File:Kentucky Route Zero Map.svg

DescriptionKentucky Route Zero Map.svg	English: Real world map of where part of the game Kentucky Route Zero takes place.
Date	28 April 2017
Source	Based on OpenStreetMap data, using Kentucky Route Zero game map as reference.
Author	Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Inspired by the work of Cardboard Computer. Adaptation by nclm.
SVG development InfoField	The SVG code is valid.   This map was created with SVGOMG.

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

You are free:

• to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
• to remix – to adapt the work

Under the following conditions:

• attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
• share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0CC BY-SA 4.0 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 truetrue

This work contains information from OpenStreetMap, which is made available under the Open Database License (ODbL). The ODbL does not require any particular license for maps produced from ODbL data. Prior to 1 August 2020, map tiles produced by the OpenStreetMap Foundation were licensed under the CC-BY-SA-2.0 license. Maps produced by other people may be subject to other licences.Open Database LicenseODbLhttp://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/true

So, here’s how the game map was recreated in vector and under a free license:

1. Raw OpenStreetMap from the game geographical area was extracted using Mapzen Metro Extracts and downloaded as IMPOSM shapefiles.
2. The SHP files were selectively converted to SVG using Kartograph.py with a Mercator projection. The converted layers are:
   • Main roads (motorway, trunk, primary, secondary, tertiary).
   • waterways.
   • waterareas.
   • landusages.
3. The result was cleaned in Inkscape using the map from the game for reference, as previously reassembled from screenshots by BabblingFishes for the Kentucky Route Zero Wiki.
   • Only the Mammoth Cave National Park was kept from landusages.
   • Only the Nolin River Lake was kept from waterareas.
   • Smallest waterways were removed.
   • Roads not appearing in the game were removed.
   • Roads appearing in the game but not converted as part of the initial SVG conversion were re-edited in from a separate non-selective conversion.
   • Multiple lanes roads have been made single lane.
   • Roads were sorted between the ones navigable in-game and the ones around, in order to allow different styling.
   • The Interstate 65 was joined into one single path and separated on top of the others.
4. The saved SVG file was cleaned up using svgomg, some regular expressions in RegExr, and manual editing in Gedit.
5. Finally, a simple CSS style sheet was written, closely inspired by the original art direction from Cardboard Computer (minus path simplification, aliasing effect, and on-map symbols).

The process was for sure empirical! It could have been made in far less steps, without opening Inkscape at all, for instance by directly editing the data in QGIS before any conversion to SVG, by writing a better Kartograph configuration file, and by specifying the CSS at this stage. Anyway, I’m happy enough with the result.