Geographical reconciliation

[eliddell]

Um, hello, there--first post, even though I've had an account here for quite a while, so please bear with me.

I just started getting back into Battle for Wesnoth after a hiatus lasting a couple of years, and discovered that even though the maps of Wesnoth and the Northlands have been in existence for quite a long time now, no one has really established the relationship between them beyond the few vague generalities that we already knew in 2007--in other words, there's still no world map, or even a chunk-of-world map. It bothered me a little (especially since I'm considering designing a campaign that might need me to have this information), so I decided to go ahead and do what you're supposed to do when something about a piece of open source bothers you, and fix the problem myself.

I quickly discovered why no one's bothered to put the maps together before: they're not nearly as compatible as they look like they should be. Colours, surface texturing, how the edge of the ocean is handled . . . all different. I ended up redrawing the rivers and coastline on the Northlands map completely, adding texture to it, and hoping that I wasn't messing the geography up too much.

And that's my real question. I'm not really a very good Wesnoth player and have never gotten more than a couple of scenarios into Son of the Black Eye, which I believe was where the Northlands map came from, and, well, I messed around with the Oumph River, over on the eastern edge of the map, quite a bit, even adding a small lake south of Melmog and west of Castlefranc. It would be kind of embarassing to produce a "world" map that would place a scenario from a mainline campaign underwater, especially since I don't think orcs swim very well . Have I done anything there, or with the strip of land between Dorset and the Heart Mountains, which I drew in to join the maps, that contradicts known geography? I'd like to find that out before I bother to try fixing little visual problems like the half-erased "e" on "Wild Steppe".



(Apologies for the outside link, but the forum won't accept it as an attachment--I think the file's too big.)

[Mica]

It looks good, but you should crop it more to the left. The rest of the map is, well. Just blank. Nobody knows about it, really. No campaign ever established what was there, and if they did, they're not mainline, so it's not accepted as official.

[Midnight_Carnival]

Yes, it looks great!
I would love a Wesnoth world map, but I seem to remember someone (a moderator or developer I think) saying that they did not want that, becasue it would restrict stuff with UMCs or something. Hey, I don't know, probably a false memory or something.

Would you be interested in drawing other maps, not for Wesnoth?

[Iris]

Kestenvarn (the artist behind the design of the higher-quality mainline maps) once linked me to a copy of a larger Great Continent map that included both the central "mainline" area, and the Far North (SotBE) lands. I might still have it in my backups so I'll look for it tomorrow or so.

EDIT:
Link #1 (1.21 MiB)
Link #2 (1.16 MiB)
Link #3 (4.39 MiB)

(Found via forum search. Yes, they are supposed to be empty/incomplete.)

[Feufochmar]

The add-on campaigns Fate of a Princess and Brave Wings are partly or totaly located in the area between the Heart Montaigns and Borstep. There's a map showing this area in these add-ons. The map of these add-ons shows that Prestum and Dorset are located norther of the Heart Montaigns than your map.

[eliddell]

@Feufochmar: Thanks--Brave Wings seems to have an appropriate map attached. Back to the drawing board.

@shadowmaster: The interesting thing about that map is that the Far North map from SotBE can't be reconciled with it, as far as I can tell--the coastlines are all wrong, even if the rivers are in sort-of the right places. Drawn from memory, perhaps? Hmm.

@Mica: The "here be dragons" was kind of a joke. That campaign I was planning would have filled in a narrow strip of land going east, but looking at the map shadowmaster linked suggests that I need to rethink things a bit due to scale--see below.

@Midnight_Carnival: Actually, I think it's plausible that one of them might have said that, although I'm not entirely sure that I agree with it. It's conceivable that some UMC creators might feel stifled if the large-scale geography were set in stone. Others might feel inspired by looking at the maps and wondering what sort of people live in proximity to a given map feature. I know I'm looking at things right now and thinking that I'm going to need to slip a teleporter in to get people out to the east coast if I ever get that campaign beyond the talking-about-it stage--fortunately, in a fantasy setting you can get away with things like that. And designing an unrelated section of the world will mean that I do a lot less complaining about how I can't see what kind of weather patterns could have operated on the existing maps to result in that kind of desert and marsh placement. ;P

I mean, seriously, if we assume that the Great River is on a scale similar to North America's St. Lawrence, the maps we have cover an area around the size of Canada from the Atlantic Ocean to the Quebec-Ontario border, plus the northernmost part of the US eastern seaboard. That might be around a quarter of one continent, on a world that, at a conservative estimate, should have at least 3-4 of them (plus islands). There's a lot of unmapped space still out there somewhere.

