Tunguska III & East

Over the weekend, apart from other activities, I worked on the five maps below.  I'll write some notes for each to help them make sense:



Tunguska, completed.



Immediately east of Tunguska, the Arctic Ocean coast has been added to the top of the map;
The large white vertical area in the centre is the Verkhoyansk Range in Siberia, known to be one
of the coldest places on earth. 

The diagonal rectangle in the upper left is where the Verkhoy map overlaps this one, which has the
150th East parallel through the center.  The map turns 60 degrees at is point.  The cluster of pink
hexes on the left is the Indigirka River basin; the cluster of pink hexes on the right is the
Kolyma River basin, the largest source of gold in the world outside of South Africa.

This seems very much like a group of scattered dots, I know; this is east of the Indigirka/Kolyma basins
(the Kolyma River debouches into the Arctic where there's a cluster of pink hexes at the top left).
On a map, you might be able to identify this with the narrowing of the eastern stretch of Siberia
between Kamchatka and the Arctic Sea.

This is the meeting between the far eastern point of Siberia and Alaska.  Alaska is on the right, and the
coastline for it can be dimly grasped if you're familiar with it.  The extension of Russia is more clear,
mostly because (I think) Russia was more adamant about settling people in forced camps along
the Bering Sea, where today they exist as a string of fishing villages.

I grant, not the most interesting of maps.  It does give a sense for how BIG the empty stretches of Siberia really are ... and that even at this latitude, it takes 18 maps at 20 miles a hex, and 30 hexes a map, to go around the world.  I'm always struck by how truly big the whole world is, and how much of a task I took on in daring to map it to this scale.  Still, it's a labour of love, so it's all good.

For awhile longer I'm going to be making this sort of map, just tagging the individual hexes for the data I have for each, as it helps with both my organization and setting something up on the fly, if needed.  In awhile I'll be swinging back around to Europe and then moving one map ring south.

(Incidentally, as an aside, the bottom of these maps is about 62.5 degrees north).

Tunguska II

So, I should put up an old picture of what Tunguska had looked like, before changes:

Funny that, formerly, I liked the strong colors ... but since, I've changed my mind about it.  Gets to be hard looking on the eyes.

Here's today's image, after the work done since posting yesterday:

The right half of the map, where it is white, would represent the western edge of Yakutia, or 'Yakutsk' as the RISK board calls it.  This is the border between what I've mapped and what I haven't ... so that much of this map, all that which is right of the hard gray line down the middle, has no work done on it at all except that I've identified with numbers what hexes would be inhabited.  Extending this further eastward is the goal for the next two weeks, so this new blog is going to be awfully boring for most people (I'm not getting much feedback, but I can't blame the reader).  I think in the long run, if I keep this up for several years (which would be the plan), the pile of data will get quite meaningful ... so I'm not worrying right now that all I'm adding are some empty maps of a pretty obscure part of the globe.

For those who really can't picture where this above is (and let's face it, that is virtually everyone), I'll offer these two maps.  First, an image of approximately the same area, gained from Google:

Yeah, no doubt that is TOTALLY not helpful.  Also, the features don't quite match up, but I've said many times, my world is only 'like' earth ... the rivers sometimes have a different shape.  Still, the small lake in the middle is recognizable and so is that bit of the sea at the top of the map.  I didn't include that big pond at the top left, though, because the map I originally worked from (a National Geographic map) didn't show it.  Perhaps its something we know about now, post cold war (I've caught the N.G. being wrong before), or perhaps it's a case of a section of permafrost melting due to global warming (which I've also seen when comparing old and new maps).  Either way, I'm probably not going to add it to my game map.  Or I might.

Perhaps this might help the reader get their bearings:

Is that better?  Can we see where we are now?  Granted, the bigger map shows a lot of 'Tunguska' is in fact west of the map above (in fact, the principal knot of Tunguska is off the above map altogether), but it sounded like a better name than 'West Central Yakutsk.'  Believe me, if you do a lot of maps of a world, you want to stay away from calling everying North That and East This.  After awhile, it gets confusing.  Best to have a code tag for every map (Tunguska is B 06) just to keep everything straight.

Okay, I'm going to let go of this post; I'm going to write a bit more on the main blog, however, so you might want to have a glance at that.

Tunguska

I'm starting a new map today, the next one over that's directly east of the Lower Yenisey map I've been working on. This one is called Tunguska. I want to start with my hex map template, and these can be downloaded from the wiki. These are 30 squares by 35, making for a nice big map, and if you use your Microsoft Office editor for pictures you can pare off the white space so that they can be overlapped to make even bigger maps. Beware of printing them, however, because the hexes are almost an inch in diameter, so the hex map will be multiple sheets if printed. Here's a png of the hex map (the boxes on the file are without borders, so the boxes won't appear:

Even though I darkened the hexes quite a lot, they're still dim - I prefer the hex lines to be quite soft, because in fact this makes the colors of the map seem brighter and the overall effect more aesthetically pleasing. I feel its important that things like this look good, as we're naturally drawn, and thus fascinated, to things that are easy to stare at.

For my own use, I prefer the hexes be colored pink to start, as pink is very definitely a color that doesn't appear anywhere on the map when I'm done ... thus, I can easily see what I haven't changed or fixed.

The first thing I do with a new map is first include a two-hex overlap for areas that have been previously upgraded. Thus, in this map of Tunguska, the previous done parts are the lines at the top (north) and of course west (Lower Yenisey):

Here is some sincere advice: overlap your maps. Don't just draw them so they synch up along the edges; overlapping them will help with continuity from map to map, and will better the experience of being able to look at only one map at a time, and not needed to pull out two or four sheets when the party happens to be at the corner of the map you've drawn. Overlap them! Well, it's not much, but that hex map should be useful to some of you. More tomorrow.

