hand is surrounded by mountainous cliffs on two sides, and sports a huge block of a hill with a monumental fortress on top. It's sort of a mix of the Lauterbrunnen Valley in Switzerland and the fortress hill of Hochosterwitz in Austria. Yes, I've raised the bar impossibly high  :Razz: . Even if you forget all the other challenges for a moment, just getting across the terrain means I'll need to use a ton of shading. So... very gingerly I have started playing with Wilbur again, although the beast has taken the best of me several times before. If it doesn't work out how I want it, I'm gonna do it all by hand - probably the faster solution too knowing how much time I spend on Wilburring!


Okay! Let me show you guys what I got at the moment: 

1. a sketch of what goes where:


2. a stepped terrain model, which is currently (and probably for some hours) undergoing a substantial Wilbur treatment:

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## Falconius

That stepped map is pretty cool in and of itself.  Although I've always had problems with Wilbur when using stepped type height maps before as in it erodes them as steps.  Did you blur it first  (which is generally my solution)?

It's always interesting to see peoples planning stages, this should be fun to see develop.

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## Caenwyr

> That stepped map is pretty cool in and of itself.  Although I've always had problems with Wilbur when using stepped type height maps before as in it erodes them as steps.  Did you blur it first  (which is generally my solution)?
> 
> It's always interesting to see peoples planning stages, this should be fun to see develop.


I feel the same way! In a way their learning experience is also mine. I tend to read those kinds of posts with a lot of interest!

By the way, I'm not exactly a Wilbur expert. Which means I keep failing at it, and ultimately doing the thing by hand. And frankly, because of that glaring Wilbur disability I have developed quite a knack for it! Turn your weaknesses into your strengths, right? Also, I'm a control freak so having it all in hand is waaaay more satisfying to me. 

So I went back to that stepped terrain thingy and redid most of it. In the original version the valley walls were sloped roughly at a 45Â° angle, while I actually wanted the valley floor to be fairly flat, and the walls to be pretty steep - a typical glacial valley with a lake at the bottom. I could have changed that by lowering the difference in brightness of the lower levels and upping it in the higher elevations, but that's just lazy people talk!  :Razz: 

So this is what I have now:

It still lacks a few layer in the tops of the mountains (they currently look ridiculously flat), but that is in the process of getting tackled. 

To give you a quick (and very ugly) impression of how the lighting of the place will turn out, here's a quick bump render:
 
(pure, and with some blurring)

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## HughVoodoo

This looks very promising. If you don't mind me asking, what programs are you using to complete these maps? Also, I looked through your portfolio on your website - beautiful work in there! Question, how do you create the buildings like in your Granador work? Do you draw them individually? Thanks!

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## Caenwyr

> This looks very promising. If you don't mind me asking, what programs are you using to complete these maps? Also, I looked through your portfolio on your website - beautiful work in there! Question, how do you create the buildings like in your Granador work? Do you draw them individually? Thanks!


Hi there Hugh! Thanks for asking! And I'm glad you like my work! I usually use Photoshop exclusively for my mapping endeavours, and draw everything in there by hand, although I do play with a ton of masks, and make quite extensive use of shading and beveling "layer styles", as Photoshop calls them. If I recall correctly from my GIMP days, GIMP does not have these functions natively, but there are external scripts you can download to have similar effects - you should really try those out if you feel like mapping but don't like the idea of spending the dough on Photoshop. 

So the buildings in my Ganador map were entirely handdrawn, but I gave them that 3D-ish look by using some drop shadow and bevel-and-emboss effects. Be sure to check out the WIP to get a detailed view of the process!

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## Caenwyr

Alright! And in the meantime I also have an update for you guys on the terrain front. So I went about and kept adding layers to the terrain, gradually climbing to the tops of the highest mountains. Never in my wildest imagination had I thought it would be such a crazy painstaking process! 

I'm too fond of details to just do a half-assed job, but I do definitely realize how horribly I'm getting side tracked here. This is supposed to be about a city, and all I've done over the past 6 hours (only counting time actually spent on the map!) is add 5 more levels of silly detail, that will probably be blurred out again!  :Razz: 

But still, it's a labour of love I guess. Because no matter how long it takes, I actually enjoy shaping and kneading those mountains just the way I want them. 

So here's my progress! The greyscale DEM, currently counting 23 levels (I estimate I'll need at least 3 more to clear the highest peaks):

and two quick-n-dirty bump renders, one sharp and one blurred to oblivion:
 
Still some weird flatlands visible in the highest reaches... and still not a single house in sight  :Razz: 

What I'm currently struggling with is, when I finally begin adding houses, whether I should actually add each individual house to the DEM itself as a tiny rectangle (with a greyscale level equivalent to say 5 meters and the layer set to "add"), which would cause houses on a slope to look slanted... or forget about that and just draw them in and bevel-and-emboss them like a maniac... 

