PDN Map Making Tutorial

This tutorial is unofficial and is in need of a spell and grammmar check. I also need someone who has never used PDN to test out the tutorial and see if it is any help. I would also like a good PDN map maker to check and see if the tutorial makes any sense. I am having trouble posting the tutorial. Some reason I have to post it in small bits.

How to Make a Map with PDN
Making a map is complicated frustrating and takes a long time. So if you can’t take a little frustration than I would suggest not doing this. The only reason making a map is complicated is because there are so many ways to do it and so many buttons to use. If you read my tutorial on how to use PDN than you will have an easier time but it is still a long process. There are standards for a map to be uploaded on the site. So if you don’t accept some help and, or advice from a cartographer than your map probably won’t make it onto the site. Your map won’t be uploaded onto the site the day you post it. You will have to work on it till it meets the sites standards if you want it uploaded. Once you learn how to make a map and have made a map or two you will start getting the hang of it and it won’t be frustrating anymore, hopefully it will be fun.
This is the order in which I will teach you to make a map:
Getting Started
Resize Your Picture
Gameplay
• Territories
• Regions
Impassibles/Passibles
• Dead Zones
• Oceans/Seas
• Rivers
1. Finding Your Rivers
2. Tracing Your Rivers
• Mountains
• Manmade Obstacles
1. Territory Borders
2. Walls
• Easy Bridge
Making Your Regions
Posting
Take a Break
Color Layer
Rough Outlines
Smoothing Your Outlines
Shading
Texture
Territory Circles
Text
• PDN Text Problem
• Placing Your Text
• Outlines
Glow
Fine Tuning
YOUR FINISHED!

Getting Started
You need to decide what or where your map is going to be. I’m going to explain how to make a 2-D map. The best areas of a world for a map are areas with big natural impassibles, these are the five kinds of impassibles: Oceans, Rivers, Mountains, Dead Zones (an area on the map that is not going to be a territory) and Manmade Obstacles (a Wall or country, state, city, etc... border). To find an image of the area you picked for your map you can look on Google earth, Google maps, Wikipedia or just search online (You can also message a catographer). The image you found is horrible and will only be traced; but first you need to make it the right size and make sure the gameplay is good.
Resize Your Picture
If you have read my previous tutorial you already know how to resize an image. Resize the image to 1024 pixels in length (make sure “Maintain Aspect Ratio” is checked). The preferred height is 640 pixels but you are allowed to make a map as tall or as short as you like. It’s best if you have room for a mini map and title in the ocean or dead zone so if you need to you can resize the canvas to make room for those. You can do that later but then it is much more complicated.

Gameplay
• Territories
You should make sure the game play is good before you start your map. First of all there is an amount of territories you are not allowed to have on a map. These are the amounts that are not allowed:
36-38 and 45-51

There may be a few exceptions if it is impossible to avoid these amounts of territories but for the most part you need to avoid these amounts of territories. If you do have that many territories than you can just merge two territories and later just put a dash in between the names. There is also an amount that is best for each amount of players playing on the map. To find the best range for each amount of players just take the number of players and multiply it by 10. Then subtract 1. The answer is the lowest amount of territories you need for that amount of players. The highest amount of territories is found by multiplying the number of players by 12 and subtracting the answer by 1. Once you have the best amounts get rid of the amounts that are not allowed.

Example:
I want the best amount of territories for a 2 player game.

2 * 10 – 1 = 19
2 * 12 – 1 = 23
The best amounts of territories for a two player game are 19, 20, 21, 22 and 23.

