Geographical reconciliation

[eliddell]

<Groan> I just knew someone was going to notice the thing with the trees. I think there are four different colours of trees in various spots on that map--one from the original Wesnoth map, one from the original northeast map, and a couple that I sort of introduced by accident at various points. I see a lot of playing with "select by colour" in my future.

I definitely could (and should) add some tributary rivers, forests, and other details to the area around that yet-nameless inland sea, and a bit of stuff in the strip between Lin-Elens and the Hammermounts, but I should note that it also makes sense for the interior of the continent to have a larger proportion of plains--look at North America, Asia, Australia, and even Africa. The interior just gets less rain, hence fewer forests. Granted, assigning some more labels might make the area look less bare, but labels aren't geography as such. And I believe it's a matter of record that there's a honking big desert between Wesnoth and the lands to the south, although I'm too lazy to check the wiki just now to confirm it.

The Tri-Forest . . . bothers me a little as well. Logically, this map must be from a far later time than your campaign, Mountain_King, so it's plausible that it might have slipped a little out of shape--I just haven't gotten around to shaking things up in that corner.

Hmmm, I think I have an old copy of Unstoppable Legion (from 1.4 or thenabouts) around here somewhere. I'll have to grab the new one and see if/how it's changed.

[Mountain_King]

The Tri-Forest . . . bothers me a little as well. Logically, this map must be from a far later time than your campaign, Mountain_King, so it's plausible that it might have slipped a little out of shape--I just haven't gotten around to shaking things up in that corner.

I was actually thinking something along those lines could be a good idea. Without the ancient cities of Dobhar, Ardobhar, and Iobhar, it looks kind of weird. I could see it growing out some in the ~1100 years or so from my campaign to when this map is placed.
Also, how did you come up with the name of Lin-Elens for the great forest? It sounds cool.


Best Regards,
Mountain_King

[eliddell]

I'll fiddle with the Tri-Forest a bit tonight, then.

"Lin-Elens" was arrived at through a thought process somewhat like the following: "Hmm, we don't need another 'Great' anything here . . . Okay, so let's just say that 'Lintanir'-no-suffix is the full elvish name of that part of the forest . . . I could break that up as 'Lin' + 'Tanir', where one of those parts probably means something like 'forest' or 'woods' or 'bunch of trees' . . . Hmm, there's supposed to be a city called 'Elensia' in the middle of it somewhere . . . So Elvish for 'Forest of Elensia' might be something like 'Lin-Elens' . . . Okay, that's not bad, so now what do I call that chunk of desert sticking up near Silver Drake Mountain?"

[Espreon]

"Silver Drake Mountain" should be called "Firecloud Peak" now.

[eliddell]

Okay, more details in the southeast, the Tri-Forest is no longer triangular, Firecloud Peak is now correctly labelled, and I pulled a few more labels out of that ear of mine. No, I have no idea how the Swamp of Ten Thousand Frogs ended up with a name like that, but the corresponding event must have been . . . interesting.

I haven't fixed the divergent forest colours yet.

[Feufochmar]

I find a bit odd that the lands looks like a square when the map is reduced (mainly because of the north coast I think).

If I recall well, there was also a map for Meridia (the South of the Great Continent), but I cannot find it on the threads of Battle for Meridia. And it is not in the Battle for Meridia 1.8 addon. Maybe someone (probably thespaceinvader) has it.

[eliddell]

I'd noticed that about the coastline as well, but I also wasn't the person who originally drew most of it. I think the problem is really due to the corner-like outjut of the Far North. Putting a really deep bay where the Wild Steppe is, making it look more like a peninsula, might help, but that's part of one of the mainline maps and so outside of my control.

[eliddell]

Update regarding maps of the south: The map in Invasion from the Unknown goes only slightly further south than the normal main map, and has a lot of swamp scattered along the southern edge for no particular visible reason, which isn't compatible with now-established geography (that is, I can excuse one swamp in close proximity to a desert, but not an epidemic of them!) (There were additional maps in the old, old version of IftU that I had lying around, but they were Wercator-generated and had no labels, so I couldn't even tell what they were supposed to represent.)

