WIP: Aiyedjembe

Autumn Getty

I've been working on this world in Fractal Terrains for a few months, and have probably about 50 or so outputs to show for it. Been playing around with the heights and climate. Anyway, I think I'm mostly settled on the altitudes in the png I've attached. I decided to do temperature and rainfall maps from scratch, using some basic things I've taught myself about climate. It seems like you can only put one attachment at a time in here, so I'll attach the temperature map in another post. Wondering how people feel about my progress.

Thanks,

Autumn

Autumn Getty

The temperature map.

Loopysue

That's looking great

Are you going to be translating this to CC3 next, or continuing in FT3 for a while yet?

Autumn Getty

I'm going to do a rainfall map, and then have FT calculate the climate based on that, and then probably assign biomes. Then I want to start doing regional maps in CC3. I've just been too detail obsessed and I need to move on to CC3 soon if I'm ever going to.

Thanks for the compliment.

A.

Loopysue

I think you might have to do a bit of extra work with the biomes. FT3 is brilliant, but it doesn't take air flow and ocean currents into account in the calculations. But at least it will give you a starting point to work from.

There is a book about how to work these things out, but I'm dashed if I can remember the title right now. Its one of those 1-2-3 type books that takes you through the whole process.

Once you've worked it out you can amend the temperature and rainfall maps by painting the corrected values onto your world (by hand).


I'll just go and see if I've got a record of that title somewhere...

Loopysue

Here we go!

Here it is!

Geoff's Climate Cookbook

Its more of a couple of pages rather than a book, and I've never had the time to work out a whole planet, but its helped a lot when doing a bit of quick mental calculation on where things like deserts might be.

Barliman

That's a much better looking map than I usually get out of FT3. I almost never get extensive horizontal continents. What settings did you use?

Autumn Getty

Hey Sue,

I've already spent a lot of time with Geoff's cookbook, and then a few interesting tutorials that were built off it at Cartographer's Guild. I actually came up with about eight different techniques to model the climate of the world, and then decided to just rebuild the rainfall and temperature maps according to some basic earth principles, with reference to some maps I found online. So I set up a basic bar approach for the temperature, with four different temperatures, and then created intermediate areas that were dependent on ocean currents, so that where ocean currents went the temperature would be modified. I then smoothed the final result at several different values, comparing each one to the real world map. The temperature map I posted was smoothed at a value of 150, and I feel is fairly close to the earth's (but I'm open to hear countering opinions).

I am about half way through a rainfall map using similar techniques, although of course its a whole lot more complicated.

The reason I want to do worldwide climate is I want to simulate migration on the planet to determine where cultures are.

Any thoughts?

And thanks for hunting that down for me, even if I had already seen it.

A.

Autumn Getty

HI Barliman,

I've included a png with my settings here. It didn't come out exactly like this. I kept changing the north pole until I got an arrangement which fit most of the map in a centered set up rather than being cut up by the edges. I didn't actually find the best set up right away, but I had done a lot of work so I accepted it. Every time I open up FT, it loads these settings and gives me a new map, and most of them are pretty fantastic and amenable to good centering. I've saved about thirty different worlds and even done full climate workups for one of them. I'd be happy to throw you a few files if you like.

For curiosity's sake, I'll just mention that this is 0 N 130 E, while the best fit is actually 30 N 118 E, if I recall correctly. I actually did a lot of experimenting with pole positioning, as I was exploring the idea it could be used to simulate continental drift. It was fun, and I came up with some cool alternate maps, but ended up returning to this one.

As a caution, if you do fool with the poles, settle on the final position before doing time-consuming incisions, as they often become undone. Also, do your best to keep land off the 180 as this will give you profound incisions you don't want. I do know how to fix them though, if you have trouble.

I could go on all day about FT, I really do love that program and learned how to do some fun stuff in it.

A.

Barliman

Thanks for the graphic and the advice!

Autumn Getty

You're welcome :).

Loopysue

Looking forward to seeing the further development of your world

Autumn Getty

I'm nearing the end of the rainfall map but have been very sick the last few days, so I've mostly been sleeping. Hopefully I'll finish it soon.

Loopysue

Oh no!

Get better soon, Autumn.

Autumn Getty

So I put off posting my precipitation and climate maps because I'm not sure how I feel about them. i think I've accepted them now though.

Autumn Getty

Precipitation map:

Autumn Getty

As a bonus, in case you haven't had enough: maximum glacial extent.

Autumn Getty

Would love feedback on the precipitation, particularly the large desert/chaparral area in the north central part of the map. Does it seem legit?

Autumn

Monsen

Looks rather sensible to me (although I am NOT an expert on these things at all), only thing I am wondering about is the large river system in that rather dry area in the top center. Is it wet enough in the area to support a river of that size? (A river showing up on a world map is by definition quite large)

Loopysue

Amazon or Nile-type large.

Autumn Getty

Thanks Monsen and Sue. I'm bothered by that river system as well. I've been looking at a map of Colorado, which has extensive river systems running through it, and has an average of 15 inches/38 mm of rain. The Colorado itself goes through some extremely dry areas (in fact most of its course is through pretty dry country). I looked at the Colorado's source, and the county its in ranges from about 30 mm to 50 mm (sorry for the metric, Canadian here), while my region averages about 28 mm, which of course is a bit drier. The part that starts in boreal forest is about 30 mm.

I also looked at the river system in the prairie provinces of Canada, which are quite dry. Medicine Hat gets 20 mm apparently.

I'm still uncomfortable with it. One thing I thought of doing is raising precipitation around rivers by 20 mm, which it looks like wouldn't disturb the general climatic pattern and also adds a bit more complexity to the zones. I really don't want to lose too much desert though, as there's not much of it to begin with.

Interestingly, the river system is about the same length as the Colorado, and does have its start in mountains, even if they're quite low.

I guess I could just not put in some of the rivers when I do regional mapping.

Sorry, I'm rambling.

[Deleted User]

Put the source of the river in mountains with high rainfall, and have it running through the desert as only 1 river (no tributaries). It will then be exactly a Nile. Oh well, perhaps 1 tributary, also arising from a mountainous area with high rainfall, like the Blue Nile arising in the Ethiopian Highlands and converging with the White Nile at Khartoum in Sudan. Gives rise to a civilization in the desert along the river, as happened in Pharaonic Egypt.

Autumn Getty

Quentin: Or two civilizations, if you count Nubia as a separate civilization (I do). It's great advice. I've been trying to get a baseline for how much rainfall is needed to produce rivers. I probably will do something like this.

As a relevant aside, I was looking at applying Koppen classifications here, and technically some of the northernmost desert, and much of the chapparal region in between the deserts, actually would qualify as cold steppe and as humid -- mostly because of the low temperatures of those regions. On a world map it corresponds to the northern part of the Eurasian steppes and into the Russian plains/boreal region.