Crumbling Sewers, Adept (Patreon)

I'm back again with a new sewer map, the Crumbling Sewers (32x28)! This is my 2nd sewer, and this time I decided that I would design it to be a little more vague with it, going a little more industrial than I otherwise would have. So, while it might not be the perfect sewer map, feeling a bit more stark and less.. fecal than what you might imagine, I think this will fit some other niches nicely with some imagination- like industrial complexes, or abandoned dwarven facilities. 

And with that in mind, your alternate version features more bronzed coloring and lighting, which I'm calling Grimy due to the browner palette. Again, I decided on this on as a little compromise between making an even dirtier-feeling sewer and making a version that has a slightly more steampunk palette.

1. This week started a little strangely for me, my newborn was having trouble napping, which was starting to take a toll on my work schedule. On top that I took too long making last week's map and ended up posting it on Monday, so I was already a day down. So I decided that I needed to make something quick and achievable, something I could make with potentially 2 less days than usual. I decided on a system of sewer tunnels, feeling that there wasn't much about it that could trip me up and cause unexpected roadblocks. 

I whipped up sketch in record time, ensuring that the layout wasn't too linear and allowed for interesting ranged and melee combats, and got to work. 

2. I finished the outlines in 2 days flat, which is nearly unheard-of for me. Placing walls, canals, and props is easy, the only things that slowed me down were the piles of rubble and the big pipes. 

The big rubble was mostly ripped from the Overgrown Tomb, with the additions of a few extra patches here and there in order to ensure that they fit well into the spaces I laid out. The pipes were unexpectedly tricky, entirely because I despise drawing circles. If you look through my map archives you'll see that I've almost never drawn things which are perfectly circular, instead using octagons whenever possible. I couldn't get around it this time though, so I had to slow down a bit and make sure it turned out right. Honestly though, that's all I had to take my time for- I wrapped up the outlines halfway through Wednesday and nearly had a full coloring/shading finished by the end of the day.

3. And if I wasn't playing it fast and loose, I might have been able to finish even earlier- but as always whenever I'm working too fast I make some big mistakes. After making the Dark and Lit versions of the map, I started working on my alternate versions, using a copy of the Dark or Lit effects as my jumping-off point. Or at least, I intend to make a copy before I start mucking around in the files, sometimes I just imagine that I copied it and I absolutely wreck the original as I tweak lighting/colors/levels, just about everything. And then I try to flip back to the Lit version for a quick comparison and I realize that I've effectively deleted it. 

Anyway, if there's a silver lining to making this mistake (a mistake which I feel like I make every 3 maps), it's that I'm forced to take more attempts at the main version of a map than I otherwise would have, and presumably it's improved in the process. Or maybe I remake it quick and dirty, pissed at myself for making a stupid mistake. Who can say? There's no way to see what the original looked like, so it's impossible to know for sure. And every time it happens I tell myself that I'll save more frequently from then on out.