|
Why the land bridges between the continents before Earthfall?
The ones in the Inner Sea region kept the Arcadian Ocean from filling what is now the Inner Sea in Golarion on the Western End while those near Garund and Qadira kept the Obari Ocean from filling the Inner Sea. (On Earth, it took the building of the Suez Canal to allow a ship to sail from the Atlantic through the Mediterranean and out into the Red Sea to reach the Indian Ocean.)
I also wonder if Arcadia extends further north and south than currently indicated. Extended it in the north would be useful for prehistoric migrations and might allow some travel via the Crown of the World. (This area is probably unexplored.)
Also, as for the south polar regions, maybe there are some large islands far south that serve to help anchor the ice cap. They could be loosely associated with Sarusan or Arcadia and may be similar to the islands surrounding the Arctic.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I am more of a history expert than a climatologist, but the location of the Mwangi Expanse is something that exists as canon in the maps. Perhaps the weather patterns,winds and currents in the area funnel moisture that is blocked by the mountains and the area is similar to what exists in Africa several degrees of latitude to the south. (The Eye of Abednego may have increased this greatly in the last century on Golarion.) Essentially, the Mwangi Expanse, Sargava and associated regions have to be more tropical than its equivalent latitude and longitude on Earth.
This is where my thoughts are as well. The Gobi Desert is the only desert in our world that exists at a high latitude, and it's because it's a rain shadow desert. Norther Garund doesn't have a huge mountain range to the west to do this, though, so it has to be the Eye of Abendego that is altering the weather patterns.
Moisture coming in to this part of the world must get caught up in the permanent low-pressure system that is the Eye of Abendego and its surrounding air currents. Any moisture that makes it over land is rotating counter-clockwise, and it gets dumped over the Mwangi Expanse, meaning the rain shadow is formed by the Barrier Wall mountains, and to a lesser extent, the Napsune Mountains. A little bit escapes through the Shattered Range into Katapesh and Nex.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
A whole lot of incredibly awesome stuff previously.
This is your Kung Fu. And it is strong.
|
|
I am more of a history expert than a climatologist, but the location of the Mwangi Expanse is something that exists as canon in the maps. Perhaps the weather patterns,winds and currents in the area funnel moisture that is blocked by the mountains and the area is similar to what exists in Africa several degrees of latitude to the south. (The Eye of Abednego may have increased this greatly in the last century on Golarion.) Essentially, the Mwangi Expanse, Sargava and associated regions have to be more tropical than its equivalent latitude and longitude on Earth.This is where my thoughts are as well. The Gobi Desert is the only desert in our world that exists at a high latitude, and it's because it's a rain shadow desert. Norther Garund doesn't have a huge mountain range to the west to do this, though, so it has to be the Eye of Abendego that is altering the weather patterns.
Moisture coming in to this part of the world must get caught up in the permanent low-pressure system that is the Eye of Abendego and its surrounding air currents. Any moisture that makes it overland is rotating counter-clockwise, and it gets dumped over the Mwangi Expanse, meaning the rain shadow is formed by the Barrier Wall mountains, and to a lesser extent, the Napsune Mountains. A little bit escapes through the Shattered Range into Katapesh and Nex.
The Eye of Abednego is only a little more than a hundred years old in the current campaign year of A.R. 4717 while it seems that the Mwangi Expanse existed from before Earthfall. I would presume that prevailing winds, currents and weather patterns traditionally funneled moisture into the area. Perhaps before the Eye of Abednego formed, there was enough moisture and warmth coming into the area to help make an area from maybe 30 degrees north and further to have a tropical climate near a desert region. The Barrier Wall and Napsune mountains must have traditionally formed a rain shadow.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The Eye of Abednego is only a little more than a hundred years old in the current campaign year of A.R. 4717 while it seems that the Mwangi Expanse existed from before Earthfall.
Shows how well versed I am in some of the details from the Inner Sea World Guide. Glad someone else is on top of this. :)
This is your Kung Fu. And it is strong.
