Critique and advice please!

[Jaxilon]

Wow, cool looking formations, I really like it.

As for rivers just remember that water flows downhill and combines with other rivers to become one on it's way to the sea. It seldom if ever branches and if it does it soon comes back together. There is a link around here on "How to put rivers where they belong". The only thing I noticed and at the level I can zoom in I can't really tell it seems in some areas you have rivers running from one side of the continent to the other and then vice verse which could happen if the land actually slopes in opposite directions. I go by feel on these things but others here really get into the math.

Hubs of activity will be based on ease of transportation in most cases. It sounds like you have Seafarers so I would say your main cities will be coastal with decent harbor areas to keep ships safe from storms and so on. Just remember what people need to live and you should do alright with anything else. (ie, source of fresh water, fertile land, defensible locations when possible).

You don't have to have deserts but it's worth keeping in mind that mountains create their own weather so it's typical to find one side of a range greener than the other. Obviously if there is enough rainfall both sides can be lush. If you have strong winds from the Sea the trees can also be a bit wind battered and that might change the look of the forest from other places.

If you are using Photoshop the easiest way to upload a large image is to save as.. <.jpg> and lower the quality which does a pretty good job of keeping your details while shrinking the file size. Once you are inside of that 4.7mb limit go for it. I know I would like to be able to zoom in on this a tad more.

Great job!

[Timo]

yeah, i was just going to leave the background until everything else was done and finished!

Wow, cool looking formations, I really like it.

As for rivers just remember that water flows downhill and combines with other rivers to become one on it's way to the sea. It seldom if ever branches and if it does it soon comes back together. There is a link around here on "How to put rivers where they belong". The only thing I noticed and at the level I can zoom in I can't really tell it seems in some areas you have rivers running from one side of the continent to the other and then vice verse which could happen if the land actually slopes in opposite directions. I go by feel on these things but others here really get into the math.

Hubs of activity will be based on ease of transportation in most cases. It sounds like you have Seafarers so I would say your main cities will be coastal with decent harbor areas to keep ships safe from storms and so on. Just remember what people need to live and you should do alright with anything else. (ie, source of fresh water, fertile land, defensible locations when possible).

You don't have to have deserts but it's worth keeping in mind that mountains create their own weather so it's typical to find one side of a range greener than the other. Obviously if there is enough rainfall both sides can be lush. If you have strong winds from the Sea the trees can also be a bit wind battered and that might change the look of the forest from other places.


Great job!

Here's the best i could i do for full size!



This i think is one of the more offending rivers, I hadn't put any thought into rivers before making the map, i just kind of knew that "this place is on a river" and "this place is at the mouth of a massive river" - things like that, so i looked at other maps for river ideas and ended up deciding that Westeros' Trident was may favourite, so this one is inspired by that - it does kind of give me a headache trying to figure out how it curves like it does! the branches are supposed to flow down from coastal mountains where the coast kind of leaps out of the sea, but now i think about it they're probably not really necessary and maybe they do reach too close to the edge of the land



the other two rivers in the image i think are ok(?)

the river on the right of this image looks a bit dumb now too, and maybe should carry on down to the inlet like the one next to it



I think the rivers here are ok too, but taking into account the high mountains there is a potential for some dry arid land? if oceanic weather comes in from the west the mountains will potentially buffer it, does that mean it could go back to being greener again to the south of the range - kind of like a low angle of light making a shadow? and also could that mean the branches coming off the mountains would actually be on the other side?



And finally, here's where i imagine the hub of trade and commerce to be as the main islands pretty much converge into this body of water making it easy for everyone to have access to everyone else, but saving the eastern and western outer coasts for trading with foreigners!



@Lingon; i took the lines away and you were right, it did look better! here's something i trouble over about inland villages and such, how do they get their water? do they have to buy it? do people collect it from rivers or springs and take it to them (like mail)? if they have to collect it themselves, how much would they have to carry back each day? or would they simply rely on collecting rain water?


thanks again for all the feedback and advice

[Lingon]

@Lingon; i took the lines away and you were right, it did look better! here's something i trouble over about inland villages and such, how do they get their water? do they have to buy it? do people collect it from rivers or springs and take it to them (like mail)? if they have to collect it themselves, how much would they have to carry back each day? or would they simply rely on collecting rain water?

Well, most villages form on rivers, so it's rarely a problem Wells can of course also supply a small settlement with enough water, but hardly a big one. I'm not very into the math stuff of world-building, mostly I just paint/write what feels right, so someone else will surely be able to give a much better answer! But if a village has to be far from a water source, then I suppose the inhabitants would be forced to do those things you suggest. There are villages in the real world located in very dry areas, so the people have to walk miles every day to fetch water and carry it home, so it's not implausible, but in what essentially is a huge archipelago, I don't think anyone would do that rather than just move to someplace where they have closer to the water

On another note, I agree with max about the texture. It's so heavy it distracts from the beautiful map!