Carcassonne Central

This set will introduce mountains as a landscape feature.

Total number of tiles = 36 to 45.

Other landscape features that will be included in the base set = roads, farms and cities.  Nothing else - no pig farms, no cloisters, no forests, no rivers.

When a mountain tile is placed, the player who place the tile gets a number of points.  Mountains need not be complete to score points.

If you play a tile with a mountain segment and connect 1 side to another mountain segment in play, you get 1 point
If you play a tile with a mountain segment and connect 2 sides to mountain segments in play, you get 4 points
If you play a tile with a mountain segment and connect 3 sides to mountain segments in play, you get 9 points
If you play a tile with a mountain segment and connect 3 sides to mountain segments in play as well as a fourth side (i.e. fill in a hole), you get 16 points
If you play a tile with a mountain segment and connect all 4 sides to mountain segments in play (i.e. fill in a hole), you get 25 points

Future expansions:
Trade goods - ore (new), coal (new), gold
Cults/Cloisters
Towers, Inns on Roads, Fairs, Other icons
P&D icons
Tournament (& Persona)
Guilds & Double turn & Chivalry
Mountain Shack & Mansions
Rivers
Forests
Rivers & Forests!

This is going to keep me busy!

Oh, I'm excited about the mountains! 
Any ideas or concepts for the mountain art yet?  I've messed around in Photoshop a bit with the mountains idea and frankly I've struggled.....  :'(

I'd love to see some ideas if you have them yet?

I'm really looking forward to the Mt. Expansion.

Wow, I feel pressured now.  I will probably be copying stuff from H&G for the mountains or something.  I will see what I can come up with.  Might take a while.  I did resign myself to the fact that this will be a long expansion to make.

I messed around a bit to try and do mountains too but I really found it tough. 
I just couldn't come up with something i was happy with. F:)

I know the feeling.  I will have to play around a lot more to get it right.  The H&G style might not fit with the normal Carc style though, and that's one thing I'm worried about.  I'm actually taking an easy weekend (i.e. no more Carc this weekend!) so it'll have to wait until the next one until I have something I'm happy with to show.

Yup, that's exactly what I tried   ;D
Just having a quick go at them I felt like they were really repetitive looking, and I wasn't willing to redraw or re-do a lot.....
THIS (http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/447/amtiles2withmountains1.jpg) is my first effort.

That doesn't look too bad.  Maybe I should retire and you should do all the tiles, Chris :)

I'm going to start off with a MMMM tile anyways, or at least that's the plan.

Those tiles look quite good...

 :o

lol, no thank you - this is your gig  {nw

And I definitely don't have as much time as I used to for graphics stuff....wife+2 kids+more than full-time job= {z1

No it's not.  Anyone is welcome to make tiles!

How about I make you a deal then - I'll see what I can do with the mountain tiles if you finish making 12 of those excellent wheatfield tiles?

lol, no problem....I've already got 2 more done and I'll finish the 12.  It might take me another week or so, dependent on how much spare time I have though  ::)

The wheat fields are intended to be trade goods, right?  What will the token graphic be?

(Perhaps this belongs in the Wheat Fields thread?)

OK, here's my try for mountains.  The MMMM tile looks horrible IMO, but it's actually not too bad if there's some grass.  Should I continue along this path?  Oh and a merit point to whoever (except Authors and mods) that names the expansion (and the item) that I stole this image from!

(http://www.dukenostalgia.com/carc/images/mttest.jpg)

 
I like them.  I don't think they look bad at all... yes, you should run with that.  Especially considering the art is semi-original.   ;)
If I was to make a suggestion, the only thing I could think of would be to maybe make them a little bit bigger and have less of them on a tile, but it wouldn't be necessary.


That looks to me like a little slice of volcano!  (from P&D)   ;D

Somewhere on one of those European boardgame sites, I saw a meeple that was a donkey pulling a cart.  For some reason, that springs to mind when I was thinking about the mountains, don't know why.  Maybe it could be used later like the pig or something.  :os  Just a random thought.

The volcano from P&D it is!  Merit point for you sir!

Edit: Tile image

Looks good except for the road running under the edge of the mountain.

That's just a rough version :)  I will probably make it better when I do the actual tile.

Due to "difficulties" (aka lack of time), I'm going to limit the base set to just Mountains, Farms, Roads and Cities.

Page 1 = 15 tiles = Mountains and Farms (i.e. see below) [1 stable, 1 pig farm]
Page 2 = 15 tiles = Mountains and Roads (and Farms) [2 inns, 1 well]
Page 3 = 15 tiles = Mountains and Cities and Farms, or all 4 [no icons]
45 tiles total for the base set.

(http://www.dukenostalgia.com/carc/images/mt1tn.jpg) (http://www.dukenostalgia.com/carc/expansions/mt1.pdf)

The next set will probably have:

Mountains and Cities only (no farms or roads!) - new image required (think Edoras in Lord of the rings!)
Shrines - new image required (with a "barebone" shrine located on the baby dragon ledge)
Cloister - new image required (with a single storey cloister located on the baby dragon ledge)
Tower - new image required (with part of the tower foundation built into the mountainside!)
P&D icons - requires the new image from mountain and cities.
Not going to get done - Fairs

Forests & Mountains?


