Complete Exile 2 outdoor map (massive spoilers)

[Ess-Eschas]

17 hours ago, Galadrin said:

Is there still a way to get the artwork though?

Hello Galadrin,

 

Quite a long time ago, I did a little mapping project of Exile II for my own personal use.

 

Just to elaborate on what's been said above, the sections of the map that you're looking for are actually not present in the game. If you were to enter these sections in the game itself, all you would see would be mostly an empty expanse of cave floor (although there's an odd line of locked doors around where Spire would be, if memory serves). You could add the sections to your map, but they'd be mostly blank.

 

From what I can tell, the map of exile wasn't simply imported from Exile I to Exile II, which is why these sections don't exist. This is most easy to see if you look side-by-side at a map of Exile I:

http://www.harehunter.info/Exile1/images/Ex1Map.gif

 

and Exile II:

https://truesite4blades.com/SWArchive/Geocities/TimesSquare/Arena/3134/mapexile.gif

 

The maps are similar on a large scale, but very different when you compare small details.

 

So, in short, I'm afraid you can't complete the map of exile in Exile II - it's not complete in the game! If you want a complete map of exile like this, I'm afraid you'll need to do a similar process to Duskwolf, but using Exile I.

[Galadrin]

3 hours ago, Ess-Eschas said:

Hello Galadrin,

 

Quite a long time ago, I did a little mapping project of Exile II for my own personal use.

 

Just to elaborate on what's been said above, the sections of the map that you're looking for are actually not present in the game. If you were to enter these sections in the game itself, all you would see would be mostly an empty expanse of cave floor (although there's an odd line of locked doors around where Spire would be, if memory serves). You could add the sections to your map, but they'd be mostly blank.

 

From what I can tell, the map of exile wasn't simply imported from Exile I to Exile II, which is why these sections don't exist. This is most easy to see if you look side-by-side at a map of Exile I:

http://www.harehunter.info/Exile1/images/Ex1Map.gif

 

and Exile II:

https://truesite4blades.com/SWArchive/Geocities/TimesSquare/Arena/3134/mapexile.gif

 

The maps are similar on a large scale, but very different when you compare small details.

 

So, in short, I'm afraid you can't complete the map of exile in Exile II - it's not complete in the game! If you want a complete map of exile like this, I'm afraid you'll need to do a similar process to Duskwolf, but using Exile I.

 

Ah ok, thank you for that clarification. That was unknown to me because I never actually played Exile 2... I downloaded Exile 1 in the Fall of 1995 and played it continuously like mad for the next decade at least. I didn't even know the graphics had been changed until a few years ago, actually.

 

I went ahead and redownloaded Exile: Escape from the Pit version 1.0.3 from the Old Versions sticky in this forum and extracted the images out of the files (these were in the old .PCT format on the Mac version, but luckily Photoshop was able to convert them). However, all I got were the individual tiles... no maps! The outdoor.dat file only extracts as a text file full of coding data...

 

I am not a programmer... I don't know Python, and I don't know what to do with this stuff...

 

Could someone who knows how to handle these files please, please, please extract the Exile 1 map from the old version downloads in this forum? Or at least the Abyss map? I would kill to have the world map in one piece... I played my fingers numb on this game and it really changed my life...

[Ess-Eschas]

Unfortunately, producing a map of Exile I like this isn't straightforward.

 

To explain what's happening here, the information about the outdoors is stored in that outdoor.dat file. Perhaps the best way to think about how the information is stored is to go down the reverse route! Take the map of Exile and split it down into those chunks that you've seen in Duskwolf's files. Each section is a square of map tiles. Now, imagine taking one square and pulling it out so that all these tiles are strung along one line. Next, replace each type of tile with a set of numbers and letters that tells you what type of tile it is (for instance, say AA is 'cave floor' and BB is 'mushrooms'). What you end up with is essentially one portion your outdoor.dat file! What these programs of Duskwolf's do is to do the reverse: they take that list of identification markers and convert it back into a map.

