Creating a map for my novel

Hey Guys,

I'm working on a map for my novel, and I'm hoping to get some feedback as I go.


I've got most of my rivers done (3 of the 5 river systems I think) that are in the region I'm doing. I'll also probably have to add some rivers in outside of the region (as some nearby countries show on the outer edges of my map.


Currently North is UP on the map, but I am strongly considering changing that to North is LEFT.


Eventually I'm hoping to have something similar to Ramah's Aronbor map.


Also, the colors are currently only for reference (I'm colorblind, so I'll be touching up the colors towards the end, once I have all of the design work out of the way). For all I know, the water is all purple right now.


Please let me know if you guys have any suggestions. And, over the next several days I should be posting up quite a few updates. I'm hoping to finish this before christmas.


Thanks,
Alex

The colors are actually nice - I like them. And the general style is cool, at least from what I can see. I would only comment on your rivers - they would look better if the had more twists and curves in them. As it is they look like branching trees. (Speaking of the rivers, you've done a varying width thing which is pretty sweet.)

I just discovered the Smooth Path plugin for GIMP, which would've allowed me to create "curvier" paths than those that I have. The ones I created were done with the Fractalize Path script and the Stroke with Taper script that I downloaded. The Fractalize Path script is on this website, and VERY useful.


I may go back and redo the rivers to make them curvier... I'm going to play around with the smooth path plugin for GIMP and see how badly it disconnects my rivers if I run it on the paths I already have.

Thanks for the compliment on the colors. I think the Land is a color that Tear uses, and the water color I just pulled out of a hat.

*edit* I just noticed that my rivers look odd where they flow out into the sea, I will fix this a little later on, once I've got all of my rivers done, and once I've gotten them approved by the "River Police".

Played with the smoothing plugin, and honestly, with how tiny my rivers get, (10px across at the biggest and most get no bigger than 3px), the smoothing doesn't make any difference that I can see. For a larger path, it would work wonders, for these rivers, it doesn't seem to change much.

My only problem with the rivers is the way they interact with the lake. There's a whole lot of rivers flowing out of that lake and that's just not done. Also, none of those rivers could possibly be flowing into the lake, so how's it getting all that water?

About how many rivers do you think could run out of a single lake realistically?

I'll rework it so that my major river flows into the lake.

Here you go bro, this link should put you in good stead regarding rivers: Putting Rivers in the right place

Not being a huge geologist myself I found it quiet useful. There are some interesting things you can pick up around here.

The simple answer to your question however, is 1.

Generally a lake can have multiple 'inlets' but would generally have a single 'outlet'. It is possible to have multiple 'outlets' but eventually one would take precedence.

Other than the issue with the lake this is a great start, looking forward to seeing it develop.

Also, the inlets to the lake don't usually just pop into the side of the lake. Instead they flow into an arm that widens into the rest of the lake. There may be a marsh or swamp as it enters the lake. Also, on most naturally formed lakes, the exit will be similar.

Without a scale it's hard to tell precisely what's going on, but the number of water channels and multiple cuts on the lake suggest to me that the area is a tidal marshland and the whole map is about 3-5 miles across. Larger areas would tend to have a somewhat less dense and less randomly-oriented flow network.

The attached image shows what happens when finding the flow pattern for a simple valley. The amount of noise relative to the terrain is increased, effectively reducing the slope fo the landscape. At first (noise=0), the rivers follow the terrain exactly. When the noise is much greater than the terrain (noise=10 meaning that the noise is by far the dominant factor and the land is effectively flat), the rivers don't follow any sort of pattern except a general outflow at the valley exit. Noise=0.01 corresponds roughly to a stone valley, while noise=10 corresponds roughly to a tidal mud flat.