WIP- unnamed fantasy world

[ascanius]

Hey you two Havn't heard from you guys in a while. Nice to see others still around.

Holy cow ascanius, the style on the central bit looks awesome! Good stuff!

The raw heightmap with the plain colors looks very good too, very detailed, but as you know, I'm not apt to give technical thoughs about it since I've no idea about it.

I'm so glad to see you working on your project a bit.

Thans Groovey. I'm hopeing to spend a good portion of time working on this map, hopefully I can manage to make enough spare time. Right now I have some to spare until life happens.

I just noticed the thread has been updated !

Your mountains look good, they are so detailed! I wanted to avoid getting too much in the details because i was afraid I might make it look wrong or inconsistent.
Your doing well so far but I find that the plains look dull in comparison.

Thanks Azelor. The mountains are a lot of work and they usually end up nothing like they were at the begining. Doing black and white first helps but when you start adding color it becomes really hard to keep things consistant and the colors right. I don't know how many times I redid the west coast of the central island trying to get the orange yellow color to blend into the green of the hills to give it a dry medeterainian feel. I've noticed working at 150% zoom helps keep the mountains roughly the same size. But it's so much work!

And climates: it is very complicated to do something realistic because it requires to consider a lot of variables at the same time.
Pixie's model is flawed in some places. The biggest problem is probably the approximation factor. Each steps error stacks with the others. And I find that the resulting climates of Palamb are not that realistic.

While Pixie's method is not without merit, (I admit that his maps look really professional) I would rather use it as an indicator rather than a definitive climate map.

If the planet is similar to Earth, I would recommend to use a simplified and standardized classification of the climates that uses precise criteria. Some are based of temperature, altitude, latitude (ex: cold desert are too cold to form between the tropics), precipitation, and geographic location (east vs west). Yes, some climates are almost exclusively found either on the east or west coasts.

You can have a look here at my answer on Worldbuilding SE: http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/1395/147
The first part is a general explanation on the climate. The forth part is actually about the different climates and how to place them.
I tried to include all the main factors and to be as concise as possible.
I'm not 100% sure but I think tweaked some numbers about the temperatures here and there to be sure climates would not overlap. The original classification is a bit more complex : the difference between Cwb and Cwc is the number of months with a temperature below 10. (3 vs 4 or more). They still overlap but that is why they need to be painted on the map instead of just generating them with a automatic method.

Nice info. In the end I used Pixies tut then used that link along with wiki and the all knowing google. In end I took your advice and started with the major climate then use rain and temp maps to get more detailed, with earth as refrence.

Here is the current map. It's not perfect and needs work still.

I've been following this thread with interest as it has some impact on the overall design of an old campaign world that I'm revisiting. I found that link you mentioned on Worldbuilding quite informative, @Azelor. Thanks.

Nice to see others taking an interest and I'm not posting for nothing.

Ok here is an update on the mountains. It's going to take me forever to finish....

Edit: Updated image
I'm looking for input on the still unfinished mountain range. I kinda got carried away with it and now I'm worried that the central area is simply too large and mostly too high. What do you think?

[Azélor]

I think it look correct but I do have some points to add.

The Mediterranean*climate: the area eastward of it tends to be drier as precipitations decrease inland. It will most likely become a steppe (cold)
I figured that the ITCZ would pass just north of the big mountain chain during summer. This would bring precipitations inland. Since the body of water is kinda small in the east, I think your climates west of that small ocean are ok. I would probably push the cold steppe further north a a bit further west.

The western side of the mountains should probably be drier than that. The climates in the mountain seems to be too hot considering the altitude but regional climate seems ok it might just need some more details.

I would expand the steppe and the desert. The blue part become a steppe and the rest possibly becomes a desert. If the mountains are like the Himalaya, it block almost all the moisture from going to the west.

The island just east of the little sea is affected by heavy precipitations during the summer. Making it mostly Cfa/Cfb unless the mountains are high enough to block the winds.

And I made other changes that I might explain later. I did not bother with the mountains since it's a lot of details.

[ascanius]

I think it look correct but I do have some points to add.

The Mediterranean*climate: the area eastward of it tends to be drier as precipitations decrease inland. It will most likely become a steppe (cold)
I figured that the ITCZ would pass just north of the big mountain chain during summer. This would bring precipitations inland. Since the body of water is kinda small in the east, I think your climates west of that small ocean are ok. I would probably push the cold steppe further north a a bit further west.

The western side of the mountains should probably be drier than that. The climates in the mountain seems to be too hot considering the altitude but regional climate seems ok it might just need some more details.

I would expand the steppe and the desert. The blue part become a steppe and the rest possibly becomes a desert. If the mountains are like the Himalaya, it block almost all the moisture from going to the west.

The island just east of the little sea is affected by heavy precipitations during the summer. Making it mostly Cfa/Cfb unless the mountains are high enough to block the winds.

And I made other changes that I might explain later. I did not bother with the mountains since it's a lot of details.

Thank you Azelor, I managed to get sick and tried to rework the climates but frankly I keep getting frustrated trying to figure out the details. I think I'm going to leave it at a regional climate map, it's to much detail otherwise.