I also make a mean opera cake.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
One of the projects I've been working on along with this mapping stuff is a solar ephemeris calculator for Golarion. As I mentioned previously, we are in the middle of the Jade Regent AP, and details like sunrise, sunset, twilight, et. al. are important aspects of the story, especially as you cross the Crown of the World.
This ephemeris calculator is still in development, but it's nearing completion. I'll make an announcement about it in a separate thread when it's done, but figured the people following here would be interested in the preview.
Right now, the defaults are set for Magnimar on the current day in 4714. The JavaScript lib I am using for the calculations has nice functionality, but errors compound as you go a few hundred years into the future so I map Golarion years back to the 20th century behind the scenes. It also uses the "local Golarion timezone" for the given longitude. I break Golarion up into 24 zones that are 15° apart for simplicity. (According to James, wizards and scholars are aware of the concept of time zones).
|
I have really enjoyed looking at the Maps and interactive globe.
I guess I'm a little thrown off by how far north northern Garrund is and the Mwangi Expanse is. I suppose I assumed that Northern Garrund kind of matched the Sahara and the Mwangi Expanse matched the great rain forests of equatorial Africa.
Looking at this thread Mr. Jacobs has been specific about a few markers, like Seattle being as far north as Magnimar, and Nex lining up with the one of the Tropic lines so the rest of the map lines up with those markers.
Again Thank you for all of the hard work.
I was looking at the interactive globe from the perspective of the south pole, the southern hemisphere is almost entirely water. It looks kind of similar in size to the pacific ocean on earth.
Isn't there a polar current that goes around Antartica effectively isolating it from the rest of the world's oceans? Would such a current be able to keep an ice sheet in place, rotating as suggested up thread?
Thanks
|
|
A few large islands might do the trick in stabilizing a south polar ice sheet.
Elyas, I initially thought when I saw the map of Golarion years ago that the deserts of Northern Garund were an analog for the Sahara but they are much smaller in terms of latitude and longitude. (Northern Garund is much smaller than Northern Africa.)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It's also possible some of those continents stretch farther south, or that Sarusan is even larger than shown. We don't have any "to scale" canonical maps that cover an entire continent to work with other than Tian Xia.
|
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Isn't there a polar current that goes around Antartica effectively isolating it from the rest of the world's oceans? Would such a current be able to keep an ice sheet in place, rotating as suggested up thread?
The Circumpolar Current on Earth goes around Antarctica specifically because Antarctica is there... water can't flow through the land mass.
With open ocean at Golarion's South Pole you'd be more likely to get a chaotic assortment of currents influenced by the nearest land masses. Similar to Earth's Arctic ocean.
|
|
Isn't there a polar current that goes around Antartica effectively isolating it from the rest of the world's oceans? Would such a current be able to keep an ice sheet in place, rotating as suggested up thread?The Circumpolar Current on Earth goes around Antarctica specifically because Antarctica is there... water can't flow through the land mass.
With open ocean at Golarion's South Pole you'd be more likely to get a chaotic assortment of currents influenced by the nearest land masses. Similar to Earth's Arctic ocean.
Perhaps some islands off the coasts of Sarusan and Arcadia might be a good idea. Also, maybe some islands between Tien Xia and Arcadia might be good in helping the prehistoric movements of persons. (They can be far enough north so that if the ice cap expanded, as it likely did during the Age of Darkness, you get some landmasses exposed around them. (Also, hunters could have kayaked from Tien Xia to Arcadia.)
Awesome work!
Looks great, Garrett!
I am thinking the Castrovin Sea needs to be a lot bigger. I was reading back through what James wrote earlier in this thread, and then looked at the entry for Casmaron in the ISWG:
The vast, landlocked Castrovin Sea stares from the center of Casmaron like an unwinking eye, lapping against the forlorn shores of Iobaria in the north, the forgotten cities of ancient kingdoms like Ninshabur and Kaskkari in the west, and mighty Kelesh in the south.
and to me that says "much, much bigger".
