New World WIP - Eurosivarae

[Greason Wolfe]

So I decided to start a new WIP on a global level. In some ways, it is an old WIP that I abandoned a couple years ago mostly because I didn't like the direction it was going. At that time, I was a bit limited with my software and really wasn't able to keep things progressing in a way that I not only liked, but in a way that made sense on a geological level. After working on Vallee Mystique with a marginal level of success and reading through a few tutorials by Torq, Waldonrate, RobA, dhalsimrocks and altasilvapuer, I've come up with a new approach that I intend to explore through this thread. If everything works out in the way that I hope, I'll eventually create a Tutorial for this process.

In a nutshell, I'll be combining FTPro, Wilbur, GIMP and Terragen to create and develop the world from start to finish, using some of the techniques described in various tutorials by the aforementioned members. But first, a brief bit of background regarding Eurosivarae.

Eurosivarae is an Earth-like planet orbiting a Sol-like star. It is, as of this writing, a fair bit younger than Earth and possessed of a fantastical element (as yet unrefined) that allows for the existence of magic. As for the populace, there is definitely a human element as well as a fae element, however, the fae element hasn't been fully defined just yet. More than likely, it will be tied very closely to the "magic" element of the world and, perhaps, find some of its source in the human element as well. (In a rough, think of the Coldfire Trilogy by C.S. Friedman with some serious tweaking)

Up to this point, I've worked up the initial fractal generation of the world in FTPro and cycled through a few Land Expansions to give myself some room to work. The next major step is going to consist of determining the nature of any potential continental movement and what portions of the land masses will need to be trimmed to create that impression. In addition to this, I'll be looking for locations for any significant fault lines that will be effecting the overall appearance of the world. For now, here are the initial renders using one of Bill Roach's lighting files from the Terraformer add-on for FTPro.

As always, comments, crits and suggestions are welcome as this is likely to be a fairly long and detailed project.

GW

[Sigurd]

I fully support detailed! If you put some thought into writing it, I promise you it will get read.

[Steel General]

Some very interesting land shapes you have here GW.

This should lend itself nicely to the development of various kinds of cultures, etc. especially that huge 'inland sea' in the east.

Looking forward to seeing this progress.

[Greason Wolfe]

Some very interesting land shapes you have here GW.

This should lend itself nicely to the development of various kinds of cultures, etc. especially that huge 'inland sea' in the east.

Looking forward to seeing this progress.

My thoughts exactly. I've got a skeleton work-up of some of those cultures already in the works, but before I can start placing them, I need to work out the "bugs" as far as the land goes. I've put some thought into how I'm going to approach the continental drift/tectonic plate action sequence and will be getting to work on that here in just a little bit.

I did want to make a couple of corrections to my first post, however.

Of those members that I listed previously, I should say that not all of them have posted tutorials that are influencing this process. In some cases, it is their own WIPs that are having an influence on my efforts. And, as is often the case, there were a few forum members that I missed mentioning. Of them, Karro, Korba and Redrobes top the list. I'm sure that, by the end of this, there will be others I can add to that list, and hopefully I'll remember to mention them, and rep them for that matter. And lastly, let's not forget about Arcana. Without this forum (one of the friendliest I've seen when it comes to fictional cartography) we wouldn't have a place to share our efforts, knowledge and suggestions. My hat's off two or three times for that.

GW

[Greason Wolfe]

Update Time

Ah, the joys of trying to accomplish something when you don't quite have the resources to do so. Such is the case with my efforts towards plotting out continental drift and action along the major fault lines. I can see it clearly enough in my head, but committing it to paper, so to speak, is proving to be exceptionally tedious. While I may still try to work that out (the committing it to paper portion), I've decided, for the time being to move forward with things.

With a fairly clear image in my head about how I'd like things to look by the time I reach the finished product, I opted to cut back a little bit on the Land Expansion sequence. With just a couple levels cut back, it looks like I'll still have plenty of room to work as far as developing a final version of the elevations.