 

It might be possible to use a modified version of Duskwolf's code to extract the information from the original game, but that depends on what changes were made to the data files between Exile I and Exile II. A little work would need to be done to convert this code so that it would work on the different data files. I would offer to look into this for you, but I'm afraid that I can't do so right at this moment. Python is having some real issues on my machine right now, and I won't be able to run Duskwolf's code until I can fix those problems. That might take some time.

 

I do have some other ideas about how this map could be created, though. They might not work out (and it might be a while before I can test them) but, if they do, I'll post something here.

 

 

[Galadrin]

1 hour ago, Ess-Eschas said:

Unfortunately, producing a map of Exile I like this isn't straightforward.

 

To explain what's happening here, the information about the outdoors is stored in that outdoor.dat file. Perhaps the best way to think about how the information is stored is to go down the reverse route! Take the map of Exile and split it down into those chunks that you've seen in Duskwolf's files. Each section is a square of map tiles. Now, imagine taking one square and pulling it out so that all these tiles are strung along one line. Next, replace each type of tile with a set of numbers and letters that tells you what type of tile it is (for instance, say AA is 'cave floor' and BB is 'mushrooms'). What you end up with is essentially one portion your outdoor.dat file! What these programs of Duskwolf's do is to do the reverse: they take that list of identification markers and convert it back into a map.

 

It might be possible to use a modified version of Duskwolf's code to extract the information from the original game, but that depends on what changes were made to the data files between Exile I and Exile II. A little work would need to be done to convert this code so that it would work on the different data files. I would offer to look into this for you, but I'm afraid that I can't do so right at this moment. Python is having some real issues on my machine right now, and I won't be able to run Duskwolf's code until I can fix those problems. That might take some time.

 

I do have some other ideas about how this map could be created, though. They might not work out (and it might be a while before I can test them) but, if they do, I'll post something here.

 

 

 

Thank you, I'll be checking back here regularly!

[Slawbug]

Just wanted to note, for anyone who stumbles on this, that the seamless map version posted earlier does not include Vahnatai lands, so is not quite the whole world map.

[Galadrin]

22 hours ago, Throwback to Goriya said:

Just wanted to note, for anyone who stumbles on this, that the seamless map version posted earlier does not include Vahnatai lands, so is not quite the whole world map.

 

That's correct, I was only interested in the "original" Exile 1 area. If you'd like, I can finish the map and add the missing sections?

[Galadrin]

OK, after way too much effort, I have painstakingly hand-drawn the entire Exile 1 map. Here is a preview (the working file is actually over a gigabyte in size!):

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w0wmzsayjbefuwq/exile1map.png?dl=0

 

I learnt some interesting things in the process... Exile 1 had a darker, richer colour palette than Exile 2. There were also fewer tiles (only about a dozen outdoor tile designs... no "white mushrooms or tile variants, for example).

 

It's not quite done, mind you... the cave walls need to be rounded out. More importantly, I was putting in the settlements (Fort Dranlon, Swamp City and the Nephilim Fort) and then I realized that I don't remember what every settlement used for a tile... there are only four settlement tiles in the original Exile 1 artwork: town, castle, tower and cave (the latter appearing in a wall). Now, I can't for the life of me figure out how to install old DOS or MacOS 9 versions of Exile on my current computer (I've always run into problems, even when I follow the several guides word for word).

 

I need everyone's help: could you please tell me which settlements used which tile design? There is a map and key in the Exile 1 hint book (http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/exile/Exile1HintBook/Exile1HintBook.html) so you could just tell me "Cave of Athron uses a Cave tile". Once I have that, I will finish the cave corners and we'll be done!

 

[Misc Staple]

13 hours ago, Galadrin said:

Now, I can't for the life of me figure out how to install old DOS or MacOS 9 versions of Exile on my current computer (I've always run into problems, even when I follow the several guides word for word).

IIRC, Exile didn't run in DOS, but ran under Windows 3.1 to XP.

[Ess-Eschas]

20 hours ago, Galadrin said:

OK, after way too much effort, I have painstakingly hand-drawn the entire Exile 1 map.

