[WIP] Building a world from tectonics onward

[MrBragg]

I'll probably post something in the way of more detailed feedback once you get to the later stages, keep up the good work .

Good job building suspense I'm currently working on figuring out / fighting with Wilbur so I can have at least a crude hiehgtmap before moving on to the next steps that require rough elevations. This--together with figuring out what geography is appropriate for the various regions--is taking me a fair bit of time, so it might be a little while before I get to the next stages, but I'll definitely appreciate any feedback whenever you're able to provide it

Really great work! I'm going through the same process on my world so it's good to see how others are approaching it. I'm no expert enough to give you any good feedback other than "keep it up!"

Thanks! Encouragement is very much appreciated!

[MrBragg]

Ok, so I created a criminally-simple outline of topography and, with that as a base, took quite a few stabs in the dark and made temp / precip maps. Doing the temperatures felt ok, but I have much less confidence in the precipitation maps since a lot of those felt kind of like voodoo; in a lot of places there doesn't seem to be enough rain, but I don't really have a lot of intuition for what's reasonable here. In any case, here's what I came up with:

Criminally-simple topography (colors in 1000 m increments)
topogrphy.png

Temps: Jan / Jul
temp_jan.png temp_jul.png

Precip: Jan / Jul
JanPrecip.png JulPrecip.png

I fed these into the climate script and, after hunting down some subtly mis-colored pixels, got a result. I haven't spent much time mentally processing this to find things that don't make sense (or editing out the abrupt transitions), but figured I'd put this up here to solicit thoughts. In particular, if anyone has thoughts on the precipitation maps and where I'm missing rain, I'd love to hear them

output.png

[Charerg]

Well, I went ahead and did my take on the currents and the pressures to get an idea of how the climate patterns should turn out in my view. The oceanic circulation ended up similar to the one you did, with some differences here and there. Keep in mind that doing ocean currents for a fantasy world is a matter of interpretation to some degree, so this isn't necessarily "more right" than the original. That said, feel free to adopt whatever features you like.

Currents:

 

Currents_ii.png

In regards to the atmospheric pressures, it's largely the same story: the overall pattern is similar to the pressure maps you made, with differences here and there (some of them affected by the slightly different currents).

Pressures:

 

January:
Jan Pressures.png

July:
Jul Pressures.png

So, looking at the climate maps, the temperature maps are probably ok, but the precipitation could definitely use some work. Looking at the climates, this turned out to be an extremely arid world, which probably doesn't make sense with these landmasses. The first thing that pops out is the equatorial dryness, the areas covered by the ITCZ should receive vast amounts of precipitation. Although looking at the topography (which is criminally simplistic, indeed ), you appear to have a lot of coastal mountains (maybe a bit too many, some of those could be partially island arcs, for example), but I still think the interiors would receive more rainfall than 0-10 mm during the wet season.

Especially the eastern continent, which doesn't have giant mountains all along the coast, should be a lot more wet along the equator. The mid latitudes seem suspiciously dry as well, even well past actual desert latitudes. Some polar steppes turn up right along the coastline of the southern continent, which doesn't seem a likely scenario. So I'd say you could definitely increase the precipitations almost everywhere beyond the desert latitudes (20-30s).

[MrBragg]

Wow, thanks for the detailed feedback! I'm glad someone else agrees that my precipitation is messed up I think I'm clearly missing something, so back to reading for me.

In the meantime, you gave me an idea re: getting rid of some of the coastal mountains. In relatively recent geologic history I have the eastern coast of the west-central continent being a retreating subduction zone, so I think there's at least some justification for turning that Andean range into a bunch of back-arc basins and island arcs. I sketched that change in and also went ahead and amalgamated your current / pressure ideas with mine, so here's where things stand while I work on figuring out what I'm messing up with the precipitation.

Currents
currents_2.png

Jan / July Pressure and Winds
Jan_pressure_2.png Jul_pressure_2.png

[MrBragg]

I went back and redid the precipitation maps (twice, actually) and managed to eliminate most of the arid-hellscape problems of my first iteration. Turned out that a lot of my problems stemmed from not having much overlap between the summer and winter ITCZ positions, so increasing the ITCZ size a bit and pulling it closer to the equator for both seasons helped put rainforests where they should be. If anything it looks like I now have too much Aw, particularly across the middle of the western continent, though maybe this isn't unreasonable. The BWh cropping up right along the coasts of the two northwestern continents also seems a bit odd, but it wasn't clear what the justification would be for adding precipitation in that region. I'm also still contemplating breaking up the Andean range on the eastern of those two continents to allow in more extratropical storm precipitation, but I'm 100% sold on that idea yet.

Precipitation, Jan / July
Jan_precip3_lat.png Jul_precip3_lat.png

Climates, take 2
output3_latlong.png

[MrBragg]

Took a break from planet-scale things for a bit to work on a tiny corner of one continent to try and get my head around Wilbur. Definitely still have a lot to learn, but I've finally managed to get results that aren't facially ridiculous, so I'll consider that forward progress

Untitled.png

[MrBragg]

To resurrect a seemingly dead thread, I've been toying around a bit with topography on the relatively small scale of a few hundreds of km, focusing first on some back arc basins / volcanic arc off the eastern coast of one of my larger continents. I'd say the goal here is "plausibly abstract realism" with a resolution of ~1 km / px, so I'm not necessarily aiming to depict every ridge and valley but hopefully the overall layout of topography and relative heights of things make at least some semblance of sense.

BAB.png

[Harrg]

Nice. It`s looks good. I really love worlds like yours, made in a similar technique

[Ilanthar]

Looking good! Nice level of details.

[MrBragg]

Thanks both of you! Hoping the process gets a little bit faster as I work at it, though we'll see...