The first approach is by far the most consistent one, but man I hate consistency sometimes  :Razz:

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## Caenwyr

Alright, update for you people:

I ended up adding 5 more levels to the terrain before I got to the highest peaks, but the job is done! Now I can finally go on and map the city itself!


The raw contour lines:
the resulting bump map:
And a bump map based on a slight "Wiburization of the contour lines map:


Which means I can finally start working on that damn city  :Very Happy:

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## Falconius

Yeah that looks really good.  I feel like the Wilburization in the very photo is a bit too eroded, which I assume was done to try and get rid of the ledges.  I like the fairly flat surface from the mountain bases and then that slightly sharp dip right in the center, and you loose it with the eroded version.

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## Caenwyr

> Yeah that looks really good.  I feel like the Wilburization in the very photo is a bit too eroded, which I assume was done to try and get rid of the ledges.  I like the fairly flat surface from the mountain bases and then that slightly sharp dip right in the center, and you loose it with the eroded version.


You're definitely right Falconius! But the advantage of the eroded mountain sides is (at least to me) far more important than the fact that some other features have slunk away. I intend to bring back the mountainous cliffs once I get to shading, and the dip in the middle will become a long, narrow lake with its own very distinct colour gradient - and I'll largely use the (uneroded) depth contour lines from the original file for that. 

Alright. So the past two hours I've been trying to *bring the Lion's Rock to life* - the solitary rocky hill that will eventually sport a large castle overlooking both the city and the riverlands to the south. Originally the highest peaks of that feature rose about 350 meters above the city. I broke most of those ridges down and filled the valleys in between to get to a flat surface now rising some 280 meters above the city. I then started constructing a road from the city floor all the way to the top, trying to keep the steepness below 15%. I can't say for sure I succeeded (I'm too lazy to go and check) but all in all it does look plausible. Hardest part was to draw the road exactly where the terrain would allow it, to prevent any rocky outcrops on the valley side of the road - it has no defensive use if it's surrounded by rock on two sides!

I then drew in both walls - the old one in the north, and the newer one in the south. The old one still needs some work. 

 

to get an idea of the *scale of the place*: 

1 pixel represents a horizontal distance of 1 meter, whilea 1% increase in brightness (or in other words, 1% of 256 brightness levels) represents a height difference of 10 meters. I can go a teeny bit more detailed by using brightness levels instead (measured in 8 bit or 256 in total), resulting in roughly 4 meters per 1/256th. So basically a house of about 6 meters high would barely be visible on the terrain map, but if the edges are clear enough, it will still show on the bump map. Which in turn means i'll have to do a ton of crazy drawing-and-transferring.

I intend to use *two ways to indicate height*: 
the bump map showing the dropshadow of each 3D feature (building, bridge, wall, mountain, ...), anda layer with the rooftops in bright terracotta, with a bevel-and-emboss effect to have them poke out at the viewer.

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## Falconius

Very interesting approach.  It also sounds super intensive  :Smile:

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## Diamond

> But still, it's a labour of love I guess. Because no matter how long it takes, I actually enjoy shaping and kneading those mountains just the way I want them.


Well, that's it right there, isn't it?  I think ultimately we all do this because we love creating.  Sure, if you get some cash from a commission, that's cool, and it's also an ego stroke to get praise from the Guildies, but ultimately you're satisfying your own creative itch before anything else.

Speaking of ego-stroking - that is looking fantastic.  If you follow through with the same level of detail throughout the whole map, this will be a stunner.

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## Caenwyr

> Very interesting approach.  It also sounds super intensive


Hah, I guess it is huh?  :Very Happy:  But man I enjoy every geeky minute of it. Glad to have arrived at the actual city-ing though!




> Well, that's it right there, isn't it?  I think ultimately we all do this because we love creating.  Sure, if you get some cash from a commission, that's cool, and it's also an ego stroke to get praise from the Guildies, but ultimately you're satisfying your own creative itch before anything else.
> 
> Speaking of ego-stroking - that is looking fantastic.  If you follow through with the same level of detail throughout the whole map, this will be a stunner.


Gee Diamond, thanks a lot! I do hope it will, although it's gonna take a silly amount of time before it will actually start looking like a decent city map instead of a crumpled-up piece of paper.

But! I'm getting there, baby step by baby step. Below you'll find my first endeavours apart from the terrain: a sprinkle of buildings, the lake, some trees and a splash of parchment colour. Still tons of additional colour to be added to the terrain, obviously.