I noticed that you removed all Ds climates, any reason? or is it simply too difficult to be accurate in terms of temp and precipitation to decide which is which.

I am curious about one thing though probably where I will make an exception to details. What do you think about the climates around those two mountain lakes/seas. I was thinking some sort of micro climate in those areas but because they are surrounded by mountains i'm not quite certain. I do know that a large body of water like that will stabalize the temperature a good bit and the mountains would probably give it an isolated climate but I'm not sure if I'm correct nor how to procede.

thanks again Azelor. I'm interested if you have a system you use or is it mostly very educated guessing on how you do the climates. I read up a good deal on climates but still.... I wish there was a formula adding math seems to make things easier for me.

[Azélor]

Well , I asked myself where is can be dry enough in summer to justify the Ds climates. These climates are mostly found near other Cs climates and in some spots isolated and small. If you go in details, it's possible to have Ds in some places. It could have some near the Cs climates but at higher altitudes.

The climate in the inland seas would be considered colder I think because they are surrounded by mountains. Air masses are colder because of this. I don't know the exact impact of precipitations. I supposed that the large landmass to the nort west created a high pressure area like the Siberian high. That's why I think it should be dry in winter. Beyond the immediate surroundings on the seas, the altitude increases steadily, reducing the temperatures. It get colder, moving in the Dwc then to the tundra, and eventually in the eternal snow.

I did try to use maths by combining temperature and precipitation maps following Pixie's tutorial, but I found it flawed.
I rely more on using specific but large criteria. The alternance of the high and low pressure systems, I think it's really important. The latitude, past a certain latitude, some climates change to others in a relatively constant fashion. Some climates are almost always found in certain locations: Cs, Ds, in the west. Dw in the east. Desert are drier near the tropics on the west coasts... Of course you must always asses whether these rules are not replaced by local characteristics, like altitude and the presence of mountains.

[ascanius]

OK I need some help with the mountain scale. I cannot decide which to use.




Right now I don't know which scale to use A, B, C, or D. I Think A is much too large but I included it to see what people think. I think C and D are the best fits but..... The mountain range D should be higher than A, B, and C but right now it looks lower. So should I use D as max height or make the mountains more like A, B, or C. Lowring the mountains is easy but making them heigher is more difficult. So which do you think looks better and gives a better representation of high and low mountain ranges.

[Deadshade]

Personnally I find B the best both in shape and scale (especially the southern part which looks very realistic)
The highest ranges on the map could be like the Northern part of B but even that looks a bit too big to me.
So I would normalise all ranges using B as a scale giver and then do other places accordingly. So if the highest places are elsewhere than B, then they should look like N part of B and B should get lower/smaller.

I must say that I can't understand D - both shape and scale look bizarre to me.

[Wingshaw]

Wow! I agree with Deadshade, B is best (although I also like C), but more importantly, this is going to look incredible when it is finished.

THW

[ascanius]

Personnally I find B the best both in shape and scale (especially the southern part which looks very realistic)
The highest ranges on the map could be like the Northern part of B but even that looks a bit too big to me.
So I would normalise all ranges using B as a scale giver and then do other places accordingly. So if the highest places are elsewhere than B, then they should look like N part of B and B should get lower/smaller.

I must say that I can't understand D - both shape and scale look bizarre to me.

I'm curious which part of the southern part do you mean? The left pointing arrow, or the one pointing north? It's kinda disapointing in a way because thats where I started to get frustrated and simply wanted to finish it so I quickly colored it in, that east west range and everything south I mean. Also does it have anything to do with the color of the mountains like that tan color which I like. I'm not sure if that tan color makes it too dry looking though.

Yeah D was mostly and experiment, I was trying to see if I could make just a few mountains and then duplicate and paste. I didn't really get around to finishing that section too wich makes the scale all off.

Wow! I agree with Deadshade, B is best (although I also like C), but more importantly, this is going to look incredible when it is finished.
THW

Thanks, It's going to take me a while to finish though, it took me a weekend to do the right island and even longer for the island on the left. Getting the colors right is probably the hardest thing. It's kinda intersting because I used a lot more red and blue than you would think.

So It looks like B is the winner. I'll post updates to see what you think.

Update:


Thanks for the help you two.

[Chashio]

This is going to be one of my favorite maps of the year. I'll probably just be quiet and watch what you do from here out, but I wanted to mention that your A mountains, while large compared with the others, had wonderful coloration and detail choice for snow and glaciers. I like the rest of the coloration as well, overall, but that stood out as particularly nice... and I miss it. Look forward to seeing this progress.

[Tom]

This is going to be one of my favorite maps of the year. I'll probably just be quiet and watch what you do from here out, but I wanted to mention that your A mountains, while large compared with the others, had wonderful coloration and detail choice for snow and glaciers. I like the rest of the coloration as well, overall, but that stood out as particularly nice... and I miss it. Look forward to seeing this progress.

i quote this! beautiful work indeed, but i also liked a lot the big mountain!