I’m just going to list the best amounts so that you don’t have to do all of the math:
2 Player Games = 19-23
3 Player Games = 29-35
4 Player Games = 39-44
5 Player Games = 52-59
6 Player Games = 59-71
7 Player Games = 69-84
8 Player Games = 79-96
9 Player Games = 89-107

• Regions
If you can’t make your regions similar to the way I describe them below than don’t worry I will show you how to fix that with impassibles later.
So now you have the right amount of territories but you are going to need good regions. Regions are groups of territories that give bonus troops to their owner at the beginning of each turn. If you look at some of the maps that are already uploaded to the site you will notice that most of the time the regions have 2, 3 or 4 borders (territories that you have to defend once you hold the entire region). Australia in the world map has only one border. Australia is too easy to defend; because of that a lot of people have suggested a redo or a new version of the world map. So avoid regions with only one border. Also notice that none of the maps have regions with one territory and few maps have regions with two. You shouldn’t make one territory regions because someone will start with it and have an unfair advantage. Even though it is more unlikely that someone will start with a two territory region it is still a problem. So try to avoid two territory regions also. You should have also noticed that most of the maps had one or two big regions. The best examples are the world map, the DXII Stadium and the Caribbean map. In the world map there is Asia with twelve territories and five borders, in the DXII Stadium there is the playing field region with twelve territories and eight borders and in the Caribbean map there is Cuba with nine territories and four borders. Not many people are going to go for those regions but it does help with maneuverability and gives a place for the weak to survive. So it is OK to have one or two big regions but you don’t want your map to be made of a few huge regions; then most of the games would be luck. So the size of regions should differ. A lot of gameplay is based on preference; but remember not to make one territory regions and that it’s best if there is one big region.

Impassibles/Passibles
• Dead Zones
A dead zone is a place on the land where there aren’t any territories. For example in the South Africa Districts map there is a grey rectangle in the center of the map. That grey rectangle is a different country called Lesotho. If I had kept Lesotho in the map it would have ruined the gameplay and the name of the map (“South Africa Districts and Lesotho map” doesn’t sound very good). The grey at the top of the map is also a dead zone; and that dead zone is also made up of different countries. Dead zones are required when there is real land that borders the map. Sometimes there are exceptions. For example the Mediterranean Sea map is missing a ton of possible dead zones. I do not suggest randomly making certain areas on your map dead zones but if there is a separate country on your map and it will ruin the gameplay and name then I would make it a dead zone. A dead zone will not have a territory circle and is normally grey (do not color it grey until you have a color layer. The color layer is explained below).

• Oceans/Seas
Oceans and seas are normally big enough that they are shown in your image and do not need explaining.

• Rivers
1. Finding Your Rivers
Rivers are normally too small to be in your image. To find a river look for an image with rivers in the area you are using. Once you have an image make sure it is the same size. Open your regular image then open your rivers image in another layer. Make sure the rivers layer is above the regular image. Open layer properties and lower the opacity so that you can see both the rivers and your other image. The picture probably isn’t exactly the same as your other one so you might need to play with the dimensions using “select all” (Tool Bar, Edit) and “Move Selected Pixels” (Tool). Are any of the rivers on the borders of territories? If a river isn’t exactly on the border that’s OK (It should be somewhat close though). Those are the rivers you are looking for. You have to show the source of the river unless it goes off the image (a river can’t just start in some random place on the land and end at another). If a river runs through a territory than you can split the territory into two different territories and call one half southern and the other northern or just make a small bridge across the river.