None of the elements seem to be bonded to the terrain really well at this point, but that will get tackled once I've added in all the elements. Which means in about 3 billion years or so.  :Razz: 



Thoughts? Suggestions? Let 'em come!

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## Caenwyr

Alright. I've spent last night and this morning on an overhaul of the terrain shading. Now the sun is somewhat lower in the sky (30Â° above the horizon as opposed to 45Â° in the previous iteration), which helps illustrate the size of the mountains relative to the houses. I also drew in some more of those, and started plonking in some trees, walls, towers and more of that funny business  :Razz: .

It's beginning to look like an actual city district you could walk around in, although I've still got a ton more to do.

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## Caenwyr

This is an update!  :Razz:

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## Caenwyr

Alright people! I added some more building blocks — I had completely forgotten how tedious a job  that is!  :Razz:  — and redid the southern walls. I kept the old ones in the north as they were, nice and dark-medieval, but decided to redo the southern ones inspired by the walls of Pingyao.

That proved a harder job than I expected! For one, on this scale such details are nigh on impossible to draw in, unless you work with vector shapes (you can give a shape a thickness well below one pixel). The second problem I had is that Photoshop kept crashing whenever I tried to add vector shapes! You see my problem? 

I spent the better part of this morning trying to solve it, and failed. So I whipped up SketchUp and did the job there. Re-importing the work back to Photoshop is a pain, especially if you want the shading to be right, but it worked.

So this is the walls in SketchUp:

(notice how every other bit of relief has been flattened — there's actually a huge beast of a rock between the two walls)

And this is the result, along with the additional building blocks:

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## Falconius

Holy Moly that is a hell of a lot of bricks.

The wall style looks great on your map.  I do have to wonder at your decision to not wall the sides, If I were attacking I'd definitely force a part of my army to climb the mountains and grab one of the gates in a sneak attack.  Or try and infiltrate them into the massive population slowly for a month or so until there was enough of a force to surprise attack one of the gates from inside the city.  I would think that even with watch towers and garrisons in those hills it would be too hard an area to effectively monitor.

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## Caenwyr

> Holy Moly that is a hell of a lot of bricks.
> 
> The wall style looks great on your map. I do have to wonder at your decision to not wall the sides, If I were attacking I'd definitely force a part of my army to climb the mountains and grab one of the gates in a sneak attack. Or try and infiltrate them into the massive population slowly for a month or so until there was enough of a force to surprise attack one of the gates from inside the city. I would think that even with watch towers and garrisons in those hills it would be too hard an area to effectively monitor.


Hey Falconius! Thanks for that input! I will reply in two different strides:


You're absolutely right! There are some holes in the defense, which are of course awesome plot devices (never forget, this map depicts a location from my fantasy novel). There won't be as many as you fear though, no worries.To fix the majority of the defense holes, I intend to wall off all passes (no gates, because you're not supposed to enter the city that way), and put watch towers on all of the peaks in between the walled sections. I haven't drawn them in yet because I struggle a bit with marrying the terrain with the buildings... But I have a few ways in mind that might work. First I wanna get the city blocks done, and then I'm back to the defense structures, such as the huge fort on that hill.

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Alright peeps, here's my next update! Added another city district, and threw in a massive amphitheatre. If you feel it looks silly large, just keep in mind that it's only 85% the size of the Colosseum in Rome (160 m along its longest axis as opposed to 187 m for the Colosseum). I don't mind its massiveness personally, but I do feel feel it's weird how large it is compared to that temple complex, which in turn was modeled after the Aya Sophia in Constantinople on a roughly 1:1 basis. But hey, I guess real world numbers can be weird!

I spent a good hour on that amphitheatre alone, but I really like how it turned out, especially that awning!

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## HughVoodoo

Hey Caenwyr. Great progress you've made! I would love nothing more than to see a tutorial of your process, as I love your style.

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## Falconius

> Alright peeps, here's my next update! Added another city district, and threw in a massive amphitheatre. If you feel it looks silly large, just keep in mind that it's only 85% the size of the Colosseum in Rome (160 m along its longest axis as opposed to 187 m for the Colosseum). I don't mind its massiveness personally, but I do feel feel it's weird how large it is compared to that temple complex, which in turn was modeled after the Aya Sophia in Constantinople on a roughly 1:1 basis. But hey, I guess real world numbers can be weird!


That is interesting, it really puts the size into perspective.



> I spent a good hour on that amphitheatre alone, but I really like how it turned out, especially that awning!


  It looks really good, time well spent.

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## Caenwyr

> Hey Caenwyr. Great progress you've made! I would love nothing more than to see a tutorial of your process, as I love your style.


