One the footers, add my name to the copyright row for all of Lerenil except:
Sophia's name replaces mine in the Uthrs' Pottery section
Jeremy's name replaces mine in the Dugaei section (when it is in place)

Leitchy, how does the layout at the back end look? If you need to displace a bit more space to end at the bottom of a B page, I can generate a small local map of the Hugaei hilltop, showing the faction camps, the contour lines of the hill and tactical hiding places (i.e., trees), and maybe where the outer picket of guards patrol.

It would be a useful addition, but also a bit of work. But I'm for it if it helps out layout. Let me know if another map (half or quarter page) would help.

Such a map would great...



Jeremy

Sorry I haven't replied yet. The truth is I don't know. The majority of my time has been taken up with breaking this long document into manageable pieces, and trying to reconstruct the Family Tree (a very long task). Not all the art has been placed yet, and I think you'll probably want a lot of it repositioned once he see the first draft.

It's also been a stinkin' hot week here, which doesn't make great working conditions. Finally, a high-profile project at work (for my Minister—that's the elected official in charge of the Federal Government department I work for, not the leader of a congregation! ) has been leaving me pretty drained at night, so I've been less productive than I promised you. However, I have spent the whole day on it so far, and plan to spend all day tomorrow on it as well.

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Dont rush, Leitchy, we'll wait. Get your work done and get plenty of rest.

I have the original of that in MS Word (though I imagine you do, too). How can I make this task easier?
.

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I made the map of the Chybisan frontier rather large to allow you to resize to fit. Feel free to shrink in down in Illustrator if necessary.

And if you are in need of a couple of paragraphs in any given section to make it come out even, I might be able to expand on the given topic by adding another NPC, a sidebar, or the like. Let me know.

No, unfortunately it won't the task easier. While the words, spaces and tabs all translate to InDesign (the lines don't, of course), the arrangement doesn't. It's one of those tedious jobs that just has to be done again. No problems, I'll get there.

At the moment, I've done Lerenil up to the Folk of the Keep (except the Clan Legith family tree), which is the end of the first section, and 22pp in size. I have to say, by DAMN some of those pictures Juha drew are good!

One of the problems I have is that the colour Common Map that I extracted from the file Paul sent me hasn't come out very well, and is blurry. I'm going to have to try to extract the image again using a higher dpi rate. I know I had all sorts of trouble extracting it the last time; I'll just have to learn how to do it again.

I've broken up Lerenil into sections to make it easier (and safer) to layout

- Lerenil (the biggest at 22pp)
- Caer Lerenil
- Rivers End Inn
- Seamans Hostel
- Uthr's Pottery
- Dugeai

While these are all separate documents, InDesign allows them to be brought together as a book, meaning the whole thing is treated as one object for the purposes of publishing.

There was no real point to most of this post; I just thought you might be interested to know how I was doing things. Call it a progress update.

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Thanks for the update.

Well, that turned out to be absurdly simple. I copied and pasted the Lerenil Common map into a fresh Illustrator doc and exported it as a tiff. Worked great. The problem before was that something buggy in the CGI template file was wrecking the export process. Cutting and pasting just the map left it behind.

You can duplicate my process, Peter, but I'm uploading a fresh map to the server in case you'd rather not.

Yes, I noticed. When you started the upload, I was listening to my favourite Trance track on my favourite Internet radio station. Suddenly, zip! The 129Mb file took all the available bandwidth, and I was bereft of my music pleasures....



I took a look, and it's certainly a lot better than my version. Thanks for that.

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Arg, I knew I'd do that eventually; I edited your post when I thought I was quoting it. Oh, well, I managed to restore all but the smileys.

Anyway, I knew you were working off the server; the Lerenil Word file was open.

The work isn't done but, given how long I've made you all wait, I thought you deserved a look at the work so far.

http://www.lythia.com/downloads/Lerenil.zip (10.5Mb)

The one portrait I don't appear to have room for is Sir Falyd Kordis. His description is split across two pages, and I can't make him fit without significantly cutting down on the text.

Can someone especially check the Clan Legith family tree for spelling errors and incorrect dates, place. The print copy I had turned out a bit small because it insisted on printing two pages per sheet (I have no idea why).

The Inn needs significant work, but most of the rest is done, I think. Lemme kow what you think...

