MAPS

MAPS is a lore-friendly retexture of the two battle maps in the game. The main battle map is the detailed map done by the cartographer Nataly Dravarol in 4E 182. It has all the cities, hamlets, roads, rivers and other notable features illustrated. What makes it a "battle map", is it has circles and squares added to mark the imperial and stormcloak strongholds. The second battle map is the simple hand-drawn map that marks the stormcloak and imperial encampments along with the joining roads. It's used as a reference for commanders in the field.

UPDATE 7/30/2015: SkyrimFantom was kind enough to make the German text translation for the main map, so there's now an "Auf Deutsch" version in the "optional" downloads section. Choose the appropriate size for your setup.

One may think it's a bit crazy to use a 4K texture for something like a map, and I don't blame anyone for thinking that. But, if you really want all the text and details to be sharp in game, then that's what's required. For the the cruder "field" map, that may be overkill, since it's not very detailed to begin with, but I'm offering it for those who want it.

The vanilla battle map textures are only 512 x 512, while the hi-res packs versions are 1K. Personally, 1K doesn't really preserve enough of the detail to make the text legible, so I would recommend using the 2K version, at least for the diffuse textures. I'm offering versions with a half-sized normal map to help conserve resources, since a map doesn't have much relief anyway. Therefore, the normal map has secondary importance (and it's shared between the two textures). You won't see a big difference when using a reduced sized normal map.

I tried to maintain the original aged, worn, and dirty look, while still making the important details standout enough to be clearly legible. Not much else to add, only choose the version which suits your particular setup.

UPDATE: I've added some "optimized" versions as well, for people who want to have the detail of the larger textures, but save on VRAM. These optimized versions have the diffuse (color) textures saved in DXT1A compression (with a 1-bit alpha) which allows the double layer textures to be the same file size as a single layer texture. The bigger the texture, the bigger the VRAM savings. The only downside, is you get a rougher edge on the outside of the map where the mask is, but the maps are torn and rough anyway, so it shouldn't be an issue for people.

"MAPS... They don't love you