Map Dabble

Just prior to coming to D12 i was messing around with making a risk game using the swing gui, for domination. I found a cool map and made it playable...here is the result... Death star territories were like ports,,but u could attack anywhere in the regions it was connected to.. see description..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5xEYIy6B3k

Is that the star wars universe/galaxy with Coruscant in the center?

I liked the video, you make your avatar using the world classic map here on the 3D globe in that program as some sort of skin?

@ naathim Not sure what map that is. i think it's a fan made one. @ CBT ..yup ..i used the same program i made the deathstar risk game with, then used another one to make my avatar gif.

Creative bug lately.
Todays attempt at making a map from scratch. Got impatient with paint.net program as I'm unfamiliar with it so just used the same gif editor program im use to. A bit frustrating trying to draw regions, so the map which was meant to be something else, ended up being a whole bunch of islands, floating islands at that due to over use of shadow effect, just went with that theme. followed a few d12 guidelines then went a lot off track. Quite a bit of stuff you got to do. Jotted on my keyboard randomly to make place names, then had a go with using my ruff map on my risk map editor program.
Tedious stuff linking up territories adding values, on the program, luckliy I've done it a few times before for quick work. End result of half a days work, very amateur but finished it, just for fun.

Got a map creation you'd like to try the game play on.. try this
Risk Map editor

Can you load your own maps there?

It's a program you download, use it to play on your own PC and create your own risk game.. cards / missions / etc.. You can play online also, but last time I played it was real buggy, nowhere near as good as here. I've used some d12 maps to try on it, for home use only. It would be good for cartographers to play around with.

Day 3
This is starting to become fun. *Not trying to get a map on D12 yet (Just practicing). Getting use to paint.net and techiniques but still mostly used my gif animating program that I'm use too.
What I started off trying to do was make a new fantasy world map. I realized just making straight lines, and drawing borders was a challenge. I ended up cutting the continents up where they started to look like islands, so forgot about drawing borders. Was too tasking to get an outline around them so I ended up using a shadow effect which gave it a 3d effect. Thought of the Avatar movie and those cool floating islands.
So that became the theme. Hit the keyboard a few times to come up with most of the names. Result so far

When I made my map, I created the outline first and then coloured and textured it. Not sure if that was the easiest way to do it but it worked (eventually....)!

I am all for people practising here in the Map Creation thread as it may well turn into a nice D12 map, as long as it doesn't become too time consuming for no intended result and that the person practising has made their intentions clear, where they are eager to learn and no expectations are made for the map creation.

Generally, there is a nice overall look to the map with regard to colour, contrast & layout.
I would separate the colours such as purple and red as they are close colours.

Purely from a graphic and aesthetic stand point, here are a few pointers:

There are human elements in the land mass shapes that need to be more natural and random, such as the island coastlines, these look to be overly forced to be random, too jagged and have lots of repeated patterns. For help with this see Vexer's 'Cloud' system used on Ancient Realm. (I will try to find it and add it to the tutorials page).
There are too many parallel gaps between the islands. (see above)
Connections lines are too linear.
Texture needed on the land (eventually).
Region Bonuses need formulating (see tutorials page).
Not sure if region names would look better in mini-map and less detracting on the main map??

There are a few pointers for now, but you really need to also read the part of the DXII Guide to Map Making about borders, because there will be a point where you will need the land to have outlines / borders.

I hope this helps and that you have fun developing your map skills.

Very helpful, thanks guys for the tips, just something for myself at this moment, that I could use for my own map editor, and just develop some appliction skills in the guidelines of D12, so that maybe a way down the track I may attempt something, and have a better idea of how to go about it, but I wont be doing that anytime soon!

Making realistic borders is very difficult. The cloud method works very good, but it is very time consuming. One of the things I wanted to improve of the current Tamriel map was the borders. They are very linear and also pretty thick. I started redoing them with the cloud method and went only through 3 of them because it was a pain, and the map has about 100 borders of different length between territories...


Creating the outline of the regions it's a different thing. I highly recommend the method for that. Also, I made an islandish project, with less borders. Outlines and region borders are done with the method, the other borders are done with random pen method (or whatever you want to call to put anchor points here and there more or less following a direction). I have a nice idea for that one, but won't reveal it now. Sorry for the colors, put your sunglasses on before looking at the second example

Borders of your islands are really simple, just use the Stroke tool, set to 'Outer' at about '2 pixels' and 'pure black' and you get a perfect black outline around your islands on that layer.

Unfortunately, I am not sure if the Stroke tool is available on other programs, I only use Photoshop.

I said really simple... yes, to create an outline to something that is already there, but not to create something that can be filled or partitioned in any way, that is a whole different "kettle of fish"!

There are some good program resource links on the DXII Guide.

I had added an extension pack to paint.net program and ended up accidently finding a way to outline the borders where it didn't have one, It also had a texture edit option which i added some on the landscape. I orignially had contrasting white connective lines (Day 2) which I changed to light blue and I liquified the lines to bend them around a bit so they weren't linear. I took on board all the suggestions except I left the landshapes un-natural looking, but that's something I'll work on and keep mind for a more realism map when I try it. Since this is a fantasy floating island map I can get away with it lol.
I've learnt a lot in the process over just 3 days from these feedbacks.

This is how my learning project evolved over 3 days. I'm quite happy with the progress in the short time.