Looking for some advice on a WIP map

[Elvis.Osmanovic]

Heya!

Well this is the proggress i made with my map.

I feel like its a biiiit too cluttered but maybe that because the scale is a bit bigger. Gonna fiddle a bit more with the map before i commit to it fully.
Any advice welcome.

Edit: Add a Second variance of the map..maybe it feels a bit less cluttered cuz of the more blended and natural color

[waldronate]

I don't think that there's too much clutter on there. I am a little confused by the rivers, though. One quick test for river operations is to find the end to the river where it joins the ocean and then move upstream, marking a little arrow to show which direction you're moving. If you come to a junction on the river, mark an arrow on each junction showing the upstream direction. If you come back to the ocean or if you find two rivers going in opposite directions, then something is not right from a gravitational perspective.

As an example, I cropped out a section of your map that has three rivers that join the ocean. I marked the river mouths (the when where it hits the ocean) with a colored dot: blue, green, and yellow. I then traced the blue elements upstream with arrows (it came back to the ocean in two other places, so that's probably an issue). I then traced upstream from the yellow and green river mouths and each arrow immediately ran headlong into an existing arrow. If you want gravity and elevation changes to be the primary driving forces behind your rivers, then this network will need some attention to keep the water moving downhill.

[Elvis.Osmanovic]

I don't think that there's too much clutter on there. I am a little confused by the rivers, though. One quick test for river operations is to find the end to the river where it joins the ocean and then move upstream, marking a little arrow to show which direction you're moving. If you come to a junction on the river, mark an arrow on each junction showing the upstream direction. If you come back to the ocean or if you find two rivers going in opposite directions, then something is not right from a gravitational perspective.

As an example, I cropped out a section of your map that has three rivers that join the ocean. I marked the river mouths (the when where it hits the ocean) with a colored dot: blue, green, and yellow. I then traced the blue elements upstream with arrows (it came back to the ocean in two other places, so that's probably an issue). I then traced upstream from the yellow and green river mouths and each arrow immediately ran headlong into an existing arrow. If you want gravity and elevation changes to be the primary driving forces behind your rivers, then this network will need some attention to keep the water moving downhill.

I actually knew that was preety stupid and i already fixed it by now It was actually made by mistake. Magic wand tool went a lil crazy and i didnt notice

Btw, Waldornate thanks man so much. You have been veeeery helpfull. Hope i can repay the favor for others one day

[Azélor]

Or it could also be an island.

Other than that, you have a lot of large river deltas. Most deltas would look more like an extension from the mainland where you can have a lot of small intricated rivers https://www.google.ca/maps/@-0.55084.../data=!3m1!1e3 , hard to show so many small river at the scale your working. That being said, I have no idea of the scale of the map.

The Nile https://www.google.ca/maps/@30.98591.../data=!3m1!1e3

[Elvis.Osmanovic]

oh the scale will be preety huge. Maybe the size of Europe or something like that. I am a noob in every single aspect of thething im doing. Starting from Cartography to Writing, but i plan on pickip up knowledge as i go and right now i am just using what i do know, and thats what my eyes can see

I guess the size would be comparable to a driving distance of Lisbon, Portugal to Zagreb ,Croatia (country in which i live) which is around 3000Km of driving distance...so if we assume a horse could travel around 25miles (40km~) a day, unhindered, it would take around 75 days for a Character to travel such distance.

Now if you are wondering what scale would that be in cartography like 1000:1...yea i dont have a clue...i mean i could bassically try to calctulate how much 1cm on a map would be Km's in my fantasy world, but im not entirely sure how big exactly it is...

So right now, the rivers on the map are generally big and known in the world. I Didnt make any elaborate deltas or many of the rivers in general to avoid the map being cluttered. Compare it to South America...there are tons of rivers there but the most notable is The Amazon...if i were to create a map in the style im making, i would probably include The Amazon and just a few others just for "art" sake.