The Battle for Meridia map doesn't appear to have ever been posted on the forums--I can't even find any mention of it except what you've said here, Feufochmar--but there is a geographical description in the main thread for that add-on from which I may try to work. However, I'm going to postpone starting on that for a few days while I deal with Xmas-related stuff in the real world. If/when I do it, I will probably start a new map overlapping slightly with the south edge of the existing ubermap rather than sticking with the single-document approach--it's starting to get unwieldy.

[Iris]

Update regarding maps of the south: The map in Invasion from the Unknown goes only slightly further south than the normal main map, and has a lot of swamp scattered along the southern edge for no particular visible reason, which isn't compatible with now-established geography (that is, I can excuse one swamp in close proximity to a desert, but not an epidemic of them!) (There were additional maps in the old, old version of IftU that I had lying around, but they were Wercator-generated and had no labels, so I couldn't even tell what they were supposed to represent.)

I don't remember much about what I had intended to do with those maps, but I later decided to drop* them as I planned to introduce several drastic changes in the Great Continent's geography following the cataclysm following the Fall, so of course the mainline age map wouldn't work with my campaigns. I don't know yet exactly what changes would be involved, other than a few details (e.g. the area surrounding Glamdrol sank into the sea, southern Elensefar was shaped into the Kalari peninsula, many important landmarks disappeared completely or partially.) You also need to consider that IftU takes place at least a couple thousands of years after the Fall, hence the differences in vegetation distribution and such.

[eliddell]

I thought it might be something like that. I'll ignore the material from IftU, then.

[Astoria]

Update regarding maps of the south: The map in Invasion from the Unknown goes only slightly further south than the normal main map, and has a lot of swamp scattered along the southern edge for no particular visible reason, which isn't compatible with now-established geography (that is, I can excuse one swamp in close proximity to a desert, but not an epidemic of them!) (There were additional maps in the old, old version of IftU that I had lying around, but they were Wercator-generated and had no labels, so I couldn't even tell what they were supposed to represent.)

I don't remember much about what I had intended to do with those maps, but I later decided to drop* them as I planned to introduce several drastic changes in the Great Continent's geography following the cataclysm following the Fall, so of course the mainline age map wouldn't work with my campaigns. I don't know yet exactly what changes would be involved, other than a few details (e.g. the area surrounding Glamdrol sank into the sea, southern Elensefar was shaped into the Kalari peninsula, many important landmarks disappeared completely or partially.) You also need to consider that IftU takes place at least a couple thousands of years after the Fall, hence the differences in vegetation distribution and such.

Hmmm... I had some ideas about that too.
In my campaign, there is a mountain range near Elensefar, where there used to be sea, and only a small river remained.
The area around the northern mountains is now Aragwaith territory, with the remaining forests near the great river being Elvish.
Maybe we (the people making post-apocalyptic campaigns) should come up with a map of chaotic wesnoth.

[eliddell]

Yes, I'm still alive (although there have been a couple of points since Xmas where I wished otherwise--flu followed by a really vicious cold). I've even been working on a bit of Wesnoth-related stuff: attached is a draft of a prospective map of Meridia/the southlands. There are no locations marked yet, more details are needed in many areas, and the forest is a mess, but it's hopefully possible to see where I'm headed.

[Sgt. Groovy]

It recently occurred to me, that since all the other terrain features are represented figuratively, is it really sensible to use some abstract pattern for the desert? Why not use some pictures of cacti and dunes (shaped in a fashion clearly different from hills) instead?

[eliddell]

The current desert convention seems to have been established by whoever made the original Far North map. I expect they chose it because it was easy (it's a brush from the default installation of the GIMP). Overall, the quality of the Far North map is . . . not up to the standard set by the original map of Wesnoth, which established the representations used for everything else.

[eliddell]

More details. The forest has been cleaned up, and several known places and place-names have been added. This is as much work as I am going to do on this map until/unless someone comes to me with requests, suggestions, or additional information about the area.