Anybody care to share their map?

I forget where I read it and don't recall all the rules about it, but I recall seeing something about placing names on a map and readability. One of the things I remember is that major places like cities are larger font size then the surrounding towns, and there is some space around the important points. Even if there is something there that needs to be labels, it shouldn't be labels because it would interfere with the major label. As you zoom in, more labels appear to provide the more information for those places closer to the center. It was using how Google Maps labels things as an example because it a very readable map.

This is one of the reasons I'm doing my maps in FT3 and CC3. It allows me to easily develop different maps at different zoom levels and link them together. Plus, I can then package up all the maps and documents I write up for the world, and anyone can browse through it with their free viewer software. You could do something similar using free tools such as Inkscape, Gimp, and generating a webpage with hyperlinked area maps (assuming you are familiar with HTML. If you want to get really fancy, you can even generate Google Maps files and make a Maps version of your world. However, that is even more complex and I'm not sure what all would be required to do that.

I read through Elantris and the Mistborn trilogy while waiting on Brandon Sanderson to finish up book 14 of Wheel of Time. He had taken over the series after Robert Jordan died and I was out of books to read in that series, so I decided to pick up some of his stuff to see how it was. The Mistborn world is awesome. I even got the Mistborn RPG book. Haven't run a game in it yet so can't really comment on the system, but love the world. There are suppose to be making a prequel video game that will be releasing sometime soon too.

 

I like what you have so far, it would be nice to see it at a better resolution though, to see more details and all. I like the landforms but from this scale it looks like there is a lot of noise and i'm not sure why?

I use Krita for painting and the Gimp for editing, I do see the point in buys software when there is so much greate open source software that is just as good. I guess it depends on how much time you want to put into it. I did everything by hand so it's taken a very long time to do. You can't really see from just looking at it but if you right click and view image you can see what I'm getting at.

It has a Van Gogh feel to it, I don't really like the clouds though.

I don't think the font, nor the font size work, it's too hard to figure out what the letters are. Other than that my only other thing is maybe making the rivers much smaller, they look too big and kinda overwhelm everything else.

 

In Jangada my islands float (aerially) - and I'm currently building a number of them as maps. This is the island from the first novel Haadrat
Created using photoshop and worldmachine

 

@ascanius Yeah, I do have a feeling I will have to re-work it totally to get the hang of it. This is my first ever map after all. I just wanted to have something that will give me the exact positioning of all the places to help me while writing.

Noldona I haven't read Elantris, but I will eventually get to it. I first want to finish all the Mistborn novels. The world there is so amazing, and it is so easy to read I think I found a new favourite. I'd love to do a frp game in that world if I could. As a player though, not the Dungeon Master. Didn't know about the game, I'll have to look it up.

 

My map can be viewed at Galyndor Interactive Map - K.S. CrooksK.S. Crooks. It only shows the main country, the entire world is on the gallery page. The main page of the website I used to create my map is donjon; RPG Tools. This site provides ideas for plots, characters, goals and several other things you may want in your story. The map maker is at donjon; Fractal World Generator. It is a nice tool and the map you create can be saved to your computer and opened in Photoshop to modify it as you like. Hope people can make use of this.

 

What appears to be noise is due to the fact that the world was generated using fractals. The software I used is called Fractal Terrains 3 and with it you can generate worlds with different options. It's also vector based, so I can actually zoom in on the parts that appear to be noisy and actually see the variations of the height of the landmass. The images I have are just basic exports I used to layout the nations and then posted to Google drive to share with my brother for discussion on my world since he is a big gamer too and is a good sounding board for ideas. I'm currently working on exporting multiple levels of the world into Campaign Cartographer and making linked maps. With that, you will be able to zoom into different levels of the world and see more detail. I might even go crazy and see if I can generate the Google maps files needed to provide that type of interface for the world.

 

World Map




I'm still working on the readability of text and spacing. It's a little more detailed than some, but I wanted a few key places to be on here that aren't capitol cities and large towns. That detail will likely be for regional maps of each kingdom. This is my first attempt at mapping, and definitely a while since I've used Photoshop for something. My map of Nis has changed quite a bit over the years and hopefully is coherent.

