I've really kept you waiting today, haven't I? It is in fact already Friday here, by a few minutes.
But I wanted to make sure I surprised you rather than giving you what you were undoubtedly expecting!



This map is rather large and detailed, and a lot of the text was extremely difficult to make out.
I haven't yet had time to cross check things with the text, nor to check for corrections and enhancements
from the Sons of Azca map.

So it's not actually totally complete yet. I have noticed and fixed two coastal errors since I
posted it, and almost none of the rapids are marked in yet. Otherwise, if you see an omission or error
please speak up!

The southern part of the Hollow World will follow, but we have some other maps to look at first over
the next few days, so please be patient.

Thanks, Thorf!!!
I don't have the HW boxed set - so this is truly refreshing, like... well, like discovering a new world, I guess.

The only one I note offhand is one that didn't even make it onto the map on p. 26 of the Player's Guide of SoA, but is in the text of the DM's guide- the ruins of Quauhnahuac, which are located "90 miles northeast of the old lighthouse of Titlapoca." Don't know how well (if at all) that actually lines up with Atruaghin's Conveyor on the Outer World, but there you go.

Likewise - looks like another ESD to put on the wish list!

It's a different style, yes, but thankfully it's completely compatible with the "normal" style. I don't really know which I prefer... A more realistic-looking, less symbolic design might be better, but in that case I'd be tempted to do away with the hexes altogether. Talking of which, I am intending to play around with doing just that at some point in the future. It should be possible to merge all the hexes of one type into shapes, and then smooth those shapes and colour or pattern them. Of course the coastlines and such will remain exactly the same.

Having all these maps in a powerful program such as Illustrator gives us a lot of opportunities for experimentation.



Yeah, there was really no problem matching them up, because generally the terrain fit, and of course the Great Pass allows you to overlap them accurately - although the actual course of the path there, symbolic though it may be, differs quite a lot between the two maps.

All in all I think you're right, X5 has the more up to date stuff. And I love your idea for explaining the discrepancies.


Oh well, when I get on to Vaults stuff, Christian Constantin's maps will be the main source on Hule anyway I suppose. And they are better than any official map of the area...



Glad to hear that, and I'll watch out for the City States when I come to it.

Interesting about the Asanda River's delta being done away with for Champions of Mystara. I wonder why they did that? Sind was pretty featureless as it was, without them needing to remove potentially one of the most interesting bits.


We're looking at 1-2 MB for each map, roughly half that if zipped. Shawn, what do you think? I'm willing to provide the files if you want to provide the space.



I'm glad you mentioned this. I've decided to release the URL for downloading the mapping files. I kinda thought I would in the end! The files there are not completely up to date, but they are more than enough to get you started, and I'll get round to updating them eventually. The page also includes a short step by step "how to" for making maps using my mapping files. (In actual fact there are two sets of files and instructions, one for old versions of Illustrator and one for the latest version.)

The files there are in Illustrator's .AI format. If necessary I can probably export them as SVG files.


Interesting, thanks for the link. I'll check it out when I have the time. It may be that it could come in useful for tracing coastlines, roads, rivers and such.


I had totally forgotten about this. In fact, though I knew that keep had two names, I don't remember ever knowing the reason.

If I understood correctly, it seems to me that it should be a pretty easy fix, just by adding Blackpoint on the Thyatian side of the border. Adjacent hexes could mean within metres of each other, or almost 16 miles from each other, depending on where the keeps fall in the hexes. But placing something over the border is pretty unambiguous.

I am getting you right here that Blackpoint is a Thyatian keep, right? I'll have to go and read up on that... Is it in Dawn of the Emperors?

Getting back to today's map... Thanks for the Sons of Azca tip, Andrew. That should definitely be marked on the map indeed.

Also, check out the new plateau art. Yep, it looks remarkably similar to the old art. But what you can't see is that it's infinitely easier to draw them now, thanks to a new brush from Katana One.

On a related topic, I'm definitely considering further de-hexing the plateaus (or plateaux, depending on your tastes ) on the other official maps. I never really liked the angular ones in GAZ2 and GAZ14.

Yeah- it's on the Thyatian map, in the same spot as Rugalov, and mentioned in the DM's guide in the entry for the Duchy of Machetos (p.14). Two keeps, opposing one another.



Glad to help. I imagine it wasn't placed on the Player's Guide map because it's supposed to be lost, and since they didn't update the 40 mile map in SoA, and the 8 mile map doesn't cover the northern 1/3 of the Empire, it got "lost" for real.


I'll have to go check that out.


