All ready for continents to be drawn in and everything. As to scale, as Efrique asked, hellifiknow. One first has to determine the size of the world, I suppose.
Thanks to all of you who commented on the last post regarding map templates! It's nice to know you're there - especially when I'm squinting at a screen, filling in fiddly bits and wondering just what the fuck I'm doing. Even if all it did was make you giggle at my silliness, it was worth it.
Cool. Now you have an overlay, at least potentially.
ReplyDeleteJust a couple of points that are probably obvious:
* The size of the world affects its gravity, so if aliens are comfortable on Earth, it's probably not too different. It could be Mars sized, or that much larger than Earth. Much beyond that probably requires explanation/exposition.
* We ended up with the 360 degrees of longitude because that's about how many days people thought we had back in the time when they came up with this stuff. My guess is that an alien culture wouldn't naturally settle on that, and maybe not on 180 degrees latitude, either.
Of course, if that were a coordinate system imposed on the world by Earth cartographers, they probably would use 360/180 out of habit.
No, I didn't ask about scale. I asked about the projection.
ReplyDeleteSee, the world is round and maps are flat. You have to project the shapes of things on the shpere onto a flat surface (performing some form of distortion into the act). These are called "projections":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection
The reason I asked was if you could tell me which one you wanted, and if I could find the relevant equations, I could probably have generate a blank grid of it for you.
But it sounds like you have what you need now, so no matter.
shpere -> sphere
ReplyDeletegenerate -> generated
dammit.