Thanks Hugh! I would really like to do a tutorial on this some day, but I'm afraid I'm currently terribly short on time, and the little time I have I prefer to use for mapping itself. But I promise I will do a tutorial once things have slowed down a bit over here.  :Wink: 



> That is interesting, it really puts the size into perspective.
>   It looks really good, time well spent.


Thanks! Glad to hear you like the job!

Alright, here's one of the more minor updates again. Roughly two hours' work, but nothing really impresive, just a bunch more houses. Slowly creeping north!  :Very Happy:

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## QED42

Coming along very nicely! 

Will you be putting buildings outside the walls too? One of my pet peeves is cities that are crammed full inside the walls but have no over flow or outlying settlements/farms, that never seems very realistic to me.

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## Falconius

There are many examples of city walls including farms and open areas for further expansion in their initial construction.  Obviously there may be a scattering of outlying buildings to take care of farms beyond the walls, but beyond that living outside the walls would be uncommon in any place where the walls were useful.  That is until the city fills up, and only then will you get communities pushing out of the walls, in which case a second set may be made or those outside left to their peril.  The other case where people are likely to want to live outside the walls is where city walls are no longer useful, either because of well controlled peaceable lands or because of technology.  There is also of course a corollary and that is if it is extremely dangerous beyond the walls either because of extreme unlawfulness, or because of overwhelming threats of technology (or magic), no one would be living beyond the walls or be building permanent structures out there.

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## Caenwyr

> Coming along very nicely! 
> 
> Will you be putting buildings outside the walls too? One of my pet peeves is cities that are crammed full inside the walls but have no over flow or outlying settlements/farms, that never seems very realistic to me.





> There are many examples of city walls including farms and open areas for further expansion in their initial construction.  Obviously there may be a scattering of outlying buildings to take care of farms beyond the walls, but beyond that living outside the walls would be uncommon in any place where the walls were useful.  That is until the city fills up, and only then will you get communities pushing out of the walls, in which case a second set may be made or those outside left to their peril.  The other case where people are likely to want to live outside the walls is where city walls are no longer useful, either because of well controlled peaceable lands or because of technology.  There is also of course a corollary and that is if it is extremely dangerous beyond the walls either because of extreme unlawfulness, or because of overwhelming threats of technology (or magic), no one would be living beyond the walls or be building permanent structures out there.



Oh yes, there will be a large quarter outside the city walls, and a substantial fairground too. As Falconius pointed out, in peaceful times people tend to go and build beyond the city walls for several reasons. Not all of them pretty by the way. There will be a residential area, a string of inns for travelers arriving after the closing of the gates, a red light district for people with um... more _peculiar_ tastes, and of course extensive farmlands, with watch towers spread out across the riverland. 

Ostwyc is a very old city, and it has known its violent periods - hence the massive defense system and the watch towers all-over -- but for the last century or so peace has engulfed the lands in a cozy warm blanket. This has allowed the population in the entire area to boom, AND it has taken away the need to build a new wall. Once times get more troubling, the need for that extra wall will arise, but only the Gods can tell whether they will be able to finish them on time....

Also, I am thinking of adding anintermediate wall (in the old style again) that was built during the gradual expansion of the city, probably a set of two walls on either side of the lake somewhere in the middle of the valley, using the streamlets running off the mountains as added protection. 

--------------------------

Anyhoo, that's for a future update. This update is somewhat smaller, since most of the work I've done is on the placement of extra monuments (a theatre, a hippodrome, a basilica, a forum of sorts, some triumphal arches or obelisks, a granary, ...). This is still mostly invisible work in the ever-increasing draft layers... This PSD file is becoming a truly unruly beast! Some of these monuments need to be carved out of the living rock, so I went back to the terrain layers and recreated the bump map for the first such monument: the theatre. You can find it in the upper half of the map. The hippodrome will probably be next. 

I also redid some of the building blocks that were already there, since I felt those streamlets really didn't deserve such a wide gap in the middle of a bustling city. So I removed the road on one side, and pulled the buildings closer to the streamlets. Most houses are still accessible from the other side, but those that aren't have their own (barely visible) bridges over the streamlets. I like to think of them as city mansions, for the more well off citizens.  :Wink:

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## QED42

Sounds like you have everything in hand and some awesome plans for this map! Now hurry up and finish it so we can salivate over the final version please  :Wink:

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## bkh1914

You've obviously put a lot of thought into this city.

And your level of detailing is...*impressive.*

One question comes to mind - does the city wall need extra fortification where the river passes under it?  Maybe something like what you have for the city gates?

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## Caenwyr

> Sounds like you have everything in hand and some awesome plans for this map! Now hurry up and finish it so we can salivate over the final version please


Patience patience!!  :Very Happy: 




> You've obviously put a lot of thought into this city.
> 
> And your level of detailing is...*impressive.*
> 
> One question comes to mind - does the city wall need extra fortification where the river passes under it? Maybe something like what you have for the city gates?