Hope that makes sense. The rivers that are currently on the map will probably be included in the story, other than that there are not alot of use for them. I may be mistaken in how i think but i dont know any better if i can be completely honest and any suggestion by you, Experienced Cartographers, will greatly benefit me, and i AM 100% willing to listen and apply what you have to say.

[Elvis.Osmanovic]

This is a proggress i made so far..map is bassically done... Cities and Settlements are mostly done randomly so thats subject to change.. Naming also will be done a little bit later... after im 100% that is what im going with...

Also the world will most likely be called "Eleasar", its a derivation of hebrew name Eleazar (El'azar or Lazarus for modern) which has a meaning "god has helped"... just of anyone is curious

Tell me what you think

p.s. the "lakes" that appear on almost all the rivers are done by accident...magic wand tool went a little crazy and highlighted a bit more than i wanted it to but i just didnt have the patience to change it...since i really am not good with Photoshop

[Charerg]

Well, I think the rivers could still use a bit more work.

Here's my suggestion:



The most important thing to grasp is that rivers only have a single "exit point", where the river flows into the ocean. If the river is very large, the "exit point" can have multiple channels (such as the Nile Delta or the Danube).

[hireshmontvellos]

I think you may have gone a little overboard on the single exit point. Many rivers have multiple exit channels. The Mississippi has like 5.

The crucial thing is just that these channels shown be slow-moving water across a very flat plain, yielding swampy terrain. You can have a delta of almost any size (for example, the entire country of Bangladesh) given the right structure of the river. Very fast channels carrying sediment off steep mountains suddenly hitting a broad, flat plain with a large slow-moving river in it? You'll get gazillions of outlets to the sea and thousands of miles of swampland. In fact, almost anywhere that a river meets the sea around a broad, flat, low-elevation plain, you will get some level of variation in the exit points.

However, whatever our map images may look like, usually the areas around the coast aren't actually flat, but continue to have meaningful elevation change. For examples, sea all the rivers flowing into the Chesapeake Bay in the US, or the Thames in England. Their deltas are in hillier country, with more elevation loss, than, say, the Nile Delta or the Mississippi Delta or the Ganges Delta.

All that to say: the major rivers forking and going to multiple oceans is clearly not how natural rivers would ever behave. And the original map does probably go a little overboard on giving every river a delta, unless all the non-mountainous areas are perfectly flat. But on the other hand, there's no imperative to give every river a single exit point. Multi-exit rivers are extremely common, you just have to mark the delta area as being swampy, flat, and low-lying.

[Charerg]

You're right that deltas are common, but most of them aren't so large that they would cover a large area. Even the Mississippi is shown to have only 2 "exit points" on a large scale map. So, depending on the scale of the map, some of the deltas in the original map may be valid, but assuming that the map is fairly large, only the very largest rivers would likely have a large enough delta that it should be depicted here.

In any case, even with a large river they do kind of have a single "exit point", it can just cover a very large area, because large rivers tend to deposit lots of silt at their mouth, creating new islands and in general producing a swampy area of low flatlands. The Netherlands is a good example of this. I tried to show it a bit as well with the delta I suggested for one of the northern rivers.

Another thing worth pointing out is that although several rivers do have deltas, they're not always drawn. Like this map of the rivers of Europe. If the author is seeking to only depict the general location of mountains and major rivers instead of doing a detailed depiction, then only the "major outlets" are likely to be drawn.

[Elvis.Osmanovic]

Ok so i heeded your advice and fixed the places marked as red X

Is there anything else i could do to make this better

And overall how do you fell about the map..do you think its too tacky? Or maybe are there some unneccesarry stuff there?

Also the cities/towns placement is subject to change but as is right now i tried to place them as close to a "natural good" as i could. meaning close to rivers, shorelines and forests. I guess historically barren lands werent the popular place to settle as food and others things essential to life would be the nr.1. goal to achieve when making a settlement.

Also do you think roads are neccesarry? I kinda wanted to leave it without roads but if you guys think i should do it i might get something done.

Edit: wrong image saved, but i did fix all of the thing marked as X even tough i uploaded/saved a wrong image... so consider it dixed as instructed at an image above