 

This is really great work, Galadrin! Well done for producing the full map! I'm sure that getting the map together into this format by hand must have taken a lot of time, and it's nice to see a map of the original caves in their full form (and in the first set of original graphics, too).

 

I've also been working on making a map like this, and I've been using a slightly different approach. Because of this, I've done some thinking about the how the Exile games produce their graphics. There are a few complications that mean making a map like this is a little awkward. Unfortunately, if you want to make the map look like it does in the games, you'll need to make a few alterations in addition to correcting the walls.

 

The exile games make use of terrain frilling at the borders of certain terrains. This means that the borders of areas of water, lava and pits look slightly different from the standard tiles: the borders include a little portion of the neighbouring grey land in a wavy pattern. This makes the border between the water, say, and the land look more natural, rather than being a straight line. For instance, here's an example showing how the frills work on water:

 

https://lparchive.org/Exile-Escape-from-the-Pit/Update 33/1-029_exileLP_007.png

 

This is in the newer graphics, I'm afraid, but it applies to the old ones too. The edges of the water are slightly wavy, rather than being straight lines. So, if you wanted to be purist about this, you'd need to put together frills for the edges of all the water, lava and pits. Having said that, though, I doubt anyone would much notice if they were missing! I say this because I've been worrying about this for my own map. I've put together a complete set of frills for the Exile 2 graphics for all tiles, including additional tiles such as bridges and rocks (which doesn't take as much time as it sounds). I should then be able to put together a map using some automated processes to generate the frills – at least partially at any rate. If I get it to work, I'll let you know!

 

If you want to try running Exile I again, I'm using SheepShaver to run the game on Mac OS 7.5.5 (on a Mac), and it runs very nicely. It's a little bit of a pain to set up correctly to begin with, I'm afraid, but it's something you'd only need to really do once.

 

In any case, sorry for nitpicking! I think you've got a great map here, and a really nice illustration of the caves!

 

P. S. For those that are interested, I think that the early Exile games generate the frills automatically depending on which tiles border which tiles. If a terrain requires a frill, the appropriate frill of the pit tileset is overlaid over the bordering tile. You can see this most clearly in Exile 2, where the bridge tiles actually have land covering the end of the bridge if you look closely enough. The frilling is quite clever, since there are only 3 terrain frill tiles, both of which contain multiple sets of frills (west-east, north-south and corners).

 

[Celtic Minstrel]

Personally I would've preferred seeing this in the newer graphics, but nevertheless it looks pretty good.

 

On 10/27/2017 at 6:55 PM, Ess-Eschas said:

P. S. For those that are interested, I think that the early Exile games generate the frills automatically depending on which tiles border which tiles. If a terrain requires a frill, the appropriate frill of the pit tileset is overlaid over the bordering tile. You can see this most clearly in Exile 2, where the bridge tiles actually have land covering the end of the bridge if you look closely enough. The frilling is quite clever, since there are only 3 terrain frill tiles, both of which contain multiple sets of frills (west-east, north-south and corners).

 

At least in Blades of Exile, the corners aren't used for water and lava - instead, they're applied to the corners of the artificial walls (stone, adobe, or basalt). A water/lava corner simply gets both west and north frills, for example.

[Ess-Eschas]

9 hours ago, Celtic Minstrel said:

At least in Blades of Exile, the corners aren't used for water and lava - instead, they're applied to the corners of the artificial walls (stone, adobe, or basalt). A water/lava corner simply gets both west and north frills, for example.

 

It's nice to have that confirmed! I'd assumed that that was how the inner corner system worked, but I didn't have any way of knowing that for certain. I imagine that Blades of Exile does things in more or less the same way as the original trilogy.

 

I was a little unclear in what I wrote, though. Those corner tiles I were referring to weren't the L shape tiles you get on an inner corner (which you can form from, say, combining I and _), but the outer corners. These corners are the little sections of frills that appear only in the very corner of the tile, and link together two edge-frill tiles on either side. So, for example, if you had a square of land in the middle of water, the corners of that square would be outer corners. That third square of pit frills has all four of those little blobs of frills in the corners.

