Show us your city, road or transit maps!

[ironicepitome 0]

o. m. g. that map is AWESOME!

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

We've seen several variations of that before, but this one is by far the best!

[CDB 3]

No subway, this time. It's a map of the regional commuter rail service (heavy rail in game terms) of a big and well developed region.

There is a little bit of story behind, but I don't feel to make a CJ, I don't think that there is enough things to tell.

The City of Derry (the lighter area roughly in the middle of the map) is composed by four boroughs that in XIX century were indipendent cities. Each city was served by its own private rail company.

When the cities were united in Derry and the regional railway authority was founded, the new lines were grouped in divisions (red, East Division; blue, South Division; green, West Division; gray, Metropolitan Division) roughly based on the old companies lines, with some exceptions: the northern and western companies (I didn't make up a name, yet) were united under the West Division and the lines closer to Derry outskirt became the Metropolitan Division, with peripherical metro-like services between the suburbs an the city.

I'd really like to finish it and add names to the stations (actually, the names of the towns), but I'm really a disaster when it comes to choose names for anything. Any suggestion?

[mentarman 14]

Must be a huge region. Looks good.

[CDB 3]

To make comparisons, Derry is roughly four large maps with some parts of the outskirts in the neighbouring maps.

[davidaiow 2]

Wow that is quite large. Nice map- love that actual lines of the routes more than anything and as for names... have you used on of those random name generators? There are a few around for The Sims 2/3 Neighborhoods

[heitomat 156]

@CDB: A stunning map, just like the ones you'd expect to find at real life rail stations. I also enjoyed reading the story behind the rail network. Great work!

[CDB 3]

davidaiow: Not really. I have tons of "New City n° x". When some good name for something comes to mind I use the chat to change the name of the city. Once I chose the name for one of the rivers and then renamed all the cities along it *rivername*-ton / -borough, etc. I didn't like it, I reverted those to "New City" shortly after.

Never thought about the random name generator, I'll try it. Thanks!

heitomat: Many thanks. I'm working on division lines diagrams, I'll post them in a few days.

[Benedict 3,119]

@CDB: Great rail map, and I also like the backstory. Don't let minimal story prevent you from doing a CJ - I'd love to see your region.

Another option for names - take the phone book (white pages) and randomly choose names - sometimes they'll feel perfect for towns, villages cities, etc, sometimes not.

One last option for names - use something like mapquest to get a map of some part of another country (or your own) - choose random names off that map. Your main town is Derry? Maybe mapquesting a piece of Ireland would give you some complimentary names for outlying towns.

[mentarman 14]

Can't remember if this has been posted before, but thought it was interesting, a map of Gotham City's rail lines, part of the promotional stuff for the Dark Knight movie.

http://www.gothamcityrail.com/map.htm

[zombones 0]

suggestion for transit maps: Use CMYK instead of RGB color

[Benedict 3,119]

Current version of the Port Sinclair monorail. Extension of the City Line to Nereid is open. Infill station St Winifred is open on the Peninsula Line.

[mentarman 14]

To quote Paris Hilton "That's hot."

Originally posted by: zombones

suggestion for transit maps: Use CMYK instead of RGB color

quote>

Am I the only one who doesn't really know what this means?

[Benedict 3,119]

Probably not. Wikipedia has an explanation. Basically it is your color setting for your image. CMYK has spaces between the dots (i.e. white space) that your brain uses to make colors - saves on printing costs. Not sure why transit maps look better in CMYK, though. Care to enlighten us, Zombones?

[zombones 0]

may be personal taste, but I've noticed the RGB-colored transit maps look like something out of a 1999 website, while CMYK look smoother and the colors are not as loud.

The 1st is RGB, and the 2nd is CMYK

CMYK has a lot less pixelation on the edges of the lines, and look smoother

[mentarman 14]

Hmm, maybe something to try but honestly I don't see much difference...

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

I don't notice much difference.

[Craig91 12]

I can see the difference, and think it comes out well on large (complete) maps.I started using slightly off-colour (towards white) when colouring lines, and it looks more like that CMYK version you've done. It's a subtle difference, but I think much more aesthetic (and modern)

[davidaiow 2]

^I agree. RGB seems much more gareish in those images. I think mine are CMYK, I can never remember

[CDB 3]

Originally posted by: Benedict

Probably not. Wikipedia has an explanation. Basically it is your color setting for your image. CMYK has spaces between the dots (i.e. white space) that your brain uses to make colors - saves on printing costs. Not sure why transit maps look better in CMYK, though. Care to enlighten us, Zombones?quote>

Not really, it's a matter of how colours are formed. I hope I can make it clear, it's hard to explain it in English. (EDIT: I fixed a couple of parts, I hope I didn't make this even messier).

First, a little bit of theory: we need to separete proper Colours from paints. it's all a matter of light. Our eyes are "just" photoreceptors, what they see is light.

Colours are just light radiations at a determined frequency; I'll use the capital C when I'm referring to them (bad thing when one's vocabulary is not as rich as it should be). Colours is what is used in TV screens, Computer monitors, etc.

If you put together all the Colours of the spectrum, you obtain white (it's logical: if you add more frequencies - that means more light - to the system, you get the brightest light). Full sunlight is always white. At dawn and sunrise it seems coloured because light beams hit the Earth at an angle and part of the radiations are deflected by the atmosphere.

A paint (actually, the proper word is pigment), instead, is coloured because it absorbs from the white sunlight all the light radiations except the ones corrisponding to the colour that you see, which are reflected. All the phisical substances are paints. If you put together all the paints corrisponding to the spectrum Colours, you obtain somthing close to black, because most of the radiations are absorbed. Real, pure, black is nearly impossible to achieve with just the sum of different paints, but that would be a huge and largely useless digression from the point of the post.

Without light, objects have no visible tint: in the countryside in the middle of the night, for example, you can't clearly see the colour of anything.

To make it brief, Colours are nearly always brighter than paints because paints gain a tint as they absorb light.

CMYK in graphic programs simulates the paints, RGB the Colours. That's why on RGB you can have brighter colours but it works properly only if you see it on a monitor (if you try to print a RGB image, you'll end with most of the colours screwed in tones and brightness because, obviously, inks and toners are paints), and on CMYK you get less bright colours but it works better when you are making a picture that is supposet to be printed.

There's no actual difference on the edges, it's just an optical illusion: the brighter a colour is, the most it stands out.

[mentarman 14]

OK, that makes more sense, and I can see some difference in color, I just didn't see a difference in the edges.

[emgmod 16]

I'm still working on it.

[Retep Molinari 68]

Good start, emgmod!

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

It is nice. Just my guess, but as the lines join at the bottom of the map, I'd say that is the city. And as the lines go in a more northerly direction, I'd say there is a river/bay/ocean/lake at the bottom. Am I right?

[emgmod 16]

You're 100% correct. North Daloa Transit services north Daloa because of the river. The one station that I forgot to label is E30/Verona Station.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

Cool! I'd like to see a CJ with this city! Will there be any southriver expansion?

[OsakaHugger 0]

Hello everyone! I'm gonna (try) making one myself for my elevated and heavy railroads. Also maybe my HOV-line (I've got a whole series of bus-only roads!)

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

Awesome, would love to see it. But remember to clearly show which network is which

[wienerubahn 0]

This is the New Princess Metro network (maybe a bit difficult to read, 7 lines: Concorde-, Barbara-, Capital-, Federal-, Washington-, Independence- and Farringdon Line)

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

I cant see it clearly at all. Can you please make it clearer?