Rhumb Lines. Basically their purpose is to give navigators lines of constant bearing on a Mercator projected map.
And yes that style is looking pretty awesome
Elten is a fictional world I, and a friend are working on. Here is the starting map I was working on until I came across a question. What are the lines coming off a compass rose, do they mean anything. And I figured I should come back here. As you can see, my style is getting better! I am actually pleased how this is coming along.
Rhumb Lines. Basically their purpose is to give navigators lines of constant bearing on a Mercator projected map.
And yes that style is looking pretty awesome
Excellent start to your map HailAmesyus.
I was actually wondering about the lines as well, so thank you Falconius, for clearing that up. I thought they might just be artistic, to break up endless areas of empty sea on a map, but good to know that they serve a purpose :-)
The rhumb lines started out as serving a purpose - take a look at the "portolan" style maps - but in later centuries, they (d)evolved into just the thing you said: elements to break up endless areas of empty sea.
Last edited by Freodin; 10-03-2014 at 06:32 AM.
With the completion of the Rhurb Lines (Not sure what this says about my continent in old times, but Idc), I am on my way to doing the borders of the Seven Nations, Pyra, Necra, Aria, Vitalia, Aquaris, and Graava with the center of this continent being the UN of my world, Arcana. I will be posting this as soon as I get the mountains and forests effects I like.
Below is before I added the corner lines and lightened the whole thing to give it a more realistic and weathered look. Eventually, I will be removing the background when I finish the secondary map (A city) and a bordered explaination of Elten's 800 Year summary and so forth. I am quite proud of how this is coming.
Last edited by TrueUndeadHero; 10-03-2014 at 07:39 PM.
I like what you've done with the textures, but in my opinion the shape of the continent is a bit... round, I'd say. It appears to be a magical world you're mapping, so that might explain it, but if it's meant to be a naturallly formed continent, you should really break up the coastline with isles and bays and such.
Also, as nice as the textures look, they might make the map hard to read once it's finished. Especially in the fold in through the middle part.