Castle Plans

[RPMiller]

Well there you go then. To my benefit it has been over 20 years since I bothered studying castles. Thanks for the great links! The images are coming up fine for me.

[RPMiller]

No really - I kid you not... it seems odd to me but this is as it comes out of the camera.

Oh, I believed you. I learned long ago for every rule there is an exception.

[Turgenev]

I was just thinking about something like this (sorry it's very quick and dirty)

That's interesting but not really what I was after. On the other hand... goes off to think about it.

[ravells]

The main point was the colour desaturation, but it looks like you've attended to that already. The supporting butresses I've put in look horrid, but I was thinking more along the lines of something to just break up that perfectly circular shape a bit.

[ravells]

I did a lot of research on Stairs and whatnot for Castle, and the majority of Stairs were Clockwise as they went down.

The reasons were manyfold, most being that a Defender could be relatively unhampered on their sword arm for swinging (not needing to worry about a wall). For narrow stairs, (like those pictured) the enabled a defender to have a wall to their left, put their shield in front, and then be able to swing to their right towards the centre of the stair, and swing over and above a defender.

<snip>

Also, it just occured to me that the width of the steps in a spiral staircase are much smaller towards the axis. So it makes sense the push the attacker towards the axis which gives him less sure footing.

[Turgenev]

The main point was the colour desaturation, but it looks like you've attended to that already. The supporting butresses I've put in look horrid, but I was thinking more along the lines of something to just break up that perfectly circular shape a bit.

Thanks for the tips, but it was the circular shape that first attracted me to this castle design and that's what I was after. Restormel castle left such an impression on me that I knew I had to have something similar for my AD&D game. It will probably be a local Lord's keep on the border. I still need to find the time to do the 2nd floor and the cellar/dungeon.

[Baziron]

Ah, Caernarfon and Conwy Castle. It has been some time since I went there on a school exchange trip.

[Turgenev]

It has been a while since I worked on this map. I started working on the 2nd level and misfortune struck. A bit of carelessness on my part (I accidentally hit the save button after resizing the image) + a power outage = I lost the full size map! Grrrr....

Here's what I had:


Now I have to rebuild the map from scratch unless anyone has any suggestions for resizing the map without losing any image quality.

Oh well, I've decided to take a break and work on an old school Castle Ruins map to help rejuvenate my spirits. Here's the first draft (I still have a lot of work to do):

[Redrobes]

I was reading the outline post in my inbox thinking ohh bad and I doubt it but after seeing this map image I think that you might be able to do it as its more of a diagram than a photo.

You will need to separate the parts of the map into their own bits. Then taking one - say the black you need to resize it using almost any algo up to full size and beyond - say twice the required. Then blur it a lot and then use contrast or better color curves to get the shape back again. Not 100% contrast but say 80%. Do that for each part and use them as masks to put the texture back in. I'll see if I can post an example.

Its not as good as the original but its better than a straight resample.

[Turgenev]

Thanks for the tip, Redrobes. I'll look into that.