Ethran: Merelan City

[waldronate]

The new cliffs are MUCH better than the old one. The fractalization adds a lot (as does avoidance of the basic Bevel element).

[Mouse]

DEFINITELY keep these cliffs. This is just astonishing work, Mouse. I've spent the last ten minutes just taking in all the little details. I want to live there!

Oh wow! And thank you Diamond!!! Er... but you don't really want to live there. Not really.

This is the doomed world of Ethran, and its indigenous population are all those "poor... poor, people" you mentioned some time ago now

Is this made with CC3? If so it's one of the most stunning CC3 maps I have ever seen! Keep it up!

Thanks Josiah 100% arranged and modified in CC3+. (not showing at its best below. I had a system crash a couple of days ago, and had to reinstall a lot of my software, including CC3+).

Screen shot.JPG

95% of what you see was drawn directly into CC3+. The other 5% consists of a relief sheet, which I prepared by eroding a hand drawn height map in Bryce (rendering it and importing it back into CC3+ as a b/w bitmap), and those beautiful little boats and ships that Jo gave me from his Alycrau map - which I believe were his own hand drawn artwork, done in Photoshop

Had I not been caught snoozing (and not really paying much attention to what else was going on around me) I might have found out about Wilbur in time to make a more pleasing relief map, but as it stands right now its a Bryce height map

The new cliffs are MUCH better than the old one. The fractalization adds a lot (as does avoidance of the basic Bevel element).

Aw thanks, Waldronate . I haven't yet found anything I can't do (or mimic) with CC3+. And the basic bevel has its uses - the pyre pit on top of the island is one of them, and I've seen many a dungeon wall that would be sadly lacking without it

[- JO -]

The new cliffs appears brighter, and we can see them better, and they're much more integrated one to another (less layer effect), I think you found the good solution !

And I really like all the places where you've place the buildings : i'm really looking forward to see the city coming to life !

you're really precise and meticulous ! Hard work, but it's paying !

[Mouse]

The new cliffs appears brighter, and we can see them better, and they're much more integrated one to another (less layer effect), I think you found the good solution !

And I really like all the places where you've place the buildings : i'm really looking forward to see the city coming to life !

you're really precise and meticulous ! Hard work, but it's paying !

Hey Jo I'm glad you like my city - and yes, it was a bit like a layer cake before, or a stack of badly made pancakes! LOL

As for being precise and meticulous - I had a good teacher to follow - YOU, with all your myriad trees!!!

I'm usually a very messy person, and also quite careless, but I find listening to some decent film score music helps with the rhythm of the old thinking process - helps me to imagine little sub-plots in the streets as I draw them - encounters, fights, celebrations.... etc My favourite right now: Guardians of the Galaxy - Awesome Mix, and a few of the longer and more dramatic orchestral pieces

[- JO -]

My wife is a big film score music fan too... And, coincidence, she's listening to the Guardians of the Galasy too, these days !
It sure helps to have music when doing demanding and repetitive tasks...

[Mouse]

I think music stimulates the imagination by generating a particular mood, so you have to be careful what you listen to when you’re drawing things that must have a certain atmosphere about them. I have a wide range of all kinds of stuff to listen to, ranging from Mozart, Tellemann and Beethoven, to Led Zeplin, ELO and Nickleback, with a sprinkling of Beiderbecke, traditional New Orleans jazz and Bob Marley thrown in for good measure…

But I would never listen to the whole lot in just one map! LOL. Just think what a confusion that would cause!

[Mouse]

Version 31

The roads and tracks were all drawn on the top sheet/layer of 8, which is why the shadows cast by the steps in the cliff didn't seem to affect them. So after digging out a few more of the houses I more or less buried when I changed the cliffs, I had to sort them out before I went any further. A basic design flaw tripped me up at that point. Diagonal roads traversing the sheets/layers in zig-zag form up and down the slope were nearly impossible to cut into sections at just the right point without looking like separate bits of road because of the shadows being cast by the cliffs. I redesigned the road layout (fourth time) to get around this problem, and made nice convenient even slopes without any cliffs for the ones I really couldn't get rid of I hope they don't look too artificial.

Having spent most of the day sorting that out, I didn't have much left in me for anything else, but managed to mostly finish Gyre Frai - the Merlish ghetto on the north facing cliff looking out over the bay, and place two taverns on the top of the island, near the pyre pit and the six tumuli/barrow burials of the early Merlish kings. Had a little fun with a couple of unofficial paths sneaking away from the pyre to the taverns

[Mouse]

Version 32

Some kind of vineyard/hop farm seems to have appeared to the east of the summit on the slopes that are too exposed to the predators for anyone to want to live there. (Well, I can't have a city without any visible and obvious vices!)

The bitmap I was using to generate the relief was making everything grey and more fuzzy than without it, so I replaced it with a vector image (in other words I traced the dark shapes on the bitmap and created a new sheet/layer for them, then got rid of the bitmap altogether). Everything is much sharper now - including the mistakes!

I haven't had time to work on the expected side effect of changing the relief mapping (more intense colours), but I'll sort that out tomorrow.

More of the spider-webbing of tiny pathways has been added, and errors with paths being on the wrong sheet are starting to get tidied up. Once I have sorted out the disturbances caused by the change in cliffs and the equally drastic change in relief mapping, I should be able to finish this off in just a few more days.

I have rendered this version without the frame to give a better resolution to the uploaded image so that you can see things. (its still there, just not included in the render rectangle)

[Mark Oliva]

Some kind of vineyard/hop farm seems to have appeared to the east of the summit on the slopes that are too exposed to the predators for anyone to want to live there.

They have to be vineyards. That's not how a hops garden looks. But gee golly whillikers, Mouse! They're in the wrong place. No sensible vintner would put his/her grapes on the east side of the hill. A vineyard has to be on the south or southwest side of the hill where the sun exposure is right (or north to northwest south of the equator).

[Mouse]

Ah!

Well...

Hmmmmn... Hmmmn....

Actually.... I need to add a compass to the map. Thanks for reminding me!

The majority of the vineyard is on a south east slope (north being diagonal from bottom right to top left). That's almost south facing... and the slope is more of a gently tilting plain, so its not really in the shade at any point of the day. Is that good enough?

I was thinking of vines when I drew them, and no, I don't live anywhere near a hop growing area. I just couldn't make my mind up if the Blucrans were men of the grape, or grain. But then I remembered that it would be easier to make wine than beer, since cereal crops are hit much harder by drought than are vines (I think), and you don't need to add any water to the 'brew'. The grapes of the Merlish vines (for it is they and not the Blucrans' who refined the strain) are small and very strong - and they are going to need a fairly stiff drink or two when they realise what's about to happen to them.

Do you think I have enough vineyard to keep the wealthy of the city in booze for a year, or shall I do more?

The reason they are there, right in the middle of the city, is because it is far easier for them to grow their own wine in situ than have it hauled across the mainland and all the way up the cliff.