It does! However, they conveniently "forgot", so there's a plot device if they're ever was one... although it's such an obvious oversight (by the constructors, not by me - I expressly designed it to have that flaw!) that it might be a bit too much... got some thinking to do there...

--------------------------

Alright, update!

Some more houses, and a teeny tiny monument. See if you can locate it  :Razz:

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## Arkidemis

With every up date I'm more and more impressed with the continued attention to detail. Great quality of work you making here, keep it up! As QED42 said, cant wait to see the final product.

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## Caenwyr

update!

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## Tonquani

This is looking absolutely epic.  especially impressed with the mountains.  From playing around with GIMP and Wilbur, I realize what a massive amount of time has gone into this!

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## Caenwyr

> This is looking absolutely epic.  especially impressed with the mountains.  From playing around with GIMP and Wilbur, I realize what a massive amount of time has gone into this!


Thanks Tonquani! I did spend a silly amount of time on them, but the Wilbur part was by far the smallest. I've learned that I rather control the whole process myself than to leave it to a(n otherwise splendid, but far too little understood) semi-automatic software package. I did use it for the finishing touches though, to erode the steps away and get some of those nice rocky cliffs near the lowlands. All in all I'm quite pleased with how Wilbur handled that part of it!

And here's another update for you peeps. Finally managed to reach the northernmost walls! Woohoo!



I'm still gonna draw in some towers and/or temples on top of those hills surrounded by the city (probably a temple on the northern one, and a smaller fortress on the one closer to the middle walls), and I still gotta add a stream coming down from that newly inhabited valley, but other than that, that part of the map is done. Phew! Now it's off to that other 50%  :Razz:

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## Pixie

It's coming good. No doubt you're putting in a huge amount of work.. I mean really long hours, for sure.
Plausibility is fine, roads and overall shape of the neighbourhoods. But... Wouldn't such a massive city have far more civic buildings? It's really lacking in landmarks, in my humble opinion, perhaps they all concentrate on the west side of the lake for some mystical reason 

Btw, I already love the location for that amphitheatre you've got planned in the NW. 

... sent from mobile ...

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## Caenwyr

> Wouldn't such a massive city have far more civic buildings? It's really lacking in landmarks, in my humble opinion, perhaps they all concentrate on the west side of the lake for some mystical reason


Thanks Pixie! When you say civic buildings, you're referring to things like temples and stuff? Because there's a ton of those in the existing half already. Maybe they're a bit small? I'm not really sure how large civic buildings are supposed to be: is 25 meters along the longest axis a lot, or should I go much larger still? I'm asking because the majority of the "larger" buildings are roughly 20 - 25 meters in length at the moment. I had intended to label a whole bunch of them afterwards, but if you're saying they're too small, now's the time to go a-fixing that. 

However, I am currently doing the finishing touches to a massive forum structure in the western half of the city. think colonnaded squares, large halls with marble floors, a circular pool, manicured lawns flanked by stately cypresses, libraries, archives, a court of law, ... I haven't quite finished it yet, but you can find the current stage below:

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## Caenwyr

Update!



I also changed some building blocks in the already existing parts of the city into one large building (or sometimes two). Does this solve the issues you had with missing landmarks, Pixie?

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## Tonquani

> So I went back to that stepped terrain thingy and redid most of it. In the original version the valley walls were sloped roughly at a 45Â° angle, while I actually wanted the valley floor to be fairly flat, and the walls to be pretty steep - a typical glacial valley with a lake at the bottom. I could have changed that by lowering the difference in brightness of the lower levels and upping it in the higher elevations, but that's just lazy people talk!


Hi Caenwyr, this is looking amazing. What was your procedure for producing the terrain? Did you work on 1 greyscale layer at a time in Wilber, then reimport back into PS, or were you Wilbering all layers in one go then just adding new layers on top after each Wilberization?

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## Caenwyr

> Hi Caenwyr, this is looking amazing. What was your procedure for producing the terrain? Did you work on 1 greyscale layer at a time in Wilber, then reimport back into PS, or were you Wilbering all layers in one go then just adding new layers on top after each Wilberization?


Hi Tonquani, thanks for asking! I produced the terrain layer by layer in Photoshop. You can actually follow my progress on that in the first set of posts on this thread. Once I had finalized the topmost layers, I imported the image in Wilbur, eroded it just enough to get rid of the most horrible stepping effects et voilà!

it sounds easier (and certainly less time-consuming) than it really was though.  :Razz: 

--------------------------------

Alright, update! Some more city blocks, a temple and a tower on the eastern hills, and a bazillion nearly invisible tweaks. Oh by the way Tonquani, I edited the terrain model to get the shading of that temple plateau correct, because that's how much of a perfectionist I am! Not that my wife agrees.  :Razz:

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## Tenia

This begin to be a real beauty, I love the lightings and colors effects, go on !  :Wink:

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## Caenwyr

> This begin to be a real beauty, I love the lightings and colors effects, go on !


