Viking Dock, Adept- a Collaboration with Limithron (Patreon)

This week's map is the Viking Dock (35x35), a new wintery map that I made with the help of Limithron! You can go check out the Viking longship he made in the regular day and night versions of the map, he really did do an excellent job. I recommend you visit his Patreon and see his other work, he made some really fun variations on the longship which you can grab over there, including fire and ice versions!

Anyway, your extra version of this map is a nice Sunset version, featuring much warmer and moodier lighting. I've always been a fan of Sunset variants, they feel much more dramatic than plain Day or Night lighting. Enjoy!

1. I didn't have many plans going into this map, my main goal was to try to capture a somewhat Viking-y vibe with the little slice of village that's visible on screen. I felt that my Barbarian Village map already was halfway there, so I decided to stick with a similar style of roofs and props. 

As you may know, it took me a pretty long time to get around to making this map, partially because I convinced myself to make several swamp maps, but mostly because I felt it was going to be necessary for it to include at least one bigger Viking ship (and I hate making boat maps) and I knew it was going to be a huge project. Thankfully, a week or two ago, Limithron and I got in touch while chatting with some other mapmakers and it just so happened that he excels at making boat maps. Perfect timing, really. So, I whipped up a quick town layout and left plenty of room for him to place a boat- honestly one of the easiest collaborations I've done yet. 

2. Since he was working on the ship, I was free to work away at the docks. I originally planned on just grabbing a few thatch roofs from previous villages, as well as some lengths of dock from the recent swamp maps, but none really felt quite right here. I decided that lots of extra wooden supports on the roofs would help add on the Viking vibes, and for some reason I decided that the new docks just needed to have extra wide boards. Don't ask me why, it felt right at the time. 

One thing I realized later on was that I neglected to add little snow drifts to the rooftops. I'm really kicking myself over this since it hit me only a few hours ago. They're a pretty minor addition, but I feel like they add a perfect amount of extra detail to the roofs. Not that big of a deal, I'm sure, but I'm sure it would have been better with them.

3. For the coloring, I tried to imitate the Barbarian Village map I mentioned earlier, which featured many similar props to this one. I sent over a copy of that map to Limithron early on, telling him that my final colors would be quite similar to those found there, so he could try to match the style somewhat. Honestly, I'm very impressed with the finished boat he sent- he did such an amazing job matching my colors and lines. Really excellent work, I feel like he went above and beyond.