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Thread: My world building project needs realism

  1. #1
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    Help My world building project needs realism

    Hi everyone,

    I've undertaken a huge world building project for my fantasy novel. As I was looking for fantasy maps to help me with realism I stumbled upon this amazing site! I had no idea there was a whole group of people like yourselves making realistic maps in a wide variety of styles. I must say quite a few of them really impressed me!!! So I love being here and I've been drooling over the maps for over a week!

    The quality of my map is low because I'm working in kolourpaint on Ubuntu (no money for a new pc or windows). And I've been messing with the map a lot.
    In my own humble opinion the continents are beginning to take a realistic shape, which is very important to me. I'm mostly concerned about which area would have which climate. I really need my map to be realistic when it comes to climate, rainfall, and so on. Who can advise me some?

    The discolored sea area is where I'm going to drop smaller islands, as that is a sunken continent. And the novel will take place in the mediterranean kind of area near the center of the map. I have a bunch of history ready to be adapted to the realism of the map, story setting details will need to be adjusted as well.

    I would appreciate any help or advice. (I can not receive pm's yet so please answer here)

    Thanks!!!
    Bjorn

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  2. #2
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    Using some info from http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...roject-Majy-sa I'm trying to create the climate myself, but I'm not knowledgeable.

  3. #3
    Guild Adept loogie's Avatar
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    Well, let me be the first to say the landmasses look quite good, they just.. feel right you know?

    as far as climates.. thats a big job... especially if you're looking to make them realistic.. cause there are just so many things that come into play. The sun for one, can cause a series of hot bands... or even bands of desert on a planet, ocean currents cause a lot of our climates as well... as well as numerous other things... I would say the best start would be ocean currents.. figuring out which are warm and which are cold currents... I dunno if anyone has any processes they've done to get something realistic, but that'd be where i'd start...

    Mountains also cause a lot of climate dispersion by blocking it, the whole concept of dry areas on the opposite side of the wind on a mt, so.. getting your mt ranges would help... large bodies of water (lakes) rivers and stuff can help too.. also ice ages (if any) and current ice flows.. pretty much anything that can change/modify/block temperature effects all of the climate... and thats just for starters
    Photoshop, CC3, ArcGIS, Bryce, Illustrator, Maptool

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    Cool! Thanks Ioogie... From looking at oceanic currents I think I got pretty realistic currents now. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm trying to mess with climate zones and mountains, for whatever reason that seems harder, but I'm still messing with it.

    It seems my previous post got eaten, where I said I was trying to use info from http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...roject-Majy-sa


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    Last edited by Hyrrow; 03-27-2012 at 11:49 AM.

  5. #5
    Guild Journeyer Facebook Connected Joshua's Avatar
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    I second the comment on the landmasses. They do look good. They also look like they have a natural curvature going on that would suite some projection style of an atlas... But I don't know what style. Yet. Now I want to do some research and learning.

  6. #6
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    Thanks. I'm trying to place tectonic plates and mountains. And this feedback means a lot to me, this task seems so daunting! :-)

  7. #7
    Guild Journeyer octopod's Avatar
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    Looks very cool! Is that whole big sea in the upper right corner very shallow (epeiric), or just the little sea near the top center? Either way, I love epeiric seas, I think they're underused in a lot of maps just because we don't have many on the Earth right now.

    Also, I would tend to expect a westward equatorial flow between the continents about 1/3 of the way from the right side of the map, since there's nothing to block the flow.

  8. #8
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    Your currents look pretty good, but you have an unnecessary band at the equator. Your equatorial countercurrent doesn't really need to be a loop, the east to west flows from your gyres basically equate to that loop. You are also missing a small section of what would likely be a counter-equatorial flow. Also in your northeast section there appears to be an oddity, which I don't think would work well. Here you have two gyres sort of meeting which should likely be one that sticks with more earthly travel. Your warm equatorial water should go around that island left and right and then continue north before swinging back east and dropping south. Or at least that would be the way to avoid some curious weather issues. I'm not an expert, but for surface currents I think that change would be a good bet.

    You've a good deal of land mass and a fairly open equator, your ITCZ will likely be an interesting propellant of weather.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by octopod View Post
    Looks very cool! Is that whole big sea in the upper right corner very shallow (epeiric), or just the little sea near the top center? Either way, I love epeiric seas, I think they're underused in a lot of maps just because we don't have many on the Earth right now.

    Also, I would tend to expect a westward equatorial flow between the continents about 1/3 of the way from the right side of the map, since there's nothing to block the flow.
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    Like this? Thanks!

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Veldehar View Post
    Your currents look pretty good, but you have an unnecessary band at the equator. Your equatorial countercurrent doesn't really need to be a loop, the east to west flows from your gyres basically equate to that loop. You are also missing a small section of what would likely be a counter-equatorial flow. Also in your northeast section there appears to be an oddity, which I don't think would work well. Here you have two gyres sort of meeting which should likely be one that sticks with more earthly travel. Your warm equatorial water should go around that island left and right and then continue north before swinging back east and dropping south. Or at least that would be the way to avoid some curious weather issues. I'm not an expert, but for surface currents I think that change would be a good bet.

    You've a good deal of land mass and a fairly open equator, your ITCZ will likely be an interesting propellant of weather.
    This is a bit difficult for me to follow. I found out what ITCZ is on google. I will remove the unnecessary band at the equator. There will be islands coming there soon anyway.
    I can't entirely follow whee you'd adjust the currents otherwise. Could you maybe quickly scribble over it in paint or so? Please and thank you.

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    This is as far as I understood.
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    Last edited by Hyrrow; 03-27-2012 at 01:55 PM.

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