Earth Hex Plotting

This finishes the reformat, so that the color scheme and hex reshape has been completed:

At some future point I'll take another pass at this and insert more descriptive labels and properly layer the elements.  Recently I've just been interested in trying to sort out old work and plot all the maps as they would appear everywhere on the globe.  This is a big task, one that I'm not going to complete anytime soon.

I tend to go at my world in phases, so that for a couple of weeks I will work on just one thing to the exclusion of all else.  The blog won't just be about maps, that just happens to be what I'm doing at the moment.

There is something I wanted to show.  These files are the backbone of my map building system. Here's a shot showing partial Rings 66, 67 & 68:

The reader can compare this to the map above. Note the numbers at the right side of the map; these are the ring numbers. Two rows down form line 65 is line 67 ... and there one can see the numbers from the image above, all of them showing '104.'  On the image, the numbers next to Ring 67 show "(70.48-70.76)" are the latitude numbers. The numbers that read in three columns, "90.45 to 91.33", are the longitude numbers east of Greenwich.

Now, this is important. Any hex with a river will show the LOWEST number. Thus these are all 104, even though the lines read 104-269, 104-265, 204-656 and so on. 269, 265 & 656 are the highest elevations those hexes possess (that I have data for).

This next part is tricky. It will seem to the reader that there's been an error; that there should be a '98' to the left of the string of 104 elevation hexes with the river in it. But here's where the hexes change the game. BECAUSE the world is round, and because the center is a hex, every 60 degrees all around the globe the map must 'bend' to fit. This map of the Lower Yenisey includes that bend.

Note that the left most 104 hex corresponds to the longitued 89.55 to 90.44. That's the 90th Parallel, where the map bends. The bend is shown on the map above by the orange line. That is why, in fact, the '98' elevation hex (longitude 88.66 to 89.54) is UP and to the left - and shows '108' on the map, because it doesn't contain a river so the HIGHEST number is used.

I know that's not very clear, but it all makes perfect sense to me. I've been doing this for awhile. If you want to get it, and it's just not evident, please ask a question and I'll do what I can to get this across to you.

My point is from the linked files above (those that go to my wiki), that the whole world is already plotted. I know what is in every hex, everywhere, and what latitude and longitude anywhere corresponds to what hex. This is what makes the mapping possible, and helps keep everything straight and controlled.

Is this beyond normal D&D mapmaking? Oh yeah. But frankly, I think this would make for a spectacular computer generated environment scheme, if I had the money to make it. Imagine a computer image of every elevation, world-wide, plotted using these tables, then merely 'adjusted' for aesthetics. Google Earth would be helpful for that.

But really, I'm not interested in Google Earth for mapping purposes. Google Earth is pretty and lovely, but it doesn't offer me the control that this template offers, where I can plop in what I want and create the 3D world that is my own.

Lower Yenisey II

A day's work on the Lower Yenisey map:

This is far from anywhere; Biyetia is part of the goblin kingdom of Magloshkagok.  Samoyadia is a gnoll kingdom
far to the north on the Arctic Ocean.  Lungos Nad is an extension of the Vostoch Empire, a vast hobgoblin
collective occupying what we would call Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk and the Tomsk Oblast.  Finally, Nissi An
is an obscure, reclusive Bugbear tribal enclave occupying the Tunguska Plateau.  What a place for a party!

Adding a few labels, finishing the rivers and some of the hex fill.  Still need to redraw the borders (orange lines) in gray, then make sure the different elements are layered correctly (text over water features, water features over border, everything over background, etc.

Siberian Maps

I have been thinking about starting this blog for awhile, just to keep the usual blog for the regular topics, ideas, opinions and the like, and to have an ongoing blog where I - for no particular reason - highlight the work I'm doing in progress.  I have this stupid idea some world creators might find that useful.  So I'm going to get back to work producing some videos, and just keeping track of what I'm doing week to week, or even day to day.

For instance, on the weekend I was relaxing between stabs at the book on reformatting my old publisher maps into new publisher maps.  Here is an old publisher map of the lower Yenisey river, as it appeared before:

And here it is after I ripped that all to shreds and turned it sixty degrees:

There are a bunch of reasons for the reformat. My old 2004 publisher program, which this was designed on, would not draw a fluid curved line, whereas the new program designed in 2009 does ... but - I did a lot of maps after 2004, and did not decide to finally shift to the new program until 2011. So I've been working on one map area at a time. Also, I wanted to change the color scheme. And make my hexes more exactly with 60 degree angles all around (the old hexes are a little flatter than the new ones are). I also finished this on the weekend, which is the map immediately to the west of the Yenisey map:

This one of Biyetia (modern northern Krasnoyarsk Krai in modern day Russia) (*Oops!  No it's not.  It's the Yamalo-Nenets Okrug; the Khasnoyarsk Krai applies to the above Yenisey map) can be compared with the old map on this post, though admittedly I've adjusted what the map portrays since then and done work east of the Yamal Peninsula since those days (you can see from the image on the link that I hadn't in August of 2009. Still, the reader can compare the old color scheme. I never was happy with that Yenisey color scheme, it was too dark and cluttered looking. The same with the old swamplands in Biyetia (which were green, and are now white with dull yellow-brown spots). Basically those swamps are all muskeg anyhow, so brown seems a better color to define them. At any rate, as I improve the Yenisey map, I'll be sure and post it on this blog.