~ Minas's little Map Tutorial ~ (with Photoshop)

Minas

Minas

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~ Minas's little Map Tutorial ~ (with Photoshop)​

Welcome Strangers, Vagabonds or simply Members of kayssplace to my Map Tutorial.
First, i'm sorry about, my bad english but i'm a crazy german, and germans are not known as briliant english speakers :p

Second, you need this tools:

Lndromat v0.99: http://www.bwfiles.com/files/file.php?id=1116
BWSurveyor RC2: http://www.bwfiles.com/files/file.php?id=337

Third, last but not least a Graphical Program. I use Photoshop but i can't give you a link ;). You need a program that can open or save as *.raw, and if you want your own landscape textures *.tga files.
All my explanatory note's are for Photoshop, i don't know how you create some effects in other graphical programs.

Now we can start:

Make a new File with this options:
createlnd1.jpg

Important is, that the picture will be grayscale and 8bit.

Now you must fill the area with black (#000000) and draw your borderline with a lightgrey (#101010).
With the "blur" tool you can smooth the edge of the line of the border, like this:
createborderline1.jpg


Here a picture of the tools i mean:
tools2.jpg


Create a second Layer with the same borderline (duplicate it) but resize it a bit smaller and take a lighter grey as before e.g. (#1b1b1b).
createborderline2.jpg


Because the map is in this form flat, have no hills and valleys you must create an effect.
In Photoshop, go to Layer and then Layer style. Take the point structure and choose the cloud effect, like in the image:
createborderline3effekt.jpg


Now the Land could looks like here:
createborderline3.jpg


But a bit is missing, right... we need mountains or some hills. draw it with a dark white (#bebebe), because if you use the normal white (#FFFFFF) you have very very big mountains :p
createborderline4.jpg


To the end you must put all Layers in a greater image. The new image must a have a size of 512x512.
finalrawmap.jpg


Save the File as a *.raw image. You are finish with the template.


Open lndromat 0.99 an search for the *.raw image. Now the Program want a *.dds file use this in my attachment.
The Program ask you, if you want copy texture files (tga) from a other lnd file, apply this and choose a lnd file (like Land1-5 or LandT or Oasis and Oasis II :p). If you don't want this, decline it and import your own tga files.

Save your new lnd file. You are finish with creating land file.

The last Step:
Unfortunately the HighRes images are very confused if you now playing this map ingame, therefore the only think you must do, is open the map with BWSurveyor and save it again.

surveyor.jpg


You are now finish, and have created your own map, congratulation!

For scripting read this files:
Black& White Mapping List v1.04: http://www.bwfiles.com/files/file.php?id=218
Creature Isle Mapping List v1.00: http://www.bwfiles.com/files/file.php?id=217
 
Well thanks for the guide, I might look into if I ever played B&W1 again.
 
You know, I might just go ahead and fire up my old PC (it's got Win 98 SE on it, and Photoshop too) and try working with it, then transferring the finished product to my Mac. I really want to try making some custom maps and stuff.

This is a great guide! :woot

How would you go about making rivers? Drawing with darker grey or black? That would indent the land, right? Would the water table automatically show up? (20 questions! LOL)
 
hey! thanks for the feedback coachzman90 and Black Curtains.

yes, if you want create a river, use real black and cut in the land, but use the "blur" tool and smooth the edges of the river line. yes its indent the land.

what did you mean with "water table"?
 
Nice guide Minas. :yes.

I think I'll sticky it.
 
Minas said:
yes, if you want create a river, use real black and cut in the land, but use the "blur" tool and smooth the edges of the river line. yes its indent the land.

what did you mean with "water table"?
Click to expand...

Good idea with using the blur tool, I hadn't thought of that.

By water table I mean, will there be water in the river, instead of there just being a valley cut into the land?
 
thank you kays for sticky  :laugh:

Black Curtains, yes there is water in the river... see my map forgotton paradise, the river where you start are made with this methode.
 
I do it almost the same, but recently I found a better technique. It is difficult to get the Blur just right that the coast isn't "jumpy," but instead I've been hand-drawing in Sharpie, charcoal and pencil, then scanning, outlining in black, and using the burn tool on the entire thing to smooth he coasts.

Of course, my method only works if you've got a scanner, though a similar effect could probably be achieved by using a Tablet.
 
Oh, thank you Okapi for the nice tip! But you 'r right... i got no scanner  :help
 
Ah, well. I don't know about Germany, but you can get a cheap one here for fifteen to twenty USD. Anyway, this is pretty muc the best way to do it without special peripherals.
 
Just a question.

When I open lndromat 0.99 and select my map, the program just closes. I've tried several times to no avail. Does anybody have any tips on how to get it to work?
 
yes, the size of the raw image is not correct, try to resizi it smaller....

maybe 240x 240 or so!
 
? I thought the image had to be 512x512 or something like that? But you have to leave anything that is not black in the center 256x256 portion, at least in my experience, which is easy to accidentally exceed, I've found, which is why I typically do all of my optimization in a bitmap, which has the added bonus of backing up my image since I have pretty much never thought to get a plugin to open RAW image data, then put it in the to-be raw file and shrink it down to a bit under 256x256, then blur the edges on 75% in case there was a hard edge on the original (which is also why I put it a bit below 256). This always works for me.

But, yeah, if the part that actually has any shade but 0-0-0 RGB black in it exceeds the center 256x256 of an image, the .exe crashes without a dialogue. It's because it is a pretty shoddy user-made program, but since it's all we've got, we can't really complain, especially since a debugger that tells us exactly what went wrong is technically just bells and whistles.
 
Thank you very much ! I'll try to make a few maps and upload them as soon as i can !
 
Hi there, I tried mapping ages ago but had a few mishaps. Anyways I need to ask how do you know about the scale of the map, is there any numerical value to determine how many pixels make a BW Map square?

 
I tried the photoshop thing, I think I have something (I can only use photoshop elements).  :woot
However, I can not install lndromat.......
I even tried installing it with darwine, it went well,
(I had the .raw at 256x256) except after given the appropriate files (.raw .odds .lnd) the window goes away and nothing happens!  :blues:
Insight is appreciated!  :)
 
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