Yantas - A Pretty Amateur WIP

[sangi39]

So it's been, wow, uh, 23 days since I last posted here. I've managed to literally do no work on either this world or any of my conlangs for over three weeks, which is kind of shocking. What the frell have I been doing all this time? 2048 has taken up some of my time, so's watching The Guild and rewatching old TV programmes. Man, I suck Anyway, back to stuff.

Okay so I've missed a lot! Also some of your recent noticings shows me that I've made several mistakes on my own african-ish world.

Is that Ibala you're talking about?

But I wanted to chime in and say it looks like you've done massive amounts of work while I was away and it looks like it's progressing wonderfully!!!

Thanks I'm hoping once I get back into the swing of things with this world, I can actually move forward a bit more.

Annoyingly, there doesn't seem to be all that many people online who are able to help with Koppen climate maps. I posted the latest version here, as well as on both the ZBB and the CBB and got a total of 3 replies dealing specifically with inaccuracies (1 here, two on the ZBB, and none on the CBB), with the two main criticisms being the size of my deserts ("too large") and the fact that many of my climate zones stick to latitude too much (which, interestingly enough, I pointed out when posting it, lol) and a minor criticism being that I didn't include all of the different Koppen climate zones (this is where the Climate Cookbook starts to fail anyway, conflating several climate zones into one). One user also pointed out that my coastal climates would likely stretch inland more than I have them at the moment.

I guess that's one of the reasons I've been able to move on. While "your deserts are too large" is all well and good, it's not really constructive, a kind of criticism which only one user of the three, acrsome, provided

However, following acrsome's advice, I went and looked at the Koppen climate map for Earth and mine does have some problems:

1) Tropical Rainforest, Af: On Earth, these seem to be blobs on or near the equator, surrounded by Am or Aw zones (northern South America and Central Africa), taking up the entirety of this latitude only on smaller islands (Sumatra, Java and New Guinea being fairly large examples).

2) I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think the south of Mistaya might be Am/Aw rather than BSh.

3) The desert of northern Mistaya probably would be a bit smaller while the steppe on the eastern side of the mountains might be taken over a little bit more by the Aw and Cfa climates, bringing the latter more inland. The deserts in Sirden and on the island south of Hungas might also be a bit smaller, but I think the desert in Arenda would probably remain the size it is now.

4) I think the Mediterranean climate of western Sirden might stretch a little further south, while simultaneously going a little further inland along with the Cfb zone to the south.

5) The eastern island of Velkasta probably needs sorting out. I'm not sure that the Cfb zone on its western coast would necessarily be there, given the lack of open water to the west. I get the feeling the entire northern part of the eastern island might be something like Dwc, but whether that makes sense, I don't know.

That's all I can think of right now, other than looking more and more at Earth's climate zones and finding analogues or near analogues to areas on Yantas (Earth doesnt have many long north-to-south mountain ranges on the east coats of continent so that poses at least one problem).

I might take a break from climates for a moment, hard to get my head round them, and come up with some names for major geographical features. "The island south of Hungas" and "the mountains in north-western Arenda" are a bit of a mouthful

[acrosome]

Y'know, I see what you mean by the size of the deserts. When you look at the Earth's Koppen map the only truly immense desert is the Sahara/Middle East. At a guess, it's large because:

1. The latitude is perfect, with a cold west-coast current that limits evaporation.
2. North Africa is a large and (mostly) unbroken land mass, creating rainshadow-like effects.
3. There are no high mountain ranges to act as climatologic speed-bumps, until you hit the Himalayas

Western Australia is another larger example (also no mountains 'till the east coast) but the rest tend to be small in extent. I suspect that this is because they are on land masses that aren't very large east-west, so sea effects mitigate. And in western North America the desert latitudes are smack in the middle of a west-coast mountain range, to boot. (That desert in northwest Sirden might be a good analogue of that- all broken up with mountains- though I'm not sure what effect that warm east-coast current will have.) Even southern Africa is basically one large highland plateau.

My mind boggles at trying to wrap itself around all of this. I've had best luck just looking for Earth analogues to terrain/latitudes/altitudes on my fantasy map, and trying to make them look similar. But it looks like I might have to go tone down my deserts, too, now.

So, I'll throw up my hands, and go babble in the corner for a bit...

EDIT- Out of curiosity, what is "CBB" and "ZBB"?

[sangi39]

Y'know, I see what you mean by the size of the deserts. When you look at the Earth's Koppen map the only truly immense desert is the Sahara/Middle East. At a guess, it's large because:

1. The latitude is perfect, with a cold west-coast current that limits evaporation.
2. North Africa is a large and (mostly) unbroken land mass, creating rainshadow-like effects.
3. There are no high mountain ranges to act as climatologic speed-bumps, until you hit the Himalayas

Western Australia is another larger example (also no mountains 'till the east coast) but the rest tend to be small in extent. I suspect that this is because they are on land masses that aren't very large east-west, so sea effects mitigate. And in western North America the desert latitudes are smack in the middle of a west-coast mountain range, to boot. (That desert in northwest Sirden might be a good analogue of that- all broken up with mountains- though I'm not sure what effect that warm east-coast current will have.) Even southern Africa is basically one large highland plateau.

My mind boggles at trying to wrap itself around all of this. I've had best luck just looking for Earth analogues to terrain/latitudes/altitudes on my fantasy map, and trying to make them look similar. But it looks like I might have to go tone down my deserts, too, now.

So, I'll throw up my hands, and go babble in the corner for a bit...

I might have to join you in the babbling.

On a similar note, another user on the ZBB recently posted a climate map of his conworld and received a sum total zero replies

EDIT- Out of curiosity, what is "CBB" and "ZBB"?

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