Brethren Coast

Nice improvements. The only thing I'm not sure about it the extra old style Land Outline on the sea. Seems too rigid to me whereas it blended before. If you are using outer glow in photoshop to do it then maybe try adding some noise and decreasing the spread.

Hey strangers. I love everything, but the text over the water is too clean for this style. Play with these effects [url=http://www.cartographersguild.com/tutorials-how/11123-bleeding-ink-photoshop.html]HERE[/url], maybe look for a more hand written font, though it's not bad. If you have Adobe After effects, you can really make it look hand drawn: http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/how-to-create-hand-drawn-text-in-after-effects/ Warning, above video will take up your time and make you want to make everything look bump mapped hand drawn. Also the attack dashed lines are darker than the borders, I'd make them the same or lighter, since we are presuming the hand drawn map has worn over time, and the borders would have been the darkest heaviest lines when it was new, so should have faded the least. 30 territory map, all 3 regions, makes for good caps games. might be just large enough to take dice out of deathmatch early as well. Same time will be all dice though, just from experience with Anchor bay, you have one bad roll early, and there's just not enough troops left to recover. Gameplay seems balanced yet imbalanced, the 3 point strong holds at those attack lines is very Caribbean, which people love so I assume you were going for that. :) Nicely done.

Thanks for the feedback. @Vexer I will sort out the land outline as suggested. @cbt711 I'm afraid the video was not of much use as I don't have Adobe After Effects and the text effect created in this program is 'stop motion' something N/A here. If I was able to create larger fonts I would really 'go to town' on the hand written effect, but I have a small text here so most effect would be lost, however, I will try to find more of a handwriting style font and use that and then alter parts to make them all different. I will also make the connection lines look more faded, well spotted. I'll try to get these changes up tonight and will most probably be altering things that beg me to retouch them for better effect. Any more feedback would be much appreciated.

http://www.the-inkstore.co.uk/frame/Brethren3.png Repeating the link from the previous page. The folded effect in the mini-map is cool. But it seems too much to me. I mean it looks almost like a wood tassellation. But probably you only need to reduce the shadow, making it very tiny, almost invisible, being supposed to be a very tiny leaf (plus highly reduced in size). But I can be wrong on this.

My only appreciation is that in the Orchard, the red label outline is not the color I'd expect to see, but a lighter red. I don't know if you know what I mean.

Yes, I know what you mean Psymon. The problem is that like all the regions, the text outline colour is taken from a point in the mid tone behind the text, but the text overlays many different tones where it is. Therefore, I must either move the text where the outline is more suited to the tones around it, or change the tone to one that suits it's current position better. The Orchard Region seems to be the one troublesome region for multiple tone changes. I will try reducing the shadow on mini map Bishop, see what you think then?

I have done the changes suggested. Now that I see the sea names in this font, I would like to do something with the territory font but can't use a script like the seas for obvious reasons, any ideas on fonts that can be easily read but old world looking? [spoiler=Brethren 3][img]http://www.the-inkstore.co.uk/frame/Brethren3.png[/img][/spoiler] [spoiler=Brethren 4][img]http://www.the-inkstore.co.uk/frame/Brethren4.png[/img][/spoiler]

Try treasure map deadland Font http://www.dafont.com/treasure-map.font

I agree with The_Bishop about the mini-map. It has a cool effect but it is a bit too much and feels a bit stiff. The mini-map [url=http://www.the-inkstore.co.uk/frame/Melee12.png]on this map[/url] on the other hand has that old map feeling to it. Sorry for not commenting on the rest of the map. Will try to do it soon.

Wait, I don't understand Fendi... Are you proposing to make the folded effect on both maps, or only on Melee map and something different for this one? Also, in the latest version the mini-map is not such stiff anymore, but maybe is it still stiff for Fendi's eyes? One more thought, it seems a bit weird to me to see it three-folded in both directions (3x3), I think it would look more realistic if it is three-folded only in one direction (3x2), possibly the wider one.

@The_Bishop I don't know why I did 3X3 folds LOL I will change this. Fendi was showing a version of Melee that was put up by me in the forum, but was changed because the paper mini map was not fitting. This is not a new proposal for Melee, which is finished and fully active!! @Fendi I agree, I am not happy with the mini map, sometimes I work on maps late into the night and don't work productively, this is one of those times, plus a lot of the map. @Vexer Thanks for the font link and suggestion, I will try this. With the help of feedback from anyone and everyone who cares remark / suggest on the look of the map, this might well evolve into a truly old style paper effect map. Please feel free to suggest ideas and personal concerns!

Try a very feint drop shadow on the sea names to the bottom side only, black, with a blurred fade... then play with the transparency of the effect, it will make it look like ink has ran a bit into the paper. You might have to make the font on the seas a touch smaller. Most of them look great, Deamon Causeway is a bit crowded with that font size though. It's not a big deal though, artist's choice there. The font looks good, just get it to bleed a little :) Also, Vexer's pirate font would work well for the land names I think.

For me, lots of things were not right or ready to make this a qualifying paper map. 1) All the hand drawn images were too opaque and detracting to the game map and boundary lines. 2) The land although too colourful for a paper map, has to be a risk map and regardless of how monotone I'd like it to be, it needs to have colour. How much colour, is up for debate of course. 3) The font for the territory labels was just not fitting so I used Vexer's suggested font and I like it. However, I have reduced its opacity so if you all think it should be more opaque let me know? 4) The territory labels don't stand out from the land as they normally would on a risk map because it has to look like they have been drawn on and faded over time. 5) The mini map has been remade to the suggestions. 6) The land / sea borders have been cleaned up somewhat for distinction and an overspray added into the sea for that old fashioned effect. 7) A compass has been added, but I cropped this from an old map on the Internet, if this is a problem, I will make my own. 8) The territory dividers have been redrawn on a lot of regions to suit the land formation which boundaries would normally follow. 9) The sea labels have been left because I had not seen cbt711's suggestion above until now. 10) An edge spray has been added to the region border edges because inner shadows and inner glows don't work well for this. 11) Some little rivers and inlets have been added for effect. There are probably a lot more things that I changed to hopefully put this map on the road to evolution into a paper style map that's good enough to be played at D12! It will need the expert aesthetic eyes and personal preferences of the forum peeps to guide it to its purpose, so give me lots of constructive feedback please? [spoiler=Brethren 4][img]http://www.the-inkstore.co.uk/frame/Brethren4.png[/img][/spoiler] [spoiler=Brethren 5][img]http://www.the-inkstore.co.uk/frame/Brethren5.png[/img][/spoiler]

After posting this, I see already that the region colours are way too much. I should reduce this substantially and the region border spray is giving green brown colour instead of black. I will use a higher layer for this, because the paper overlay is causing it to discolour. When you do a major overhaul of a map, there are so many mundane jobs to do, it hinders you from standing back and being creative. That will happen if the map is determined as going in the right direction.

I'm loving ye look of this! Two suggestions: I noticed some river labels, which are a good idea, but they are too small at ye moment. I know they shouldn't draw attention to themselves, but it seems like they are illegible as they currently stand. Ye olde title, Brethren Coast, is also on ye minimap, but ye end of ye title is cut off. I think it would look better if there was no title on ye minimap. Otherwise it looks fantastic!