 

Still, I haven't yet experimented with using the frill tileset I've generated, so it's possible that the original game behaves in a different way from what I've assumed. I put together the complete set of frills just in case, but it's possible that they're not all used.

[Celtic Minstrel]

16 hours ago, Ess-Eschas said:

I was a little unclear in what I wrote, though. Those corner tiles I were referring to weren't the L shape tiles you get on an inner corner (which you can form from, say, combining I and _), but the outer corners. These corners are the little sections of frills that appear only in the very corner of the tile, and link together two edge-frill tiles on either side. So, for example, if you had a square of land in the middle of water, the corners of that square would be outer corners. That third square of pit frills has all four of those little blobs of frills in the corners.

Oh, I think I see what you mean now. Pretty sure BoE does also have these corners in addition to the separate wall-round-off corners.

[Galadrin]

On 27/10/2017 at 6:55 PM, Ess-Eschas said:

The exile games make use of terrain frilling at the borders of certain terrains. This means that the borders of areas of water, lava and pits look slightly different from the standard tiles: the borders include a little portion of the neighbouring grey land in a wavy pattern. This makes the border between the water, say, and the land look more natural, rather than being a straight line. For instance, here's an example showing how the frills work on water:

 

https://lparchive.org/Exile-Escape-from-the-Pit/Update 33/1-029_exileLP_007.png

 

This is in the newer graphics, I'm afraid, but it applies to the old ones too. The edges of the water are slightly wavy, rather than being straight lines. So, if you wanted to be purist about this, you'd need to put together frills for the edges of all the water, lava and pits. Having said that, though, I doubt anyone would much notice if they were missing! I say this because I've been worrying about this for my own map. I've put together a complete set of frills for the Exile 2 graphics for all tiles, including additional tiles such as bridges and rocks (which doesn't take as much time as it sounds). I should then be able to put together a map using some automated processes to generate the frills – at least partially at any rate. If I get it to work, I'll let you know!

 

Thanks Ess-Eschas, is there anyway you could get me the "border frills" art for the original art style? I have each terrain type separated by layer in a Photoshop document right now, so it is not inconceivable that I could get this to work, but I'd need the art!

 

Sadly, Sheepshaver and Wine have never worked for me with Exile. I can't really see what you are referring to, but I wouldn't be surprised if you are right.

 

I also still need those town/castle/tower identifications, if someone can help out there!

Edited October 31, 2017 by Galadrin

[Galadrin]

On 28/10/2017 at 11:13 PM, Celtic Minstrel said:

Personally I would've preferred seeing this in the newer graphics, but nevertheless it looks pretty good.

 

Ah that's interesting! It would have been easy for me to do this in the updated graphics, but I always thought the original graphics were much, much better! I guess it is just up to what you start with... I also preferred the original battle system (where you only moved one space on your turn... made combat brutal!).

[Ess-Eschas]

12 hours ago, Galadrin said:

Thanks Ess-Eschas, is there anyway you could get me the "border frills" art for the original art style? I have each terrain type separated by layer in a Photoshop document right now, so it is not inconceivable that I could get this to work, but I'd need the art!

 

I'll see if I can put a set together, but it might take a little time. I'd need to put together a new tileset for this, since the one I have already uses the slightly different Exile II graphics. However, now that I've got a working system in place, it should be quicker than making the first set!

 

Also, I took a quick wander around Exile to get those town entrances you were looking for:

 

