Más Hexes

Lest you think I forgot about this hex map project... I haven't. I got side-tracked last week with new PBE Games releases, and then sports-related events. Now it's back to the hex map, and a refinement pass on the previously generated big hexes.

The map, when we left, looked something like the map at right. This is fine, so far as it goes, but there were a few things that bugged me. The swamp to the south was huge, over 100 miles across at its widest point, and I wanted a bit more in the way of forest, so I altered a few hexes. I also wanted to clean up the coastline and make it a bit more irregular. To accomplish this I first hit all the small hexes that were split by the edge of large hexes and randomly assigned them one of the underlying terrains. I did the same thing on the shallow / deep ocean border. Next I randomly selected a handful of hexes along the shoreline and either pushed it in or pulled it out. This created a more interesting coastline.

Next I repeated the random edge terrain assignment process to all the interior terrain hexes that contained mixed terrain. I specifically didn't randomize these further because I still have to do terrain generation for the small hexes. I don't mind messing with the coastline, but I want to see how the generator deals with using overlay hex terrain for generation, so fixing split hexes is enough for now. Here's the final result after all this was complete.

As you can see, there is some irregularity to the map (and I forgot to turn on the key layer), but overall the hex structure is intact. Next up I'll start laying out sub hexes, which means some work on labeling and legibility too. It's going to get cluttered quickly.