I think it's finished?? I'd like some feedback.

[Reeses]

I'd like to hear people's thoughts on my map. I think its finished, but perhaps I should add something more in the way of decal or something? I don't have all the lables for the countries yet, as I have to redo them. but I do have the map itself finished, I think. Please tell me what you think! Its for a series of books.

[QED42]

Some of your rivers are doing really funky things, you are going to fall foul of the river police as it is.

This thread might help you some https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ead.php?t=3822

[Reeses]

I looked before for river things on here before and I never found that forum. Lots of good info it looks like. It is indeed the part I am most uncertain about and why I wasn't certain if it should be called finished. There is magic in this world, and some of the brown/yellow bits are that way because of magical means. I didn't plan for any magical waterways, though now I kind of want to. I left my rivers mostly on their own layers so it won't be hard to change them again. Out of curiousity, which one is the worst, if there is one that is worse than the others. Thanks!

Also, I'm not sure what you mean about the river police, but I don't think I want to fall afoul of them. 0_o

[waldronate]

The worst offenders on the river front live on that left-hand continent. The one on the lower side doesn't match the other in detail level and it also makes a loop. The two towards the top make all manner of crazy loops, which isn't how rivers would flow at all.

The other major complaint about your rivers is that they flow from one ocean to another. The first rule of hydrology is that water flows downhill. Everything else stems from that rule. A river that connects two parts of an ocean requires that the ocean be at different levels and that the land between them be flat (or nearly so). As a connected body of water will always be effectively at the same level everywhere, it's not possible to have a river that flows between two part of the ocean.

[Reeses]

Yeah I was looking at them after I posted my response and what happened is that some of those rivers weren't actually supposed to be there. I made changes to my map a while back and lost all my rivers except for the continent on the far side of the map. So, the rivers that are detailed have been around longer. I was reorganizing my map (again) and I think I got blinded from the rivers. I've been looking up books at the library to try to figure out what is wrong with my rivers (besides the fact that you can tell where I did them at different times becasue I used the pen tool at one time and the brush tool at another) But the reason that they aren't as detailed is becasue I was pretty sure they weren't right and then forgot that they weren't right because I was working on it wothout any sleep. >_>

[waldronate]

I wasn't particularly bothered by the work-in-progress rivers beyond the things like the loop in the middle of the river. Lack of sleep is a powerful force in the world, and rarely for good.

The simplest way to get your rivers in the right place is to figure out which parts of the world are higher than the others. Water than flows downhill via the steepest possible path. Over time, the water will erode land to make channels, which will join together into a single channel if they get close. Bigger rivers do more eroding and capturing, making rivers join together on their way from the high places to the low places. It's the eroding and capturing that causes effects like lakes having a single outlet, rivers not running parallel, rivers not forming loops, and rives flowing from one ocean to another.

Another way to look at it is that rivers are ways to dissipate gravitational energy in as efficient a way as possible. The sun provides energy to evaporate water and lift it up in the gravitational field of the planet. Rain or snow then puts that water onto the land. The water then moves downward as quickly as it can, doing as much damage to the landscape as it can manage. Water high up on mountains can pretty much go down the mountain quickly, letting it erode fairly straight and deep canyons because that fast-moving water can move a lot of stuff. As water gets out of the mountains, it slows down, dropping a bunch of stuff (which is what the not-mountains are generally made of). When the water gets to really flat areas, it still has energy that it needs to dissipate, which it uses to cut side-to-side, which causes meanders. When the water gets to a low point like a lake or ocean, it can't go any further down, drops everything that it's carrying, and mixes with what's there, doing no more damage to landscapes.

[Reeses]

Here is the updated version of the map. I changed the rivers. This version, the trees are turned off but the mountains are on.
I thought I should add, the yellow parts are areas that have been negativly affected by magic. Things do not grow there, usually, though each place affects the surrounding area in different ways, depending on what caused it.