Battlemaster Maps

So, you wanna "give back to the community"? Wanna, "give Tom a break"?

Wanna stop playing the same maps again with just different region names?!?

Good! Then this is the page for you! Let's get started then...

Tom is very particular about his maps. Before you post to the discussion list about how you made this great map, consider that there is a reason why Tom recycles maps.

Yes, he has probably seen your map-editor somewhere and doesn't like it. As a matter of fact, there is only one map creator that he found and liked so far (see discussion page). And that brings us to the first point:

Tom likes the Age of Wonders Map Creator. He's made all the continents with it.

There, its been said. Henceforth, Age of Wonders will be referred to as "AoW".

However, if you don't have AoW you can fudge it a little by copy and pasting different areas of an existing map and then altering/combining the different parts to make it look like it's a completely new map.

(Yes, it has been done.)

Let's say you make a map, it's all foresty, watery, snowy, and sandy. Now what? Well, this brings me to the second point:

Borders, how to make them, how to ruin them

(This needs more work)

Based on Tom's words from the discussion list:

Borders

on their own transparent layer with an opacity of about 60%
draw them in a darkish red, 5 pixels wide
when done with all burders, apply some blur
experiment a little on what looks good. There are some differences between the original BM maps as well.

Region Names

Script-Fu=>Logos=>Alien Glow
Caligula font, 48px (might be 40px, someone needs to check against an existing map)
glow colour white or almost white with a blueish tint (#F0F0FF or so)
remove background, merge layers, scale to 50% in size
paste into map, also on their own transparent layer

There is a program that Tom uses to make the borders. It's called:

GIMP

The program can be downloaded for free here. Once you've got GIMP and your map, you can get to work. If you've used a Photoshop type program before, GIMP should come natural to you.

Some Examples

Hints

Battlemaster borders end at the coast.
Try to put all of one type of terrain in a region. It helps when it comes time to decide what the region should be. i.e. put mountains together, trees together, plains together
Most maps should have around 100-150 regions in them, but the bigger the map, the more regions you should have.
When bordering cities, consider how to make "donuts". for example, if a city can be surrounded by one region, then don't make it two, if the city can be surrounded by two regions, don't feel forced to make it three.
If you have a large stretch of desert/mountains/trees, make it one region.

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