Map Dimensions?

[Squessibionaro]

Hi, I'm new to the cartographers guild and had a question. I was wondering what image dimensions or ratio of length to width would be the most appropriate when planning to create a world map? I'm Game Master for an upcoming pathfinder campaign me and my friends have started (never GM'd before....) and would like to create a world map for my campaign world but i'm not even sure how to begin, like what image dimensions would i even use for a map.

I've used gimp fairly extensively in the past so that's my program of choice, although mostly for simple things like parallax mapping in RPG maker.

I plan on browsing the tutorials when I have additional time, also any other tips would be greatly appreciated.

I apologize if my question is silly or confusing in some way, but i am by no means an artist OR cartographer. After being directed to this site though, I might be looking to change that....

[Falconius]

Equidirectangular projection (2 wide by 1 tall) is the easiest to deal with. You can project it easily onto a globe etc. And it is easy to conceive of how it works. However it also ends up with huge distortion at the poles so if you want to map those areas in detail too you might want to put them into separate insets.

[Squessibionaro]

I expected a good bit of distortion on the main world map and thus plan to individually map the continents separately as well.

Thanks for your reply.

[LordEntrails]

How are you going to be using the maps? i.e. are you printing them on letter size paper? or A sized? Are you displaying them via a projector or on a TV screen?

Use the ration that goes with how you will be presenting them.

[waldronate]

First, decide how you want to use the map. Then, pick an appropriate map projection. Then, draw your map(s) onto grids in whichever projection(s) you chose.

[Squessibionaro]

I'd like to create it as if it were a map for navigation of the world, whichever projection would suit that purpose best. As for how it will be displayed it will be placed in the "Tabletop Simulator" program as an image for our table top, so I can adjust the table based on the dimensions of the map if need be.

[johnvanvliet]

all of the above

for "whole world " maps i use a 2X1 simple cylindrical map projection
Example : ( a 2048x1024 very small map )

2k.tex_shade.png

but the poles are very distorted , for those i use "polar stereographic" projection
Example - the North pole area : (used Gimp to remap it )

2k.tex_shadeNP.png

PS. i used "wilbur" to eroid the heightmap and it dose not work well on poles

[rebelandarunner]

How do you plan on using the map? Is it just going to serve as a general reference for you? Or will it be something that is going to be "common knowledge" by your players?

Asking because I've been developing gaming worlds on and off (mostly off) for the last 25 years and about 6 years ago, I finally put a world together that looked like a candidate and I wanted to see what it would look like as a globe. I scanned the image from the paper and converted it into an image file with a 2:1 aspect ratio then downloaded an app and converted it to lat-long and projected it onto a globe.

It looked horrible.

A post-mortem on the process revealed that I didn't do enough research on map projections and I think I assumed to start with Mercator when Plate Carrée would have been a better choice.

Good luck!

[rebelandarunner]

Adding a little more to the discussion (since the gaming world I'm developing is also for a Pathfinder campaign) and I'm happy to talk about what I did in the process.

One thing I recommend to anyone in building a world is to think about the background before you start. I majored in geography at college and one of the things that all of the professors stressed was asking the question "why of where?". Basically, asking "why is this (mountain/store/forest/lair/anything) where it is?". When you apply that line of thinking to world building, it definitely complicates the project and changes it from an art project to more of a science project but I think it's more rewarding.

So, things to think about are:

• Do you want a lot of land or a lot of water?
• How do you want the land arranged, in large continents or as islands?
• What is the general topography going to be? Do you care about plate tectonics?
• Where are the various races located and how did they get there?
• Are you looking to implement any geophysical characteristics which make the world unique?

The next step is to get your pencil and paper and start sketching. I would definitely recommend that you start with a continental outline and capture that electronically (i.e., scan the image) before you add any other details (mountains, hills, forests, rivers, lakes, craters, etc.). Doing this will let you print out the outline as your base map and you can then add details as discrete layers which you can overlay to keep things consistent.

The final part of the process is the software you use to bring this all together. I'm not going to lie, this isn't as easy as it might sound. I've gone through multiple apps in an attempt to make the current world I have and it's be an educating but challenging process.

My cartographic background was in vector-based systems (Arc/INFO [the precursor to ArcGIS] and Adobe Illustrator), so that was the route I pursued. I started using Inkscape as my graphic editor and that was painful. I have since upgraded to Graphic (formerly from Autodesk) to manage my data layers. Into this mix I also use G.Projector to project my maps onto a globe so that I can see what they look like "in reality". It's helped me resolve a lot of the issues that johnvanvliet pointed out about the polar distortion.

Depending on what level of detail you're looking at getting to, you might want to look at Hexographer and Worldographer (both of which are from Inkwell Ideas). I have both but I really don't have use for either.

Hope that helps.

[waldronate]

I'd like to create it as if it were a map for navigation of the world, whichever projection would suit that purpose best. As for how it will be displayed it will be placed in the "Tabletop Simulator" program as an image for our table top, so I can adjust the table based on the dimensions of the map if need be.

Mercator is a popular projection for navigation because straight lines on the map are fairly close to paths of constant bearing. However, Mercator has huge area distortions away from the equator. Some modern militaries like the Universal Transverse Mercator projection (see the Military Grid Reference System) because it manages distortions in a not-too-bad way, but it has serious problems in overlaps (look at a MGRS map of Korea for an example: it lies at the overlap of two zones).
A whole-world map might not be the best choice for gaming. Unless your game specifically requires whole-world maps, I recommend making a map as large as your intended area and just using that. You can pick a projection to minimize distortion in your important area and not worry about distortion in not-important areas.