One thing I wanted to do, however, was open up a few sea lanes while maintaining some of the larger continental junctions. Also, and this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, I wanted to center the landscape, so to speak. For reasons I can't quite explain (and, perhaps, don't understand), I've never cared for maps that have the land masses wrapped around the edges. Maybe it is the fact that, at least for me, it seems to break the flow of things. So it was off to the cutting board to trim down some of the coastal areas, build up a few islands and shift the perspective a bit to meet my tastes. One thing I am still a bit concerned with at this point is that things still seem to look a bit cluttered. But that could just be me, so I'll wait to see if anyone else feels the same.

All in all, I'm generally happy with the way things are going. I've printed out a few "flat" black and white versions of the world as a whole so that I can sketch in a few ideas as far as large scale details go. For now, though, I think I'm going to take a break from the actual mapping side of this project and do a little astronomy and/or background work just to flesh things out a bit more. That will, I hope, give me a better idea of where my climates are going to go as well as how the population has spread out over the world.

Until next time, here's a peek at the current state of the world.

GW

[Steel General]

Neat...

[altasilvapuer]

After working on Vallee Mystique with a marginal level of success and reading through a few tutorials by Torq, Waldonrate, RobA, dhalsimrocks and altasilvapuer, I've come up with a new approach that I intend to explore through this thread.

GW, you have no idea how awesome it makes me feel to see my name mentioned here. I feel like all I've done, so far, is stumble about brandishing a machete at the jungle wildly and haphazardly. (Though that is one of my most cherished pastimes).

I love the work on the map, so far. Can't wait to see more!

-asp

[Greason Wolfe]

GW, you have no idea how awesome it makes me feel to see my name mentioned here. I feel like all I've done, so far, is stumble about brandishing a machete at the jungle wildly and haphazardly. (Though that is one of my most cherished pastimes).

I love the work on the map, so far. Can't wait to see more!

-asp

Personally, I prefer a chainsaw, but then again, I grew up working in the lumber industry.

[Greason Wolfe]

So I've worked out some of the astronomy details. I'll have to see how this data works into any astrology aspects for the inhabitants of Eurosivarae. Mind you, these details are not quite written in stone just yet, but some of them (particularly the stellar data and orbital distance of Eurosivarae, itself) will definitely be playing a factor in how the world climates develop when I get to that stage.

So here goes;

Eurosivarae Astronomical Data

Class                   : G2V
Mass                    : 1.01 Sol
Radius                  : 1.008 Sol
Luminosity              : 1.0354 Sol
Number of Known Planets : 13
Solar System Population : 1

Known Planets

Para Nu (to be renamed)
     Distance: 47,995,439 km
     Radius: 1995 km
     Orbit Period: 66 days (0.19 years)

Pipel Tau (to be renamed)
     Distance: 61,614,771 km
     Radius: 2216 km
     Orbit Period: 96 days (0.27 years)
     Atmosphere: None
     Known Moons
          Pipel's Halo (Ring)

Gisvahala
     Distance: 77,338,046 km
     Radius: 2837 km
     Orbit Period: 135 days (0.38 years)

Einimeir
     Distance: 95,758,936 km
     Radius: 5696 km
     Orbit Period: 186 days (0.53 years)
     Known Moons
          Einimeir's Inner Halo (Ring)
          Einimeir's Outer Halo (Ring)

Eurosivarae
     Distance: 146,231,890 km
     Radius: 6921 km
     Density: 0.99
     Gravity: 1.07G
     Orbit Period: 351 days (1.00 years)
     Rotation: 24 hrs
     Mean Temp: 285K/12C/54F
     Atmosphere: 0.87 atm, Breathable
     Known Moons
          Ematu (Moon)
               Distance: 254,510 km
               Radius: 2232 km
               Orbit Period: 13 days
               Rotation: 0 hrs
          Toravae (Moon)
               Distance: 414,303 km
               Radius: 3633 km
               Orbit Period: 27 days
               Rotation: 0 hrs

