Nameless fantasy world

[gammatelier]

Hello, First post here!

Yesterday I created a fantasy world just for fun. I tried to give it a satellite-like look, but it's not as smooth as somes i can see here, so i still have a lot to learn.


Basically, I tried to make a functionnal world, with many different areas, weathers... I hope it looks interesting. I randomly put names on the map, but I never was good with finding names anyway ;p (but easier to talk about the map this way)

World philosophy:
The areas near the old sea would be like a middle age europe: lots of kingdoms, duchies, baronnies, etc...

Northeast of it is a very big fertile "valley", a very populated area and old civilization too.

The Dathic Jungle would be like the Rainforest: hardly anyone living here, wild tribes and such.
The vertical "valley" at its west would be quite populated too, and a center of trade, between east and west

farwest is the most populated area on the world, thanks to the water of the longest river which pass through the pontic deset, home of nomad mongol-like tribes.


Humm, not much to add I guess...

If anyone have question or critics to make, they're very welcome! ^^

PS: if anyone has a name for this world, you're welcome!

[Gandwarf]

It looks very good gammetelier, have some reputation!
Highlights for me are:

- The realistic looking mountains and terrain
- The colors
- The font

Some criticism:

- Your rivers seem to very large/wide. On this scale not all rivers should be shown or be this large/wide.
- The rivers don't act naturally. Rivers normally don't split as water takes the way of least resistance. The same goes for outlets of lakes: multiple outlets are rare.

As this is your map and your world, feel free to do what you want with your rivers. I am just saying that in the real world these rivers would be unnatural.

So, are you going to add places of interest, like cities?

[Ascension]

Only two things I have to add is: I can see that you're going for deltas so put those closer together and make the branches smaller/closer to the coast; and second while not technically wrong it does stretch logic for the river to cross the desert to skirt the mountains run through a gap and continue on...instead it should probably connect to that little wisp of a river near the coast. Otherwise, great colors and nice layout.

[landorl]

I have to agree with the others. I love the terrain! The highlands and mountains look great, but the rivers have some pretty bad problems. First, I agree with Gandwarf that they are too wide. Second, you have multiple rivers that drain in two different areas. Also, the long river in the Pontic Desert just doesn't look right. It just looks like it wants to drain to the sea below the desert, but is forced all of the way across to the other sea.

[gammatelier]

humm, thanks for the comments...I will read carefully the "how water flows" topic ^^

[rdanhenry]

I see the River Police have already issued you a warning, so I'll let it go, except to say that if you want that long river through the Pontic Desert for narrative purposes, you can keep it -- you just need to put in some terrain to direct it across the desert instead of looking like it should be finding a much quicker path to the sea.

I like the colors and textures and this is not my favorite type of map. It looks nice. The distribution of biomes seems a bit random, but in a high fantasy world that doesn't matter so much. If you are going more realistic, you have to ask why you have a rain forest east of a desert. If the desert is just at a desert latitude for this world, so is the forest. If the desert is a rain shadow of the mountains, the rain forest is likewise shadowed... unless south is up, then right is west and the rain all falls on the forest and the mountains take what's left to leave the Pontic Desert dry. In fact, you can justify all the deserts as rain shadows of mountains if you make south up on the map! South at the top is more unusual, so it'll make it cooler, too. You'd need to change the name of the Southern Ocean, though.

Definitely a nice looking map, just fix up the waterways.

[Coyotemax]

Very nice texturework.

Gave me a few ideas

[gammatelier]

I see the River Police have already issued you a warning, so I'll let it go, except to say that if you want that long river through the Pontic Desert for narrative purposes, you can keep it -- you just need to put in some terrain to direct it across the desert instead of looking like it should be finding a much quicker path to the sea.

Yeah, the Police river is frithening I should show some hills or mountains to direct it at the beginning.
Also, yeah i know they are large, but wanted to represent them more than draw them really (I know you can barely see any river from a earth wide space photo)

I like the colors and textures and this is not my favorite type of map. It looks nice. The distribution of biomes seems a bit random, but in a high fantasy world that doesn't matter so much. If you are going more realistic, you have to ask why you have a rain forest east of a desert. If the desert is just at a desert latitude for this world, so is the forest. If the desert is a rain shadow of the mountains, the rain forest is likewise shadowed... unless south is up, then right is west and the rain all falls on the forest and the mountains take what's left to leave the Pontic Desert dry. In fact, you can justify all the deserts as rain shadows of mountains if you make south up on the map! South at the top is more unusual, so it'll make it cooler, too. You'd need to change the name of the Southern Ocean, though.

Definitely a nice looking map, just fix up the waterways.

oh....you mean that in a world rotating, in the southern hemisphere, the deserts are east of rainforest? (trying to follow) your explanation is actually what i thought up, but i don't really understand why i should inverse North and south (here, i thought it was cool to have most of land masses in the southern hemisphere more than in the northern one)

The "valley" between the dathic jungle and pontic desert is in fact a zone wherre the two continent land masses collide. south of it, both are now forming the same mountains, but with time, the "valley" will get narrower.
Same goes for the long "valley" in the northeast: it's a collision between the big land masses that circles the old sea and the doryan sea, and a north-east "small" continent.


thanks for the critics!

And as for doing it, i just created randomly some textures, then, put them using a mask...was like drawing really, just when i was making a line, a chain of mountain appeared. Did that in 5 hours i think

[Steel General]

First off.. Welcome Aboard!

Love the colors, etc. The "problems" with the rivers have already been covered, so we'll leave that alone.

Looking forward to seeing more from you.

[rdanhenry]

I was wrong, sorry. Prevailing winds near the equator are from the east, so it is fine as is.