Thanks Tenia, and I will! Below you'll find my most recent progress. Slowly creeping towards that northern wall there.

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## randigpanzrall

I love this project, it´s quite inspiring. If you would ask me for suggestions, it´s quite hard, to say something. Maybe the shape of the lake could be pimped up and maybe the mountains reliefs seem to be too detailled for the cities scale

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## Caenwyr

> I love this project, it´s quite inspiring. If you would ask me for suggestions, it´s quite hard, to say something. Maybe the shape of the lake could be pimped up and maybe the mountains reliefs seem to be too detailled for the cities scale


Thanks Randig!! I can see what you mean about the shape of the lake. The mountains being too detailed? Whew, I'm taking that as a compliment  :Very Happy: 

Alright, here's an update for you guys. Finally reached the northern wall from the western lake shore. Still gotta "tree things up" though, and then it's off to the area north of that wall, where the oldest seed of the city can be found.

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## QED42

Looking forward to see how you tree bomb this map, trees are such fiddly sods to get right!

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## Arkidemis

I will be "patiently" waiting for the trees to be planted. The city has turned out great.

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## auck

This is uber-beautiful. Congrats!

IMHO, there's only one thing that looks a little odd. If you look at the northern part of the valley, it looks like the valley itself is a water divisory. The topographic gradient flows both to the north (upper part) and to the south (lower part). I'm not sure the drainage network is entirely consistent. Other than that, I'm looking forward to the end product!  :Wink:

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## MidcenturyMr

Nice work!  :Surprised:

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## Caenwyr

> I will be "patiently" waiting for the trees to be planted. The city has turned out great.


Thanks Arkidemis! There's a crazy amount of trees already, just look for the smal green blobs all over the map... but tons more still need to be added




> Looking forward to see how you tree bomb this map, trees are such fiddly sods to get right!


Oh yes they are! 




> IMHO, there's only one thing that looks a little odd. If you look at the northern part of the valley, it looks like the valley itself is a water divisory. The topographic gradient flows both to the north (upper part) and to the south (lower part). I'm not sure the drainage network is entirely consistent. Other than that, I'm looking forward to the end product!


No, you're absolutely right. It's an inconvenient consequence of working with Wilbur with my very, very limited capabilities. I noticed that from the very beginning, but I'm gonna blot that abomination out by putting other stuff over it  :Razz: 




> Nice work!


Cheers amigo!

-------------------------------

Alright, update! Finally got started on the Old City, the district beyond the northern walls. I've partly redone the floor of that part of the valley so the most horrible kinks Auck pointed out will get fixed. 

There's gonna be a gorge filled with greenery, and dense housing on both flanks. Houses are generally smaller in this part of the city, and roads are narrower. I'm also gonna draw in an old (mostly ruined?) fort on the western tip of the wall. There's already a hairpin road going up to that point. No trees yet, and no streams, but I'm sure you can see where they're gonna be when I get to them. 



Still a long way to go though: I still gotta
draw in that maybe-ruined fort (which means returning to the terrain file and going crazy on it)fill in the rest of the valleydraw in the city districts outside of the walls (I talked about them in this post)work out some defensive system for the hanging valleys on either side (talked about here)plonk in a bunch of bronze roofs (they seem to have disappeared from the current version!)finish the massive fort in the southern walladd some shading finishing touchesadd a frame border to the mapstart labeling the placeadd a legendadd a titleadd a scaleand maybe some ornamental bits (although the map is quite busy already, so I might drop that idea)

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## DanielHasenbos

This is just so spectacularly amazing! It's like watching a progress bar of a download that just slowly progressing, and with every percent you're getting more excited about the final thing. You've still got a lot to do, but it's already looking great!

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## Tonquani

Hi Caenwyr, this is looking fabulous! I cannot conceive of the amount of time that is going into it! A real labour of love .  :Smile: 

Just one small thing... the largish temple type structure to the East of the lake (the one on top of a mountain with three paths leading up to it) looks a bit...  ...odd.  Maybe a bit more pixelated than everything else, and also the shadows (if there are any) are way too light. It just looks like it is floating a bit compared to the surrounding hillside.  I will add my usual caveat here, that I have been known to see errors where none exist, as I apparently have quite bad eyesight...  :Wink: 

Anyway, it's a superb effort, can't wait to see it finished!!!

