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Thread: does this map seem realistic or unrealistic?

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    Default does this map seem realistic or unrealistic?

    does this map seem realistic? In other words, could this landmass exist on a planet similar to earth? Are there any climate or proportion problems (other than the fact that the volcanoes and some mountains are not proportionate)? Is there a better medium to use?

    {Please help me improve this map.

    nord map edit.jpg
    Last edited by jesterman; 08-07-2018 at 10:37 AM.

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    Guild Adept Facebook Connected Mimine's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by jesterman View Post
    does this map seem realistic? In other words, could this landmass exist on a planet similar to earth? Are there any climate or proportion problems (other than the fact that the volcanoes and some mountains are not proportionate)? Is there a better medium to use?

    {Please help me improve this map.
    You did not post the map in question, Jesterman! We would be happy to help, however
    Si tu n'as rien fait pour ton rêve aujourd'hui, est-ce que c'est vraiment ton rêve? - Fred Pellerin

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    Guild Master Falconius's Avatar
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    Without seeing the map: Keep in mind smaller planets than earth would have less gravity and thus larger geological formations like volcanoes. Mars is small compared to earth and has 1 third earths gravity and has gigantic mountains and volcanoes. But lets say the planet is only a bit less mass than Earth it would still allow for the formation of very (compared to earth) large volcanoes etc. I suppose the mass could be lessened by using lighter materials? Not sure about that, and also would alter it from being "like earth" a great deal, so that might not be a solution (to a problem I'm making up in my head anyways ). Show us the map!

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    Administrator waldronate's Avatar
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    He posted a working map over in his intro thread a https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=42071 if you'd like to take a look. I recommend starting a Work-In-Process (WIP) thread to hold this discussion.

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    Quote Originally Posted by waldronate View Post
    He posted a working map over in his intro thread a https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=42071 if you'd like to take a look. I recommend starting a Work-In-Process (WIP) thread to hold this discussion.
    how exactly do I do that?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Falconius View Post
    Without seeing the map: Keep in mind smaller planets than earth would have less gravity and thus larger geological formations like volcanoes. Mars is small compared to earth and has 1 third earths gravity and has gigantic mountains and volcanoes. But lets say the planet is only a bit less mass than Earth it would still allow for the formation of very (compared to earth) large volcanoes etc. I suppose the mass could be lessened by using lighter materials? Not sure about that, and also would alter it from being "like earth" a great deal, so that might not be a solution (to a problem I'm making up in my head anyways ). Show us the map!
    well, the given volcanoes are of normal size (as the rivers) but enlarged for my own purposes (both provide extremely large plot points in the story and I require knowledge of their exact shape and wherabouts and etc. so I enlarged them) but that is the only proportional difference that was purposeful.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mimine View Post
    You did not post the map in question, Jesterman! We would be happy to help, however
    whoops! Here we go. Just figured it out.

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    It looks realistic enough for the most part, except as Waldronate mentioned about the rivers. Rivers do go underground and through mountainous regions when there is no better alternative. Particularly in karst topography. Look at the Tibet to China transition area.

    To me I'd suggest the scale looks way too big for what I'm looking at, I would assume that scale to end at 100-200 miles at its upper end not 500. That said, landforms are fractal in nature and it could just be the style and overall shapes leading me to expect different sizes.

    Another note about the technical aspects of the drawing. You mountains are leaning pretty hard over as you go down the page, it is worth while to keep them upright and with hills and mountains try to have the ends of the lines on either side by level with one another. All the things should have the same orientation as one another, especially when close by.

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    Thank you for your notes on the mountains. I did not even realise they were leaning until just now. It's a bad habit of mine. I will have to fix that next time. I will have to work on that and practice.

    Yes, the scale does look rather big, especially given the shape of the landmass at hand. That was on purpose. The reason for this is that the "sea" to the right of this land mass is actually an inland sea. In other words, this is a peninsula inside of an inland sea (similar to Italy in the Mediterranean), with another ("undiscovered") landmass, although now that I look at it I am realising that the shape of this landmass near the bottleneck top makes very little geological sense, unless at one point the entire place was a large desert and is slowly becoming an inland sea. This could be explained by lowering fault lines (there is a large fault line system that runs near the whole system and if it were to be pushed down by another heavier plate to the west, it may create an effect like this) but I will have to look into possibly editing it. The shape of the biomass is very convenient for my novel, but now that I think about it, it seems very unrealistic (especially given the disproprotionate rivers and details in the carved edge of the landmass)

    Do you have any tips for this kind of problem?

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    Default techtonics

    ok, I developed a map of this part of Nord as it would have looked a few Billion years ago, where it was all one huge landmass. In it you can see the landmass outlined in black, the tectonic activity in green, the areas where the shoreline has been eaten away by waves and erosian in red and the areas where the land has sunken or collapsed inwards in blue.

    Haven's Hold, the only area of Nord yet discovered by Nordins (the native race) is positioned on a medium sized techtonic plate that is being pushing outwards towards two inwards pushing plates (shown by green arrows) and because of the pressure and the fact that the Haven plate being lighter than the other two, it is being continually pushed underneath the other plates, considerably lowering the elevation of the landmass and causing the blue area, of lower evelation to sink considerably under seawater. The long solid green line shows one of the fault lines where the Haven's plate is being pushed under. considerably, and where the collapsing (area of black shaded lines) has collapsed considerably and filled with water to create an inland sea. On the west side of the map water fills in the areas of lower elevation. On the green dotted line we see an area where the Haven's plate, being pushed inwards, begins to crack and push upwards (causing the local mountain range) and raising the nearby elevation.

    With all of this information, do you think that the current version of Haven's Hold in Nordin is accurate if these geological functions were to have come to pass that many years ago? Is this a realistic description of the possible events that may have come to pass or is there an error in my estimations? This is a form of mapping I am very new to (I am more accustomed to civilization maps, political maps, exploring maps and biological biomass maps, rather than a map of this function)

    nord techtonics.jpg

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