(As yet unnamed) Building a believable conworld

[NadirtheFox]

Hi everyone Well... First thing: sorry for bad English, but I am from Poland so English is not my first language and I am still learning it.
So... Recently my friend asked me to create a world map for our RPG setting that we started working on about one year ago. I agreed but because I always aim for realism I can't just draw few weird-looking continents with pictographic mountain ranges and randomly placed island chains and call it a day. No. I am going to make it as realistic as possible! (Even if it is JUST for RPG!)
My goal is to create scientifically plausible world (at least in terms of geography), make game-usefull world map and probably separate maps for each continent.
For now I have this:
womatwip1.jpg
(Grey regions are meant to represent mountainous areas) It is just a quick draft with no details - I just wanted to see how will this look like. I think I will keep the shapes and general locations of continents, although these continents feel pretty massive, so maybe I will try to make them a little bit smaller... And probaby I will add another small continent/big island somewhere... And this world is definitely lacking island chains Ok, that will be quite a lot of big changes actually... I don't know... What do you think about it?
As for tectonics:
womatwip1tectonics.jpg
(Red lines- rifts, black lines- transform boundaries, green lines - collision boundaries, blue lines - subduction) I will have to make some corrections there, I think. When the mid-oceanic ridges and most of the subduction zones seems right to me (with one or two exceptions), I am not so sure about the rest. Especialy this thing on the southern continent seems odd :/ I can't really explain it, but I wanted to justify this mountain range in the middle (and create series of rift valleys ). The shape of this continent is based on world what I created as a kid when I had no idea about plate tectonics... Every suggestion appreciated
So that is it for now. I just wanted to know what do you think about it Again sorry for bad English and thanks for your time!

[Naima]

Its already very belieaveable and the continental shapes are very good, I will leave to tectonic experts to comment further on the plaques .

[Pixie]

I think this is the best start at tectonics that I've ever seen. It's perfectly clear in terms of big pangaea-like continent breaking up and leading to the four present continents. And you've got island chains in the right places, and I love how you expertly handled that bit on the south end of the western continent.

Here's the usual suggestions:
- get these two pieces of software: g.plates and g.projector, both of them are free.
- use g.projector to see your planet with different projections - ortographic is very useful, specially to have a look at how it all looks at the poles. Gimp also allows to morph the map into a polar projection and draw on it, it's a bit weird but I find it very useful sometimes.
- use g.plates to better determine the movement of plates, if you want the extra detail (which is very handy when making mountain chains) - search for the user Charerg here at the guild and have a look at his main thread, where he worked extensively with g.plates.

For people working on tectonics, at some point I suggest that they try to paint a map of the age of the oceanic crust, like this one:2310_LeChampMagnetique_1-794052.jpg
Could you do it for your world?

I look forward to the next developments.

[ChristosLegacy]

I really like the: Draw base on tectonic plates.
However as a fantasy enthusiast my self I do not really feel like you need to make everything perfect.
I like the freedom and randomness of unexplained effect. I say that however total chaos will ruin a map.
So in my opinion keep it up just try to be a little more chaotic as well as orderly

[NadirtheFox]

Thank you for comments
Naima: I am not sure if I will agree, but I am glad you like it.
Pixie:

It's perfectly clear in terms of big pangaea-like continent breaking up and leading to the four present continents.

I guess it is always a good idea to give to continents at least ilusion that they once formed one bigger supercontinent. It seems more natural (at least to me)

get these two pieces of software: g.plates and g.projector

I tried installing g.projector, but my computer refuses to open it as it is "unknown aplication" but g.plates works perfectly fine, so maybe I am doing something wrong.

Gimp also allows to morph the map into a polar projection and draw on it,

Actually I am using photoshop for that, but it also have this option. I use it sometimes, but I don't like it as it just moves problem to a different place. It would be the best to draw on a sphere... (What as I think about it is kind of doable - I can use "draw feature" option in g.plates to draw outlines for continents and then morph it into rectangular projection...)

(...)I suggest that they try to paint a map of the age of the oceanic crust(...)Could you do it for your world?