Tatsu
     Distance: 199,899,906 km
     Radius: 3712 km
     Orbit Period: 561 days (1.51 years)
     Rotation: 21.3 hrs
     Known Moons
          Tatsu's Halo (Ring)

Maaraas
     Distance: 233,449,450 km
     Radius: 4524 km
     Orbit Period: 708 days (2.02 years)
     Rotation: 18.5 hrs
     Known Moons
          Grantiphy (Moon)
               Distance: 322,037 km
               Radius: 161 km
               Orbit Period: 35.37 days
               Rotation: 1021.9 hrs

Eeravalle
     Distance: 272,727,561 km
     Radius: 8469 km
     Orbit Period: 894 days (2.55 years)
     Rotation: 13.1 hrs
     Known Moons
          Bavirsas (Moon)
               Distance: 31,590 km
               Radius: 1107 km
               Orbit Period: 0.41 days
               Rotation: 0 hrs

Sponchio (Gas Giant) (to be renamed)
     Distance: 438,078,166 km
     Radius: 29458 km
     Orbit Period: 1820 days (5.19) years
     Rotation: 12.2 hrs
     Known Moons (None Identified as of yet)

Paka (Gas Giant)
     Distance: 925,204,999 km
     Radius: 96339 km
     Orbit Period: 5586 days (15.91 years)
     Rotation: 5.8 hrs
     Known Moons (None Identified as of yet)

Monthu (Gas Giant)
     Distance: 2,825,454,900 km
     Radius: 16981 km
     Orbit Period: 29811 days (84.93 years)
     Rotation: 23.6 hrs
     Known Moons (None Identified as of yet)

Caenaar (Gas Giant)
     Distance: 4,579,123,313 km
     Radius: 32424 km
     Orbit Period: 61506 days (175.23 years)
     Rotation: 15.9 hrs
     Known Moons (None Identified as of yet)

Muhene
     Distance: 6,819,775,272 km
     Radius: 5199 km
     Orbit Period: 111789 days (318.49) years
     Rotation: 26.5 hrs
     Known Moons (None Identified as of yet)

As for how this looks from the "heavens" please refer to the image below.

On a side note, the number 3 will be playing a significant role in things for the Eurosivarae setting. A trinity of creator divinities, a three part cosmology set-up, several divine events that occur in 3s and so on. As an idea of how far reaching this is, each planetary orbital period (in days) is divisible by 3. There will be, of course, some anomolies (such as the closer moon, Ematu which has an orbital period of 13 days, but that, actually falls in line with the number of months defined for the world while the second moon, Toravae, orbits Eurosivarae every 27 days, or once a month. Obviously, there's still quite a bit of work to accomplish along these lines, but it is coming together slowly and surely. In a day or two, I hope to get back to work on the actual mapping. I've discovered that if I focus in on that aspect of world creation too much, I tend to get overly frustrated with things and end up forcing issues instead of letting them flow naturally.

GW

P.S. Sorry about the code tags, but wanted to make sure the details laid out properly for ease of reading.

[Greason Wolfe]

A minor update for now.

As mentioned earlier, there were a couple areas that I felt were a bit crowded. They didn't really show up until I was looking at the spinning view of the world, so I did a little work on them to see if I could open things up a bit more. I also worked in a few island chains in a couple areas to make up for the land loss. On top of that, I did a bit more continental trimming to break things up just a bit more.

Much to my surprise, I found an area that may become the new Vallee Mystique. I don't recall seeing FTPro produce such an area in the past, but I suspect it is quite likely that such areas have been produced and I simply missed them in the process of cycling through worlds. In any event, it struck me as being very Crater Lake (Oregon) or Mt. St. Helens like, so when I go to re-create the elevation file, I'll have to save this area (detailed in the second image) and make sure it passes through to the next level.

All in all, I'm still generally happy with where things are going and the next step is going to be that re-building process to get a little more variety in the elevation file and, in essence, build up some coastal region mountains and interior flatlands to better represent the concept of continental drift and fault line activity.

GW

P.S. I'll upload the new spinning view upon request for those who wish to see how this round of editing makes things a little less cluttered.