[WIP] Narridia, Revisited

[atpollard]

A general observation from drawing contour maps and drainage basins: The coast generally represents the contour drawn at the level of the water (since most water is flat). A convex (bulge out) coast represents a small hill, ridge or slightly higher local terrain. A concave (curves in) coast represents a small valley, swale or slightly lower local terrain. Since water flows downhill, rivers tend to collect in the low parts. As a result, most (but certainly not all) rivers intersect the coast at one of the concave parts. Look at the sample maps in my earlier post to see what I am talking about.

A free observation of dubious practical use ... the general convex/concave shape of the coast tends to continue into the deeper water body. This affects local water temperatures and steers local weather patterns. As a result, concave areas of the coast recieve more rainfall and are more likely to be the place where a hurricane makes landfall. (based on observations of storm paths around the bulge on the west coast of Florida, just north of Tampa).

[Lukc]

Actually, I think the southern continent is more app. half the size of Europe ...

[atpollard]

OK, this could be my bad.

The map on post #8 has two scales ... one for the map of Europe and the Medeterranean, and another scale at the bottom of the map. They are very different. Which is correct?

I assumed that the medeterranean was shown at the same scale as your map, and your southern Continent is 3-4 times the area of Europe on the post #8 map.

From the scale on your drawings, both of your continents combined are about the size of Europe.

[the-golem]

OK, this could be my bad.
The map on post #8 has two scales ... one for the map of Europe and the Medeterranean and another scale at the bottom of the map.
They are very different. Which is correct?

I assumed that the medeterranean was shown at the same scale as your map, and your southern Continent is 3-4 times the area of Europe on the post #8 map. From the scale on your drawings, both of your continents combined are about the size of Europe.

Well, they both are. Kinda. The Euro-scale came with the map, and is 500 miles. My scale is actually measured in leagues, although I never went out and said that. The blue line *above* that is the same distance, converted to miles, based off of the length of the Euro-scale. However, I think that this is a bit too large, and I had a different idea: Each subcontinent is roughly the size of Australia. I think this is slightly smaller than I had before.

Although, interestingly the scales show up at different sizes, so I initially thought Australia would be smaller, but my math tells me they should be the same rough scale, roughly

[the-golem]

Ugh. I've been stumped for placenames, so to distract myself, I took a shot at few geo-features, namely Forests and Swamps. I'm not exactly pleased, but I thought I'd at least toss this out there:

[Lukc]

Hmm ... what about a style where more of the underlying map remains visible? For your style, such bright colours for features might kill your mountains and borders visually.

[the-golem]

Hmm ... what about a style where more of the underlying map remains visible? For your style, such bright colours for features might kill your mountains and borders visually.

Yeah, I should have thought of that sooner. I did a test with the swamp texture at 50% opacity, and the forests at 75%. I like the faintness of the swamp, I think it looks better. On the other hand, the forests look worse, IMO.



Edit: Meh, noone's replied, so instead of doing multiple posts, I'll just go ahead and make an addendum to this one.

To get a better grasp of scale, I went online and grabbed a world projection map (Goode's Homolosine), and superimposed an outline of Narridia onto it. I scaled the continent down to the same scale (more or less) as the one involving Australia to fit it to the map. I must confess, I'm a bit surprised as to how small the scale is. When I was working with Europe, It seemed very very large in comparison, and with Australia it also seemed large, but not overwhelmingly so.

Opinions?

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Edit: Oh, I'm an idiot. I forgot to upload the new image. Fixed: