Map of the World of Drakan

Discuss Drakan: Order of the Flame with fellow players and post any technical problems here where an 'unofficial' support team will try and help you. Gameplay help questions can go here too.
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Kellorkleft
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Map of the World of Drakan

Post by Kellorkleft »

Hello, everyone! I must admit I'm quite new to these forums, but am a long-time fan of the Drakan series. Being a childhood lover of The Ancients' Gates, after learning about the original game for the PC, my fascination of the game was sparked once more, and I felt myself more than eager to play The Order of the Flame. Thanks to this resourceful website, I was able to get this older game to work on my newer PC, and become amazed once more by the development team's creativity. Now that I've finished the game a little while ago, I now find myself lurking these forums to see what else lies in store.

Now that introductions are out of the way, I would like to point out that I *love* cartography. I love how helps define a universe as well as shaping a living, breathing world with a life of its own that you can only wonder about it and what lies beyond the explored. I love it so much, that imagine my dissapointment when I discover that there is no world map of the Drakan universe.

I'm not easily swayed, however. In fact, I see this as an opportunity. While there may not be an official illustration of the Drakan world, that doesn't mean we can't make one of our own. While I have a decent mental image of the world and landmass, I do not have a full memory on the locations and their shapes, and I'm finding it surprisingly difficult to find maps of the game online. This is where I need your help, community. If someone can collect, or show me where I can find the maps of locations from both games, I can make something that would resemble what the known world would look like. I will certainly keep you all posted on my progress and give rough concepts for us to discuss together in terms of how things should go.

mikros
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Post by mikros »

The game was a bit odd in that all areas were actually connected, weren't them? I mean, I seem to remember that Rynn and Arokh never made a travel off-screen.

And so, very little of the world is shown. There are those areas at the start of the game, with the snowy cannyons, then the tele-transporter and the coastal area.

The maps in the game were cool, being hand drawn instead of some other method of imaginery, by the way. I probably have them screencapped somewhere in my hard drive.

Kellorkleft
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Post by Kellorkleft »

I appreciate any help you're able to provide :)
I'm confident we can piece together a rough idea as to what the general landscape looks like. Thankfully, because there are no "travelling" transitions, we know much easier how things are connected to each other. They look odd, yes, but we still understand the area that they've scaled. We know that Rynn's village is in the heart of a river valley, one river of which could very well be one that connects to Surdana's in TAG. Additionally, there's consistency in the geography where the next area in the game is the Wartok canyons, which deposits water from the mountain source it rests at the foot of into the valley, and leads to a mountain range east of it that is likely responsible for the general shape and topographical nature of the region.
This, along with several other hints and ideas, some realistic estimates and comparisons to realism, combined with a little imagination, can actually lend a good idea on the rest of how the unexplored landmass must look like.

I've had a bit of luck uncovering a couple maps from a walkthrough site, but still need more locations from TAG. Right now I'm replaying through Order of the Flame to get the regions from that game as well, but I don't have as much time as I'd like to play through the game in a reasonable amount of time. Not that I'm saying impatience as an excuse...No, wait. That's exactly what I'm saying.
So far I have Rynn's Village, Surdana, Ravensholm, Kragmor, Shadowmire, and the Andrellian Isles.

Admin
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Post by Admin »

Yes, the only world map was the one in the Ancient Gates. The continents & land masses of the world have been put too close together for the purpose in the game. In a real world the land masses would be further apart.

The only other thing that is known about the world is on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drakan - go down to the Land section and there is some info there that gives some clue. But yes, it would be nice to see a map of the whole world showing continents etc. Also names for these continents and countries - there isn't any names other than the "Great Continent"

<i>"The world has several land masses. The largest continent called 'the great continent' covers the central area of one side of the planet. There is a central mountain range that runs from east to west which is where the Order of the Flame originated from. Rynn's village and Surdana are situated in the foothills of these mountains near the west coast.

There is a south eastern continent which is where Alwarren, the Succubi lair, Mount Tibor & Drakan City can be found. This is mainly a tropical climate and is where the final battle against the Dark Union took place 600 years before Rynn's time.

There is a northern continent, which covers the top of the planet and stretches down to almost meet the great central continent on its north western side. The Andrellian islands can be found in the short span of sea between these two continents. Ravenshold is on the southernmost tip of the northern continent.

The other two continents lie to the east and west of the central continent with the western one being unexplored and largely unknown to the inhabitants of the central continent. This continent can possibly harbor new species and civilizations unknown to the old and new Order of the Flame. The eastern continent is where Navros retreated to and is rumored to harbor vile magic and travel to this part of the world was forbidden by the Order of the Flame."</i>

This also might help - it's a desktop background with some of the world map shown www.adrian-smith31.clara.co.uk/wp_081024.jpg

Bregolas
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Post by Bregolas »

Hi Kellorkleft, your idea is very exciting - I wish you Good Luck and lots of patience ;)
Once I wanted to make a schematic view of the OOTF map, so I started by taking screens of ingame maps and levels in the editor. I gave it up fairly soon - as soon as I realized there isn't much logic in the way the areas are linked. Rather than linking level area overviews it's far better to complete the picture using your own imagination, think up some more realistic scale etc. Anyway, here are the screenshots of all the level maps as they appear in game, maybe they could be of some help. No copyright infringement intended and I really appreciate the way those maps are drawn and stylized - adds a lot to the game atmosphere! That's in case the game designer ever finds this thread :D

And here are the level maps of TAG that Brokaliv has drawn, you probably have them already. Mind the overall scale again as the locations are more practical than accurate...
Last edited by Bregolas on Mon Oct 22, 2012 11:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

Kellorkleft
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Post by Kellorkleft »

Thank you both so much for your help! I never thought to look at the wikipedia entry, and that wallpaper just blew my mind a little! I've already begun drawing an outline for what we have established. You've made this so much easier, Admin!
http://i1192.photobucket.com/albums/aa3 ... Sample.png
And Bregalos, you're awesome for having those maps and you should feel awesome for being a big help.
I was worried that collecting the maps would be difficult, but both these image dumps has given me pretty much everything needed! This is going to go a long way, you guys.

Onto geography discussion. It seems that the setting is a little contradicted in the geography in association with Rynn's village and Surdana. I had thought that Arokh's quoted words, "comes from the north" and "a few days march" would be easy enough to give indication, but when you look at Rynn's starting location in the game, she begins at the northern end of the Surdana region, next to the coast! So now I'm wondering how she got all the way up to there by travelling north without running into the other regions that would have a much quicker route to Surdana. Perhaps she travelled through a small pass around a mountain range along the coast to avoid the valley of the fallen and its dangerous inhabitants? That direction is much more East than North, but I suppose it's the best lead. However, the answer could lie in the reasoning that the direction of the valley's entrance is on the opposite side of where you would think it would be, which is to say the side facing Surdana. However, it is the Desert of Tears, which is not the entrance to the region , that is closest to Surdana. There could be a part of the valley not shown that may serve as somewhat of a crossroad between north and south? Btu that still leads to the question why she would go all the way north instead of just going east from there. Overall, it's pretty confusing.
In the meantime, however, I'll be drawing both maps separately, and worry about combining them when I can conclude the most probable explanation.

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