Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Gygax Challenge Week II: To Be Continued... Later...


So, Dundjinni can be very, very slow on an old computer - which was one of the reasons I started using my less reliable G5 Mac to plan the work - but yet retain that stubborn resistance to planned obsolescence. 

I finished the map work above fairly early in the day - but rendering it in full definition proved to be very, very difficult. Since I have the map saved, I can come back to this later (week 5). This is at approximately 72 DPI - and the rendering as a JPG took a minute or so at 1600x2000. 

The program defaults to 200 DPI at 8000x6000 or thereabouts - which was taking hours, and crashing out during the finalization of the BMP format. I may have to tweak Java or my GPU settings to do this (the latter is a crippling feature, considering I had the best PPC AGP card in the G5).

The physical dimensions of a canvas that size is like 32"x40" and gives a truly detailed result - I haven't given up yet, but overland maps are much, much more crowded than the average dungeon map. Some of those tree symbols were put down one at a time...

Nonetheless, I want to be into Week III, so I did some manipulation on the lower resolution image with Photoshop. Basically I highlighted edges, faded the overlay of them, posterized the image, used auto contrast/color/tone, and applied a basic canvas texture very slightly...


As you can see I muted the color a little bit, and posterizing took care of some of the more jagged mouse drawn lines. I'm not looking to layout material in Photoshop - but it made it easier to smooth the image out and make it a bit more 'organic' looking.

Since I stated one of my inspirational sources was horror comics of decades past - I wanted a bit more blend with that style...


I will be doing all of my map labels from within Comic Life, which is a somewhat limited program but captures that comic book feel. It's not perfect, and I'll probably revisit this technique when I have the full resolution BMP.

Over the next few days, between real life work, I will start putting together some names of places and the first few concepts of the dungeon design. I think I will wrap the random encounter tables into stocking the dungeon, since I will need to find a suitable layout for the charts.

I'm thinking of some forgotten crypt-temple beyond one of the copious marshlands that tend to well up around the mountainous regions. The town nearest will be a palisade walled fort town like you'd imagine fur traders in the 17th century using... or, easier still, Sleepy Hollow from the Tim Burton movie.

Until next time... Stay creepy!

No comments:

Post a Comment