Crafting a world - Vaalgaea

[Axelton Crow]

A height map for a world I've been working on. I tried to recreate some of the realistic formations and patterns of Earths height map, of which I simplified and have included for comparison. This map is not meant to look pretty (yet). It is to serve as the base information map for my fictional world, and I have been striving to finish the height map stage of this process, and am anxious to continue on to mapping weather patterns and biomes. I am looking to see if people can see the height map as being realistic, or at least believably natural, and cohesive. I also had hoped to give the world variation in having nearly 'everything' a good fantasy world should have, so if you see any shortcomings, please point them out. Any comments or criticisms are welcomed.

new_world_2015_v20_heightmapfinished.png

[Eld]

I do like the presentation of the north pole in this extra circle, it looks good and gives a very good impression as the pole is very distorted on the main map.
I can't judge if the position of the mountain ranges is geographically correct but I think they look well done.
The composition of coasts and seas looks nice and I can imagine many great trade routes, places for commercial hot spots and stuff. Interesting.
What's the relatio of land to water? It seems that water covers a bit more than 50% of the surface?
I'm curious to see how your work will proceed.

[Axelton Crow]

Yes, the northern continent is very distorted (and looks strangely pixelated because of the conversion process), the polar view of that continent is the one I actually drew, and converted it with G.Projector (bit of a rough job) to put it back on the "main" map.

Also I can confirm that the mountain placement is definitely not geographically "correct" per say, I chose to completely ignore plate tectonics in order to create interesting shapes that wouldn't likely exist within scientifically correct geography. Having plate tectonics would indeed determine mountain and island placement. The perfectionist in me almost wants to go back to square 1 and figure out tectonics.. but seeing other people do it in this forum, it seems very tedious! So for this version I simply placed things where they felt natural and/or interesting, and tried to at least emulate realistic formations, to make it "feel" like plate tectonics had happened somehow, without going into the what how or when.

And yes trade routes are something I am excited about, I purposely and specifically wanted very interesting waterways and many islands, to give plenty of room for seafaring adventures! The world now currently has 60% water coverage.

[Axelton Crow]

Moving on to ocean currents, I have realized I have several separated areas of water that would have their own currents, mostly unaffected by outside ocean currents, so I just tried to do my best to figure out what the Coriolis effect would do there. I'm curious as to what the experts have to say about them, do they look like they make sense or am I missing something?

new_world_2015_v20_currents.png

[Pixie]

Just had a good look at your maps.. This is an impressive start!

Yep, there is not way tectonics can explain your landforms, but if you choose to drop that ball, it's fine - the game can carry on. However, you have a lot of "highland" compared to Earth - this will make a lot of areas slightly cooler, less deserts, less mediterranean areas. I am curious about the actual pixel size of your heightmap - it looks like you dedicated long hours before posting your work here...

As for the currents, I wouldn't do any of it differently. Except that there is a "return polar current" in the south pole - which you can ignore as it doesn't affect any land mass.

Keep it up!

[Axelton Crow]

Thanks for the input Pixie! Your tutorial along with Geoffs are my main guides while doing these next steps.

When you say tectonics can not explain my landforms, do you mean coastlines, or heightmap, or both? I am not really willing to compromise my coastlines to a large degree (small adjustments would be fine) but I am considering placing tectonic plates, figuring out their movement like you and some other have done, and completely redoing the heightmap with that information, rather than just arbitrary placement. I am a bit of a perfectionist and i fear i will regret skipping over the tectonics..

The current heightmap was done in.. I would guesstimate about 10 hours or so, at the uploaded resolution (i specifically chose to work at a very small resolution in order to focus on simply defining the big picture for now, its only 800x400). But i would be willing to start over, if tectonics could be applied to the current coastlines.

[Azélor]

It looks good to me. Even if the gaps are small, the water will flow but the thermal exchange is much smaller.

[Axelton Crow]

Went ahead and attempted to cover the pressure zones. Not sure if there would actually be any low pressure zones on land (red), as Pixie stated in the tutorial, the only place this occurs on earth is the center of Eurasia during winter, but I placed them where I thought they may exist, if at all.

I may have also shifted the ITCZ and polar fronts a bit more dramatically than is realistic, but in a couple of places it was hard to figure out what they would do.

vaalgaea_pressure_v1.png

[Azélor]

I think you misunderstood. The Siberian high is a very high pressure system affecting a large portion of Asia in winter. And it turns into a low pressure system during summer because of the intense heating close to India. The same thing happen one every continent but with a different intensity.

So the red spots and the blue ones are both high pressure systems in your map. We also have high pressure systems over the ocean in the north during winter but it's more intense in summer.

You can use the images to help you with the pressure.

http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-map...an-enlarge.jpg
http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=h...d=0CB0QMygBMAE

About the Polar front: high pressure system will push it toward the pole in January. It won't move much in the south though because it's mostly water but it still moves by maybe 10 degrees. You could probably make it move a bit more without problem.


Lastly for pressure zones, generally, the ocean temperature are more constant than on land. In the cold season, the land get colder while the ocean remains warmer. Since hot air rises and cold air sink, the winds tend to blow offshore. And it is the opposite during the hot season. That is why the winter dry climates are much more common than the summer dry ones.

Close to the equator, the difference is smaller between January and July. Temperature tend to be hotter than the ocean all year long but not that much. It's still enough to draw the winds inland for most of the year.

[Axelton Crow]

Wow, can't believe its been a year and 4 days since I last updated this. I have slowly been picking away at this map every once in awhile and think I am finally satisfied with the coastlines. Regardless of what I said before, I do want to try to make some tectonics trickery happen here, at least to give me an idea of how to make the height map a little more believable. This is what I have so far, just basing the plate borders and directions off of the coastlines and landmass shapes. I ended up making over 30 plates I think, which is quite a bit more than is probably realistic, but maybe it'll make things more interesting as well. I am obsessed with having lots of little nooks and crannies as far as ocean inlets, islands, and mountain ranges go, so I think a lot of tectonic activity could help explain and cause that. I'll post a couple of versions, which will show the current landmass shapes with very light tectonic boundaries, and a second picture with the proposed tectonics. If anyone is into this sort of in-depth world building, I would love to hear some feedback, whether I'm on the right basic track, or if its totally ridiculous and completely wrong. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated as well.

vaalgaia_may2016_tec_v2_2.png

vaalgaia_may2016_tec_v2.png