I will definitely try, but for now I have no idea how to do it - the central continent complicates stuff as it is locked between spreading rifts (somewhat like antarctica) so it is not mooving away from them, but instead they move away from it.
******
I do not have updated maps for you, because temporarily I don't have access to my compuer so I am stuck with working with pencil and piece of paper, but I'll get back to work as soon as I will be able to. I promise

[NadirtheFox]

ChrystosLegacy: (sorry I made this post earlier, but as I am new on the forum I have to wait before my posts shows up) I got the point and I guess it is fine, but it won't work with this world. Setting is intended to be focused more on technology than on magic, so it is not this usual chaotic one and it can't explain random terrain and unnatural climates.
And this world is not going o be perfect I just want to keep general geography and climates as close to realistic as I can. The rest? Who knows how it will end

[NadirtheFox]

Quick update.
I did some reworking with gplates (rotation files are headache!) and here are the results:
reworked.jpg
(Note that these are only parts of continental crust, not actual coastlines) It still needs some tweaking (or a lot actually...) but it is slowly getting closer to what I intended... Or at least these continents are less overwhelming now
Here are some eyeballed tectonical boundaries:
image_0.00Ma.jpg
(I left one ocean empty as it is pure guesswork)
I know that these are preaty big changes, but I feel like it is better now. And, to be fair, I am posting this clearly unfinished state because I will be gone for a few days (again!) and I have no idea when I will be able to uptade this world :/
I hope you like this new version

[Pixie]

G.plates doesn't "add" new land, like island chains, so this new version, in a way, looks less plausible. Summer often stops these projects of ours, the guild will be here when you come back, no worries

[NadirtheFox]

It took longer than I expected... After a lot of struggling to get everything right (and trying to get my computer to work properly...) I've decided to redo pretty much everything. So yeah, there you have updated map with some wip names (becuse calling continents "A", "B", "C" etc. can be confusing)
conworld.jpg
Even though there are no mountains marked yet, coastlines are far from being finished and isands will be changed (i drafted them to show where they are going to be), I am realy satisfiied with how it looks now. Hopefully I will not have to do any bigger changes.

But there is more! I managed to create more-or-less acurate continentl drift model using gplates:
image_200.jpg
200mya there existed one big pangaea-like supercontinent. There are some odd holes in this model because crust in those places got deformed during colisions later on.
image_160.00Ma.jpg
160mya due to mantle superplume the supercontinent broke into two major pieces pourly connected in the west. Also narrow sea opened in the east of Australis
image_120.00Ma.jpg
120mya another sperplume (or younger part of previous one) caused further break up. Central Tropical plate separated from Australis and Northern T. pate separated from Nurian subcontinent causing rift between them to close, Nurian plate started mooving to the north and Zantu with Southern Tropical plate also separated from Australis. Meanwhile the rift in the east of Australis died off and unnamed fragment of land separated from Interium.
image_80.00Ma.jpg
80mya sea between two major Tropical plates finaly closed forming mountain range. Same thing happened in eastern Australis. Subduction of mid oceanic ridge caused Eastland and Kimdia to separate from Interium. Southern tropical plate separated from Zantu and subduction zone forming on its eastern edge caused plate to rotate clockwise.
image_40.00Ma.jpg
40mya Southern tropical plate started colliding with Tropica. Subduction on the eastern edge of Kimalayan plate (Between major Interium plate and Kimdian plate) ripped Kimdia from Eastland. Also rift formed throug Interium (it may be associated with subduction of Kimdiand oceanic plate?) (Aaaaand I have just noticed weird behaviour of island arc in the south of Kimdia... This should not happen!)
The "island arc" in the south of Autralis does not have typical back arc basin - there is area of extended crust instead of ridge and oceanic crust.
(As a side note: I have to admit that gplates is a great tool but with weirdness of my computer it can easily become pain in the ass... From unknown reasons I can't save rotation files in ".rot" format so I am saving them as ".gpml" but this way I can't open them in notepad or any text editor so to correct mistakes like wrong plate id i have to load corrected rough rotation file (all rotations set to 0) and start settig everything from the begining. Also creating flowlines seem to cause gplates to crash )

So that is it. What do you think about all of this? Is it ok or I did somthing horribly wrong? Feedback appreciated

[Pixie]

Sorry for the long time to produce any feedback.. Hope you are still around, because your work with g.plates produced a really nice output.

I think you could call it "Done" with the Pangaea break up model and go on with the next steps of world creation - basic/rough topography - then oceanography (currents) - then climates.