Reply With QuoteI can change things, like add mountains etc... But it's going to be impossible for me to do plates afterwards?
PS:
Put simply, with tectonics there's no point to doing it AFTER drawing the map and no point to doing it 'part way'. The point of it is to make the arrangement of land and mountains on your map look realistic. Start from scratch, planning out the plates on a proper globe, with particular emphasis on their movement (as movement influences their shape) and only when you have that worked out transfer to a projected map. If you don't do that, your plates are going to be completely wrong anyway.
Doing it on a map you've already drawn is pointless as you've already drawn it and all you can do is post hoc justification hand waving. Doing it without really understanding spherical geometry and applying it to your work is pointless because you need the spherical geometry to get things right enough for the tectonics to matter especially as tectonics requires an even deeper understanding of spherical geometry to get right than just drawing shapes since it's all about movement of shapes occupying large portions of the globe. You can't just work this out on a map.
PS: Here are some Teutonic Plates
Last edited by Hai-Etlik; 03-29-2015 at 04:11 AM.
I can change things, like add mountains etc... But it's going to be impossible for me to do plates afterwards?
PS:
So if I can't do plate is the next thing rivers then climates?
No, the point is that the tectonic plates are like the structure of a building. You can change it after it's finished but you will also have to demolish/change a lot of other things. Plates will influence mountains placements, volcanoes, formation of archipelagos (Japan, Indonesia for example) and mountains will influence the climates, how the water flows from point a to point b...
I'm prepared for that, and I want to do it at this stage before I get too much further in.
Why don't you just take a map of Earth's tectonic plates, choose a region that seems right for you, and use it.
Hmm?
And use the land masses already created? Or put possibly land masses in instead?
Well, I was thinking that your problem was in getting plates that work together, moving in realistic ways. If you take real plates for that, you can't go wrong. Then you can put whatever land you want on top of them. It was just a thought ...
Hmm, and I'll need to do my whole planets plates at once, I can't just do one part then do the others later?
Yup if you want to do tectonics you need to do the tectonics for the entire planet. The tectonics in one region have implications across the globe. Give it a try, make a rough tectonic map of your entire world and see how it goes.