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Dot~!
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Nicely done!
By the way, this interactive map demonstrates how map projections distort distances. The "true" distance between Magnimar and Sandpoint using latitude/longitude measurements (assuming a great circle arc) works out to only 35 miles. In my GIS application, measuring off the projected map gives me a straight-line distance of ~77 km, which is just shy of 48 miles. The latter is what you get if you measure the distance off of Paizo's Varisia maps.
The Inner Sea map covers over 35 degrees of latitude. The scale bar shown on the map is really only accurate within a few degrees of the central latitude and longitude of the map projection. The farther you go, the worse the distortion and the less accurate the scale is.
The problem with Paizo's nation/country maps is that they all use the same scale bar as the Inner Sea map, and it creates an unsolvable problem: there is no way to produce a global map of Golarion where all of Paizo's published maps and distances are true.
We should probably start maintaining an FAQ on stuff like this or people will wonder why the global map is "wrong".
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I have created a Web page that illustrates the issue.
It shows that, when you place the regional maps for Varisia (at the north end) and The Sodden Lands (at the south end) on the Inner Sea Map, they are very clearly using the same map scale despite being over two thousand miles apart.
Is there not some projection which has a consistent scale everywhere?
(I ask merely out of curiosity, since I think the global map has to mirror the ISWG map, otherwise it will just look wrong - I'm just curious whether one solution is to "spread" the extremes of the ISWG map out significantly across the globe).
You can't turn a sphere into a rectangle without distorting something. You can keep distances equal along lines of latitude, but they'll become curves in the map projection which means you distort angles. The Inner Sea Map has a distinctively cylindrical project look and feel. Assuming it's a conic or azimuthal projection will make it look really distorted on the global map (it will get a sort of pincushion squeeze).
I think the right thing to do here is make the distance scale accurate for about 35 latitude, which is the center of the map, rather than at the equator (which is the default for a cylindrical projection). It will make the Inner Sea a little wider on the globe, but instead of having the north edge be really off and the south edge being slightly off, both ends will have a modest distance error and the region in the Inner Sea and Absalom will be spot on.
You can't turn a sphere into a rectangle without distorting something. You can keep distances equal along lines of latitude, but they'll become curves in the map projection which means you distort angles. The Inner Sea Map has a distinctively cylindrical project look and feel. Assuming it's a conic or azimuthal projection will make it look really distorted on the global map (it will get a sort of pincushion squeeze).
I think the right thing to do here is make the distance scale accurate for about 35 latitude, which is the center of the map, rather than at the equator (which is the default for a cylindrical projection). It will make the Inner Sea a little wider on the globe, but instead of having the north edge be really off and the south edge being slightly off, both ends will have a modest distance error and the region in the Inner Sea and Absalom will be spot on.
Cheers. I kind of figured it wouldn't be possible without making the final "corrected" map look wildly wrong. I wondered though if it was a true mathematical 'nothing we can do' or a more pragmatic one.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I have created a Web page that illustrates the issue.
It shows that, when you place the regional maps for Varisia (at the north end) and The Sodden Lands (at the south end) on the Inner Sea Map, they are very clearly using the same map scale despite being over two thousand miles apart.
Maybe Golarion is, in truth, a cylinder?
I really hope this spurs the developers to grab a beach ball and scribble a rough map onto it.
Then hire a cartographer and turn that into a baseline (and if it's just for internal use) that can be taken to work out regional maps.
|
|
I doubt the existing maps will ever be redrawn/rescaled to account for curvature... not including that factor made them (like all flat maps) inaccurate to begin with. Some future global mapping which would theoretically allow determination of precisely HOW inaccurate and in which sections will thus not inherently change the situation.
Put another way... the maps have been 'close enough' all this time, so they'll presumably continue to be considered so going forward.