Looks great by the way!

Well, Forests and Mountains will be further down the line, a lot further down the line.  Trade goods will probably be an early one.

Is there supposed to be three pages there?  I only see one.

Excellent work sir!  Those look great.
I haven't had much spare time either but this has inspired me to try and finish off the Wheatfield tiles.....just need to find some time  ::)

I look forward to seeing pages 2 & 3 so I can print them off and have a 'trial play' with my 4yr old son   ;D

Here they are:

(http://www.dukenostalgia.com/carc/images/mt2tn.jpg) (http://www.dukenostalgia.com/carc/expansions/mt2.pdf) (http://www.dukenostalgia.com/carc/images/mt3tn.jpg) (http://www.dukenostalgia.com/carc/expansions/mt3.pdf)

I had to move the 2 inns to page 3 because I ran out of space on page 2.  And before anyone asks where are the other city and mountain tiles, well, those will be in the next expansion.  As I said in the previous post, I'll have to draw new images where the city walls run on top of the mountain foothills or something - I'm thinking of a cross between Edoras of LotR and the Great Wall of China.  Anyways, that's the tiles, the rules will probably follow on Sunday.

I like these tiles.  I think they look really good.  The only question I have is concerning the middle tile on the bottom row of page 3.  Wouldn't it be easier to put the Inn on the other side of the curve?  There's more room there.

It is, but it would mean extra work since I don't have that image.  I decided to be lazy and just use what I already have :)  Functionally, it doesn't change anything.

Anyways, here are the rules (http://www.dukenostalgia.com/carc/expansions/mtrules01.pdf).  Suggestions and proofreads welcome!  I'm still pondering if I should include examples to make the scoring clearer.

They look good to me.  I like the scoring system, but I'm curious how/why you came up with this as opposed to something more "normal".  The variety is interesting though. 

The main idea was to keep all the mountain tiles together, where possible so as not to create more "holes" in the game.  I didn't want to create another 150-tile expansion for the base set to "fill in the holes", so I thought it might be better to force players to fill in the holes themselves with the rules, by rewarding them when they fill in the holes.  That would also cut down on the number of tiles required.

Also the new scoring system allows a player to score potentially twice per turn (or potentially 4 times with a double turn) - once from the mountains and again from the followers.  That should make mountains more valuable than, say Forests or Rivers.

That's a good idea.  I like it.  It keeps the mountains together which they should be.

Yeah, I agree... a nice idea which plays well and avoids having to create endless configurations of tiles...

This probably should be a separate topic.  I've been asked how do I draw those new images.  Well, I don't.  I'm a photoshopper, not an artist or a colourist or an inker or whatever.  I use all the photoshop skills available to create what I'd like to create.  Here's how I did the mountains.


From left.
1. Volcano image
2. Delete all non essential graphics that can't be covered up.  That's mainly the flying rocks.
3. Use the pen/paintbrush to build the outline (or to cage the dragon in this case).  It's best to use a totally separate layer.
4. Clone, Smudge, copy and paste, whatever to fill up the cage.  In this case, I copied the image to a new layer, filled it up and deleted the extraneous bits.
5. Repeat 3. for the caldera
6. Repeat 4. to finish the image.
Not shown. 7. Once I've got the basic mountain, it was a simple case of copying and pasting it multiple tiles to get the desired mountain chain look.  I hope that helps someone out there.

To colour images from scratch though the process is slightly different.  Here's the process used to get my facebook avatar (from a few years back).  Pencils by Shipman, colours by myself, background by Holmberg and Werner.  Used with permission!


1. Shipman's original pencils, scanned in
2. Colours (each one on a different layer!)
3. Inks
4. Shading, part 1 - this was one of my first attempt at shading.  I missed out various bits, made other bits look wrong, and it was just a mess.
5. Shading, part 2 - so I corrected the shading again
6. Background added.  I was lazy to draw my own, so I got permission to use background images from real professional artists!

I did this a while back and did th montage then to show how the process was done.  The mountains step-by-step above is inspired by this.  Before anyone asks, no, I don't do this for a living.

Back on topic, if there's no further comments on the rules by Thursday, I'll make this base expansion ready for public downloads by Friday.

Excellent Tut (+merit for you).....very useful for the aspiring photoshoppers out there! 
There are also HUNDREDS of photoshop tutorial sites out there and i'd encourage anyone wanting to give it a go to just try it.
I'm also a photoshop user and completely self taught.  If I can do it, anyone can do it!

BTW Novelty, or anyone else interested in Photoshop, I just got Photoshop PS4!  w00t!  Definitely worth checking out - there are some fantastic improvements and time-savers.  Details here:  http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/photoshop/

 {up

Thanks for the kind words and the merit point, Chris.

Anyways, the public release of the expansion can be gotten from the Public Downloads (http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=49&Itemid=62) page.  Have fun.