Newcomer's Dilemmas

Old Fritz

I've just purchased FT3 and have never used this programme before.
I'm looking to build either:
1. A large area of land (without any sea and very limited mountains) to game over - say 400 miles by 400 miles.
or
2. An earth type world with 6 or 7 continents (this time WITH seas & mountains).

Unfortunately I don't seem to be able to create either.
When I try to limit the sea area I get lots of mountains or high areas.
And when I try to get a planet with a realistic number of continents I get just 1 huge land mass or maybe 2 or 3 continents.
Also, is there a way of preventing FT3 from constructing most of the land masses at the poles? Which it appears to do 75% of the time.

As you can see I'm very new to FT3 and have only played about with the settings for a short time.

Master TMO

What you may be seeing is the distortion caused by the points at the top and bottom of the map being the north and south poles. The landmasses at the poles are not actually that huge, they're just stretched all the way across. Try using some alternate projections to get a better idea of what they look like; or use the Globe window and click-and-drag it to rotate the planet view to new locations. When I work on a map lately I have been changing the pole coordinates so that there isn't any land at either pole, just to make mapping easier for me, even if it's not what we're used to from Earth.

Simon Rogers

You can change the north pole locations by doing a right click on the Globe tool. Use an orthographic projection to get a better idea of the distribution of land.

Use the world setting, both primary and secondary to get the world you want.

Old Fritz

Thanks guys. I have tried some of the things you recommend, but still not with much success.
I believe the are one or two tutorials available, some by Joe Sweeney - all of which I've seen. And
one listed under this link http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/CGTutorial/index.html
but all I get with this link is a whole world graphic and no tutorial. Am I missing something here?
(By the way, the graphic is precisely the type of world I'm trying to produce myself).

jslayton

I can't speak to the Joe Sweeney tutorials, but the tutorial at http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/CGTutorial/index.html is a very long document. Scrolling down should show all of the steps. It's just text and pictures without any video elements or links.

Old Fritz

Cheers guys. I'll take another look at the jslayton tutorial and hopefully I'll find what I'm looking for.