Reply With Quote
had to order this thanks to youlets hope its worth it!
I'm a fifth of the way through Guns, Germs and Steel, and I've decided to scrap all of the above and start again. Too many awesome ideas just from what I've read so far that need different geographies to what I've put in the map...
had to order this thanks to you
It's been pretty good so far! There are a few things he says that irritate me (such as essentially saying that humans are no longer apes...), but other than that it's given me ideas for loads of different ways to develop diverse and realistic cultures. It'll be good to hear what you think of it too! I was thinking it might be worth starting a thread talking about books that are useful for world building, but wasn't sure if it's really related enough to cartography...
If you like it then you should get Collapse too, it's essentially the opposite of GG&S since it deals with how civilisations die; I've already read that one and it's awesome. So much detail and so many different facets that make it really interesting. It's also pretty useful for world building since it means you can destroy your cultures in a realistic way, rather than the usual "yeah, this civilisation died, just because" kind of thing
i was thinking about a thread for good worldbuilding/cartography books we can share. i have a good for that i'd recomend
I've only got those two books that are in any way related sadly, so it'd be a bit of an empty thread if I started it!
I'm having a hard time coming up with a set of tectonic plates that both make sense and create the kind of continents I want... Basically I want something similar to my first map, but with a route that would link all the continents. I'm either getting plates that are far too small (i.e. every single one is smaller than Earth's) with unrealistic divergence zones or a continental layout I'm not happy with
Might just attempt to adjust the original one somehow unless someone has some ideas?
I think I've got it roughly making sense now, not 100% convinced by it though...
tectonic-plates.jpg
Standard stuff - arrows mean plate movement direction, hatched lines mean divergence, chevrons mean subduction. The greyish blobs are roughly where I'm thinking the continents will go.
Had a little time today to mess around making the continents more detailed in Photoshop. Apparently tiny islands are NOT fun to make.
### Latest WIP ###
continents-unfinished.jpg
Planned Alterations:
• All of the coastline of the continent just to the left of the centre of the map.
• Northern coastlines of the continent to the south-east of the central continent.
• Add some detail to the continent to the far south east.
• Make sure the coastlines look right at both full size and 100% zoomed in.
Some of the coastlines feel right to me, and I'm very happy with how some of the islands turned out. The ones just south of the centre of the map are my favourites, and also too the longest time to make. Anything look wrong to anyone? I'm not really convinced by the line of four big bays on the south-east coast of the continent north of the center...
Who needs sleep when you can stay up and make maps all night?
I've altered the coast a bit more, think it's good enough for now. I've also worked out where the high/low pressure should be.
Apparently the equator should be a solid band of low pressure, and then 20-35 degrees should be a solid band of high pressure. Then it's only the band around 60 degrees that should switch between h/l depending on the season. The poles also have a high pressure system there all year round. Funny that none of that was mentioned in the climate cookbook
### Latest WIP ###
January
pressure-january.jpg
July
pressure-july.jpg
I'm seeing a lot of teeny tiny islands with no sizeable heart - look at real-world archipelagos, there's generally something substantial amongst them like indonesia or the caribbean. unless there's a fitting in-world explanation for that i think they need revising.
Also, are these maps equirectangular, for the purpose of warping into a globe or other projections? I'm guessing so as you've included spheres above, though I notice you've not included any images of the poles from above/below - how's the warping there as it took me ages to get coastlines on my equirectangular map to look 'convincing' towards the poles and i still have some issues now, after lots of tweaking.
the climates look great!
Yah they did originally have larger islands, but I couldn't get them to look right for some reason. They're supposed to be similar to the smaller pacific islands - i.e. fewer large islands than you'd see in general - and there are a fair few miniscule atolls that are lost when I save at a lower resolution, which makes them look a bit more uniform than they actually are. I should probably make them less numerous I guess to make it feel more natural, but I wanted to have a huge number of them to fit in with an idea I had for a culture... I'll have to have a think and see what I can come up with, though I'll probably just end up adding some larger islands back in like you saidOriginally Posted by vorropohaiah
Yeah they are, just haven't bothered doing it yet. When I'm messing around with the coastlines I tend to switch back and forth between Google Earth and Photoshop/Illustrator to make sure they look ok on a globe:
North
pole-north.jpg
South
pole-south.jpg
Those are orthographic projections, focused in on the poles and showing about 30 degrees I think. The north could probably do with a little more smoothing, and the smaller southern continent could do with a more interesting coastline somewhere. It's not as bad as it could be though!
Cool! I'm torn between making a semi-realistic map like the first iteration I posted and skipping that to make a regional map focused on the most important area... D:
