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Author |
File Description |
Synyster |
Posted on 12/15/07 @ 09:13 AM
File Details |
Map Size: |
400x400 (Large) |
Minimap:
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Saint Peter's Basilica (Basilica di San Pietro)
In the Vatican City, the world's smallest country, lies St. Peter's Basilica, a great architectural accomplishment. I Have tried to recreate this area accurately and to my fullest ability.
This file contains:
- St. Peter's Basilica Map
- Bonus St. Peter's Basilica INVASION Map
- Word document
- Text document for those that don't have MS Word.
Thanks to all who gave suggestions and supported me, including:
- Timballisto
- ericgolf
- Surajsubba
All said, I hope you enjoy this map. It took me a long time to make and long hours of editing. Let me tell you, lowering this much walls to ground level for a street and pavement is very boring. Nonetheless, I feel this map demonstrates almost the best of my abilities. So, enjoy. Through all the boredom, it was a very fun map to envision and make.
Synyster |
Author | Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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artofmath |
Posted on 12/18/07 @ 03:34 PM
Rating: 4.5
These eyecandy maps sure are tough to rate, but in all, I believe this one justly deserves its 4.5, after exploring all its nooks and crannies for close to half an hour. First the good, then the bad news.
I have to admire how much patience you must have had to have in order to fill in such a substantial part of the map with so much lowered wall, it astounds me. Not even as boring as when I covered a map with snow terrain tile by tile (see my third campaign map). The way the things were structured intrigued me, and it took me quite some time to see all the parts of the basilica. It is a massive building, and I think you've surely done it justice here with this rendering.
The basilica is surrounded by a huge city, filling up the entire map. What looked a little strange were the perfectly straight streets. It looked a little odd in the heart of a old city, where paths are usually more meandered. Also, where did the streets go? The streets themselves looked a bit plain, but I don't know if that was intended or not.
Additional Comments:
Eyecandy ^, big city detracted somewhat. I advise re-reading some of the articles on big cities, and the streets and paved roads. An excellent source is Stronghold Knights, where there are TONS of tutorials.
I hope to see more maps,
- artofmath |
AZ ViTrAzhAs |
Posted on 12/24/07 @ 08:31 AM
Saint Peter‘s Basilica
In the beginning I would want to say that the number of various buildings is extremely vast throughout the map! As You mentioned in the story, You have designed the rest of the Vatican using Your imagination, and I must say it blended with the basilica quite well.
I always fancy Stronghold Crusader interpretations of various real sights, cities or buildings, but there aren’t many of them. Personally, I have not created such kind of a map due to the fact that I am a big maximalist (I would want the replica to look perfectly alike when compared with original structure and that is almost impossible to do). Anyway, I have looked trough a couple of photos of the basilica and I must admit that the structure You have designed looks very similar (congratulations). The surrounding constructions were designed using walls and stairs and looked quite original, the most important church was built in the same style, but I thought that possibly a cathedral building would appear a bit better (that’s only my personal opinion). The main square looks great, the pavement looks realistic too, but it could have been a bit lower. I noticed a clever use of black monks – they resembled citizens and priests. Engineers, pikemen, tunnellers also created an impression of the busy Vatican’s life. I’ve noticed other small eyecandy features – yards in front of the churches, small water reservoirs, a garden near the inn, a small kindergarten (possibly), interesting lord manor, multiply marketplaces, custom stockpiles and other things. The whole map is filled with interesting uses of towers, walls and stairs. However there were some aspects that could be changed; various buildings (hovels, marketplaces, inn etc) are placed regularly, but they didn’t actually look like real streets. The buildings could be set more messily, they would form various paths (wide and narrow), and few main streets should do the trick too. The streets could be filled with small structures, wells, gardens, statues, maypoles, etc. Inns, marketplaces look better in the corners. Anyway it’s Your choice, Synyster! There are some good city and street designing tutorials in Stronghold Knights, though.
A big plus to Your work was the invasion, which was really interesting, but sadly unbeatable. The small problem was the win condition (You should have simply set the “no enemy and invasions left” win condition), as somehow I couldn’t kill enough enemies to win; there was no lose condition too. On the other hand, the idea was fascinating, as usually players have to defend the city, its walls; Your invasion offered a completely different scenario as I had to fight with Saracens in the city streets. There were enough troops to overcome the first two invasions, but the third one was just too massive, and I had to buy some macemen (fast and strong enough). I liked the idea of wandering throughout the city and fighting, or siege the enemy by marching through the main square. Of course I could simply order my troops to defend the king by crowding in the stronghold, but that would be really boring, wouldn’t it? When playing, I also had a chance to explore the map better, too. Although Synyster’s Saint Peter’s Basilica map didn’t offer stunning new eyecandy features and details, it looks splendidly without the well known 1000 stone trick, etc. The story could have been longer and I suggest extending it by adding various facts and details – when and how the basilica was built, Vatican’s or Pope’s Region’s actualities and sights, etc.
Overall, this is a good example of patience and hard work to everyone; maps can be very nice-looking and stunning by adding a lot of effort and creating it with one’s heart.
Sincerely,
AZ ViTrAzhAs |
subindxsubin (id: SUBINDXSUBIN) |
Posted on 02/16/08 @ 09:12 AM
There are only a few maps in stronghold heaven which are based on things like this. The best part of the maps was the central part of the basilica. I noticed gardens for inns and houses which ist seen much. You have surely gone through a lot of trouble to lower all those walls. I liked the pat were many workers cross the basilica through a junction that cannot be seen easily. For the dome you could have made the walls like you have and then place a chapel inside of the dome shape to make it look more real. Now you have a dome and it doesnt look like a chapel. I didnt see a story. You could atleast give historic information about it. |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
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Downloads: | 2,975 |
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Size: | 1.54 MB |
Added: | 12/15/07 |
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