Spoiler

1. Fort Exile - Castle

2. Silvar - Town
3. Fort Duvno - Castle
4. Bandit Fort - Tower
5. New Fort - Cave
6. Bat Cave - Cave
7. Formello - Town
8. Hidden Tower (Solberg’s Tower)  - Tower
9. Lair of Motrax - Cave
10. Ancient Crypt - Cave
11. Dark Pit - Cave
12. Mertis - Town
13. Ogre Cave - Cave
14. Tower of Magi - Tower
15. Cotra - Town
16. Nepharim Fort - Cave
17. Nephilim Fort (3 levels) - Castle
18. Hidden Temple - Castle
19. Fort Draco - Castle
20. Spider Cave - Cave
21. Cave of Athron - Cave
22. Shattered Fort (Akhronath) - Cave
23. Island Fort - Castle
24. Fort Dranlon - Castle
25. Swamp City - Cave
26. Aranea Cave - Cave
27. Aranea City - Cave
28. Slith Temple (2 levels) - Cave
29. Almaria - Town
30. Slith Castle (2 levels) - Castle
31. Foul Cavern - Cave
32. Slith Fort - Cave
33. The Castle - Castle
34. Gremlin Cave - Cave
35. Crypt of Drath (3 levels) - Cave
36. Slith Fortification - Castle
37. Cave of Pyrog - Cave
38. Strange Cave - Cave
39. Giant Fort (2 levels) - Castle
40. Hidden Tower - Tower
41. Teleport Pentagram/ Castle Hawthorne - Special spot
42. Fort Emerald - Castle
43. Gnass - Town
44. Blosk - Town
45. Patrick’s Tower - Tower
46. Stagnant Caverns - Cave
47. Fort Spire - Castle
48. Bandit Cave - Cave
49. Bandit Cave - Cave
50. Spire - Town
51. Bargha (2 levels) - Town
52. Black Spire - Tower
53. Tower of Barriers - Tower
54. Lair of Khoth - Cave
55. Fort Saffron - Castle
56. Dharmon - Town
57. Fort Remote - Castle
58. Gremlin’s Gold - Cave
59. Tower of Erika - Tower
60. Skarragath - Castle
61. Prison of Grah-Hoth - Tower
62. Ruined Fort - Cave
63. Cavern - Cave
64. Tower of Grah-Hoth - Tower
65. Pit of the Drake - Cave
66. Tower of Sulfras - Castle
67. Final Gauntlet - Cave

 

[Galadrin]

Brilliant, thank you so much for the ID's! I'll keep rounding these walls and updating the settlements while I wait for the sample border frills.

[Galadrin]

Ess-Eschas, is this the water border tileset, by any chance? I pulled these from Exile 2 (original graphics), which has a slightly subdued tileset in comparison to Exile 1 (original graphics). It is possible, however, that Jeff did not change the water border design and colours between the two games... for example, he did change almost every tile, but he left the water tiles and water rock tiles the same.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/irnohubpoehc13d/Exile Water Corners.png?dl=0

Edited November 1, 2017 by Galadrin

[Ess-Eschas]

7 hours ago, Galadrin said:

Ess-Eschas, is this the water border tileset, by any chance?

 

That's interesting. I've not come across this before. Where did you find it? Given that most of the graphics are easy to locate, I haven't looked extensively through the game's data – so I can see myself missing something like this! Having said that, though, it's odd because the sheet is really incomplete. There are fewer than half of the tiles needed to produce the frills for water. For instance, it's missing all of the 'outer' corner tiles, along with the three-sided edge tiles. Both of those tiles appear in the game. Perhaps this was a test sheet that Jeff put together?

 

Incidentally, the frills for Exile II can't be used for Exile I, at least not out of the box, since the ground colours differ.

 

As it happens, putting together the frills was quite a bit quicker than I had expected. I've put together a quick tileset for you that includes frills for pits, water (including rocks and bridges) and lava. In addition, I've put the frilled sections of land on their own at the bottom with a white background, in case you want to use them separately. You can download it here:

 

https://we.tl/KGTf3DQsNa

 

The link will be active for a week. The frills are arranged from left to right, top to bottom. The first four are single edges. The next six are double edges. The following four are triple edges and the final tile has edges on all four sides. This is then repeated in the same pattern for the outer corners, that is, the little blobs in the corner of each tile that link together adjacent tiles. The pattern of (1),4,6,4,1 is a nice demonstration of a binomial coefficient!

 

As I started writing this, I realised that I'm actually missing a few frills. The missing ones combine edge tiles and outer corners, which you'll need for single-tile thin objects. I've put these into a separate file, which you download below. I think that's all of them now, but if I'm missing any, do make me aware. There's a reason why Jeff automated this process – there are a lot of tiles!

