State of the Vector Map

[Malliki Tosha]

Or Ctrl++.

[Shyriath]

*Tries it* Huh. I stand corrected...

[Shyriath]

Another update. County names finished, cities from the latest version of the claim map (which I will post in the other thread later) put in, names for national, House, and county capitals and large cities put in. All counties should now have capitals, with two exceptions:

-Raynor Isles. There was some development done with them, and reading up on that, I found that the county officially has no undisputed capital; the cities of Biotopia and Libertopia were jockeying for dominance. I... don't know how to deal with that on the map.

-Cape Farewell. I'm reluctant to just pick a capital for an active county, but no one in Kalir has answered my questions about it and I can't find anything else at all saying where it is. C'mon, guys, yer killin' me here.

Also, I marked Hawshire-Dura with a slightly different color scheme, since they seem to be a protectorate of Shireroth rather than a county.

Edit: Also, I marked the historic nations withing Sermolot. I may change the style involved, though; as it stands, they don't look very pretty.

Behold:
-The production version
-The full SVG version

[Malliki Tosha]

You can upgrade Nee, NL to major city if you can be bothered with it.

[Shyriath]

Easily done!

Once I do that, and I add in the names for the smaller cities represented here, I think I may have reached an appropriate approximation of "done" as far as an overall national map is concerned. After this, I think I can start taking on submissions to add county-level detail to the map; and in between submissions, I'll do other things like adding in longitude and latitude lines, some artistic additions or changes (don't ask... the one I definitely know I want to do is going to be a surprise), and, of course, slowly adding in the rest of Micras.

[Shyriath]

Updated again, with change to size of Nee and added lesser city names. Also, now with 100% more sancts.

-Production map
-Vector file

[Erik Mortis]

Okey. I finally looked at it.. and that rocked my socks...

[Shyriath]

You see what you were missing?

[Shyriath]

Status update: I haven't uploaded the files yet, but am currently working on including other continents. Istvanistan has been added, and the islands surrounding the Keltian continent will soon follow suit (and then the continent itself).

[Harvey Steffke]

Shyriath, I have an unreasonable request. Could you make an expanded version of Amity (say, about 800x800 pixels) with the cities and towns Greg came up with here: http://shireroth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=93&t=11823 ? The castles aren't important but the cities are. If you can't (and I'll understand if you don't want to go around labeling all that nonsense) then the larger version of Amity with the word Amity in the middle removed would be sufficient and I could do the labeling myself.

[Kaiser B'caw I]

*Examines the thread* Wow. *Puts on a folksy accent* That is some detail right thar, Ah tell yew whut...

But anyway: nah, it shouldn't be too hard to do, in and of itself. I'm going to try to incorporate the more detailed maps into the main file anyway, when and as they're presented to me; so this will give me stuff to work on, and in the process I can make up an Amity map that has what you want on it. How fast I'll get it done depends on some things; it could be anywhere from "tonight" to "inside of a week", but I'll happily do it.

[Kaiser B'caw I]

I've updated the production map. The vector file will be updated in due course, after I've finished the stuff for Amity.

[Kaiser B'caw I]

And speaking of Amity, see below.

This is the first case I've dealt with so far where the detail map I'm translating from has substantial differences with the one it's being translated to. Amity as shown in the maps in the referenced thread had a rather different shape from the one I'd extrapolated from the MCS map, so I had to try to figure out how I should deal with that. The result favors the overall shape I already had, but tries to incorporate coastal details from the other map. I also included the rivers, because showing the land as a blob featureless aside from towns kinda bores me. (But in deference to the fact that I was an environmental science major, I didn't include the high-elevation bodies of water that most of the rivers seemed to jointly spring from, because Rivers Don't Do That.)

So, Harvey, let me know if this works for you; if not, I'll see what I can do to fix it.

[Harvey Steffke]

It's perfect. You truly are a God among mortals. Thank you so much.

[Erik Mortis]

We need to have an epic battle in Serenity Battle.

[Malliki Tosha]

Or Serenity Valley even.

[Erik Mortis]

Yes.. that even....

[Kaiser B'caw I]

Vector file and production map updated.

