World Map for my Campaign - WIP

[philipstephen]

You are an awesome resource Su Liam... how did you develop your knowledge in this area?

regarding the fractal nature... some of it is likely heightened by the deep gouges in the land that look like wide rivers...

i imagine these as canyon like fault lines that fractured at the time that big crater was created about a 1000 years back...

but maybe they would not be so jagged? or they would be placed differently? they kind of radiate outward from the craterous Shadowlands.

I will not likely get more work on this done for a few weeks, but I will see about softening some of my fractals, or at least varying them a bit more...

thanks for your input...

phil

[Juggernaut1981]

Looking at this, I'm very worried about the connections between your mountain/faultlines.

Faultlines aren't "spider's web". Plate techtonics in really crude terms is crashing sheets of playdough into each other. So you will have a ring fault line or maybe a sort of "straightened circle-edge" at one point where two plates have collided. The tectonics of this place don't quite work.

Style wise, I'm all over this like a fat kid on chocolate. It's got a bit too much of a "MMORPG Spruik-Map" feel at times, but I like it in general. Knowing me, I'd get the brightness and dial it back 5 spots probably.

[su_liam]

You are an awesome resource Su Liam... how did you develop your knowledge in this area?

Thanks. I have wide and trivial knowledge, thanks in large part to nearly twenty years in college trying for an undergraduate degree. I am now two terms away from a BS in Geography. Also, planetbuilding is a personal obsession of mine. Thus the Geography major where I failed in computer science, engineering, and (oh God!!!) English.

regarding the fractal nature... some of it is likely heightened by the deep gouges in the land that look like wide rivers...

i imagine these as canyon like fault lines that fractured at the time that big crater was created about a 1000 years back...

Something that had an effect like that a mere 1000 years ago? This place would probably make Mordor look like the Garden of Eden. With the crust so badly contorted, ripped and fractured, the place would probably be dotted with areas of flood basalt volcanism. A lot of this continent might resemble Io. Nuees ardentes and ignimbrite deposits are another bit of fun you might see a lot of. You have Stephen Gillett's World Building book, right? Look at his quote from the American Journal of Science on page 59. Actually look at that whole chapter. Dragons and balrogs... whatever. I'm more afraid of sudden death from gaseous lava clouds.

but maybe they would not be so jagged? or they would be placed differently? they kind of radiate outward from the craterous Shadowlands.

Look at the Caloris Basin on Mercury. Big [b]WHAM[/i] there. The ridges and channels from the impact should probably mostly be oriented concentrically rather than radially. Expect a few radiating structures, but only a few and much straighter, not spiralled so much.

Also that wham would probably be an extinction level event. This is more Aftermath, even after a millennium, than Middle-Earth. Mad Max, The Day After, A Boy and His Dog, Clan of the Cave Bear, Quest for Fire, mix the worst of those and remember, there are still bombs under the ground that could be compared to Mount St. Helens as, "the explosion of a hydrogen bomb with the bursting of a firecracker." Eeep!

I will not likely get more work on this done for a few weeks, but I will see about softening some of my fractals, or at least varying them a bit more...

thanks for your input...

phil

Heh. Yeah, I'm working on getting a fast emergency loan to complete my school, and working, and then, oh yeah, actually going to school, and on the off chance that I get some spare time, maybe doing my own world(s). I really need to win the lottery so I can concentrate on important things. Worldbuilding!

@juggernaut The cratering event phil is talking about is such a major and recent exogenic process as to eliminate all signs of endogenic tectonic effects(is there any other kind?). In some ways this is like the topography of Manhattan island, the normal structures are completely overwhelmed by other influences.

[philipstephen]

I am not sure how this would affect things, but the secret of how that crater was made...

...if you are a player in my game, stop reading now...

... the secret is that it is the result of a metaphysical and semi-physical world-tree being ripped up from this world and this plane and fired up into the sky, and through a gate into another realm...

the world tree was the instrument of creation and stood at an eden like centre that bridged the realms...

but in the last years of the godswar, the creator gathered the faithful at a city of light at its base... and then ripped the world tree from the world...

the ring of mountains that remains around the shadowlands are the remnants of its underground root system...

and the smaller crater like nation above the shadowlands were protected by the servant god - a paladin like deity - because he knew that it would be important in the potential to restore the world... and a sapling offshoot of the world tree grew there... so it is less of a real crater and more like a ring of protection that weathered the ripples of the world tree being ripped from the earth and into the sky...

so this event was a metaphysical one with physical reprecussions...

not sure how that would affect plate tectonics...

how would a blast from within the earth change its face in a different way from an external impact?

likely bad things.

[Karro]

Well, when you get magic and metaphysics involved, we don't have a lot of precedent on good ole real-world earth for those kinds of effects. At that point, you just have to use your best reasoning abilities to consider what you think is the most logical* effect.


*for some values of logic

[philipstephen]

h'okay...

this is my latest update, but likely more transformations are in the works...

what has happened here is that some lakes have been moved and re-sized to better suit where i want them... some rivers have been added, some shorelines have been tweaked...

But the fractal nature of the shoreline has not really been addressed... I myself liked the jagged nature at first, but I now wonder if they are too extreme...

So... I think I am going to soften the edges up a bit and see how I like that look....

phil

[philipstephen]

It seems like the flow of the coastline and landmass shapes are keeping me busy so far...

I have cut up and stretched and shrunk and twisted various bits of the land and filled the gaps in afterwards...

I am not quite happy, but getting close to a shape that seems right, and a better general feel for me than the original map that I started with.

I have deleted a number of layers that no longer fit due to all the transformations I have made... you can even see some ghost images in the ocean from where land used to be...

not too long from this i should be ready to actually fill in the land with colour, texture, forests, roads, and settlements... i am looking forward to that...

that will be a glorious day...

[Karro]

I realize this is probably the case, but I do hope you're not planning to keep the land so dark. I like the light, almost-whimsical painted look you had going previously.

[philipstephen]

I do plan to colour it, yep.

That black is the base... i can do a selection of the whole thing and then shrink it a few pixels to leave a little dark border around the edge and around lakes and rivers... and then make another layer to do the colour in...

but i keep on trimming or moving the shoreline, so doing that work takes me too long if i have to keep undoing it as I change my mind about land placement....

so... it is dark until I am happy with the shape...


I am not sure how happy fun the colours will be though... it actually is supposed to be a dark and apocalyptic world of sorts... so my natural happy and whimsical style may contrast with that intent...

we shall see how it all takes shape.

phil

[Tom_Cardin]

Looking good. What you have now is very exciting. If you are seeking something a bit more aesthetically pleasing, I would suggest breaking up the overall fractal roughness of the coast by introducing some blocky areas and smooth areas.

I like to allow the interior features of the map to influence the coast and vice versa