 

https://we.tl/oA3yg6b1y8

 

Also, for my curiosity, are you getting these graphics from Mac or Windows Exile? This could actually be important, since in the later games, the colour palette differed slightly between the two platforms.

Edited November 1, 2017 by Ess-Eschas
Why wait to put together the file? :)

[Galadrin]

Ess-Eschas, thank you so much for those tiles. They are perfect. The one I showed earlier was something I cobbled together from Exile 2 files, so it wasn't in the game like that. I am using the Mac versions from 1.1 to 1.3 (I forget which exactly... I downloaded all of them and dug into one of the folders). If it is important, I can quickly look up which one I used, but in any case I think all of those versions should be identical to the early Windows versions. I have to say, I really like the rich, bold colour palette of the early versions of the game!

 

I've updated the map to show the new water borders and the settlement icons. Of course I forgot to do the lava borders when I did the water ones (could have done it all in one go!) so I'll have to go back to fix that. After that, it's on to the biggest and most tedious task... placing the cave borders. I can automate the straight-aways, but there are tons of corners and I do not know of a good way to do that quickly in Photoshop!

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w0wmzsayjbefuwq/exile1map.png?dl=0

 

Let me know what you think of it so far!

Edited November 2, 2017 by Galadrin

[Ess-Eschas]

The map is looking good! All the water frills seem to be working correctly, including all the one-tile rivers. Don't forget to frill up the pits as well as the lava when you update the map, however! It was actually the pits that made me notice the missing frills initially; the frills seem far more visible for pits than water or lava, at least to me. It's particularly noticeable around the land bridge to the Final Gauntlet, for instance. I noticed that there's a spot of lava south of the Slith Fort that should be a sign, too.

 

5 hours ago, Galadrin said:

I am using the Mac versions from 1.1 to 1.3 (I forget which exactly... I downloaded all of them and dug into one of the folders). If it is important, I can quickly look up which one I used, but in any case I think all of those versions should be identical to the early Windows versions.

 

I was asking this just for the sake of curiosity, since there's a small chance that there is a small difference between the Mac and Windows versions. At least for Blades of Exile, the colour palettes differ between the two platforms. One is slightly darker than the other, although I can't say which is which off hand. It's noticeable for that game since people create scenarios for it that modify the core graphics. The palettes don't match up if someone takes Mac graphics and just ports them to Windows or vice versa without changing the brightness. However, it may only be Blades that has this oddity, and not the earlier games.

 

My graphics match up with yours, so it shows our palettes are consistent! However, that's to be expected, since we've both used the Mac graphics. If you'd been using Windows, it would have been a way to find out whether the graphics on the two platforms are consistent or not.

 

Actually, if you like Exile and you're using a Mac, you could always try Blades of Exile, now that I think about it. Unlike the other games, it's been ported to work on Intel Macs, and it works like a dream. It's freeware now, too. There's a link to it in the Blades of Exile forum header under 'Intel Mac build'.

[Galadrin]

Ah thanks for catching that sign slip up. I thought it looked weird...

 

What about that tile of water near the pit on the bottom-center of the map? Is that supposed to be there? I don't remember it being there, to be honest...

 

Anyway, I managed to figure out how to automate both the cave walls and the inside corners. Unfortunately it looks like I'll just have to manually place the outer corners... this should take some time, but then it will be done!

 

I will definitely check out Blades of Exile. I played it back in the day when it first came out and it reminded a little of Realmz, which was another terrific game. To be honest, I was actually planning on using this map for a D&D-Exile crossover!

Edited November 3, 2017 by Galadrin

[Ess-Eschas]

22 hours ago, Galadrin said:

To be honest, I was actually planning on using this map for a D&D-Exile crossover!

 

Oh, I see! I was wondering about your interest in putting together a map like this, although of course it's interesting in its own right!

 

22 hours ago, Galadrin said:

What about that tile of water near the pit on the bottom-center of the map? Is that supposed to be there? I don't remember it being there, to be honest...