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## Caenwyr

> This is just so spectacularly amazing! It's like watching a progress bar of a download that just slowly progressing, and with every percent you're getting more excited about the final thing. You've still got a lot to do, but it's already looking great!


Thanks Dan! It's progressing slowly, since I'm trying to be waaaay to detailed (I'm prone to redrawing single street blocks several times until they are "probable" enough, as if anyone would ever look at the map with that amount of eye for detail... except for this wonderful guy below apparently  :Very Happy: . I guess it's people really poring over the map that I'm doing it for then  :Very Happy: !
Also, this is a personal project (the main reason why I can afford to be so overzealous), but I'm currently negotiating a paid job again, so this map might at some point fall to the wayside until I manage to finish that paid job. AND we're currently overhauling um... well basically the entire house at the same time, AND my dear wife is wonderfully pregnant (with some awesome but time-consuming nursery-related chores as a result), so I'm pretty tight when it comes to time. 

The things you do for (a labour of) love, right?  :Wink: 




> Just one small thing... the largish temple type structure to the East of the lake (the one on top of a mountain with three paths leading up to it) looks a bit...  ...odd.  Maybe a bit more pixelated than everything else, and also the shadows (if there are any) are way too light. It just looks like it is floating a bit compared to the surrounding hillside.  I will add my usual caveat here, that I have been known to see errors where none exist, as I apparently have quite bad eyesight...


Oh no no no, you're absolutely right! the shadows on that plateau are still a bit wonky... as they are in dozens of other places on the map. I'm gonna try and get them fixed wherever I can find them at the very end of this stage (just before labeling, that is). Thanks for pointing them out Tonquani, that helps me in identifying the more glaring ones from the ones only my freakishly overzealous eye for near-invisible detail manages to find. So thanks, and keep 'em coming!

-------------------------

Oh, and here's an update!


Added a bunch more houses to Old Town, and added some light snow cover to the tops of the mountains. Not entirely satisfied with the washed-out look on the light side of the mountains though -- probably gonna fix that in a future update -- though I do like the fact that the peaks look a little lighter now. It helps the eye in identifying them as "high" for this wonderful psychological reason I keep forgetting  :Razz: .

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## Caenwyr

Woah okay, so this update is long overdue! 

Sorry for the delay people. I spent the last seven weeks working on a commission (I'll publish the final product as soon as I have permission from the client), so this one kinda fell by the wayside. The second map in the commission will get started soon, but I thought I'd give this one a bit of love in the meantime. What else would I do but map, right?  :Razz: 

I decided I'd get restarted prudently, so instead of beginning the outside-the-walls parts of the city, I added some trees. Well, a bunch of trees. 

Well ack-chew-ally... I think the correct word for this is a crapton. Yes, a total crapton of trees.  :Razz:

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## QED42

> Woah okay, so this update is long overdue!


Damn straight it's about damn time! I was getting the shakes from having gone cold turkey on this thread without an update for so long!

Great to see the progress coming again.

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## Caenwyr

> Damn straight it's about damn time! I was getting the shakes from having gone cold turkey on this thread without an update for so long!
> 
> Great to see the progress coming again.


Hahaha thanks QED! Sorry I caused you to go into withdrawal there! I hope you didn't suffer too much, but just to be sure, I'm back with your next fix already.

As you can see, I coloured in the southern portion of the map, drew in the first village in the SW corner, and drew in the roads for the second village. There's also gonna be a fairground near it. You can already see the huge ("yooge") pavilion, but there's also gonna be an ad hoc village of covered wagons, canvas market stalls, a playground for kids, an animal pen with "exotic" animals (think camels and zebras rather than lions), a bonfire, ... All that surrounded by a palisade wall and an impressive entrance gate (entirely made out of painted cloth and pioneered spars).

That second village is also gonna boast several inns for latecomers arriving after the closing of the city gates, a river port (where all incoming goods need to be unloaded, checked and taxed before being brought into the city on mule carts) and last but not least, a pretty seedy section complete with whorehouses for people with more "peculiar" kinks and the (obviously unofficial) headquarters of the Assassin's Guild.

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## Weery

Amazing work. Great addition to the south, too. Really exciting seeing this develop  :Smile:

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## Caenwyr

Okay! Some small amount of work done over the weekend! 

I'm still between assignments for that commission, so there's some free time for me, but I'm also in the middle of extensive baby preparations (the little one should be arriving early August), some pretty large-scale changes to the outside of our house, AND preparations for our bathroom to be ripped out, some walls to be moved and a new bathroom to be put in... So yeah, kinda busy!  :Razz: 

Still, I got some mapping done too. This is where I'm at now:



I added another village, and did some work on the fairground on the overlooking bluff. Still tons and tons of stuff to add though.

