The World of Predica - WIP

[pyrandon]

Hee hee--that's hilarious! I did not see it until pointed out. Now, of course, I cannot NOT see it.

But then again, I live in Michigan--the "mitten" state... I wish we had something as cool as a bird.

*sigh*

[aeronox]

I also see a flattened mouse, a goose, and a leaping camel.

[RPMiller]

ROFL!!

Thanks everyone! Somehow this holiday season has found me frantically busy; much to my chagrin. I haven't been able to do a thing on the computer other than a couple quick log ins and then I was off and running again. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have a full day to devote to this.

I like the level of detail you're putting into your posts. Keep it up; I'm anticipating learning a lot!

No promises, but I'll try my best.

what a wonderful horrendously colored map.

I am interested to see this progress.

Hehehe... believe it or not the color choices were on purpose. More about that later.

I for one, am looking forward to a better colored map as well. As it stands, with only two colors I see, a Teddy Bear, a Bird-thing, and a Cat/Dog thing.

Whoa!! You won't believe this, but where you pointed out the Cat/Dog thing is exactly where the party first encountered such a creature. It wasn't what you were thinking though. These are puma looking creatures with a wolf's snout, mouth, ears and tail. The players took to calling them catdogs because no one knew their actual names (all original creations on my part).

I saw the bird too, but maybe the "great primal animal gods" were involved in this world's creation mythos, but only those with the greatness to view the land from above the sky can see evidence.

Where do you separate the geologic from the philosophic?

I'm trying to defend you, RP...

Thanks GP! Actually that comment isn't too far from the mythology of the world. Of course it is just myth. In reality this world underwent some pretty incredible changes, and as you'll eventually see isn't even a typical planet as one would suspect. I'll have to keep you in suspense about that until later though.

Now I have to run off again as we have guests arriving soon.

[RPMiller]

Ok, I was able to squeeze a little more time in on this.

At this point it should be noted that what you are seeing are actually solid colors that fill the screen in the form of color layers. A layer mask has been added to create the land formations. This serves two functions. The first is that I can quickly and easily change the color/fill/texture of the land and non-destructively change the land shapes and such as the original land formation is saved as an alpha channel that can be reapplied if needed.

I have now added in the tectonic plates and begun indicating the direction of the plates' movement as indicated by the red arrows. These plates will help form the justification for various mountain ranges as well as volcanic ranges. There are three types of plate interactions so you should eventually see all of them scattered about the map. I won't go into plate tectonics as there are a myriad of sites that explain them and frankly I don't have the kind of time it would take to explain them all.

Anyway, once the plate movement is finished the next step will be to start putting the land features which will start with mountains. Once those are in place I'll go back and address sea and wind currents to establish the different types of climates that will be scattered over the planet.

[mmmmmpig]

I like the process that you are working on. Might I suggest a small edit on your plate features? the dark green plate and the purple plate. I think it would be better to make the plate boundary happen a bit further to the north where that land form is it's largest, kind of cutting through that bay. then you could make a gigantic mountain range there.

[RPMiller]

Are you referring to the bottom of the map purple and green? The interesting thing about plate tectonics is that mountains can actually rise hundreds of miles away from the edge of the plate as they slide under/over each other this is often the result of the kind of plates they are. You frequently see it with an oceanic plate sliding under a continental plate as the hotter plate causes the colder to "bubble" more. You see this along the western edge of the Americas and in southern Europe. You'll see a similar rise in exactly that area that you are pointing out as well as along the western edge of the central continent (the one in pale yellow). Of course if you have really old continental plates slamming hard against each other such as is the case with the Himalayas you get a similar effect. These times of mountains tend to be very 'craggy' and rough with sudden vertical rises and very little volcanic activity.

[mmmmmpig]

I was actually thinking about the Indian subcontinent slamming into Asia. That continent could have your super elevated mountain range, (roof of the world, godhome, etc...)

[RPMiller]

Ah, right. Actually the tallest mountains are at the top of the center continent where all the plates have smashed together and warped the land into almost a whirlpool of land with that large inland sea in its center.