 

This is a transcription mistake. I had a more careful check through your previous map than I did yesterday, and I found a few more. As a general rule, if there are any places on your map where there's a single tile of cave wall not connected to any other walls, it will be a mistake. There aren't any cave wall frills to allow the placement of a tile like that! Here are the problems that I found:

 

1. The rocks on the path of the river near the Scimitar pit should be water (on the southern edge of the Great Cave).

 

2. The two single walls to the right of Solberg’s Tower should be bridges.

 

3. The single wall on the water near the eastern entrance to the Great Cave should be a bridge.

 

4. The single wall above the Nephilim Fort should be rocks on water.

 

5. The single walls below the Nephilim Fort should be totems.

 

6. The single walls on the islands around the Slith Fort should be trees.

 

7. The single wall above the Ruined Fort should be a pit.

 

8. The pit south of the Aranea Cave should be normal floor.

 

Given the size of the map, it's possible that I missed some errors, but hopefully this is most of them.

 

Also, and I appreciate this might not be a straightforward suggestion, but I'm wondering whether you might find the map more helpful if you added in an indication of the secret passages in a similar way to Duskwolf's original map? There are some places where there are links between different areas of Exile that only happen through secret passages, and these aren't always clear on your map as it is at the moment. One example that springs to mind is the route to Khoth's cave directly from the river through a secret door, avoiding all the fights with the demons that occur when using the other, less direct, routes. This route is actually opened up by the Empire in Exile 2, as you can see on Duskwolf's map! However, that might not be worth the hassle if it's not easy to generate from the map you already have.

[Galadrin]

Thanks again for those corrections. I'm having trouble figuring out which tiles are meant in #1 and #2, but the others are clear.

 

I certainly can do the secret passages and it's no real trouble to do so. What would you recommend for a graphic though? I was thinking a normal cave wall with an Exile 1 "s" letter superimposed over it in white.

[Ess-Eschas]

11 hours ago, Galadrin said:

I'm having trouble figuring out which tiles are meant in #1 and #2, but the others are clear.

 

Let's see if I can do better:

 

1. There's a large section of pit near the middle at the very bottom of the map. This is the one you pointed out earlier, with the single tile of water. Above that tile, there is a tile showing rocks on cave floor (or, perhaps less confusingly, gravel). This tile should be a bridge tile, so the river above connects to this single tile of water, allowing the river to flow into the pit.

 

2. If you look at the cave to the immediate left of this pit, you'll see some water passing through a little cavern with stalagmites on the right-hand side. On the path of the water are two wall tiles that stand alone. These should be bridges, so that the water tiles connect together to form a river, and allowing the cavern with the stalagmites to be reached without flying.

 

11 hours ago, Galadrin said:

I certainly can do the secret passages and it's no real trouble to do so. What would you recommend for a graphic though? I was thinking a normal cave wall with an Exile 1 "s" letter superimposed over it in white.

 

I actually quite like Duskwolf's original idea of changing the palette of the secret walls. This makes them very clear to see when looking at the map on a large scale. I think the meaning should be clear to someone looking at the map without explanation. Jeff is generally very good at placing and hinting at his secret passages, so in most situations I think the tint will simply look like it is highlighting something that is already there, rather than looking like a completely different type of wall. Here's a set of tinted walls broadly in Duskwolf's style, although with a slightly different tint to allow for the slightly different colour of Exile I's walls. For completeness, I've included a full-wall secret wall as well, although I don't think Jeff uses these in any of the Exile games:

 

https://we.tl/IXkyPqoC78

 

However, so long as the distinction is clear, I don't think it matters all that much how the secret passages are indicated!

[Harehunter]

Hey folks , Harehunter here.   I found myself in a rare idle moment checking on my website "harehunter.info" when I noticed  the link to the Exile II maps was broken.  The link was supposed  to point to Olly Clarks page, which seems to have finally been discontinued.  Many years ago I noticed just how transient web sites are.   Being an Archivist as well as a Cartographer, I have downloaded  many websites for just the eventuality of another site going offline.  Soooo...  I have added a section to my harehunter.info called The Vault.  I have uploaded Olly's page in it's entirety.  It was a really useful site. 

 

Anyway, if anyone is looking for Olly, enjoy.

 

And now it I must return down the rabbit hole, back to wonderland.