Building a Web Map, part 8

Since I'm going to be running a game today,  I wanted to be able to use the web map.  A big part of that usefulness fro me is the presences of hexagons for distance measurement. I know I already have a scale bar on the map, but I always find those pretty useless on interactive maps. So I generated hexagonal tessellation in ArcMap at 3 different scales: 6 mph, 24 mph, and 96 mph. I know Mystara is traditionally mapped at 48 or 72 mph at the smallest scale, but I felt I should be consistent in size difference because 24 is 4 times 6, whereas 72 is only 3 times 24, which works for the 8 mile hex, but I'm using 6 mph because I'm trying to stay consistent with the older source material and the 6 mile hex is great for measuring in general. Yes, that was a ridiculous run on sentence.

You may notice that the hexagon layer doesn't match up with the size of the hexes in the original maps. This is due to actually placing the maps in their geographic locations on Earth. I'm am positively sure that the "Continental Map" published in X1 and "The Grand Duchy of Karameikos" map published in the Expert set were developed prior to and independently of the "Known World" map which appeared in the masters set. So the map from Isle of Dread was smashed into a place on the world map that looked like it might fit, and the scale was retroactively applied to the world map. The scale of the hexagon layer and the scale bar are the accurate scale produced by matching the "Known World" map up with the map from the Jurassic, giving me actual geographic coordinates and a basis for an accurate map. If you prefer the original scale, it is fairly simple to convert; in most places the original hexes are 2/3 the size  they are supposed to be. So the 6 mile hexes in the original map are each about 4 miles across, thus the 6mph layer would be 8mph at the old scale.

Also you may notice a distortion of the hexagons as you get closer to the poles. This of course is due to the mercator projection used in pretty much all web maps. The hexagon tessellations appear as regular polygons in the mollweide projetcion (the original projection of the Known World map), but become warped in any other projections. Displayed in another equal area projection, such as the cylindrical equal area projection, the hexagons still maintain their area while shape is distorted.

Building a Web Map, part 7

Sorry to anyone who actually keeps up with this blog, I know I haven't posted all week; I have been distracted by TotalWar. I haven't played any computer games all semester and I decided I have time and deserve a break, but then I got sucked into the hole that is Europa Barbarorum.

So, I finally updated the web map. It now shows a version of the poster map, along with a scan of the original known world and brun maps. I have started digitizing the smaller streams, and once I 'm done with that I plan to fix a few anomalies I didn't catch earlier so I can run the interpolation again. Then it should match the stream network on the poster map and I can move on to creating hexagons for the webmap and filling them with data.

Building a Web Map, Part 6

School is now over!

I presented my thesis on monday, I'm going to upload it as a link in the sidebar. The web map has all of the locations placed with custom icons and popups.

also I finished a poster of Karameikos for another class, I'll also post a link along with the paper for that project, but here is a screenshot.

Of course I continue to plan working on this project, I am going to upload a modified version of the of the poster to the web map as a new basemap. From there I will probably be working on a hex overlay with info tied to each hex.

There are still a few locations that need to be placed, I'll listthem below with pertinent information, If you have any input, let me know.

• Village of Kaldarak/plains of desolation, on road, between carrabridge and ford, several farms nearby, near dapleth woods home to elves and treants, Dungeon 15 pursuit of the Slayer
• Elven Home, in sylvan wood, treeant, Dungeon 1 Elven Home
• Elwyn's Sanctuary, deep wilderness, in domain of patriach sherlane, elwyn made deal with shrine of evil chaos, B9 and B1-9
• fire giant home, large mountain with cae entrance in foothills, AC10
• Tuma, mountains spurs in west, sylvan forest in north, desert around ctiy of tuma, most likely northwest of wereskalot in 5 shires or lake amsorak in darkokin, B8
• Giant's castle, in northern mountains, more than 3 day journey from town to castle, above the treeline on a black mountain, AC10
• guido's fort, probably on edge of malpheggi swamp south of darkin, B5
• Haven, original orange book in gulluvia/glantri, green book in karameikos - 'valley in heart of altan tepes' according to B 1-9, placed north of lake of lost dreams south of zargash mountains in 83 expert
• Highdell, on duke's road, at source of river, 83 expert
• hive brood lair, near rugalov north of road, Dungeon 13 of nest and nations
• mist raven, destroyed in explosion rebuilt, AC11
• white dragon cave, 10 day journey into mountains, trail leads past and through mountains, in ravine with spring, pine trees, AC10
• Mt Caylorne, abandoned dwarven city
• port town, trade from caravans to south to north sea, zenopus tower on hill near city, Holmes Basic
• Gray Mountain, in elven forest, middle eastern overtones, mountains to north, B7
• spinyon, small village far from trade routes, grows corn and wheat, AC11
• stonefast, abandoned dwarven stronghold, on edge of human territory, white dragon, classic D&D 
• stone peak, dwarven kingdom, AC11
• dragon lair, dragon in wulfwolde hills raiding peasants on edge of moor, Dungeon 27 Tarfil's tomb
• Zanzer tem's Tower, near town, salt mines and dungeon below, classic D&D

Building a Web Map, part 5

I have begun redoing the location markers. I have divided locations by category: settlement, stronghold, lair, ruins, and dungeon. I Have been working on updating one category at a time. I have finished the settlements. They can be seen on the webmap split into different layers with different icons. The categories of the settlements are based on the population of each place, based on the pop figures in the RC or Expert books. The different categories are Homestead, 1-49 pop; Village, 50-1,000 pop; Small Town, 1,000-4,999 pop; Large Town, 5,000-14,999 pop; City, 15,000-99,999 pop; and Metropolis, 100,000 or more pop, the last category being one I invented.

Of course Karameikos has no cities or metropolises, if you go with pre-gazetteer numbers. I think I am going to have Specularum have a population of 7,000 because it is stated as having 70,000 in Kingdom of Adventure. My general rule of thumb for pop figures post gaz is to divide everything by 10, but the city as shown in B6 is a little large for a medieval town of 5000 people even if you take the scale which shrinks the city. So I think 7,000 is a good compromise number; 5,000 of the people could be of thyatian origin, and 2,000 could be traladaran. the traladarans just aren't included in population figures normally. The same principle applies to Threshold. In the expert set the town is said to have 400 inhabitants plus 100 visitors, and then it says it has 500 inhabitants and 50 demihumans and visitors. Both those numbers are given on the same page. we could reconcile that by saying the extra 100 are traladarans not given full citizenship by the karameikans/thyatians.

Anyway, I created the settlement markers in Adobe Illustrator. I just traced an image of the legend given in the Kingdom of Adventure poster map, with some slight modifications. I have also created symbols for the stronghold and dungeon categories, but have yet to put those locations on the map and port them over to the web app.

Because blogger kept messing up the map, and the marker symbols, I decided to just have the blog redirect to a web portal on my student account at the school for now. It seems to be working just fine so far. I'm currently working on a new base map, based on the elevation model I created, as a side project for another class, and hope to finish it over the weekend, when I do I'll be uploading it to the web map as another base layer.