Thoughts on my Map?

[sgbii]

That's the one area that I've been struggling with (and not married tosince my book takes place almost entirely in that swampy triangular place to the far west), mostly because I've been struggling with biomes. I made a heat map and attempted to do ocean currents and windage stuff, but it gets me messed up. What would more likely go there? I figured it would be the drier side of the mountains but it's also in the hot regions. I don't need a desert, honestly I'd rather it not be one, but that was all that I could make sense of.

 

[TheKillerBs]

You're gonna need the whole world map if you wanna figure out your currents etc

 

[sgbii]

You're gonna need the whole world map if you wanna figure out your currents etc

I have one Here

 

[ThinkerX]

I have one Here

Looks like +60 to - 60. The far northern and far southern continents will be far smaller (east-west axis) than they appear due to longitudinal distortion, as a degree of longitude at +60 will be only 1/3rd the distance of a degree of longitude at the equator.

 

[JBCrowson]

I did tons of research on plate tectonics, continent forming, etc etc. I looked into where certain biomes would occur naturally, dry side and wet sides of mountains. Everyone I've asked says it looks cool or it looks good but I want to know if it's believable. These islands aren't the entire world, just my starting point. I do have other areas roughed out in a different file but nothing detailed.

I'm trying I loosely base them off North America with a lot of center removed and the ends put together. I haven't picked an accurate scale either so that's open to thoughts as well.

Black and white

Color

I can't think of a fantasy book or story where the geology / geography made me feel "Yuk, I can't read this." That may be a me-thing, not a generally held feeling.
What I find bugs me most often is distances in the story don't correlate with the distances on the map. By that I mean the story says A to B takes 2 weeks on horseback but C to D takes a month, yet both look the same distance on the map.
Your maps look just fine though there is no overlay of political organisation (yet) i.e. where are the boundaries between countries / empires / clan territories or what ever groupings the people in your world will have. Those tend to follow the geographic elements like watersheds, so that might be something to consider as well.

 

[sgbii]

I can't think of a fantasy book or story where the geology / geography made me feel "Yuk, I can't read this." That may be a me-thing, not a generally held feeling.
What I find bugs me most often is distances in the story don't correlate with the distances on the map. By that I mean the story says A to B takes 2 weeks on horseback but C to D takes a month, yet both look the same distance on the map.
Your maps look just fine though there is no overlay of political organisation (yet) i.e. where are the boundaries between countries / empires / clan territories or what ever groupings the people in your world will have. Those tend to follow the geographic elements like watersheds, so that might be something to consider as well.

Yeah as of right now I don't even know what the other continents contain. And this map I'm sure is guaranteed to change as I developed more and more areas. I'm only focusing on the two continents on the far right, and zooming in on that little triangular portion for the book I'm currently working on. I tend to overthink things and I might also have a problem with trying to be a perfectionist. I know the other map says Litalond, but apparently that is the name of the place in Middle Earth that's home to the beornlings. I originally had it as Lityrn, but got a little overboard with language.

 

[sgbii]

Updated Sepia Map

Got bored and decided to simplify it a bit. All the labelling isn't done yet but I wanted to post the update.

 

[Rexenm]

My oh my it is looking good.

 

[Genly]

As a meteorologist, can I make some comments about the map that I hope will be useful? First, the map looks sensational, and it looks like it could almost be published as it is. The first point is to clarify which latitudes are being shown here. If we are assuming a contemporary climate similar to that of Earth, the "frozen north" section looks rather large and rather too close to the equator if the map is showing +60 to -60 latitude, as ThinkerX states. The scale indicates that the north-south extent of the map is about 8,000 miles or so, so that is about the right latitude range. I suppose if the planet were in an ice age, the extent of the northern ice cap would be less surprising, except that the map seems to indicate that the icecap extends as far south as 30N, which seems a little too far south, given that this is further south than the ice extended during the peak of our last glacial period.

Next, climate zones. As you probably know already, poleward of about 35 degrees latitude, prevailing winds switch to westerly, which typically means more rain on the west side of continents and mountain ranges than on the east. Closer towards the equator, there would be more rain on the east side. In between, if a continent is reasonably large, there would be a desert zone. So this leads me to wonder why there is forest on the western side of the equatorial part of the southern continent, west of a large mountain range. This region should probably be semi-arid. Similarly, the forested island off the west coast of the southern continent at about , given its latitude (about 25S), might also be semi-arid, perhaps shading into a Mediterranean climate (wet winter, rainless summer). This would be amplified by the cool current that is likely to travel northwards along the west coast of the southern continent, given the orientation of the geography.

Anyway, just a couple of comments.