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Whew! It took three tries, but I finally got a good download.

That artwork makes a stunning impact right off - great page one!It is almost perfect, Peter. In the lower right corner, following the entry for Alena Legith, there is a misspelling in 'descendants.' To fix mistakes of mine (not yours) change the date of birth for Hanseth Legith to 700 and the date of birth for Leselle Legith to 710 - this brings their ages in line with what is given in the text.

Paul gets veto on this, but on page 20, in the entry for Rithalyr, his age should be twenty years to match the date of birth...given the baron's age, etc, we can't really birth him earlier than the given date of 699. Since his last birthday was in 719 (writing as of 1-1-720?) he is a 'young' knight still looking forward to his 21st birthday.

The credit box should use the plural 'writers.'

The footer needs to give the copyright to Paul.

I'm not sure if the spelling of 'ghoasties' in the caption on page 15 is intentional or not.

There is an editing comment hiding at the end of the entry for Hanseth on page 16, and another one at the lower right hand corner of page 46.

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I'll go over the draft in detail tomorrow.

But in case you work on the Dugeai article in the meantime, Peter, please cut the camp map on page 52 from the article. While it is a good sketch from Jeremy, it is not appropriate as a final piece (I asked if you needed a new local map last week a few posts up). The map that is missing in this section that should be on the same page as the tribes sidebar is the Chybisa kingdom map showing the Hodiri territories (the one I posted a segment from on the sneak preview topic). This is the one I suggested you shrink down if you need more space above.

Oh, I see you have the maps dialed way down in terms of dpi for the review copy; their print quality is pretty bad. But I assume this is intentional...

Great effort overall, Peter. Be back soon...


P.S. Sophia, he's got the copyright notices right; see the first post in this topic. Though he needs to check the notice in the Hodiri section, as there seems to be a pasting problem there...

It's quite possible you were trying to download when the file itself was still uploading. I set off the upload, and then wrote my post, but it was still uploading when I went to bed.


It is good, isn't it? I really like the art on page one.


Yes it is; it matches the text for Old Wat.

I deliberately left these in so Paul could comment on them. Obviously the have to come out, but I thought it might be a hold-over of some thought Paul had that perhaps he hadn't gotten around to doing anything about.


I agree the final map is out of place, and the suggested map would be much better. And a better place for it, too. It may push things around a little, but I'll cope.


The vesion you see here is the screen version, not the print version, which will be without the watermark and the object shadows...and all dpi's dialled up several notches!

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RE the Hodiri map. You might combine it with the Hodiri sidebar to make a half-page ensemble; Put the text under the map, perhaps. Then run what text fits above the whole thing and onto the next page...

Sorry, Paul. I'm not certain I understand any of what you said. But I've made some changes anyway; see what you think.

http://www.lythia.com/downloads/Dugeai.pdf

I'm almost certain this *isn't* what you asked for, though.

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Hmm.

I have uploaded the proper map in both tiff and ai formats (in case you want to resize it but retain the larger labels) on the server, plus a quickie pdf (document1.pdf) to show what I mean (see page 2). This layout might take up half a page if you play with it a bit in InDesign. Put it at the bottom of the first page, and flow the main article above and then on to the next page.

It may or may not work, but at least we'll be working on the right map!

The map you have been using is the one that isn't going in the article unless it gets redone as a proper local map.

I'll start with layout, since that's what Peter is engaged in; I'll follow up with proofing comments this weekend.

First off, thanks so much for tackling the layout job, Peter. You’ve taken a lot of your free time to work on this, and I really appreciate it. Your layout rocks. Great page one especially, and admirable job with those nasty maps.

Of course, as you suspected, I did have different ideas as to illo placement. We do have a ways to go yet! Now, of course, I realize I might have explained my thoughts before you started, but that would be too easy! I do apologize…

Local maps: I would like these to be independent of the article, on a floater page like most of the CGI town maps: color map on front side, GM map on the reverse side. Both pages carry the black header bar with the name of the map ("Lerenil Common Map" and “Lerenil GM Map”), but no page numbers. Put at back of pdf or at front. Crop color map a tad and/or shrink (a tad only) to fit with proper header: copy scale info as white box and drop in over woods at bottom right of map; cut rest of current header above map entirely. (I can do the cropping and resubmit maps if you like.)

