Thitherto Unnamed World of Cassini

[Islacrusez]

Greetings fellow cartographers!

I've recently started work on a project which has suffered from an awful lot of requirement-creep and not an awful lot of work. Now I'm stuck with a to-do list more appropriate for someone's life work, and no idea where to even start. Thus I have a few questions and would greatly appreciate the input of this fine and vastly experienced community. This thread will serve as an anchor for my project, tracking the status, showing off my work, and recording any suggestions or feedback that you kind folk bring me. So first, a little look at what I'm trying to do.

Purpose:
The idea is to create a world to set a number of fantasy RPG campaigns in. This includes everything from countries and cultures, to futures and histories; everything in between including politics, philosophies, laws, natural resources, pantheons, economies, currencies and trade goods. In short, an entire world. The tangible result is an atlas of the world resembling one of our own (possibly one for each of the three or four key points in history). It would also mean a bunch of databases (and RNGs based on them for names etc) and overlay maps.

What I have:
Questions and not a lot else. The world itself is what would happen if the world's surface was rotated 90 degrees, as per http://what-if.xkcd.com/10/
This means that my starting point is the terrain of Earth as a sphere, or a terrain map with a Cassini projection and by extension, this:



Thus my first question, how should I create my map/world? What sort of software should I use? Ideally having something that works like Google Maps or Google Earth by the time I'm done would be great, especially if I can then throw my overlays on it as needed. In particular I'd be able to generate atlas-style images of any area I choose, rather than having to redraw a new map every time. Unfortunately I'm new to cartography and am not familiar with any of the software listed here (certain acronyms in particular are rather unenlightening!), so I'd appreciate any suggestion you guys might have.

Second question, far more simple... What do I call it? How does one name an entire world? I wanted to call it Cassini because nobody I was going to show it to would know the reference, but I can't call it that here - nobody would be able to find it. I've poked around the toponomy section, but I didn't see anything on naming world; countries and cities yes, but not so much for worlds.

So what say ye, anyone know which shovel to start digging this hole with?

[waldronate]

On the naming subject, one technique is to add "a", "an", "que" or some such syllable to the name. Thus you might have "Cassinia" (a lovely bacterial species), "Cassinian", or "Cassinique". I've spent the last hour dealing with the aftermath of three small dogs and one well-aged bag of used diapers in my home, so my ideas may be as polluted as my lungs at the moment.

[Islacrusez]

Thitherto-Cassinia it is then. Not that it matters, as few (if any) people would have a name for the world other than for the ground beneath their feet. Gives me a name to pin on the project though.

With that out of the way, any thoughts on how to approach it? I know there's some earth heightmaps available, and I'd like to use those, I guess they'd require reshuffling from one projection to another? Would it be possible/sensible to work on a globe?

[johnvanvliet]

the perl panotools for hugin will do it
http://search.cpan.org/~bpostle/Panotools-Script-0.28/

BUT it is in the Python "pip " so very easy to install

pip install panotools

installs the Python version


from this

using this

erect2cubic --roll=-90 --erect=4k.gebco_bathy.png --face=1024 --ptofile=gebco.pto

nona -o cube_prefix gebco.pto

cubic2erect cube_prefix0000.tif cube_prefix0001.tif cube_prefix0002.tif  cube_prefix0003.tif cube_prefix0004.tif   cube_prefix0005.tif rotate.tif

you get this

[Redrobes]

Thats some useful bit of scripting right there. Not sure why I would need it but maybe one day ill need it but at least I know where to look !