Community Efforts

Every now and then, a project is being done part or in whole, by the community. The best-known example is the creation of the Dwilight map, which was done entirely by the community.

Current Projects

I (Tom) am looking for one or more volunteers to update the maps of all the islands. What I need is a layered feature map of all the islands, in Photoshop or some other layer-supporting format (PNG or TIFF may work, haven't tested). All of these should be greyscale:

Layers needed

• Ocean, Rivers and Lakes
• Forests
• Hills
• Mountains
• other land types (desert, plains, ice, etc. - each on its own layer)

Example Workflow

• Take any world map.
• Using a magic wand, select the ocean, rivers, etc. and (on a new layer) fill that area in with either black or white, leaving the rest transparent. Paint over the bridges manually
• Using a brush or a lasso tool, draw in the various land types, each on its own layer, and fill them in, leaving everything else transparent. Make sure to leave no gaps inbetwen, so hills going over into mountains should be painted flush on each other, with no border inbetween.

Example File

There's an example file in Photoshop format at: http://web.lemuria.org/~tom/SouthIsland.psd This is not the only way to do it, it just illustrates what I mean, e.g. using greyscales to show the forest density or the elevation, etc.

This is a bit of manual work for someone who is familiar with Photoshop or another drawing tool. Before you do all the work, make a quick example of a part of one world and send it to me (tom@lemuria.org) first so I can check whether it is how I need it to be.

Your advantage will be helping a new cool feature in BM come into existence, and being among the first to see it, long before anyone else does.