I go back and forth, really. The angular ones are, obviously, easier to place into hex maps if you've got tiles for them, but I think the "freeform" ones are a bit more interesting and colorful. Compare the southern Hule maps (and plateaus) from Dragon #171 to the "angular" plateaus of the Savage Baronies in Dragon #172 (or 173? I forget). Very different effects.

As it happens, I discovered a slight problem with the brush that means it's not actually possible to make perfect hexagonal plateaus. But of course that has nothing to do with my preference for less angular plateaus.

It does actually mean more work in the end, because you often have to have different terrain types within the same hex at the top and bottom of the plateau, which unfortunately takes a bit of extra time and effort to do.

Edit: So which lighthouse near Titlapoca is the old one? As far as I can see, we're probably looking at a hill hex or a coastal plains hex, depending on which lighthouse.

I just tried opening them with karbon14 (http://www.koffice.org/karbon/; I'm too cheap to buy Illustrator), and although it purports to accept .ai files as being from Adobe Illustrator, it fails a horrible death. If it's not too much trouble, SVG's would be great. I assume doing so will remove smart guides, but I'm hoping that I can re-add something similar in karbon14.

__________________
Mystara in 3D VRML <-- Updated with screenshots. Thanks Shawn!

Thorf- here's some extra map stuff you might want to add to some of your maps.

On the 24 m/h map of the Known World, there should be another island in the Sea of Dread to the north and slightly east of the easternmost island in the Thanegioth Archipelago. Not sure exactly where, though... If you look at the 72 m/h map from DotE, it would be located in the hex 5 south of the tip of Thyatis. This island can be found in the module XSolo: Lathan's Gold. The other one over there you already have marked (the one to its ne), which is also on the X7: War Rafts of Kron map. The island I'm talking about would be beneath the legend somewhere on the X7 map.

There should also be a three island chain off the se coast of Thyatis- the Teki-Nura-Ria chain from X8: Drums on Fire Mountain. Unfortunately, there is a slight shifting of position of the landmasses in their hexes on the 24 m/h map in that module, but near as I can figure, the island of T-N-R should be located about 5 hexes se of Sclaras. There is a tiny island 2 hexes ne and 1 se of that, and another one on the border of the two hexes below it. Also, it's hard to tell for sure, but it looks like there should be an island 2 hexes sw and 1 s of TNR as well, but we only see the very tip of it, so there's no telling what it would/should look like at all.

Finally, I noticed some discrepancies between the descriptions of Thyatian dominions and the map that you may or may not have noticed yourself:

p.9, County of Halathius- Described as "the easternmost region of hills in mainland Thyatias), but there are no hills on the map, only mountains. It mentions hills quite a few times in the description.

p.12, County of Lucinius- Described as having "a ridge of forest-covered hills", but the only hills shown are just... hills.

Good question- I was actually hoping you'd have a better idea.

The text doesn't say- it just says "the old lighthouse" but doesn't make a distinction exactly which one that is. I would guess it's the one closest to Titlapoca, putting Quanahuac in those hills.

I agree, the closer lighthouse would seem to be the logical choice, although an argument could be made for the other one too. In the end I prefer the hills location for the ruin to the coast, though.

Thanks for the info on Sea of Dread islands. I'll probably be working on the new 24 mile per hex map again very soon, it's about half done now. It should be pretty easy to place Teki-Nua-Ria, by the way, by lining up the coastlines rather than the hexes.

Regarding the Thyatian dominion discrepancies, it looks like we have two more to add to that ever-growing list. I still think that Minrothad's Open Isle is the worst one so far for text-map disagreements.

This opens up a bigger question: which should we rely on more? Was the map made to fit the requirements of the author of the Gazetteer, or was it vice versa, and the author just did commentary on the map? (Evidence would seem to point to the former...) Either way, an argument could be made for the maps to be more reliable than the text, since the maps tend to have details of many things not described properly in the texts...

It's a thorny issue.

By the way, today's map won't be posted until quite a bit later, probably about ten hours from this post. Just thought I'd give you all a heads-up.

Hey, just got onto this forum, but I've been following the progress of the project. Great stuff!

I have a scanned HW map with Quauhnahuac marked. Tried to paste it in, but that didn't work. What do I need to do to post images and/or attachments?

Hi Dan. It's not necessarily easy to post pictures on forums, I'm afraid - you have to have a web server to put the picture up on. If you like, you can e-mail the picture to me and I'll post it for you.

I'm interested as to which map it is, though. Is it a scan of a map, or a player-made map? Either way it will be interesting to see where the ruins were placed.

Gotcha. I will send it to you (probably in ~12 hours, gotta go to work). It is just the HW map with the ruins added in by me. It sounds like I put it where you guys are talking about.

