How to get your rivers in the right place

[Redrobes]

EDG:
The terrain might raise up to the left but there was a single flat base level which went across the middle of the map to either side. It could have gone either way. It would have been reasonable to have a river going east to west or west to east.

During the sim if the water height is not very much then it does not show so if the water spreads out then it can vanish from the view. I set it not to permeate or evaporate and its running on my GeoTerSys app. There is in fact rain and water all over the map just not very much of it. The app is not ideal either. Its not without problems and differences with the real world. It is objective however, so it can come up with an answer which lacks my bias.

Talroth, Asharad:
Perhaps there are more lakes than I thought. It was a personal observation not really steeped in fact. Our world has some crazy places on it which defies all sensible mapping. Heres a good one...

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&...37708&t=h&z=11

It seems that there is a band across the world from Canada, Norway, Finland, and right across Russia in a small set of latitudes which do have a tremendous amount of lakes. Below that line they get a lot less numerous. But best ignore that statement - some places do have a lot of lakes. I dont know why this is or whether it has anything to do with water tables. I would doubt it. I wonder because of the latitudes that it might be because for some part of the year lots of water is locked up as snow and ice and then later it all thaws into lakes and then refreezes again. Maybe that climate precludes long rivers because theres no continuous steady water flow.

Nomadic:
Sure, should have said rain and snow. It was basically that water has to gain the energy to rise up in height before losing it all as it falls back to the sea.

I am not much of a geographer but have been wrestling with some of these things trying to model them in water flow to try and get the results looking natural. We could do with more expertise with geographers and geologists on this site.