Big picture geographical questions

[octopod]

I looked through the old threads on this forum and on the wiki and couldn't find these answers, so here they are; sorry if I missed them somewhere else.

1) What is the scale of the current map? (How big are the blocks?) The fractal nature of coastlines makes it damned hard to figure out.

2) What is the general idea of the world? Are we eventually planning a full globe's worth of map space, and if so, how big is the relevant globe? And where is the current area on it, in terms of lat/long?

3) By what means is the geography created? That is, is there any kind of overarching geological idea going on, has anyone poked at the continental plates or anything, or is it just someone pushing a button on a simple terrain generator?

I'll probably have more questions, but these are the first and most important things I'd like to know. I'd hate to not know something like this from the get-go, especially the first one.

[Gamerprinter]

OK, I'm not one the CWBP experts, just a participant, however...

1. Each block is approximately 600 x 600 miles. Note these are longitudenal lines north to south and they do converge closer together the further north you go, so these aren't true blocks.Still most of the map squares have been created at 600 x 600, however.

2. The actual FT created world we chose to use for the CWBP includes several continents. We didn't want to start the project all over the place, so we focused on one of the larger continents. The regions are only of the northwest half/quarter of the current continent. We haven't even opened those regions yet. At the moment, we are populated the existing regions.

3. The world was FT generated, thus pretty much push button. Not that someone shouldn't create a reasonable plate tectonics map that could justify the current geography, this method wasn't approached at the start of the project.

Someone, (NeonKnight, I believe) created a dozen or so random FT terrain maps and we posted a poll to vote, which one to take. We picked this one and that's how the project started. We weren't all that scientific about it.

GP

[octopod]

Thanks for your answers...
I just found the master map here. The terrain (especially the ocean floors) indicates that there's no way to use continental plates, so there's that. Good to know.

Very cool that all the topography exists already, though I'm not sure it all makes complete sense in terms of water forms, and there's no coherent tectonic stuff that I can figure out off the top of my head.

What are the expert opinions around here regarding geopolitics? Can we make them up yet, or do we want to wait?

[NeonKnight]

The Geopolitics were pretty much 'made-up'.

For example, I envisioned the area I did, the Thanelands of Skoldavia, as somewhat Norse with maybe a little Celtic/Saxon infusion. That's my area, but that doesn't mean that is the predominant theme of the land. The Plaguelands to me seem a little more Germanic in feel, while further south more Arabic.

Again, this is just my feelings on it.

[waldronate]

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=1769 has a general discussion of the base map

I did an example of the size and placement of the area when placed on a globe. It still amuses me that the southernmost areas of that map are about at the latitude of Moscow. Be sure to click on the images in my post on that thread because the placement and size examples are animated GIFs that fade from the base map to a real-world map.

The map was done using the default terrain generator in Fractal Terrains (it's a simple noise-based generator with no attempt to be "physically correct"). Seeing yet another generic FT map prompted me to write up the tutorial at http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/CGTutorial/ but it was already too late.

[SeerBlue]

The area being worked falls within a bounding box of
WEST LONGITUDE=40.900618° E
NORTH LATITUDE=64.514710° N
EAST LONGITUDE=80.466861° E
SOUTH LATITUDE=30.922578° N
COVERED AREA=4278335 sq mi
give or take a bit, I've been awake to long to nudge much in Global Mapper to get much more accurate. I posted a pick, ( in wagnerhammer, joost cause oi loike it).
here, because I couldn't find the ones done by Waldronate, he beat me to it.
SeerBlue

[NeonKnight]

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=1769 has a general discussion of the base map

I did an example of the size and placement of the area when placed on a globe. It still amuses me that the southernmost areas of that map are about at the latitude of Moscow. Be sure to click on the images in my post on that thread because the placement and size examples are animated GIFs that fade from the base map to a real-world map.

The map was done using the default terrain generator in Fractal Terrains (it's a simple noise-based generator with no attempt to be "physically correct"). Seeing yet another generic FT map prompted me to write up the tutorial at http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/CGTutorial/ but it was already too late.

Not, sure, I checked that thread and you have this image with the CWBP world become super imposed with the Earth and......Italy shows as being located at the equator. Watch the world change. Also, Africa's Cape Horn and Torq's home seem to be located at the south pole

http://www.cartographersguild.com/at...8&d=1212736939

[octopod]

::reads tutorial::

That is the coolest software in the entire world. WOW. Also, the world you developed in the tutorial looks quite nice.

OK, so this territory is roughly Scandinavian. That changes my plans somewhat climate-wise, that's for sure...this is very useful.

Maybe you should apply a bit of the basin-fill/erosion to the original cooperative world map? Although I guess everyone's kind of doing their own landscape weathering on their segment, based on what I've seen.

[waldronate]

Yep, I completely messed up those globes. I believed the perspective globe projection that Google Earth was showing without realizing it was a perspective rather than orthographic projection.

In the other thread I dumped the size comparison globe and redid the position comparison one to be in the same projection for both maps. It's not all arctic, just the inland northern areas.

[octopod]

Oh, I see. Crap, now I'm confused again.

Maybe I'll move all the relevant reference maps onto the Wiki if no-one objects?