The Mapping Goes On

 

The above image comes from my Google Earth Pro, with each rectangle being 40 mi. by 20, or 64 by 32 km.  In making the map piece by piece, I take it's equivalent from the map above in order to get the right placement of mountains or rivers ... with personal adjustments.  Blue rectangles are places I haven't drawn maps for, but which I've outlined in order to get the coastlines "right."

The reader can see the definite curve that's emerging as I steadily add to the map surface.  I have to make adjustments for it ... but these are so small that they can't be seen except by persons who are personally acquainted with the areas I'm mapping.  For me, the adjustments seem huge, because working at the scale of 6.67 mi. per hex really makes them stand out.  The scale for my hex map is 1:422,611, for those who care to know.

With regards to publishing the new map each month, I've decided to adjust my method.  Instead of going around in a 40 mile wide circle, I've decided to make that circle 120 miles wide.  This is why, on the left, you can see that I've jumped out three full rectangles into Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia.  I'm just starting into central Hungary.  I'm not going to reach either Lake Balaton or Budapest with this go around ... but if I maintain this pace, I'm sure to get there in 3-4 months.  It's been fascinating working my way through Serbia and Bosnia; the northern part of Serbia is called Voivodina, which I've just finished in the last few days.

Anyway, I should be able to produce maps of "what's new" more easily, as I'm not going all the way around the map each month.

This is something I tend to do late in the evening, as a relaxation while listening to podcasts, the news or audiobooks.  I can do one or two rectangles a night (it's August 12th and I've finished 22 rectangles this month), with a slow steady gain week by week.  After so many of these now, it's fairly routine, a bit like working on a colouring book, though there are strange places that offer a challenge.  Here's the merging of the Danube and Drava rivers in Slavonia, surrounding the large city of Osijek, where the rivers form a regional swamp:

The land bridge that allows the road to pass from Osijek to Sombor is narrower than the map shows, but does exist in reality.  I like the prospect of players having to arrange to put themselves on two ferries (the rivers are too large for a bridge) in order to get across, surrounded by traders who take this route regularly.  Both Osijek and Sombor are important market cities, acting as transhipment points up and down both the Drava and Danube rivers as well ... since both rivers are navigable at this point.  Squeezing in the details while producing a clear, pretty map is something I did last Thursday, on a day when I did about half a dozen rectangles.

So, I'll return to the main topic again with the next post.  It's brutally hot here today and I think I'll take a shower and cool off.