About Map 508

Map 508 is the fourth in a series of winter maps (Map 505 - 508), this one featuring a western coastline of a fictional land mass or island.  The most noteworthy feature about this map as compared to the others in the series are the cliffs.  These are meant to represent the fjiords of Norway or a volcanic island in the Norwegian Sea.  Access from the sea is therefore more challenging, as the cliffs make up a large portion of the coastline.

It is presumed that winds have swept away most of the heavy snow near the coasts, leaving a rocky surface with a light dusting of snow as shown by the colored texture (coded as Rough 1).  The snow becomes deeper further inland, however,  which is shown as pure white (coded as Rough 2).  As the terrain is relatively flat once you are on the high ground there are no snow drifts piled up at the base of hills as there are in maps 505-507.

The cliffs generally come in two varieties -- steep and extremely steep -- which is indicated by the thickness of the gray rocky shore.  These cliffs are coded as Rough 3 and Rough 4, respectively.  (Note that the cliff cells are generally placed on the inland side of the gray cliff artwork, not the seaward side.)

Where roads pass through towns they are coded as "roads," otherwise they are coded as a 50/50 mix of Rough 1 and Clear terrain (a slight improvement over the surrounding terrain which is Rough 1 only).  As you move inland the roads are coded as Rough 1, representing the deeper snow and poorer traction (which is still markedly faster than the deep snow that surrounds it, which is coded as Rough 2).

Bridges are coded as clear terrain.

The northern and central rivers are deep and uncrossable toward their mouth, but shallow and fordable (crossable) upstream near their source.  The portion that is shallow is coded as Rough 3.  The river whose source is off-map to the south is not crossable at any point.

I hope you enjoy the map.  Please send comments or bug reports to:

RikkiTikki@openwarsim.net

Thanks.
