FTPro - Random World Mapping for Fun and (no) Profit

[Master TMO]

Speaking of just trying things to see what happens, I get some unexpected results when I play with the Continental Shelves value.

Here it is with the default shelves set at 1000 ft below sea level. This one also has all of my edits and such.


Here it is with the shelves moved up to 500 ft below sea level:


What I had expected was to possibly lose my hand-edits and for the shelves to compress inward toward the coastlines. What apparently did happen was that my edits were retained (the world would look much different back in its original form) and that the landmasses were raised up, bringing the coastlines closer to the shelves. Now, the shelves did move in very, very slightly, and there are spots in the flat areas underwater where it dropped into abysses. But overall the change in shelf outline is minimal.

This is just uninformed guesswork, but I would say that while we tend to think of the significant boundary for the landmasses in FT being at sealevel, it looks like it's actually at the shelves. I had been thinking of it as working from the top down elevation-wise, with it just putting in the shelves wherever it happened to reach -1000 ft. But it looks like it might be the opposite - building the shelves first at whatever depth is defined, and then going upward from there. I haven't built one yet, but I wonder if there would be any functional difference between shelves @ -500 ft and shelves @ -1000 ft and the water level set to -500?

[Master TMO]

I'm still playing around with a few things on this map, trying to speed up some of the manual processes. (I have an incurable hobby of trying to turn manual processes into automatic ones.) However, while driving in to work this morning I spent a bit of time wondering about the tectonic processes that would result in that large bay on the main continent that is surrounded by a circular mountain range. I'm no tectonics expert, but the only two I've been able to come up with are: 1) hit an sub-continent similar to India in the past, and has almost completely finished submerging it back into the crust, leaving just the mountain range as evidence of the collision. Or 2) is in the process of somehow being pushed up and around a seafloor plate, swinging closed on it, and therefore pushing underneath from multiple sides at once.

[Master TMO]

Just to post a quick update and thumbnail at closing time. I'm in the middle of filling in the accidental lakes around the continents. After I'm done and checked it, it's on to manipulating the rainfall and temperature.

I'm not entirely sure what I think about the channel that's developed across the top right continent. If I should leave it, or fill it in.



I think I have enough ideas with this map that once I'm done with the geography, I can start with the inhabitants. Placing cities and countries and races, that sort of thing. I haven't looked at that before, so if anyone knows of any good resources on the site, I'd be happy for references.

[Master TMO]

Well, as per my usual method, I get close to finishing up and I start it over again. However, this time I think I came up with a usable script. Every step I did to this map is a regular menu command, with only 1 step involving manual labor. I have not tested the script on other random worlds yet though, so it may not be generic enough. We'll have to see. But here are the start and end images.
Original map:


Final map:


Here are the steps used:

Landmass Preparation:
1 - Drop water level to -1000 ft
2 - Fill Basins
3 - Select altitude from -1000 to 0 ft
4 - Lower Pre-scale offset by 0.075
5 - Smooth Pre-scale offset by 2
6 - Incise Flow (Amt: 2; Flow Exp: 0.4; Blend: 0.5; Blur: 1.5)
7 - Fill Basins
8 - Smooth Offset by 2
9 - Set Water Level to 0 ft

Weather Tampering:
Dry out the Horse Latitudes:
10 - Load Horse Latitudes selection file (a selection file I created, will post it in a separate post)
11 - Lower Rainfall by 20 inches
12 - Raise Temperature by 10 degrees

Monsoon the Equator and 60 degree Lats:
13 - Load Weather Bands selection file (ditto Horse Latitudes file above)
14 - Raise Rainfall 20 inches

Dry the continental interiors:
15 - Select Altitude from 0 to 100000 ft
16 - Contract Selection by 10 pixels
17 - Lower Rainfall by 1 inch
18 - Repeat steps 16-17 until the selection completely disappears

Wet down the coasts:
19 - Select Altitude from -100000 to 0 ft
20 - Expand Selection 10 pixels
21 - Select Altitude from 0 to 100000 ft, subtract from current selection (this leaves a 10 pixel border around the edges of the continents as your current selection)
  - Note: looks like the beta version I am using might be doing selection subtractions incorrectly.  You may have to change this command to desired result.  I am working with tech support to figure out what is going on, and will update/change this step as necessary.
22 - Raise Rainfall 2 inches

Clean up:
23 - MANUAL - Hand-fix potholes where sections inside the continent boundary drop below sea-level.
24 - Fill Basins
25 - Find Rivers

[Master TMO]

Here are the selection files for the steps above. The files are sized for a map of 4096 pixels in size. You'd have to convert them if you use a different size map.

Horse Latitudes:


Weather-bands:

[ravells]

Wow, I really wish I had the know how to get this much out of FT Pro!

[Master TMO]

It's not actually completely valid, if you are trying for as much realism as you can get. Ocean and wind currents don't affect all coastlines equally. But I couldn't figure out any way of affecting a selection so it expanded in only the appropriate direction. Although while typing this I *did* just come up with an idea for another possible weather manipulation to do.

[Master TMO]

Well, I think I've exported about all of the views I could reasonably use for plotting. Are there any good tutorials for laying out country boundaries and city locations using Photoshop? I did a quick search using Photoshop and Tutorial keywords, but mostly got WIPs. This is a new field of endeavor for me, so I'm pretty much starting from scratch, and any pointers would be welcome, even the most basic.

[ravells]

Are you after pointers about where cities and country boundaries should be located (in which case that's not a photoshop question but a general geography / history one), or how to make country borders and city markers in photoshop?

[Master TMO]

The drawing part. I think I know enough about history and geography to come up with something that sounds plausible, even though it would probably make actual historians, sociologists and biologists cry to see their fields butchered like that.

And I will do some more searches myself as well. I was pretty tired last night when I posted that, and didn't have the patience for a full search.