Thus, to me the best mapping on to the globe is one which minimizes the average distortion and keeps existing regional maps as close to accurate as possible. For example, maybe take advantage of the gap between the Avistan and Crown of the World maps to push Avistan a little further South... and thereby reduce the distortion towards the north / south edges of the map.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
With Magnimar and the Mana Wastes locked into pretty narrow latitude bands, any projection that stretches the ISR map across a larger part of the globe would only exacerbate the scale discrepancies at its extremes.
One of the options I haven't fully explored yet is an Azimuthal Equidistant projection, centered not at a high latitude, but at the equator. This would give us nearly horizontal lines of latitude through the Inner Sea region (with some slight cupping at the northern edge), and mostly vertical lines of longitude with modest convergence towards the northern edge. Just enough to cause distances in Varisia to spread out, but not so much cupping that Magnimar gets shoved too far south.
Magnimar may end up closer to Portland, but James said that's OK.
I don't like dropping the cylindrical projection assumption, but the scale bar issue has kind of forced that.
A Transverse Mercator projection would do the same thing. I don't know these two projections well enough to know which would be a better fit so I need to experiment. (Transverse Mercator is typically used in narrow bands of longitude where it is super-accurate, but that's a different usage model so even though it would normally be an "inappropriate" choice here it may still give the results we need).
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
OK. Assuming a Transverse Mercator projection made a lot of magic happen. Garrett is going to hate me because the vectors of the Inner Sea, Garund, and Casmaron will all have to change again, though. :(
I had to assume a little unequal scaling in the map (I put about 5% compression in the N-S direction), otherwise everything stretched too far north but overall the scale bar stays remarkably consistent.
No fancy map yet since I am still tweaking but here's a screenshot from my GIS application. You can see how this new projection creates a mushroom effect at the top of the map. This is what allows distances to stay true, at the expense of distorting angles (what I was alluding to in response to Steve Geddes earlier). This ended up being a better solution than an Azimuthal Equidistant approach, which did too much latitudinal stretching and not enough longitudinal spreading.
The distance query in the GIS app says the great circle distance between Magnimar and Sandpoint is now 73653 meters, which is ~45.8 miles. If you use a precision ruler on the Varisia map in the ISWG, the straight-line distance is about ~47 miles. I'd say that's pretty good!
In this map, Magnimar is at 47.6164 N latitude. Which is exactly where Seattle is. And the northern Tropic is mostly over the Mana Wastes.
This is more bulbous than I'd like in the final map, but...something had to give.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah, it's going to put a bulge in the throat where Avistan meets the Crown but at least there's no published map there to conflict with it.
This will also be a good time to enlarge the Castrovin Sea. I think James intends for it to be a big hole in the center of the continent, making Casmaron more donut-like.
|
|
Yeah, it's going to put a bulge in the throat where Avistan meets the Crown but at least there's no published map there to conflict with it.
This will also be a good time to enlarge the Castrovin Sea. I think James intends for it to be a big hole in the center of the continent, making Casmaron more donut-like.
That is my impression as well.
I do like what I am seeing. Thanks for all the hard work!!!
As much of Casmaron is unmapped, I imagine that enlarging the Castrovin Sea will not be a big issue. (Many of the areas near the Castrovin Sea would likely benefit from increased rainfall, but Casmaron looks large enough to have ample deserts as well.)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Dotted for pure awesomeness
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
OK. The problem du jour is: Iobaria. This map is has north pointing up, as all good maps should, and with a Transverse Mercator, or even Azimuthal Equidistant, projection for the Innear Sea map, you get mushrooming and curing at the northeast and northwest corners. This makes Iobaria not really fit, unless you want it at a diagonal, which I don't. Plan B (though I think we are on, like, Plan K at this point) then was to move the center longitude of the Inner Sea projection closer to the right edge so that it's more vertical, but then you get severe curvature on the opposite side where Varisia sits and it's just a mess.