As for other maps, I'm willing to try (it's good practice, if nothing else) but I should note that a. I have rather a lot of projects on the go right now, which translates to limited time in which to add another one, and b. the map you've already seen involved a lot of judicious use of a clone brush, rather than being drawn from scratch, although I should be able to do the latter.

[Iris]

Those big maps predate the current Far North map, which was remade by esr and Espreon not long ago, but certainly long after Kestenvarn became inactive.

[Midnight_Carnival]

Yes, well I have even more projects, let's get imature and compare things we should be working on while wasting time on the forums shall we

But as for the not so clearly defined world map: People working on UMCs have the freedom to make whatever they like, the Wesnoth engine is versatile and fairly easy to use for whatever... I don't see the point of trying so hard to fit so much on the vanilla Wesnoth world, make your own similar world, it can also be a fantasy settining, but have nothing to do with the world of Konrad, Haldric and Gruu the Troll. There are several Umcs not based in the standard Wesnoth world anyway... and you can change things regarding eg: the various fantasy races that you don't like. Be original, if it's crap at least it won't be unoriginal and crap.
I support you in your "Geographical reconciliation" quest, as long as you don't expect me to contribute.

If I get really bored or something I might suggest ideas for wesnoth-like worlds, with sketches, etc... but not here.

[Mountain_King]

depending upon how interested you are in making maps, I have a map in my UMC for the chunk of land to the East of the "Far North". If you want, you could try making it "better" for me. It could give you some of that practice you want.
Go mbeannai Dia duit!
Mountain_King

[eliddell]

Augh, that was a hectic long weekend.

New version, incorporating information from the map in the Brave Wings campaign. Known infelicities include a duplicate label in the Heart Mountains and some blurring in the Lintanir Forest, the Heart Mountains, and in the hills along the eastern edge of the map. The east side of the Heart Mountains isn't particularly pretty--I did my best to reconcile the watershed in a sensible way, but I don't think two rivers so close together but flowing in different directions can ever be made to look entirely right.

Again, ~4MB offsite image.

@Midnight_Carnival: I believe in a well-rounded approch to creativity, which requires a bit of down-time spent being silly on forums. ;P Anyway, the reason I'm working on this map is that it amuses me . . . and I have the sort of mind that wants to organize things. I'm of the opinion that worthwhile things can be created both inside and outside an existing framework . . . although to be honest, if I were going to create a game with a story not associated with Wesnoth, I'd want to write my own engine for it too. <shrug> It's just the way my mind works.

@Mountain_King: The Ice Age campaign's map, you mean? I'll see if I can clean it up a bit for you, but it may take a while. Are you particularly attached to that river that comes down from the north in the north-western corner? The reason I ask is that it's going to be difficult to reconcile geographically with that tributary of the mirror-image-Great-River that nearly links up with it.

[Mountain_King]

Not especially attached. Basically anything West of the Lost Woods or anything East of Dobhar. I'm only really attached to the geography on the mid-section of the map, the northern coast could probably use some work too. The mountain range in the SE corner of the map I would like to keep mostly the same.

Other than that, you can just go wild with it. Nothing else really special I'd like to keep. Have a great day.
Best Regards,
Mountain_King

[Simons Mith]

I'd love to see some of the naff placenames (Desert of Death, Swamp of Desolation, Swamp of Dread) replaced with something non-naff.

One short list of suggestions here, and there may be others elsewhere on the forums: http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... it=+dorest

[Reepurr]

Since reviving that thread would most definitely be necromancy, I'll put forward an idea for the Swamp of Dread or something...
Putrefied Marsh?
I like the word 'curach' but it can also mean a boat and it's not so widely known so...

Also, the campaign A Drake's Story which I'm currently working on will be set in the east; the player starts in a volcano so are there any volcanoes anywhere?
(P.S. I like this big-map idea)

[AI]

I've previously attempted to extend the maps to the east for EoS purposes. A reasonable index of this can be found herer: http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 33#p321533

Unfortunately, those maps aren't very high quality and several are outdated to various degrees.

You may be interested in Silver Drake Mountain aka Firecloud Peak (yes, it is a vulcano), which has a whole story attached to it. (which can be found elsewhere in the thread)

[Reepurr]

Meh, that almost fitted my purposes...

Campaign path: (roughly)
Volcano cave -> Big desert -> Great River -> Other cave -> Volcano cave (again) -> Final battle far to the east of the desert

But hopefully this can be linked with AI's map somehow...