Hail Elyrians!

Several months ago my team and I set out to take the maps you voted on back in the Fall and turn them into maps that were large enough and detailed enough, and contained enough information, that your nobility and aristocracy could look at them and say "that's mine," to any domain or settlement on the map, and feel proud of that.

At the same time, we wanted to ensure that we didn't reveal so much of the continent that it felt like all the discovery had been done, even before the game launched. In spite of the dynamic nature of our world, and the fact that you never know for certain what lies at the edge of the copse of trees, there's some thrill and excitement that comes from just exploring the lands and being the first person to chart a map of a specific region for the first time. And we didn't want to take that away from people. We also wanted to give people a glimpse into what some of the cartographic tools you'd be using as players would look like in the game. So, taken all that in mind, we set out to create a stylized, rendered version of our maps that conveyed the necessary information, while still left plenty to discover.

We always knew that it would take more work to create the symbolic, stylized maps than it would to just render a relief map or height map and shade/color it. But we hoped that by only having to do a stylized view of the map the we'd somehow be saved from the painstaking work involved in building every nuanced detail of the world. We were wrong. The more we looked at the maps, the more we realized without a deep, fundamental knowledge of every parcel of land on the continent, whatever we conveyed would just be a gross approximation that would inevitably lead to more work down the road.

So, over the last month and a half the designers and I have been running simulations, statistical models, and balancing algorithms to learn everything there is to know about the starting maps - from the composition of the soil in each parcel, to the amount of wood and trees, to the overall sustainability of an area, given the resources that exist there. While this all seems a bit much, it's important to understand that what we represent in these maps are a snapshot of the world at around launch. And we convey information such as the sustainability, that has to tie directly into the in-game mechanics around survival. So a lot of the work we didn't think would need to be done until later in the balancing cycle, had to be done now.

But I'm pleased to announce that our work has almost come to an end. And while we still have a bit more cleanup and polish to do, the journey is almost over for us.

So - as a bit of a visual update, here's Map H stylized and rendered at 16m resolution. Note that the settlement locations are handled by the web framework, not the renderer, so there's no settlements visible. And as roads to nowhere would look kinda weird and be a bit confusing, I've left the roads off as well. But this shows you the natural world of Map H. Also take note, D&SS includes 4 layers of detail, each designed to allow you to pick a specific domain type. The lowest resolution layer is for picking the kingdom, the next the duchy, then the county, and finally the settlement. The resolution of the following map is the "county" level. Which means, upon the launch of the D&SS website, there would be yet one further level of detail.

And as one final note for those who haven't heard - Map H is the map that will be used during all public/private Alpha and Beta testing. So you'll be seeing a lot more of Map H as we move forward.

Cheers!

Click the image to download the 40mb 12k image.