So I am exploring alternatives that are a little weird but very usable. Like assuming the Inner Sea map is using a Mollweide Projection. This is a compromise projection, that distorts everything (angles, distances, area) a little bit rather than preserving one at the expense of the others. Also nice is that lines of latitude remain horizontal in the projection, so you get trapezoidal rather than mushroom or bushel spreading when viewed on the globe. A nice side-effect of this is that the top of the Inner Sea map will run along a line of latitude, which is clearly what was intended by the illustrators. Iobaria still won't fit perfectly, but the problem is less severe and falls into the realm of "good enough".
I checked distances between Magnimar and Sandpoint with this assumption and they came out about 10% short. I also think that is "good enough". Some error is expected in a compromise projection, and that is not a lot of error.
No screenshots yet as I have some work to do but I should get something posted later this week. We are closing in on a final solution that will make everything work. Until Paizo's next map gets released, anyway. ;)
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
First off, an acknowledgement to those who have posted just to dot the thread or express their thanks. You are welcome, and thank you for following! This is a fun project, and also hopefully one that is helpful to your campaigns.
And a big thanks to everyone who has contributed, from participating in the discussion to creating tools and images. With each iteration we are getting closer and closer to an "accurate" global map of Golarion.
Here are my latest in-progress images:
The Inner Sea, assuming a Mollweide projection
Robinson projection of the globe
Iobaria has been added in to the latter and fits reasonably well. There are some unaligned areas, but it's pretty close and good enough.
In the final maps, the great circle distance between Magnimar and Seattle is 43 miles, compared to the straight-line distance on the Varisia map in the ISWG which is 47 miles. That's less than 10% error for a non-equidistant projection at this latitude, which I am also satisfied with. Magnimar has also been moved up in latitude and now sits at 48.18 N latitude, which is at the northern end of the Seattle metro area, in the Marysville/Everett vicinity. And of course the northern tropic is over the Mana Wastes.
I still need to update the rough sketch of Avistan, Casmaron, and the connection to the Crown of the World. But so far this is looking really good.
All I can say is, wow, awesome work!
Agreed!
Carry on!
--C.
This is a really cool thread. Thank you for the work so far, and I hope you keep it up!
I also hope the creative team keep this in mind when working on the less fleshed out parts of the world. I'd hate to see them screw everything up because they didn't take some of the things you've struggled with into account. We could end up with an unreconcilable situation that requires retcons instead of the hand waves you've used so far, and that would be terrible.
Edit to add: When I said "everything" I was referring to the world's overall design, not the work John and Garrett have done. That would also be terrible, but I'm just hoping we can inch towards an ever more cohesive map instead of a complete mess the way, say, certain comic book universes have gone with their geographic layouts.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I love what you are doing and don't understand most of it, but that is fine.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Update 1/26/17: The new maps have been posted.
- Updated map of the Inner sea with graticule
- Updated maps of the globe with the new projection for the Inner Sea map incorporated
- Updated north pole view
- Qadira map added to global views
- Casmaron has been re-sketched along with a larger Castrovin sea to more closely resemble descriptions from both James and the ISWG.
I've also been doing some stuff behind the scenes that will work it's way out. More points of interest data is coming, and I'll probably reorganize the georaphy pages to make them easier to navigate. By which I mean, I'll actually put some thought into navigation. :P
|
Awesome work, guys!
Do you have plans to make the vector data of the land features downloadable?
I've been wanting to develop some custom maps in ArcGIS for a campaign, which would follow a character's journal. The steps of finding a coordinate system and georeferencing maps to draw the base layer has kept me from it.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Do you have plans to make the vector data of the land features downloadable?
I've been wanting to develop some custom maps in ArcGIS for a campaign, which would follow a character's journal. The steps of finding a coordinate system and georeferencing maps to draw the base layer has kept me from it.
Yes. I need to get my web site cleaned up a little so I can support a distribution depot for the data layers, but that is coming on the sooner-rather-than-later side.
I'm yet another person reading & loving this thread. Keep up the good work :D