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## Caenwyr

Alright, I'm sloooowly closing in on the finish line here. Still got tons of tiny tweaks to do (will list them below), but the rough outline is starting to emerge here. 

As you can see I
added another crapton of trees;tweaked the massive circus tent so it looks more "taut";added a bunch of canvas market tents just west of it;added two streams in the east,a road crossing it,and a tower and a guard house on one of the new bridges;and finally I added a bunch of fields edged with poplar trees.



Still to come:
finish the fairground with covered wagons (to the south of the circus tent) and something (playground? petting zoo?) to the north;throw in a whole lot of white longish dots to act as sheep grazing the pastures;plonk in a bunch of bronze roofs (they seem to have disappeared from the current version!);finish the massive fort in the southern wall;add some shading finishing touches;add a frame border to the map;start labeling the place;add a legend;add a title;add a scale;and maybe some ornamental bits (although the map is quite busy already, so I might drop that idea).



Any thoughts on the progress?

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## Falconius

Feilds don't seem like they should be but I always found them kind of a lot of work (maybe because it feels like they shouldn't be, so any work feels like a lot?).  Anyways those ones look great.  Following this map is a bit like playing Where's Waldo, trying to figure out all the changes from one to another.

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## Caenwyr

> Following this map is a bit like playing Where's Waldo, trying to figure out all the changes from one to another.


It's fun, right? I have come to use my browser as the image viewer of choice especially for this "find the difference" game. And it's easy too! Just open two versions of the same map in two separate tabs (by middle-clicking on them), zoom in on both without moving your mouse and alt-tab like a madman. I largely prefer this workaround over using those fancy schmancy image viewers Windows provides.

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## DanielHasenbos

This is stunning and I have to agree with you, as the map progressed I kept opening different versions in different tabs to see the progression. It's really fun!

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## Caenwyr

Sheep! And a petting zoo in the fairground! And circles of covered wagons! 

Oh and yeah, I also added a massive castle complex, boosted the terrain shading and redid the entire lake bottom, but who cares about such tiny additions.  :Razz: 



All that's left now is the non-map thingies. Unless you guys see anything that really needs fixing before that, so shoot!

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## Caenwyr

Alright, in-map labelling is done. 101 little balls with numbers in them. There's also a golden border, and some other stuff as well.

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## QED42

> Alright, in-map labelling is done. 101 little balls with numbers in them. There's also a golden border, and some other stuff as well.


It looks like you might have missed the 102nd one in the bottom right corner as there is a bubble sans number there! Otherwise it looks amazing. I think that amount of labels would probably send me over the edge!

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## Voolf

Wow Caenwyr, that is a beast metropoly. You have really put a massive good work here.

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## J.Edward

> Wow Caenwyr, that is a beast metropoly. You have really put a massive good work here.


I totally agree  :Very Happy:  That is a monster of a map.
Really awesome Pieter. Nods fervently.

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## bkh1914

I agree with the others.  *An awesome map!*

Ummm...  Two locations have the number 68.

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## Caenwyr

Gee thanks people, you're just too kind!! 


> I agree with the others.  *An awesome map!*
> 
> Ummm...  Two locations have the number 68.


Well poop, you're right! Guess I overlooked that in my enthusiasm to label the circus. Thanks for pointing it out, bkh! This means I'll have start relabelling all numbers from 68 upward 

In the meantime, here's an update with the legend. Still many things to change in how it will be presented.

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## Caenwyr

Update!!

Toyed a bit with the legend, and added a shield too:



also, I spent the last two days creating a sideways view of the fortress, and only now discover that there's absolutely no room for me to put it in without absolutely crippling the style...



So I guess this is gonna be its only appearance for now. There's still some things that need to be added (like windows and doors, flags, dropshadows, ...), but these will be for some other time. Maybe!

Still gotta add a compass and a scale, and then this monstrosity is done!

Oh, and I gotta fix that double 68  :Razz:

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## QED42

Maybe you could put the picture of the castle in a low opacity either behind the text of the legend or the title of the city? If you do it behind the legend you might need another drawing to balance it up on the other side.

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## Falconius

It looks fantastic.  So perty....

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## Caenwyr

> Maybe you could put the picture of the castle in a low opacity either behind the text of the legend or the title of the city? If you do it behind the legend you might need another drawing to balance it up on the other side.


Well, that's actually not a bad idea! But what you say is true: I'd need another one on the other side. And I don't think I have the energy at this point to pull that off (plus, which building should I pick for that? all the other ones are pretty straightforward I think). 

So here's an update with some tweaks in the bottom part (and some very minor re-labelling in the map itself). And I added a scale. So all that's left now is plonk in a compass, and I guess I'm done!

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## Caenwyr

And here's the compass!

What do you think of its placement?

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