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

[Ryan K]

While I'm waiting for all the layer map slices to export, I'm browsing through the non-mapping worldbuilding threads, looking for tips about economy, trade, demographics, etc. I had some resources of my own already, and am busy bookmarking and subscribing to a bunch of others.

>snip<

* How did the world generate multiple sentient races?
** Are all the races branches of the same species, or completely different?
** Are they genetically compatible for crossbreeding?
** If they are the same species, why are they so different from each other?
** Does the race have a different outlook that would affect how they build nations?
>snip<

Thought I'd jump in because I am sort of fleshing a bit of this out with my own projects.

With regard to races branching off, that is probably your best bet. Only a few dozen thousand years ago, we shared the landscape with another sentient species - the neanderthals. We shared a long extinct common ancestor, yet we quite happily followed different paths of evolution. The neanderthal had some very stark contrasts from us, in their skeletal structure most noticeably. With that in mind, I find it a whole lot easier to understand where dwarves come from. Elves I find a little tricky, because waters tend to get muddied when you try to biologically explain why elves are so fricking uber all the time. I danced around that one by simply downgrading elves to normal mortals like the rest of us oxygen-thieves, with their own set of medical difficulties that don't seem to plague humanity, and some other characteristics that counterweigh the benefits of their longevity (which I think is a little bit of an untouchable elf trait).

This quite neatly dovetails into your second concept of interbreeding. There have been argument for the theory that humans and neanderthals interbred every now and again, but this will probably be largely unproven until we find fossil evidence of human/neanderthal hybrids. It is indeed possible; tigers and lions have been interbred, even though I think the offspring tends to be sterile/infertile, and donkeys and horses have done the nasty as well, giving us the common mule. I have a sneaking suspicion the human/neanderthal theory have a large support base in scientifically minded people who have a phobia of red-heads or have derisive things to say about the rugby team they didn't make selection for. History will decide.

Differences in physiology is all about evolution finding the most energy efficient way of getting people to reproduce more than they die off. So, have a look at typical physiology. Dwarves are short and stocky, hairier than Robin Williams, and are typically fair-skinned. Those could be very good hallmarks of a biological advantage in being strong diggers in cold environs, with a bit of energy being saved in not producing melanin in the skin.

Elves are harder. Depending on your take, such as fleet-footed-ness, excellent sensory faculties, quietness... well that just tells me of a biological need to get the heck out of danger and hiding until the bad things go away. Like I said, elves are hard.

With global outlook, I take the following tacts: dwarves are about as far-sighted as the next cave-wall, but apply highly developed engineering skills to a pragmatic concept of dealing with issues. Solutions to compelx problems can possibly be described by a dwarf in half a sentence. Elves like to avoid problems like the next predator, but with the ability to watch forests rise and fall throughout their lives, they may have a natural understanding of nature, and the nature of nature, than we like to think we have today. They are born to hide and watch. This may still be their attitude to the world. Watch for movement, and learn. Watch our kingdoms rise and fall like the waves on a beach, and hope if they stay quiet long enough, it will all just go away.

That's just my musings. Have a nice day!

[Master TMO]

First attempt at a localized map using the slices exported from FTPro. I'm still trying to play with the river contrasts so make the smaller streams still visible, but obviously lesser than the larger rivers. Once I get the look tweaked the way I like it I can export it into Inkscape or something similar to start placing cities, roads, trade routes, whatever I decide on.

Oh, nothing is custom drawn yet. It's all based solely on FTPro exports, although I am using Photoshop filters and layer styles, mostly on the rivers. So there are a few artifacts that need cleaning, but nothing too serious.

Scale is approximately 1 pixel = 1 mile, as I believe this map is close to the equator. That's something I'll have to calculate exactly though before I get too in-depth.
[EDIT: Added a simple scalebar to the map]

[TregMallin]

That's some really nice looking terrain!
As for the rivers/streams: Would it help to have a lighter band of water right at the coast, and then have the rivers be the same color as that?

[waldronate]

I find the perfectly straight sections of the rivers quite distracting. Perhaps filling basins before doing rivers might help? At the scale you're working, though, you may not have the editing resolution to fill enough of the basins to prevent a lot of straightening.

[Master TMO]

Yup, basins were filled before rivers were run (sounds like a sequel movie). So editing resolution is probably the culprit here, although I generated the rivers at double the image size resolution. The world is at 4096 pixels, and I generated the rivers using 8192. Is there a limit to that number like there is for the whole world? Or could I generate rivers using a 30000 pixel setting?

[Master TMO]

I tried it at 30k pixels and it immediately crashed. I'll try some smaller resolutions and see if I can find one that works that is higher than 8192.

[waldronate]

Everything in FT is limited by available process memory (roughly 2GB or 3GB total for everything that the program is doing). Many operations require temporary copies of the surface to work with, so what may work with one operation may cause a crash with another. FT doesn't have the world's best error checking as far as memory operations go.

[Master TMO]

A quick application of the Ripple filter in PS fixes the straight lines issue. The main difficulty with it will be that it won't ripple the straight lines the same way on different maps, so if a river segment is in the overlap, it will display differently on different maps. That's something I'll have to think about and experiment with. Maybe I can set up the ripple effect so that it is identical in those overlap zones or something.

[Master TMO]

My entry in the May 2011 Challenge using this world map.