Argentia Topographica | The World of Naos

[Tiluchi]

This looks great! Definitely a big fan of the color scheme and the general style- reminds me of an atlas from the mid-20th century.

[morne]

More progress on a variety of things, most notably new oceanography. I decided to try hand-drawn this time, and I think I'm mostly happy with how it turned out.

post_process_test copy.jpg

[Impractical Cartographer]

If I may interject:
When there is a geographic coordinate grid on the map, the town names should be aligned with the parallels.

For example:conic-names.jpeg

Also, the coordinate grid looks weird, like it's a fragment of another map. The tangent meridian should be in the center, but it is shifted to the east.
For this map, the tangent meridian should be 28 E, not 26 E. A small detail, but always.

What projection did you use for this map?

Also, the place names should be on the same side of the river/lake as the signature of that town.
names-rivers.jpeg

Besides that, it's a very cool map.

[The Colonel]

Absolutely, the color palette is great!
What software did you use?

[morne]

I welcome any and all advice and criticisms!

My primary inspiration/visual reference is the Pergamon World Atlas so hopefully that gives some context to what style I'm shooting for.

When there is a geographic coordinate grid on the map, the town names should be aligned with the parallels.
.

Wow, this is such a subtle thing and it makes a world of a difference. Did not even realize. Thank you!

Also, the coordinate grid looks weird, like it's a fragment of another map. The tangent meridian should be in the center, but it is shifted to the east.
For this map, the tangent meridian should be 28 E, not 26 E. A small detail, but always..

That's fair. I created a Equidistant Conic projection for the entire island (laziness), but all my data is properly georeferenced so it's easy to change the projection on the fly, and it does look better. That aside, I don't know why the central meridian of the projection was set to 26.. thought it had been 30!

Also, the place names should be on the same side of the river/lake as the signature of that town.
.

Yeah, this one's tough. The Maplex labelling engine is fantastic a lot of the time, but it does sometimes feel like I'm fighting against it. I'm not placing labels by hand so it comes down to tweaking the settings and feature weights to get the optimal output. But at a certain point I'll probably just have to except that not every label will be perfect.

post_process_test copy.jpg

[Impractical Cartographer]

Well done! Keeping my fingers crossed for you!

[rbnvgl]

Wow, design wise this is one of the best maps I saw here in the last time. Shows how much there is still to learn, also in the technical aspects.

I saw you made a underlying shaded relief. May I ask how you did this?
Also, is there some kind of backstory to this place you show on the map?

[morne]

Wow, design wise this is one of the best maps I saw here in the last time. Shows how much there is still to learn, also in the technical aspects.

I saw you made a underlying shaded relief. May I ask how you did this?
Also, is there some kind of backstory to this place you show on the map?

Thank you!

The shaded relief is made by generating a hillshade layer from the source heightmap that my topography is made from. It's set to overlay at a lower opacity to give the shaded effect.

I do have some backstory---this world will be used for a ttrpg I'm making, which is a fantasy world set with early industrial era technology and magic. I haven't really compiled my notes too much on Aljieudum in particular, but it is one of the more advanced nations in this particular region of the world, being a large mercantile power on the sea. The Basentia Omnia is located in Meripol, Aljieudum's capital, which is one of the more prestigious universities that trains Acronists, this world's version of wizards, which gives them a ton of power in a variety of industries. For instance, Air Acronists use Gravity to power the Aerostats and Railways, and Space to control the Prismagates that allow for instantaneous travel to other major cities.

[morne]

Well, I decided to take a step back and work on the global scale for a bit before coming back to regional maps.

naos_topo.jpg

The source heightmap has a lot more detail, but this simplified view provides a nice digestible overview of the topography.

The really cool thing, though, is my deep dive into climate simulation. I've long sought after a way to simulate or even just prescribe climate to a given world heightmap, rather than do it by hand. Songs of the Eons does a great job, actually, at prescribing climate using a variety of methods, but the output format leaves a little to be desired and requires a decent bit of cleanup. There are a lot of GCMs out there, but 99% of them are out of reach for mere mortals, requiring both a Phd in climatology and access to a super computer. However, I came across this very recent tutorial that uses a relatively new GCM, called ExoPlaSim, that uses Python to simulate exoplanet climate using methods that are actually feasible on consumer hardware. And the tutorial by Nikolai on top of that makes it relatively easy to dive in and actually get it working.

With that said, I've ran through nearly 4 decades of simulation on my world with the following results.

Jan/July Pressure Systems
jan_pressure.png
july_pressure.png

Jan/July Temperature
jan_temp.png
july_temp.png

Jan/July Precipitation
jan_precipitation.png
july_precipitation.png

Jan/July High Altitude Winds
jan_wind_high.png
july_wind_high.png

Jan/July Surface Winds
jan_wind_low.png
july_wind_low.png

There is a ton more data that is generated, and I have monthly data for all of these. The atmospheric model is actually 10 layers so there are 10 layers of winds, I'm just showing the highest and lowest layers here. Once the climate simulation has reached a nice equilibrium, I will be generating climate maps from this data.

[Ilanthar]

This is spectacular! I love the shape of your continents. And the map(s) are gorgeous already.