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Wyvern

Wyvern

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Wyvern
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  • Desert map for a commission

    @Autumn Getty noted:

    Also, happy to have benefitted from Wyvern's understanding of deep sea currents. I have a tenuous grasp on how they work.

    Which is pretty much where almost everyone else is too! The snag is ocean currents seem to behave much like air currents in the atmosphere - so as with the prevailing wind diagrams, the charts you see are huge simplifications of the real situation. However, they're much harder to get accurate information on at the same level of detail as is possible for air currents/winds because of being undersea. The deeper you go in the ocean, the less data there is, because it becomes increasingly difficult to get equipment there with any useful regularity.

    When you consider new animal species are found on pretty well every deep-dive into the unlit parts of the oceans (everything below roughly 200 metres/660 feet, so that's pretty well all of the oceans!), it's very obvious how appallingly little we know about what goes on there at all. Like the Coelacanth, believed extinct for 66 million years, yet still happily getting on with things and thriving today in Earth's oceans!

    Autumn Getty
  • WIP Large Area, small village and battle maps. For a viking-ish Trudvang campaign

    I forgot to mention this the other day, but you might have also tried the Jon Roberts Dungeon style mushrooms (among the "Cave" symbols for that style), as they look quite similar to the standing stones as you currently have them, and some of the single rocks in that style (same catalogue) would work equally as different-look standing stones, as many are elongated along one axis.

    Looking at your new ruins (oxymoron alert!), they look a little too uniform in height. You could try moving some to Sheets with different Glow Effects (looks lower than with a shadow) or different length shadows, as you have for some of the standing stones already. You might also add a few smaller areas that are raised above the flatness of some of the current pieces, placed on top of the existing walls; if set on a different Sheet even with similar Effects to the lower ruin walls, they'll help break up that uniform appearance more.

    I agree with Sue. The moss looks really good, and yes, keep experimenting!

    LoopysueAleD
  • Desert map for a commission

    @Vir: There are a number of problems involved in understanding climate and how it would behave in circumstances for another planet than Earth with its current layout of continental landmasses, sizes and depths of ocean.

    One is we don't really understand how Earth's climate works. There are a lot of theories and models, but many of them fall apart if we try to use them to explain the current Earth in any detail, and/or if we try to use them to explain what we understand about the geological past (this latter is a particularly major problem).

    Another is that because we don't properly understand how our own planet's climate operates, when we try to use these theories and models to explain another planet's (and this has happened repeatedly in our own Solar System), they don't really work either.

    So the further we get away from the current physical situation for Earth, the more guesswork is involved, essentially. (And there's a lot of guesswork involved in explaining the current situation already!)

    Ocean depths different to Earth's create particular uncertainties, as it's clear there are things happening in Earth's deeper oceans that have huge effects planet-wide, but we don't really know why they happen. So when trying to look at a planet like this one, where great areas of the ocean are much deeper over far larger areas than Earth's, it gets to the point of either giving up, or just going with whatever you fancy!

    Ocean currents, for example, can flow in completely different directions at different depths - a warm current might be flowing over or under a cold current behaving in this way too. Similar things happen in the atmosphere as well, so while that shouldn't be a surprise, it doesn't mean we really know why things are as they are.

    If you need a south to north wind (maybe only seasonally), my advice would be simply invent what seems to you a good reason for why it happens, and if that involves something relating to Earth's climate/weather patterns, possibly only vaguely, just invoke that. If anybody's daft enough to question it, then obviously it's because it's also influenced by the planet's magical field!

    If you need ideas based on what happens for Earth, I'd suggest taking a look at places online such as already suggested above here for the geological situation for Earth that's similar to your own planet, with things like the estimates for broad-scale current flows. If you can find a good-quality physical atlas showing similar things for either the past or present (which is a useful definition for "good quality"), that will be just as suitable, dependent on what you prefer.

    VirLoopysueBlackYetiMonsenmike robel
  • Community Atlas - Forlorn - Bleakness - The Craig dungeons and environs

    I like the "goes to somewhere else..." tunnels! I spent years designing dungeons/scenarios that were intended to link with one another by similarly vague pathways, and where the next mapped sequence had a similar group of tunnels going - who knows where! I ended up having to keep a separate written list of all the "blank" routes so I didn't lose track completely...

    ?

    JimP
  • Sandpoint Town Hall

    All this AND a Golden Wyvern too! What more could one ask?! ?

    TelnangoLoopysue