2. Tracing Your Rivers
Make a new layer and trace the rivers that you are going to use with a size four brush. The color doesn’t really matter, black and blue are the only colors you want to avoid. Later you are going to trace the sides of the traced rivers. Now you can delete the rivers image (not the one you just made the one you found online).
• Mountains
I have yet to find a good way to make a mountain. Once I have found a good way to make one I will update the tutorial.
• Manmade Obstacles
1. Territory Borders
The easiest manmade obstacle is a territory border. You can slightly change borders to enhance gameplay that doesn’t mean totally change the borders of every territory. You can change borders if their original place was pretty close to where you moved it. Sometimes this may cause problems with players because they might live there and not like that their borders were changed. Make sure all players are OK with these changes.
2. Walls
The Great Wall of China was just two different shades of grey outlined in black and filled in with a texture. Simple and very complicated at the same time. Most things like this have a lot to do with perspective. It’s good to get a 3-D effect.
 DO NOT make the “Easy Bridge” until you are sure that your color scheme is going to stay the way it is.
• Easy Bridge
I find bridges very difficult. So I am going to show you how to do a really easy bridge (I used this bridge in the South Africa Districts map). All you have to do is make two lines with a size two line/curve across the water and use the outline smoothing process (explained below. Hit the “Ctrl” + “F” keys and type in “Smoothing Your Outline”). Once you are done that use the colors from both territories and color in the gap in a new layer. After that you can slightly blur the colors with “Average Blur” or “Gaussian Blur” (make sure the color doesn’t go into the river, if it does erase the color in the river) (the color also may become slightly invisible so you might want to duplicate the bridge’s color layer).

Making Your Regions
Now you need to decide on your territory borders and region borders. Make a new layer and trace the territory borders (I suggest doing this with a bright red) (this can be sloppy because it is just to show everybody what your gameplay is going to be like). Now trace over that with a different color for reigons.
Posting
It is a good idea to post your map in the forums so everyone can give you advice on gameplay. Save your image as a PDN file (name it “name of map (PDN)”) now you need to save your image with “Save As” and change your file type from “PDN” to “JPEG” (this time name it “name of map (JPEG)”). After you save the image as a “JPEG” it will ask two questions. Hit the “OK” button for the first question and “Flatten” for the second. Now go to imageshack.us: http://imageshack.us/. You are going to need to signup but don’t worry it is free. Now go to media upload click browse and find your picture once you found it make sure you change the image resize box to “Do Not Resize” now click on upload. After that it will give you a link so people can look at your image, copy and paste it in a new topic in the forums.
Take a Break
Now you have to wait until a few people comment. Wait for the cartographers to comment because they will tell you whether or not the gameplay is good enough for playing on. You should ask these two questions in your first post: is the subject interesting enough and is gameplay good or at least acceptable.
Color Layer
This is where the map making begins. Make a new layer and select your pencil tool. Trace the border of a region (you can zoom in for this. I normally have it set at 800% or 1200%) and then select the paint bucket. The tracing doesn’t have to be perfect just make sure it is pretty close. When you are map making the tolerance for the paint bucket is normally at 1% so that it only fills in the exact color that you click on. So once you have the tolerance at 1% use the exact color you traced the region with and fill in the region. Now you can chose any color you want and change the color of the region with the paint bucket (just make sure the tolerance is set at 1%). Now repeat the process with the rest of the regions; make sure that you use different colors. It’s best if you have a variety of colors so that it isn’t hard to tell regions apart. It’s best if the saturation and variance are not at 100. Make sure you don’t put similar colors next to each other in your final color scheme. That also means no blues next to blue oceans.

Rough Outlines
Make a new layer and select the paint brush tool. Change the brush width to 2. Make sure that the fill is set at solid. Antialiasing should be enabled for basically everything in map making. Make sure the blending is on normal. Make sure that all the layers but the colors layer is invisible. Now zoom in to about 1200% and make sure your color is black. Trace the regions using the color layer.

Make sure that it is as centered over the edges of the color as possible so that you can’t see two different colors touching. Once you have finished duplicate the outline layer. Now make every layer invisible except one outline layer and the image that you traced the regions from. Go into the old image’s properties and lower the layer opacity (just enough to tell if you are tracing in the wrong layer). Now go into your visible outline layer and trace the territory borders. Once you have finished you have a region outline layer and a territory outline layer. Save your rough outlines so that if you need to change them later you can easily do so.

Smoothing Your Outlines
To make your outline smoothed (at the moment it is pixelated) click on your color layer and “select all”. Now click on “cut”. Resize the image using the “by percentage” option instead of “absolute size”. Resize it to 101% and then resize it again to 99% (it should be the same size as it was before). Now go into your color layer and click on “paste”.