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Thread: [WIP] Zanannia and environs

  1. #11
    Guild Expert jbgibson's Avatar
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    OK, MaYbE less optimum according to Imhof, but one could rationalize that rules for paper may differ for the computer screen - you can more easily tilt a paper map to read at an angle ;-).

    Zanannia7.gif

    Siigh .... simplicity is overrated. But OK, Niropa is bigger and Tripecia is in one piece. I needed to finalize those district-labeling issues before I started to place cities. In the real world people inconveniently plant cities right where it complicates neat labeling of large features. Here, I confess, I can sneak in the places people live where they won't be under a district name :-). So much easier.

    Zann, what do you call the principal city of a district - its capital? I'll need that for the key.

  2. #12
    Guild Expert jbgibson's Avatar
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    Hmmm. If I'm going to avoid placing major population density in deserts, for instance, guess I'd better figure rough climate now. Zann says in his factbook page:

    Mountainous/evergreen forest in the north, plains/deciduous forest in the middle of the continent, desert in the south. Lilac Island is mostly tropical, with a volcanic mountain in the middle.
    Climate:
    Many terrains come with many climates
    Elevation Extremes:
    17,488 feet - 0 feet

    Usually I work with a given generated world, and take what it gives me. Here, nothing even says where in latitude we are, nor the extent of the landmass in latitude and longitude. Sooooo, I start with the given size,

    Area:
    10,239,701 km square (6,632,655 miles square)

    Hmm - that's troublesome. That conversion factor is for distance, not area. 6.6 million miles is about 10.6 million km. 6.6 million square miles, which Zann agreed was his intent, is more like 17,178,498 sq km. I'll go with that.

    I used to do all kinds of gyrations and approximations to figure land area. This is easier: I reduced all the land mass of Zannannia to black on white water, and deleted the separate nation up north. Filled in the lakes, since they usually count in a nation's area. I squared the file to an even 1500x1500 pixels, to help me think in round numbers.

    SizeCalc1.gif

    The PhotoPlus histogram for distribution of colors across this B&W picture looks like so:

    Histogram.gif

    Apparently the Gimp and PhotoShop have something similar.

    Left being the cursor over the left end of the spectrum, black, and right being the white end. PhotoPlus reports that as 143766 black and 605844 white, for a total of 749,610. I quote this in all its halting process, because I have to rediscover how this works every time... THat's with the histogram set for RGB. If I make the land pure blue, and the sea black, the histogram seems to read (referencing the blue channel) 201,948 for black, and 48052 for blue, for a total of 250,000. Yeah, that's how -- stick with one channel. Not sure why the histogram refers to 250,000 pixels total, when the canvas is 1500x1500=2,250,000 . <shrug> What I need is the proportion, and that I now have: Zanannia is 48052/250000 of the whole. 19.22% ? Squint at the picture... yeah, I'll buy that.

    Now, I'm going to do some rounding here, so 20% is plenty good enough. So if 20% is 6.6 million square miles, then my 2,250,000 pixels is 33.2 million sq miles. Square root of that is 5759, so that's how many miles to the 1500 pixel side of my square canvas (see why I squared it?) So a scale bar is going to be based on .2605 pixels to the mile. If I'm measuring in PhotoPlus, I'll need it the other way around -- 3.839.miles to the pixel. The nation is about 1030 pixels north-south - call that 3955 miles.

    For the sake of the argument, we'll say the planet is earth-sized -- 24,860 miles in circumference through the poles. 12,430 miles is 180 degrees of latitude, so the nation stretches about 1030 pixels or 57 degrees N-S. Also we'll assume the same axial tilt as earth, so the equivalent of tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are at 23.5 degrees N and S. Those are the drier latitudes, all else equal. If Zann wants deserts somewhere in the south, we could straddle the equator.

    Those mountains on the Niropa-Dectarium border are tall enough to give a bit of rain-shadow dryness, if prevailing winds are NW-SE, or SE-NW. Let's say most winds are out of the NW at that point, and that the C of Dectarium is at 23.5 S. So the southern tip of the mainland would be at 270 pixels ( ~15 degrees) further south, or 38.5 South. That'd put the northern end of the nation at about 18.5 N. Call that Cape Town to Timbuctu.