The image now represents the full size of the world map when it is finished, so you'll be seeing a lot of blank space until it's filled in. I've added in most of the islands around Keltia, except for the former Menelmacari lands and associated islands, and the Keltian continent itself will be the next thing to fill in. I'll also still be working on adding detail to MASS, though that won't show up on the full map. Also, at some point I'm going to add in the military bases as shown on the developing claims map.

[Gman Russell]

(But in deference to the fact that I was an environmental science major, I didn't include the high-elevation bodies of water that most of the rivers seemed to jointly spring from, because Rivers Don't Do That.)

Everyone's a critic... especially the ones who have degrees in something.

[Kaiser B'caw I]

To be fair, though, it could be worse. I could be trying to develop a climate model for Micras and telling everybody they stuck their capitals in the middle of the desert.

[Gman Russell]

...but you... wont?

[Kaiser B'caw I]

Only if I get really, really bored.

[Harvey Steffke]

My good man, could you give me some advice on where to start on working with vector-based maps? I would love to make some of my own maps that can be zoomed without pixilated nonsense but I haven't the foggiest idea on where to start.

[Chrimigules]

It's so beautiful...

[Kaiser B'caw I]

Where to start. Hm. Well, as far as software, CorelDRAW X4 is what I'm using, and once I invested some time into it it wasn't too hard to learn, or at least learn enough for what I've been doing. As far as I know, it's only available as part of a software suite, which I think tends to run around $500 for a current version; but it comes with tons of fonts and extras.

I've also tried Inkscape in the past. On the plus side, it's free and it uses .svg as its native format, but it's also still in development, so it might not be as full-featured as other applications.

It's so beautiful...

Thank you. I'm hoping to make it more beautiful in time, if I can figure out how...

[Kaiser B'caw I]

Incidentally, production map is updated.

So: Continent of Keltia added, including the lakes and rivers. Northern icecap completed. Added a grid for longitude and latitude, which still needs labels. Added also a scale, although that may need adjusting.

It seems to me that it had been agreed some time back at the MCS that rounding distances up to 7 miles to the pixel would be a good move, and I made the scale accordingly; but apparently the official measure is still 6.917 miles. This is... problematic. Still doable, I think, but I imagine it will be the source of headaches later on, especially since I already had to convert pixels to inches. That's the thing about a vector-based map; pixels stop applying.

Anyway. Northern hemisphere is nearly done; about all that's left there is the area of former Menelmacar. After that, I'll start on the southeasternmost lands, Corum and the polar isles nearby, and start drawing my way west through Eura, former Pacary, Caplona, Tapfer, Cibola, and Sypyr. I'm tempted to think that it'll be less work than the northern hemisphere, because there's less land area there, but since the real measure will be coastal length, I can only hope.

And after that... plus ultra.

[Kaiser Ometeotl I]

So... What is the state of this awesome vector map? The last update looks beyond nifty btw.

[Jonas]

There should at least come some minor deletions (Straylight and Elwynn).

Keep up the good work! We count on you!

[Harvey Steffke]

This is the only thing that could make me post around here right now, and only because I want to help make this work international. Kinda sad that all Shireroth can think about is what internal borders to scratch off instead of focusing on Micras at large, but not at this point a surprise.

Unfortunately, I have deep, terrifying fear that the loss of Shyriath's computer also took his work with this map with it. Shyriath, if you still can view the forums somehow or another, please either confirm or deny the fact that you no longer have access to the ability to continue this work. There are a lot of very positive projects that would need to be adjusted if this is the case, but even if the grim facts are true, we need to know.

[Jonas]

Kinda sad that all Shireroth can think about is what internal borders to scratch off instead of focusing on Micras at large, but not at this point a surprise.

As I'm focussing on the Shirerithian map it wouldn't be a surprise that I want to 'scratch' Elwynn from it. Some could otherwise see it as a way to not recognising their independence. It has nothing to do with politics. I'm not saying that it really has to disappear, just changing the borders is fine for me. And in the case of Straylight I had interpreted that the cities had moved so perhaps be deleted from the next version (or moved if we want to go international, but I thought this was in the first phase a national project for Shyriath).

It's not like we want to forbid you to use it.