Thaalmyn-Duhr : The Re-load

[Greason Wolfe]

As some of you might know by now, I suffered a major computer crash recently. Sadly, I lost retarded amounts of data even as I was trying to create back-ups for that data. The Thaalmyn-Duhr project I was working on, unfortunately, was one of those data files I lost irrevocably as far as the actual maps went. Fortunately, however, I had enough forethought to hand-record the world generation parameters used for this world in FTPro, and that has allowed me to start anew on this project.

Obviously there will be some changes, but I see that as a good thing since there were little bits and pieces of the world I wasn’t particularly happy with. Additionally, I wanted to narrow my focus to a particular region of the world and really concentrate on developing it as fully as possible

Thus, I present Thaalmyn-Duhr : The Re-load

For the most part, I’ve been following the same initial process as before, starting with fairly small land masses (based on the original world parameters) and slowly building up the continental shelves until I had room for one major continental mass, a few smaller continental masses and some areas that would work well as island chains. At this point, I’m pretty well set as far as the western portion of the map goes. I’ve got, probably, a couple more hours of shelf/sea editing to do in the eastern portion of the map, and then I’ll set about building up the actual land masses.

The area depicted is roughly 4000 miles east to west and 2100 miles north to south. It’s not quite a 2:1 ratio, but I believe it will work well with what I have in mind when I make the transition from FTPro to Terragen via Wilbur. Before the crash, I worked out a way to import non-square height fields into Terragen that leaves all sorts of room for map keys and/or legends, borders, and other details that can be added in as part of the rendering process or as part of the post-render editing.

In any event, here is the first “re-loaded” WIP. As always, thoughts and suggestions are more than welcome.

GW

Edit : Included a larger version of the original attachment. I keep forgetting that, along with the new system set-up, I got a larger monitor as well.

[Greason Wolfe]

Got a little more work done, mostly in the north eastern portion of the map. I also isolated the island chain in the south mid-western portion of the map. The last bit for now is going to be the smaller continental mass in the south eastern portion of the map. I definitely need to trim some fat off of it, but am undecided about whether or not I want to keep it closely related to the main continental mass (as it currently is) or try to isolate it a bit more. A third option would be to eliminate it completely and replace it with a series of larger islands. Thoughts? Suggestions?

GW

[Diamond]

I'd say leave it as is. Always good to have a (relatively) narrow channel somewhere.

[Kelron]

They look better than before, I would also keep them.

[laevex_esre]

I think it's nice to have a variety of channel sizes. Keep them close to the main continent.

[Greason Wolfe]

So the general consensus thus far is to keep things close, and after thinking about it for a while last night at work, I'm leaning that way as well, though it will be more of a straight than a channel. With that in mind, I'll probably beef things up in that area and do a little trimming along the southern and eastern sides of that smaller continent. Thanks for the input though, it's always helpful know what looks more aesthetic to other sets of eyes.

GW

[Greason Wolfe]

So, this is the first stab at that final bit of rough editing. Reshaped the southeastern mass a bit and sucked it up a bit closer to the main mass in an attempt to give the impression that it is a "break-away" portion of the continent. Not sure if I'm 100 percent happy with it just yet, so I'm gonna let it stew for a bit, try to get some sleep before the temperature hits 90 and take another look at it when I get up. Made this image a bit larger, roughly one half what I intend for the full size to be, though I may have to go even larger than intended once I get down to the detailed portion of the work.

GW

[Greason Wolfe]

Got quite a bit of work done on this map this afternoon. Built-up the actual landforms and started eroding them in FTPro. One downfall/difficulty I'm facing is the editing resolution limitations in FTPro, particularly when it comes to the smaller islands. I should be able to do more with them in Wilbur once I get started there, but will have to wait and see.

GW

[eViLe_eAgLe]

That looks lovely

[Greason Wolfe]

Just a bit of a progress report here, but no attachment.

After giving this a couple of days and taking another look at things, I decided I wasn't entirely happy with some of the elevations. The original process had pushed the upper elevations to almost double the limitations I needed them to fall in, so I've backed up a couple of steps and started re-working that process. It's a bit slower and involves a lot more "by hand" editing, but should let me keep things in line much better than before while allowing me to better define some areas as they were/are meant to be. It'll probably be another day or two until I'm ready to post another image, but hopefully it will have a better, more varied appearance in terms of both elevation and climate.

GW