    An alternative would be to stretch it from 23.5-15 = 8.5 degrees N to 65.5 N. Call it from mid-Nigeria up to mid-Norway. That might stick the Malkakhian S.S.R farther north than they might want, or it might be just the ticket. Zann - is that country the property of a human player, who might care about his latitude?

  3. #13
    Guild Expert jbgibson's Avatar
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    Looking at South America and Africa, I see that Tropic of Capricorn effect creating some pretty serious west-coast deserts. Hmmm. That makes more sense -- rain-shadow plus descending dry-ish air, and most of Niropa can be desert and savannah. The flatlands and river bottoms of Tripecia, Haleria, and Mavia would be pretty well watered - crops and forests. The equator passes through the centerpoint of the Y of Elroyas Cho District.

    Hmm. So the plateau of Aeocypta District might be high enough to get those evergreen forests you mention in the north - certainly the mountains at the Malkakhian border are. Altitude... so now's the time to figure the altitude key. Your highest point is 17,488 ft, says the factbook entry. Ten altitude bands; I'll call them 1800 ft each. That makes the plateau 7000-8000 feet up... I'd say that's as good as tens of degrees of latitude poleward, therefore YES, we can grow alpine/ boreal forests there instead of the rainforest / jungle that might be at the coast, at the same latitude. OK, that covers the desired climate zones, and many more. Unless you see an absolute showstopper in my logic, Zann, we'll say your nation straddles the equator, from about 38.5 degrees S to 18.5 degrees N.

    Okay, now for the tectonic action. If Lilac Island needs to be tropical, there's no reason I can't shift it to be more equatorial. >S.H.O.V.E.< Serious earthquake - we just moved the whole archipelago hundreds of miles north :-). While I'm at it >tweak<, >tweak<, and there's several extinct or dormant calderas for old volcanoes. And finally here's what I'll use as a base for city placement and labeling. To ease the mechanics of layer manipulation while I place a hundred dots & names, I'm working with a file where I smashed all you see here to one layer. Now if I can remember to not go editing any topography while I'm placing cities, I'm golden.

    Zanannia7a.gif

  4. #14

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    I am in awe! I know I keep saying they're amazing, but it really is! Seeing your vision become reality always makes you appreciate the finished product more...

    The Malkakhian SSR is not a human controlled nation, do whatever you want with it.

    As for the altitude and climate changes, I like them. It makes the map and the nation that much more realistic...

    The capital of any given district is called a capital.

    Keep up the excellent work, jb!!

  5. #15

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    One request: in order to better follow what I was thinking when I named Lilac Island, can you name the other islands after plants/flowers? Like hyacinth, narcissus, wysteria, etc.?

  6. #16

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    The other islands in the Lilac archipelago, that is....

  7. #17
    Guild Expert jbgibson's Avatar
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    Yeah, I figured you meant the Lilac Archipelago islands :-). Here's another step in the political view. Capital cities, other large and medium cities placed, and capital cities named. Any commentary / criticism on how I placed labels? I worked over a topo layer, so I could see how they'd look there too -- I figure about this many cities and labels would be appropriate even on the topographic map.

    Still to place - small cities, and labels for medium cities.

    I'm undecided whether showing the lilac islands closer, at least on the political map, would be worthwhile. I'll see how much of that 'empty ocean' is filled by labels that I need to place offshore... I could always do the topo at "true separation" and "save paper" on the political map by excising 500 or a thousand miles of ocean. We'll see. Any opinions?

    Zanannia9.gif

    Notice this is still under 100 kb. The labels and cities will add some, but it'll still be suitable for viewing even without broadband. I run websites and servers for a living -- I get paranoid about accessability.

  8. #18

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    I like it. No really important opinion on the island/map ocean space thing, I like the names.

    Could you give the Malkakhian capital and islands Russian-type names?

    Other than that, it still looks fabulous!

  9. #19

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    Work in progress still? It's been a couple of days... Sorry for sounding whiny, but this has been the longest you've gone without posting... It' probably just me. I'm paranoid...

  10. #20
    Guild Expert jbgibson's Avatar
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    Oh, I'm still working on it :-)...

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