Iryth : My second project, a world this time!

[vorropohaiah]

great progress and dedication on this. looking forward to seeing this evolve

[Brennall]

Sorry for the absence ... some time spent in hospital I am afraid. However I am back and continuing with Iryth

Using the Air Pressure maps for summer/winter and the guidance from the climate cookbook online, I adjusted the precipitation and temperature in FT3 to match what the cookbook said was the likely climate. This took a while, and I still can think of some more tweaks to do (increased precipitation[water] following down the major rivers etc) but overall things are coming together.



As you can see few deserts, the topology and climate only suggested them on the west coast of the western continent. Some dry areas in the middle of continents and behind mountain ranges and a monsoon area on the easternmost continent South Eastern corner. Given the changes I was pleased to see Savannah and Chaparral appearing in logical places as the adjustments were made.

In addition I used the new sea climate image feature to add icecaps based upon temperature. These are much better than the randomised ones added in the Gaia view and with some adjustment to the image I used I could alter the position of the ice shelf easily.

So with Biomes generated, Temperature, precipitation and wind done I am at the stage where I can start to think about zooming in on the first region for development. I suspect I will focus around the inland sea on the easternmost continent. Hmm naming things also raises its ugly head!


finalclimate.jpg

[mbartelsm]

Thanks for all your posts, this thread has been incredibly helpful
However, I've taken a different approach myself for climates, after a lot of investigation and studying climate and vegetation zones here on earth, and after some help from the climate cookbook, I thought It would be best for me to personally place each zone on my world, It has given much better results than FT3 too which's climates are way too ambiguous for my taste, I investigated and studied specifically the Holdridge Life Zones, the Köppen Climate Clasification and the FRA2000. Since each of them only covers a certain topic (which places have which climates, which places have which vegetation and which climates have which vegetation) it was necessary to collate all the information together before attempting to actually place each climate and vegetation in the map, however I must say that the results are much more satisfactory than those of FT3 with the disadvantage of having no concrete temperature and rainfall information.

[Brennall]

Interesting approach, I had considered going that route myself, however the game manuals I am using sadly do not need that level of detail. The good news generally is that having all the precipitation, temperature and geo location information I can reference the various climate/biome classifications and get that detail on the zoomed in maps. However you are now tempting me to delve into doing it, even though I should start o focus on the initial racial distribution! ... Arghhh the temptation!

So far the other advantage so far is using the hires climate map as an overlay in google earth ... Actually the google mars map as it is the same size as my world (there was method in my madness).

[mbartelsm]

Hires map? any links? I don't really know what I'm looking for

[Brennall]

The map size I am using is 8192 x 4096 pixels. Due to the size I have not put it online and had not planned too till it was finished. Given the planetary size it scales to approximately 1.3miles per pixel, not quite the level I wanted but near the limit of what ft3 can handle. Luckily the size is also the limit that kmz files for google earth can handle before needing to use overlays.

The next level of zoom will take me down to a 10 degree lat lon box ... I am hoping to do that using vectors and contour lines with some subtle relief shading taken from ft3. After that a conversion to a "drawn" style if all goes according to plan. Then finally some old fashioned hex style maps for the wilderness encounters.

[mbartelsm]

ahhhh, HiRes map, dumb me

[Brennall]

As the creation of Iryth continues, I have descended from Satellite height mapping to something with a higher level of detail. This is an early draft of the map I am working on for the southern coast of the Darkstar sea. It needs lots of love from my roleplaying system Adventurer, Conqueror, King ( Adventurer Conqueror King | Autarch ) to get to the point it has domains and population centres. The map so far lacks the effects of humanity such as deforestation, it is very much how it would have looked during the last age under the rule of the Elves.

darkstarsea.jpg

Next on the list of things to do will be overlaying with a hex grid at 24 mile scale and getting a grasp on how the migration of the Närdik peoples would have moved from the east into the area. Once I have determined the influx of humanity and generated the locations of cities and towns, I will start to deforest the local area. Then will come the Hel-plague and the loss of half the population, which should have some interesting results at a population level.

Once I have completed the above tasks, I get down to naming the various communities and high level characters of the area.

Interesting times!

p.s. for those interested, this map is the southern coast of the inland sea on the eastern continent (I really must start naming things).

p.p.s I used the relief map and climate maps I prepared at the world level to generate this. In addition I used RPGMapMakers brush packs from here ( http://www.cartographersguild.com/ma...cks-ps7-6.html ) as I liked the hand drawn style. Lastly I used the image climate map from Fractal Terrains 3 with significant blur as the washed out pastels gave me a nice look for ground cover.

[Brennall]

The last few days I have been busy with the game aspects of my campaign, but managed to squeeze in time to add my first country based around the City-State of Keflavik ruled by the Jarl . Using the "hand drawn" version of my map with no colouring and a parchment background I defined the area of the country using an overlay hex grid of 6 miles diameter. I then used Adventurer Conqueror King to create baronies, counties etc. This gave me the locations of major settlements, using a viking town name generator at Viking town name generator I named and then labelled the settlements and added some local terrain names.

keflavik.jpg

The above shows the initial area of the Keflavik City state with relation to the Darkstar Sea southern coastal area.

Below is a more detailed map showing the local settlements.

keflaviksettle.jpg

I haven't done much in the way of Labelling before, so any advice would be most welcome.

If you have any interest in the other aspects of Iryth please visit Iryth - The Chronicles of Iryth

Next will be removing forest in the area around Keflavik based around settlement ages.

As usual comments and critique welcome

[vorropohaiah]

only thing i can think of is the labels outside the coast should be oriented in the same direction. some of them - dritsker and kirkjufell - would look better if they were along a similar path to the others