 

Something I've been working on for a little bit. I used the Donjon world generator and then added some of my own labels and rivers. Still a WIP, but I think it looks pretty nice.

 

Assuming the world is earth sized, it would be interesting to see how the culture on the islands in the west vary from those in the east. Since they are much smaller and farther removed from everyone else, I can easily see something like a Japanese type culture (assuming you are going for standard European fantasy for the rest of the world). Could be a major culture clash between the two.

 

Well to be completely honest, I'm not even sure of the cultures of this world I have created. I build world in a top-down manner, and this is a project where the only things I really have decided are the origin of the universe, the resulting gods, the source of magic, and now finally the physical layout of the world. The culture is something I'll be working on next, and I'll keep you input in mind! I think a culture class would definitely be an interesting tie to have.

 

I'm working on my world in a top-down manner as well starting with the solar system. However, I found that I work through these higher levels of things, I come up with ideas for lower level things. Such as my world orbits the primary star (a G2 star) of a binary start system. This means the planet would have 2 suns with the second one (a K2 star) causing more of an orange twilight then actual daylight. This lead to the idea about a culture seeing the suns are great dragon gods. The primary star would be the gold dragon while the secondary star is the red dragon. Their orbiting looks like the great dragons battling in the sky. This lead to developing a whole religion in my world based upon this concept which actually lead to the development of 2 of the largest nations in my world which are at war with each other due to religious differences. One believe the gold dragon is the good god and the red dragon is evil (Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, working name) while the other nation (Kingdom of the Red Dragon, working name) is reverse. This also left to a superstition among the KotGD where the orange twilight period is considered bad luck and most people try to avoid being outside during that period if they can help it. I also have started in on a tribal religion based upon the 3 moons and them being a great wolf pack.

 

Dorking around with Inkarnate Beta. I exported the file as a .png and then added the rivers in Gimp.

 

This is what I have of my world map so far. but I'm going to change the mountains a bit.

Iso, a tidally locked mood (like our own) with most of the population on the half facing the planet Oriath to take advantage of the light Oriath reflects during the long dark cycle. Because it's spin is so much slower than Earth, most of the water is located at the poles with the land mass around the equator. Also due to the water being polled toward Oriath there is more land on the half facing away from Oriath.

 

Started a thread for mine. Figure it's faster to link the thread than re-post everything.

http://mythicscribes.com/forums/world-building/15402-completed-map-illiathar.html

 

This is not even close to how the map's going to look by the time it's done, but you can see the shape of continents and the placement of mountains.

 

My maps aren't nearly as nice as most - I use what I call the "zoom and enhance" technique. I draw my maps strictly as grids, so as to keep the scale consistent, that way I can create a more detailed map of specific regions by making each square on the larger map represent a 5x5 grid on the more detailed one. This makes it so the map maintains a reasonably organic look without having to worry about inconsistencies from one drawing to the next.

As an example - the southern continent of Chonan Tochi, as it appeared early in the First Era.

 

This first picture shows an incomplete political map of the south eastern end of the globe, during a period known as the 'Mystic's Era'.

All of the colored domains north of the Neutral Wildlands of Itvul belong to a humanoid species known as the Doth, who migrated to the world as Denisovans long before the humans of the kingdoms below the wildlands did.



This second picture moves a little north and about a century into the future. The results of the Mystic Era have destroyed the political structure of the Sudaid humans. The Doth have merged into a socialist union of nations and the Humans of Northern Quubi are trying to establish a stable infrastructure in the warring lands of Teldras, Land of Migrants.

This map takes place during the beginning of the 'Orphaned Era'

The different Eras on my timeline are...

Age of Discovery
The Old-Odyssey
Colonization
Mystic Era
Orphaned Era
The Eternal Night
New Odyssey

Next up: labeling geographical regions

 

jm.milks the land shapes looks very organic and realistic. Did you draw it yourself?

 

Yeah. Initially with a mouse but then I went back to add details with a pen and tablet.

I took tectonics into consideration, as well as major events and dual planethood, so you'll be able to see where a few of my fault lines are and maybe make some other observations about it.