Well some progress. I have been going through the old ultima maps, and numbers 4 and 5 (because of the dual scale world) really seemed to be scaled big, but not big enough.
By taking the size of a cell and setting it equal to a small town (say 500 ft), then multiply by 512 (number of cells) you get about 50 miles. I looked at google earth and have found no 50 mile islands with near enough mountain and shoreline detail that these maps have.
Because the continent contains multiple mountain chains, and is in the middle of the ocean, I surmise it must be much bigger. I am not finding mountain chains much shorter than 100 miles on Google earth, so scaling up, I think the smallest this continent can be is about 300 miles. It has too much feature for a coral atoll or a volcanic island, though there is some volcanic activity. That being said, how does the strange C-shape get created? I am postulating that the left hand side is of the island is formed by a plate tectonic convergence boundary. That leaves the possibility of some of the smaller islands being caused by andesite volcanics. I am working out how this can be possible and will make some sketches.
I also intend on taking a look at how major ocean currents behave. I found these neat map of new zealand currents. I will come up with something similar for this.
New Zealand Currents
Anyhow, I compared all of the maps of britannia, and found that ultimas 4,5,6 and 7 actually agreed pretty well with each other as far as the shoreline. The other major features, rivers and mountain ranges, were very different however. I took the most detailed one (ultima 5 - also the largest scale) and made an outline of it so that I had a base to make notes on and tweak the shape.
Thats neat - I like the art style, very clean. I am going to go for a similar level of detail, but with my scaled up content. It will show the roads, forests, and stuff in the same kind of way. I am going to do it by hand and try to copy the style of maps like those on this page, including the navigation rhumb lines (particularly the one on the bottom):
http://www.xpoferens.cat/75.html
Just found this sweet picture.
I will be using this to make my map.
Plate Tectonics puzzle
Also turns out that there are 5 types of mountains:
Fold - Alps
Fault Block - Sierra Nevada
Volcanic - Iceland
Dome - Navajo mountain, Utah
Plateau - not really a mountain
Starting to think that the mountains near spiritwood will be fault blocks, of andesite volcanic, and serpents spine will obviously be fold mountains.
Some interesting rules I noticed about plate tectonics:
There are almost no plate boundaries that are on land. Almost all are under water.
Fold mountains can happen anywhere in the plate because plates arent rigid.
Plates apparently can move in multiple directions and not all boundaries have directly opposing motion. Interesting.
Alright guys, don't know if anyone is reading these, but I have had a busy day and am turning in. This is my first guess at possible plate tectonics so I make sure there are believable mountain ranges. Shorelines will follow eventually. I have surmised that the mountain features are the most important part of a continent, almost like bones in a skeleton, and that perhaps it is best to start shaping a map by coming up with their placement first.
My major hypothesis is that there is some form of plate twist going on created by the center plate moving NW while it is getting pushed S by the upper right plate and NE by the left plate.
Tell me what you think. I think my notes are self explanatory, but tell me if anything isn't
While plate tectonics (and their effects) don't come into play in my maps all that much, I'm still interested to see how this turns out.
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Thanks for the note. I am starting to think that it doesn't matter for most maps, but when people crank out massive world maps without considering mountain formation, you get stuff like this:
Faerun
I think they designed it by dropping dried macaroni on a paper and drawing a mountain range wherever a piece fell.
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