WIP- unnamed fantasy world

[Chashio]

I really like where you're going with the land on that middle continent in the eastern half. It doesn't look finished yet (most completed of the bunch?), but I do like where it's headed. The lake looks pretty sweet too, though there is a difference between it and the rest of the coloration. The only input I can give on how well the height map works realistically is that you look like you know what you're doing. I say carry on.

[Akubra]

Having a look at your height map and I must say it looks really nice. You achieved a kind of "fuzzy" look which tends towards a satellite view (don't ask me about colours, I have a mild form of colour blindness). The thing is, your ocean floors are so awesome that everything else pales a bit in comparison . I agree with Pixie and Chashio that the small central-eastern continent looks the best.

I'm a little unsure about the lake. It looks like you placed it smack in the middle of a small plate with divergent boundaries all around. Wouldn't the lake be located on one of those boundaries instead? Also, the outlet towards the sea crosses a divergent boundary in the south of the plate. I have no idea if that is possible, but it's not something I would do intuitively. Maybe a question for one of the professors at the University of Picsë

Cheers - Akubra

[groovey]

Yes, I agree the fish continent looks the best, but I don't dislike the rest either, since it gets the job done. Of course, that's very personal because I'd use the height-map for info purposes and wouldn't care if it looked to pretty or what. If you have a "finished map" purpose for it, then yes, in my opinion it needs more texture definition, which I guess you are still working on anyway.

I guess they are right about the contrast between the sea style and the height-map style though. It would need to be coherent, again, I personally don't care though, as it gets the job done for info purposes, it works for me.

EDIT: your style for the ocean reminds me a lot of Google Earth's, so a satellite style for the land should work as well as it does in it, if you work more on the texture of the land.

[ascanius]

Ok Thanx everyone for the feedback. It really helps. Currently I've been working on climate so I can get a better idea of the color palette. I'm hoping that by figuring out the climate first I can do terrain in one go without making a height map then going back and essentially doing it over again. I used this height map for the work on climate. I've also worked on a tentative palette that I am going to use.

So this is what I have for the cimate stuff.

Temp map. Red is hot blue is cold. Purple is high changes in temp (centers) green low changes in temp (coasts, cannot really see the green but it's there)



Next is northern Summer atmosphere and rainfall.
Red = high pressure centers
blue = low pressure centers
Purple/blue = low precipitation --> light purple/blue higher rainfall with the almost white being a lot of rainfall.
the continental areas where the land shows through are areas without rainfall or simply dry.



and here is January norther hemisphere


Ok. Now it took me doing this over and over I figure I'll just post and see if anyone can give me some pointers. I honestly feel like I have done everything backwards. To me nothing makes sense, I kinda thought the winters (northern hemisphere) would have more rainfall than they do, but according to my rainfall map it seems that the rainy season is in the summer. I kinda feel that if I flip everything north to south it would make more sense. I have little hope for these maps so be mean!

[Pixie]

Well, ascanius, you did make a very basic mistake . And yep, unfortunately it's one which will change things a lot.

You forgot the high pressure centers at the oceans during winter time. They aren't replaced by low pressure centers, like you did, they just migrate north/south. The low pressure areas happen at the ITCZ and the Polar Fronts - actually, that's what they are, the regions where Low Pressure centers tend to occupy. Also, the high pressure centers tend to be elongated East-West and not so much round. I just retrieved the following image from the portuguese weather office - see how the A's (high pressure) line up to make a sort of oval area.


This will change most of the winds and that will change most of the rain patterns. So, I'm sorry to bring bad news, but if you want some accuracy you have to go at it again.

On the positive note, it's already clear that you will have some areas with heavy rain and others much less so. That very flat southern coast of the southern continent being just under the polar front will be very interesting. It's also plain to see the wide areas of rainforest and the deserts that are about to "be".

Lastly, once you have a revision ready, post it with the continental shelves invisible. The color is close to "Very Wet" and gets confusing. Hope this helps and that I was mean enough.

[ascanius]

Ha I knew it. I knew something was wrong but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what it was. I followed your tutorial at first but when my rainfall map showed almost no difference between summer and winter I checked out Geoff's climate cookbook then confusion set in. Then argg...about six maps later the above maps resulted.

Ok this is the revision for winter. I modeled it loosely of this map mostly to get the north south shift of pressure fronts. If I can remember the url I'll post a link.