I know you guys are probably expecting a trail map today, but I'm afraid it's not done yet.

I could just give you a map with the previous maps stuck together, but I want it to be better than that,
so please wait a bit longer.

However, don't worry, I won't leave you mapless. I'll just show you some of the maps I've been
making in order to try to get the trail map just right!



Just in case there's any confusion, this is indeed a replica of the map from X4. As such, it's way out of
date. It's from the first era of Mystaran maps, concurrent with the Expert Set and the B/X/CM/M module
series. Having said that, the later maps in Dragon and Champions of Mystara carry over a surprisingly large
number of this map's features.

Apologies if you find these old maps kinda boring. The results of this "research" will definitely be worth the wait.

I just did new higher resolution versions for the following maps:

• Legend
• Known World and Sea of Dread Expert Set/X1 map
• Karameikos ("normal" map only)
• Glantri (evergreen only)
• Ierendi
• Alfheim
• Aengmor
• Rockhome (evergreen only)
• The Northern Reaches (evergreen only)

Ylaruam, Thyatis, Northern Iciria and X4's Great Waste were already in high resolution. I will try to get the rest of the maps updated soon too.

The higher resolution files take up a fair bit more space (both visual size and file size), but they look nicer and the detail comes over better.

Thorf, these maps are great! Thanks for doing all the work -- hopefully I can import them somehow or someway into CC2 (even as a template), though it will probably be a few days until I try. I really need some permanent maps in electronic format that I can update for my campaigns!



Your time taken to research all things sure helps me out (and others too, I'm sure) since I haven't taken the time to do it.

Much appreciated!

JTrithen

I Agree. Just joined these boards because of the great maps.

I remember when I got X10, that the map what there was, didn't match X4. Where did Sayr Ulan appear from? why didn't the trail go southwest, where did this west trail go?

Good to have you join us!


Good questions. Made me think why the trade caravan trail would go through the desert instead of going around? What menace keeps them in the sands?

Today's map is the other half of the pair from X4 and X5. It is also, as Andrew and I were discussing earlier, the one and only official map of the whole Hule area.



Through all my map studies of late, I am slowly coming to the realisation that Mystara's maps are divided into two or three different eras. First there was the Expert Set, and all the B/X/CM/M maps built on and utilised that map. This was the first era of Mystara's maps, and it was characterised by simple, mostly black and white symbols, which generally were more symbolic than they were pictorial. The maps themselves were low on detail and labels, and consistency between maps was also not especially high.

Mystaran mapping entered its second era with the release of the Gazetteers. These maps featured full colour, largely pictorial hex art, with an ever growing variety of terrain types. Where first era maps had desert, for example, second era maps had a choice between desert, rocky desert, broken lands, bad lands and so on. These new maps also featured a much higher level of detail, partly due to the standardisation of the high detail 8 mile per hex scale. Due to these new factors, first era maps were changed, developed and expanded upon to a much greater extent than ever before.

There wasn't really a third era of maps as such. The mapping style did change again with the release of AD&D Mystara, Red Steel and the Savage Coast sets, but there were very few new features or developments as a result of these changes in style. AD&D Mystara maps had a simple hex art revision while retaining the same basic mapping conventions and maps. Red Steel and the Savage Coast did away with hexes altogether, but the replacement maps still featured the same details as the original maps.

If this topic interests you, you may like to know that as I remake these maps, I am working on an article tentatively called "The History of Mystara's Maps", which I will release eventually as part of my Secret Project.

You're welcome to do that. If anyone has information on how to import things into CC2 I'll be happy to provide you with the files in the right format. Personally I checked out CC2, but when it comes to hex mapping I'm more happy with Illustrator - for now.



My pleasure. I'm really enjoying working on this project.


Great! It's nice to have people appreciating my work, but it's even better to have people start contributing to the forum because of it.

Not much progress so far this weekend, I'm afraid. And I have a friend coming to visit for two weeks starting on Thursday, so I might yet have to take a break from posting maps every day. On the other hand, by my count today's map will be the 23rd, meaning that I've continued with a map a day for more than three weeks now!!

In any case, here is the map.



From my notes:

This region, directly to the north of the Known World, was detailed for the first time in this map from X11 Saga of the Shadow Lord. The lower quarter of the map duplicated the top of the Expert Set map, but while at first glance it may look identical, unfortunately it is in fact significantly different. Discrepancies include slightly different courses for rivers and trails, a new contracted border for Ethengar, and most glaringly Ostland was moved a hex down and to the left.

Wendar and Denagoth were later featured on the Wrath of the Immortals set maps, and also had maps in the Poor Wizard's Almanac series. These maps will follow at a later date.

