Thread: Thinking BIG - 600 miles

Originally Posted by Sigurd

Its just too hard for 12+ map makers to have different scales north-south than east-west.

Agreed. This is why we see so many real life country maps with "Not to scale" written somewhere. However, maybe we could fudge it by taking an average between the E/W and N/S distances on the maps, and make a scale according to that. For example, if your region is something like 440 miles N/S and 300 miles E/W, then you could make a scale based on a square map of 370ish miles NSEW.

The only side effect I can foresee is that the northern maps will cover smaller areas.

Here is a diagram that explains the idea. Notice the white squares are maps, and the yellow stretchy stuff is how they connect to each other. Imagine that they are wrapped around a globe and it makes more sense.

Could we not just get pictures from the Fterrains Globe with the Graticule (the lines of Longtitude & Latitude). That would give us sections that are correct to the globe and we could accept the morphing of the polar regions.

We could still assign 'blocks' within the lines of latitude & longitude.

Sigurd

Handsome Rob's tutorial uses this method.

It seems to me we do that or simply map to the flat map and use the globe for navigation, weather etc....

You could also use an equal-area projection. HR used Lambert Azimuthal EA, I believe, centered on each tile.

I personally like equal-area cylindrical projections. No wasted pixels. I know a lot of folks were put off by Peters', "Mercator Projection is racist," silliness, you could always call it Gall Projection. Actually, I prefer the Behrmann Projection with standard parallels at 30º N/S, it seems to look less, "continents hanging out to dry."

I've been thinking a bit about this and:

1. I'm grateful for the organization so far. Everyone has contributed to a very neat experiment.

Originally Posted by ravells

This is a fantasy world, and adventurers need vast areas of nothing in which to encounter monsters etc. Middle Earth (for example) had big regions of wilderness in it...I don't really see a problem with the scale.

2. This is a very valid point. What we have is completely workable and interesting. I've enjoyed my tile and have learned a lot from trying to make it better.

3 - Most importantly - I don't want to try and change anything now. People have their tiles and their plans shouldn't be derailed.

Personally, I think some of these details have merit and might be a good for a second go at this sort of project. Torg and the others who have done the lions share of the organization so far can make whatever calls they like and I'll be happy to go along.

Everything about scales and possible ways of organizing things has to remain hypothetical at this point.


Sigurd

As I am new here take my opinion with a grain of salt (though I did try to post in the intro forums and got back a blank page, I will try again if it doesn't post).

I don't think scale, in this case matters, you can set your map to any scale you want, not literally, but as in it would take a Mastodon 40 days to cross your tile, if that was the cartographers mode of travel, and the players went by that. I have seen several old maps as part of my genealogical research which listed scale as how far a Ranger could travel in a day, or how far a revolutionary company could muster out and still arrive fresh,, granted these were drawn by "locals" in one of my ancestors companies ( Bedell's Company of Rangers, 1777, NH), but that is what gave them flavor.

The whole Guild World map, as it is now, if plotted top left corner at 90 and -180 degrees and the bottom right at -90 and 180 degrees in Mercator gives about 300 miles a tile average, so what.

I suggest you set the tiles to what ever size can be agreed upon for continuity and run with it.

Google maps, and your work does look good on my comp/local server in google maps,( I couldn't resist) , will still display it, and no one will ever know the difference, as long as the top left and bottom right corners are as above, if you don't add an interface for them to measure with they will have to take for granted what the map scale is said to be. Google Maps doesn't really care what your scale is, it just cares about tile names and resolution of the original image ( the bigger the better).

Which brings me to another point, which really should be another thread but I keep loosing my connection due to the Blizzard so I will ask here, is there interest in seeing a google map of this GuildWorld Project, I have spoken to RedRobes (here), and the key members of the ME-DEM Project (RedRobes is one) and we would like to see your work showcased, we have the server space for the tiles, the programs to tile your imagery (well, most of that is done, better to be almost ready if one is going to make an offer), and a website design in work, which I am more than happy to send out some screen caps of for input.
Right now it has the working name of Inspired Cartography, and would host both me-dem work and Cartographers' Guild work, with full credit given and links back to the home Project.
As it stands now, I have a 16kx16k pixels image of the joined tiles (those that were done when RedRobes sent them to me), a 16kx16k pixels image of Throbmorton for higher resolution, more zoom levels done,,,and I would be happy to rerun the tiles as they are done, or add higher resolution subsets for individual tiles as needed, it only takes an hour or so to do.

If any one has any input,ideas, please start a thread, perhaps called InsCarto, and answer there so this thread doesn't wander any further than I have taken it (my connection is flaky, so I am doing this in notepad to be quick), I am more than happy to listen to anything you all have to say, from website ideas to kml overlays for safe areas and ,,well anything...

SeerBlue
Edit: I just had a look at Sigurd's post (I think) with the scale bar, great idea actually. If every one uses a scale bar of the same "length" on their map then they can set the scale units to whatever fits there creation. As Kasim's post below says "Wagon Travel", a Wagon can travel to the first division in x days and the full length of the bar in xx days. Though I would really like to see one labeled Mastodon Travel, for who ever thought of having those great woolly beasts, would not a Cartographer hired to make a map for a warlike people base the scale on how far their main offensive weapon could trundle in one day, or even the poor folks who had to defend against such an onslaught.
If the players who will use the maps have trouble getting their head around the distance relationship then comparisons could be offered on the Wiki, this would make for an interesting read in itself
As long as the scale bar has a "known" agreed upon distance scale will remain consistent throughout the realms for the players.

Yeah, I ran into an issue with my maps when I was doing them up as well. I originally created the eastern arm of my little continent to be roughly the size as Australia. Then when doing some prelimiary common sense checks, I realized it would take 3 months travel for adventurers to get out of the region they were starting in. It would have been several weeks to get to the nearest village.

I ended up rescaling and eventually redoing portions of the map, not based on miles or kilometers but based on "days of wagon travel". I basically had to reprogram my method of thinking to not think at 70 mph, but at a crawl. That way distant foreign lands were still distant, yet areas they were meant to travel and adventure would be accessable. Now it takes about 3 and a half weeks to get out of the region.