Cruenti Dei world map

This is a work in process in tiny, tiny steps.

A bit of background: Cruenti Dei is a fantasy PBeM that I've been running for several years. The basic idea is that each player is running a country, doing all the sorts of things a country does: trade, ally, war, research, and so forth.

Until recently, the players have been confined to a single continent, Sahûl.

As technology has improved, a new Age of Exploration has blossomed. The players (at least some of them) are aware of three continents now, at least one of which has nations (and thus, new player positions) already present.

It recently occurred to me that the quickie world map I made several years ago was not going to cut it:

Attachment 30440

So I conceived the idea of putting together a full-colour poster map of the world. Because I apparently go from "easy" to "ludicrous" in just one step.

I figured I'd start by cutting and pasting outlines of my finished continents (suitably reduced) to a single Photshop doc and then use jezelf's first tutorial to put together the coastlines and major rivers for the remaining continents.

Here's a reduced version of step 1: importing the three "finished" continents:

Attachment 30441

(Note that I'm reducing these posted WIP maps considerably from the actual working map. The final poster will be 24 x 36 at 300 dpi - though I'm considering dropping to 200 dpi to prevent my old Mac from suffering a coronary).

Here's step 2: adding the first of the new continents

Attachment 30442

At this point, I got hopelessly distracted by the wonderful WIP map that Slylok is working on, featuring a beautiful double-hemisphere frame. I decided right away that I wanted my poster map to have the same motif.

Thanks to the very kind advice of Hai-Etlik (Stereographic Azimuthal projection indeed!), I was able to whip up a version with a twist:

Attachment 30443

Now to finish those other pesky new continents and marry them to the frame.

And then the fun really starts!

OK, I've got the last of the continents "inked" in.

Attachment 30454

Tomorrow I get to play plate tectonics and scootch them around a bit. And then on to the next tutorial!

nice... looking forward to seing it progress :)

I'm with Tilt, looking forward to seeing how this progresses.

I'm also with Tilt on this one.

Thanks for the encouragement, guys. As I said, I'm posting this in tiny steps as I walk through this process, rather than putting up something nearly done right off. I hope it doesn't get too tedious, but it's already been helpful to me, since I'm thinking through next steps as I post the current one.

This morning I married all the elements together and did something that a real-world cartographer never gets to do: I moved some of the continents around so that they wouldn't be sliced by the projection I'm using. ;)

Attachment 30463

As you can see, I was not entirely successful. In fact, I've had to cut one continent (Efan, for those keeping score) pretty much in half. Since this is one of the continents the players have already discovered, there wasn't much I could do to move it.

I also distorted some of the landmasses near the poles to give the illusion of conforming to the projection I'm using. Since this will (hopefully) be a 16th-century style map by the time I'm done, I'm not exactly shooting for 100% accuracy here. The players obtain regional maps as they explore, and this chart is mostly to show how they all go together.

Here's one of the regional maps to give you an idea of scale:

Attachment 30464

This is centered on the star-shaped lake on the south-westernmost continent (Sahûl).

My next step will be to walk through jezelf's tutorial on making fantasy/parchment maps.

This is going great so far!

Actually, for a project like this, you might just find some more 'serious' geospatial software useful. QuantumGIS for instance.

This would provide a way to store data about your world and analyze it. (A simple example would be: Find all regions with average temperature above X, and all regions with more than Y cm of annual rainfall, and then intersect them to find tropical areas.) It can also convert projections for you.

It's more software to learn, but it's free.

Well. I took a look at QuantumGIS, but I'm afraid that several hours in I'm finding it quite beyond me.

Back in Photoshop land, I've aged my map.

Attachment 30466

I can't say I'm too happy with it. Although it looks much better in the larger size than this one, it's still not right.

There's nothing I can't fix, but the sheer amount of fixing is enough that I'm leaving it for another day.

For one, it's much too dark - dark enough that any other use of colour is going to look like mud.

Then there's the fact that the tan frame is not working with the parchment effects. It's going to have to be a different colour.

And for some reason, I have one river that's standing out like it's on fire.

Grr.

love your regional map :) ... but agree, the aged map needs more work and to be lightened :)