Heh- wait'll you try and combine that map with the trail maps and the CM series of maps. I think you'll probably find that, though the CM series claims to be at 24 mi/hex, it should probably read 36 mi/hex. Otherwise, you're going to end up with a large inlet where Landfall "runs into" the map you've just posted- a bay that Geoff Gander ended up naming "Kamminer Bay", and which seems to have been largely adopted by the Mystara community in its collective mapping efforts ever since.

Boy was that a headache to work out...

...but I've been wondering, how does the 72 mile per hex map from Dawn of the Emperors fit in there? Does it have everything at the right scale?

In any case, I'm getting slowly closer to the point where I have to start dealing with Norwold. I'm sure I'll be venting my frustrations over this issue here soon enough.

I've never really compared the 72 mile map all that much, to be honest, so I can't say for sure. It would be interesting to find out, though.

[EDIT] Scratch that- I just checked my DotE 72 mi map and noticed that I did at some point check things out. The most notable thing is that the outcropping of land to the east of Freiburg is missing, though I don't think it existed at the time of the map's creation (the Trail maps only went as far as just below Freiburg).

Interestingly enough, though, it is still missing on the 48 mile map from WotI, despite being on the 24 mile map. The WotI map, IIRC, is the first time we ever saw that much of Heldann, so you'd think the two maps in that set would have been more consistent on that point.

I know I keep taunting you about Norwold, but honestly, I'm really curious to see what you come up with. I've done the Norwold thing twice now (with slightly differing results, due to a different method of scaling down that I currently use), but to my knowledge, no one else has done it- Thibault maybe, although I've never talked to him about it. I've only noticed him using the "Kamminer Bay" fix that I stumbled upon and that Geoff named in one of his Norwold maps. I don't know if he ran into that problem himself or just worked off the previous "fix".

So I'm looking forward to your thoughts on the matter. It may turn out not to be the best solution after all.

Yep. I'm looking forward to it.

Well, I spent a few hours today sorting scans in preparation for the next batch of maps. It takes rather a long time to rotate the map until it's perfectly straight, then resize it until it fits under my hex grid just right. And of course that has to be done for every single scan/page of each map.

I also updated my template to streamline the map-making process, but unfortunately all this preparation and sorting meant I didn't get any actual mapping done. Oh well.

I have just updated the rest of the maps to the new resolution, and I made some corrections while I was at it. Here's the list of updated maps:

• The Five Shires
• Minrothad
• Upper Broken Lands
• Lower Broken Lands (also added in bridges)
• Darokin
• Ethengar
• Shadow Elf Territories
• Atruaghin Clans
• Thyatis (added Blackpoint)
• Northern Iciria, Hollow World (added in Quauhnahuac, a couple of labels in Azca, and rapids)
• Alfheim (changed forested hills to hills with great home trees)

That brings almost all the maps up to date. The only exceptions are a few variants and a few historical maps early on in this thread, which I don't really think are high priorities at this point.

Talking of priorities, I thought now would be a good time to ask everyone:

What maps do you want to see?

I do have a rough plan, but there's not really a set order I have to do the maps in. So, if you want to see a specific map/country/area, why not tell me so I can give it a bump up the list.

Im interested in an updated map of Sind and the Sind Desert from the CoM Source!

Hehe, I see you've noticed my stubborn-ness in checking things out for myself.

I've thought about doing the Isle of Dawn next, because it seems as if it might help when it comes to Norwold. I'm also considering doing the other parts of Thyatis, and Alphatia quite soon.

Well, I would like to see the rest of the Empires (Alphatia, Isle of Dawn, Thyatian colonies - especially the Hinterlands.) - so I'm glad to hear they're soon to be done.
I'd also like to see Undersea.

And some coffee, please.

I began preparing the other Dawn of the Emperors maps last night, but I still have yet to start on the Alphatia and Isle of Dawn maps. Both should be quite fun to do, though.

Today I've spent some time on Atruaghin and Sind again. It seems there might be even bigger problems there than I thought. From my initial comparisons, it appears that in fixing the Atruaghin plateau they may have introduced another problem into the coastline. Anyway, more on that when I've completed the Champions of Mystara and Wrath of the Immortals maps, which should show me how they dealt with the issue.

Edit: I just had a quick look at Champions of Mystara's Great Waste map, and it seems they have fixed the problem with the coastline. Basically, in Dragon 169 they brought the coastline too far west, meaning that the plateau was bigger but if you tried to draw a map that included the Known World, there wouldn't be space. They fixed this apparently by adding in a couple more hexes on the straight bit of coastline from Jahore to the Atruaghin bay.

PS - Sorry, I don't have any coffee. Would you like a cup of tea instead?