I know right now my pressure fronts have been taking steroids.


I have a few questions.
-for the southwest continent how would the ITCZ move in relation to that continent along the eastern coast. I'm guessing it probably wouldn't shift that far over the ocean, maybe a low pressure center would form over the landmass and the ITCZ would curl back towards the equator.
-second how far would the north polar front shift south over landmasses and what about over the ocean.

Thanks for the help Pixie your my hero.

[Pixie]

Nice map for reference.

Looking at it (assuming you mean Winter "in the northern hemisphere")
- low pressure centers form inland in the continents south of the equator and also at the warmest part of the Indian Ocean (I don't know whu, but I assume it's the equatorial currents which have crossed the entire Pacific that heat that area)
- high pressure centers still exist in the oceans, the ones in the southern hemisphere were displaced southwards.
- at the core of the continents in the northern hemisphere, high pressure centers formed - more or less following the shape of the land, the one in Asia is huge!

This more or less answers your questions
-> the southwest continent -> most of the equator line is over water, so I don't think the ITCZ would be displaced significantly, maybe only as far as the coast (which is mountainous almost all the length, so a natural boundary for air masses)
-> the northern polar front -> over the ocean it wouldn't move much, it is a very vast ocean, so its surface temperature is quite stable. As for inland, it would be displaced northward, because of the effect of the high pressure center, just the way you have it.

Glad to be of assistance (hero-like...)

This looks much better (though the northern polar front is far too much into the tropics!)

[Akubra]

Sorry I can't be of much assistance here, ascanius. A few weeks ago I tried to do what you're doing here, got a bit frustrated and published it half finished. I'm following your discussion with a lot of interest though. Looks like I'll have to study this topic again and redo my whole pressures/winds map.

Cheers - Akubra

[ascanius]

Thanks Pixie for answering my questions.

@Akubra. Yes doing a climate map is work and complicated, especially since you have make an educated guess where pressure fronts are located. If your like my the jargon of high and low pressure fronts is/was confusing due to my chem background, studied micro bio so you need to know chemistry. To me it makes more sense to call the high pressure centers low pressure due to the air technically being colder thus lower pressure. When I think pressure of a gas I think PV=nRT where if T is increased then pressure increases. So things like the ITCZ being called low pressure is confusing since it is warm/hot air. I honestly think they should get rid of the pressure term and use density it makes so much more sense if you ask me though I get it's called ideal gas law and ideal conditions don't exist, that and it's mostly used to calculated variables in a closed system. But damn it still confuses me. I finished on of the maps and realized I had my pressure zones backwards.

Anyway. here are the latest updates.
summer northern hemisphere both atmospheric and rainfall.



here is winter north.



I am wondering if the eastern sea in the large northern western continent would be enough to create a micro-climate something like the Mediterranean.

[Pixie]

I sometimes get confused with high-pressure = cold and low-pressure = hot, too. But the perfect gas law is for an homogeneous gas, not for particle movements within that gas. High pressure and low pressure, atmosphere wise, are terms related to the direction of the pressure gradient - but alas, that doesn't matter now

So your maps look much better, apart a couple of aspects, but I'll leave that to later. First, I want to tell you that I am using also having a look at your climate (doing the stuff you are doing, in parallel). This is because I want to see if my prospective tutorial yields sort of similar results for the same map. If you agree, I'll keep those to myself until you finish your stuff and then we compare notes.

Also, having "copied-pasted-layered" your map, I noticed that one could use a different 0º longitude point that would look neat as well (in my humble opinion, neater, since it doesn't break any continent). Do you still recognize this?


You mentioned recently that the difficulty of my tutorial about climate is the educated guess one needs to take about position and extent of the low/high pressure centers and of the convergence zones. Here's the stuff from your map where I don't quite agree with your guesses (but they are my guesses, I am not a climatologist):
- the high pressure zone, in January, in the northern continent, should be directly over the high mountain ranges, effectively pushing the polar front south of it.
- also in January, the low pressure in the larger southern continent should not cross the central mountain range - that's not a warmer part of the land.
- you are stretching the oceanic high pressure centers into almost all of their respective oceans, I think it's over-stretching them

And finally, this is not a guess, but something I am sure of. Winds are almost parallel to isobaric lines, you are making them perpendicular in a lots of places.