In the following, first number indicates page number of illo to move, and the second the page it moves to. Cut # means eliminate that illo from its original spot.

2 to 16 (no pic on 2); place with Clan Legith entry
cut 16 for now if it doesn't work with above.
9 (Shamus) to NPC entry on 40
10 to floater page (see above)
22 to floater page
15 to 32; it works better where it is, but end of book needs graphics more than front. Change pic caption to " Old Wat regails Henrico with one of his ‘ghoasties’ "
43 Reduce pic to fit in one column. It’s not detailed enough to carry this size, and white space is awkward. Duplicate one (or two) of the generic pot pics from the Pottery article to help combat resulting white space on 43-44; I think duplication between the two articles is fine in the case of pots.

You might have room for Falyd at his NPC entry now. Otherwise, how about dropping him in on 28 with his room entry?

The break from the town description to NPC section on 12 is a strong one, so let’s start town council on new page. Page 13 is way too busy and flows oddly. Move Keffer pic to NPC entry on 34; also cut Jarvis (he’s better off with his pottery entry on 46). Reflow text as normal.

Page 30 is an interesting experiment, but it doesn’t work for me. Try cropping out most of the dotted bits of the map to the right and nest properly-sized tower map from 31 in that spot. Put text from both 30 and 31 on same page, either before or after map (I’d rather have white space at end of section than the huge map on 31 and blocks of floating text on 30-31). I can do this if you like.

We lost a few sidebars:
Pg 4, Lerenil Calander is a sidebar. Reformat and flow Horse Fair text around. If you must place it in text, cut second sentence of intro with Sophia link; it’s too conversational for the main text.
Pg 32 Menu/Accomodations is a sidebar. Flow text around.
Pg 41 Menu/Accomodations is a sidebar. Flow text around.

Well, dang, that's a lot of moving! Please do what you can, and let me know if you think something won't work. We may have to tweak again once things are resettled; it's hard to keep all the moves straight at present.

Thanks again for all you've done!

I've never seen that map before now. Looks good!

OK, I've made some changes and uploaded the Dugeai file again; same link as above. Your turn, Paul. Or indeed anyone else.

I added the last page of the Pottery piece to get the page spreads in proper alignment. It makes it easier to imagine the finished product that way.

Now to tackle the extensive revisions Paul want.


<takes deep breath>

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I bet I uploaded the wrong Hodiri map at some point then, sorry. (And you have seen it before; on page two of the Sneak Preview topic)...

Paul, you mistake me for someone who reads all the Harnforum entries. I just own it and manage it, dude. I don't read a heck of a lot of it.

So, no, I've never seen it before now.


[Edit] Ahh....no, I missed that in the teaser. Didn't spot it at all.

I guess that makes me unobservant, as well.

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Oh, so shake my belief you are a Harn god second only to the Dungmaster. Besides, you've been all over that thread and Ken's comments!

Anyway, I like what you've done with the map! Good look. The text does run up on the top of the sidebar box a tad, though.

I wish we could do more with the Hodiri section with graphics, but Mister McLatey Pants Jeremy got his stuff in after the artists had all gone home.

Yeah, I know, there goes Paul banging his spoon.

I don't blame you...

Nope, I'm just a guy with a lot of webspace. I've grown tired of the threads; I've pretty much seen them all before. And since I don't use HarnMaster at all, many of the threads have no relevance or interest for me whatsoever.

But I am interested in fan-developed articles. Besides, I'm getting practice with design & layout, a field I want to move towards...and one that I'll be doing on a semi-professional basis soon with my own publishing house.



Well, it's your spoon to bang, but I think I'll take a little break now. I'll go see what the fuss over "Return of the King". Now the extended DVD is out, I'll finally get around to seeing it. I finished The Two Towers last night, also for the first time. The visual feast was wonderful.

Of course, I have to skip all those dull parts with Frodo the Complaining. Gollum's well done, but Frodo annoys me, and Sam's beginning to get to me, too, although I might watch the fight with the spider.

Aragorn and the rest are pretty cool, though.

And, yes, I'll serious. The Lord of the Rings books bored the crap out of me, but the movies are (mostly) fun and very, very well done.


I'll get back to more layout once I've finished the movie. That is, if I don't get dragged into roleplaying tonight.

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