Nov/Dec/Jan '23 Lite Challenge: Map a Section of the Temple of Elemental Evil.

[Bogie]

Nov/Dec/Jan '23 Lite Challenge: Map a Section of the Temple of Elemental Evil in full BattleMap size.
Another 2 month Challenge, because this is a big Challenge and there are 2 or 3 major holidays coming up.

The Temple of Elemental Evil is one of the great original D&D adventures. It has a huge set of maps in the original game. But, they are not useful for anyone
who likes to play on full sized battlemaps.
So, anyone who wants to participate should start a thread announcing they are in and I will post your section of the map on your thread to download and work from.
I will also post the written descriptions of the rooms for you. While the descriptions will tell you where the monsters are, that is for the game only. The monsters should not
be permanently seen on the map.
We did a similar challenge years ago mapping the Caves of Chaos from Keep on the Borderlands and it was a very popular challenge. I am hoping this one will be also.
While I realize this will be most interesting to those of you who have played D&D, it is basic mapping which does not require any knowledge of the game.

Parameters: Each map should be created at a resolution of 1 inch equals 5 feet at 140 dpi (or ppi).
Note The original maps I will post are made at 1 square = 10 ft, so the battlemaps need to be twice the size at 1 square = 1inch = 5 ft.
They should also be as close as possible but a little artistic or realistic changes are OK.

Please remember to title each thread: Nov/Dec/Jan '23 Lite Challenge: < your title here >

Also remember to preface each image you want to show up in the thumbnail scraper with: ### Latest WIP ###
(If you don't, your map won't show up for the voters at voting time, which might hurt your chances. ) Try using the WIP Icon to make it nice and easy.

Please note: If you put more than one image on the same post, only one of them gets picked up by the picture scrapper
and it might not be the one you want.

The challenge will end on or about the 14th of January, after which we'll have 3 days of voting. The winner of this challenge will receive a silver compass, you know you need one!

Quick rules reminder: The Lite Challenge is open to anyone who has not already won 3 Silver compasses, 1 Gold Compass, or been selected as a featured Cartographer's Choice Map.
Also, the map has to be started on or after the first day of the challenge, no reusing older maps even if they were not finished, unless you start over from scratch.

DEADLINE: End of day, January 14.

Example: This original map section, becomes this battlemap ( not at 100 dpi yet )
ToEE 419 original.JPG ToEE 419 sample.JPG

toee-cover.jpg

[XCali]

Cool challenge.
Sad I already have a gold compass.

Why put a constraint on Dpi/ppi? It takes some detail away if someone wanted to be more artistic. The size of the squares are perfectly fine. But, why can't someone go with 300ppi? (Just a thoughtful question)

[Bogie]

Cool challenge.
Sad I already have a gold compass.

Why put a constraint on Dpi/ppi? It takes some detail away if someone wanted to be more artistic. The size of the squares are perfectly fine. But, why can't someone go with 300ppi? (Just a thoughtful question)

You are welcome to make a map for fun and post it here, it just would not be included in the voting.

These are fairly large maps, I think that 200 dpi and up would be to large to post. I will have to check on that. Normally, I like high resolution too.

OK, so I made a quick mock up of one of the map sections as a size trial. Results will vary depending on the software used.
The map section I picked is 16 squares by 15 squares which is 32 inches by 30 inches. I used Photoshop and a medium high quality compression setting.
At 200 dpi the files size was 10 MB, which is to large to post here. At 140 dpi ( a popular size for use with a lot of Virtual Table Tops ) it dropped to just under 5 MBs so I think that would work, and be a good compromise between higher resolution and file size limits. Thanks for the suggestion XCali.

[Bogie]

Note to everyone: I changed the Map resolution parameters to 1 in = 5 ft at 140 dpi, but if you want to stay with 100 dpi that is ok.
If anyone has trouble uploading, let me know.

Also a note about map grids, some game systems emphasize the use of a grid on the map and some don't. That is your choice, but I find a grid that is to strong detracts from the aesthetic of the art. My advice for those who want a grid is to make it subtle ( dark gray or a color that blends with the floor, never white or yellow) and only put it on the floor, it should not be seen on walls or objects. Your choice of course, but that is my advice.

[Straf]

A cursed grid room. If you spend too long in there you become a part of the grid.

[NarramoreArt]

Gosh this is quite different, I'll have to look up what this challenge turned out like last time!

[XCali]

@Bogie

Cool beans man! Glad the suggestion could help.

Also, the reason why I asked about 300ppi, is most of my maps is on that resolution, but when I export them I bump down the quality just a bit to something like 90-95%. And then it comes down to below 10mb. It's a little better to do something on a higher quality and bump it down a bit than start on a lower ppi and you can't bump it up.

[Greason Wolfe]

It just occurred to me that when we did the caves of chaos we ran into an issue with the physical size of some entries possibly being to large for some folks to post. Or maybe I am remembering something different. IDK.

Edit: so yeah, this was becoming a problem with the caves of chaos challenge and we eventually had to settle for 70 px to the inch with each inch being 5 feet. For this one, my section is 17 squares left to right with each square representing 10 feet in the original version. If we are using 1 inch equals 5 feet at 140 ppi that puts my map at 4760 pixels wide. Unless the size limits have been changed and I missed it, wont that put me over the limit? Think the final dimensions would be 4760 by 4480 pixels. Do we need to maybe cut back the resolution a little?

Edit 2: Or maybe I am just misinterpreting something?

[Bogie]

Make it at the higher resolution, Like XCali said, we can always reduce the size after.

[Straf]

I didn't really know what was going on with the area descriptions but I've found a level 2 map that has given me a bit more context. Would it be useful if I posted it here?