Ten's World Building Thread

This is going to look fantastic when I'm done! Feedback is greatly appreciated.

The shape of the land follows the wind and sea currants at the moment, rather than the divided land mass approach. My level of geography doesn't exceed 4th grade so any advice on that would be nice =]

Edit: I reconfigured the land mass further down the page to create more land and alter the ocean currents a bit. Here's the original for reference.

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Added mountains, rivers, and some snowy peaks. I also made the Eastern side a bit greener.

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Worldbuilding+3.png (700.91 KiB) Viewed 1081 times

Click to Englarge.

Added a few more land textures. Once I'm finished with this part I'll start putting in some of the major roads and manmade smush, which should be fun. I've yet to find a style I like that would be consistent with this kind of map.

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Worldbuilding+4.png (1.13 MiB) Viewed 1019 times

Again, click to enlarge.

Edit
Construction of major roads was held up by reconfiguring land mass (and the appearance of a few more countries.)

Hi! I really like this one, and I'll input some of my opinions in this, so bear with me!

So, the first thing I like to do whenever I make a world is to figure out the continents, the poles, and the major mountains, lakes etc. I feel like you have all that down except for the poles, but I can be sure about that

Thankyou! =D

poke xD

Why are the "deserts" on the waterfronts?

Umm, the only geography I know of for world building is that the deserts are most common in the middle of the northern and lower hemispheres because the wind currents pull water away from those areas and either deposite most moisture above or below those spots.



The other reason deserts are made is because the usual currents coming off the sea are blocked by mountains.

-I don't know if this helps at all.-

@Aley Because I decided it that way!

Good point though! =p

I tried to redesign the geography. So, where our world is shaped by techtonic plates and all that super smart stuff, this world is shaped by ocean and wind currents back when they were strong enough... to move mountains... >.> Or at least, throw large sections of land up in the air. Fresh, cold water comes down from the north and hot winds come from the south.

The water in the south is really salty and polluted and the earth is compact, so little of the sea water actually makes it very far inland. The hot winds push most of the rain further inland.

That's the reasoning in my head anyway, please do correct me!

I edited the land to increase the land mass, and I've yet to put back the forests and ice caps yet. Still struggling with the mountains. The deserts have been reconfigured based on @Aley 's feedback.

Here's the basic land mass:

And here's the division of the countries:


Which are, from the top left: Chendao, Lao Vei, Kozak, Jepleu, Denvoux, Contres, Tomiya, Vrasi, Nabanya, Takaida, Dunaris, Kamaria, Rabinas and Hurin.

On second thought... I'm going to expand Kamaria and Dunaris, shift Takaida over to the right and put Nabanya next to Tomiya (to the left of Dunaris.)

Zolens casual comment:

Does not make sense to me in a socio-econimc sense, unless those are following some very long canals. You see property lines, and more so country lines are not perfectly straight, they might look a bit like it from close up or even a bit away, but often they follow rivers and terrain. It's hard to be absolutely sure of the lines unless everything is well labeled out there, as that would be a pointless and dramatic effort in most cases countries try to pick obvious dividers, something people can easily pick up on. For example I see a few rivers and some implied mountain regions, try laying the borders around there. It would seem more natural.

@Zolen

Thanks! When I make the boarders more distinct I'll do that, and add a few mountains and forests in.

That would still leave me with the Denvoux/Contres boarder and the Kamaria/Rabinas boarder, where there aren't really any distinguishing land types to separate them... Could something less subtle like a tundra or steppe work?

Yes, but its worth noting that often when there is no distinguishing land marks within a long stretch of the the border, the lines get even more uneven then they do when following the land.

1. You have a point, Zol, but for now I think it's just important for Ten to know more or less where each country is, it's easy to adjust the borders to look more natural later. While on borders, though, keep in mind that countries will have sea borders as well as land ones. They won't necessarily follow any kind of obvious logic, but sea too is a territory to be divided.

2. Kamaria's territory looks like a really cool unicorn.

3. I'd like to add a bit about the rivers. They all seem to have quite a few confluences (that's hopefully the right word), but they all seem to meet the sea in the same way, forming estuaries. Which is cool, but adding some deltas in there might make it more believable. Deltas also provide you with fertile land, meaning those areas would probably be green, populated and source of various goods (mostly food).
Speaking of rivers, springs of many of them will be in the mountains - not necessarily all, but that's not a bad thing to think about.

4. Mountains! They're tricky ones to draw, but basically there are two types - old and young. Old ones will be darker, young ones will be lighter. Mountain peaks will be darker shade than the mountains' bottoms, and it would get darker the higher it gets. Also, don't forget that mountains rarely have just one peak, even if one is the highest or the most important, so that would show on the map as well.

5. Your coastlines would probably be more indented than they are on the map right now. Currents, rivers, time and possibly human intervention would create all kinds of fjords and little bays and whatnot. Seeing the shape of your land, it looks like the currents are hitting it from the sides, forcing the land to turn circle-ish, and I can believe that currents of that strength would leave the coastline the way you drew it. On the inside side, though, it would probably be somewhat different.

I'll stop rambling now xP