OpenGeofiction
Aŭstrasuno Tero: construction of a geography - part 2.
Posted by Alejandro24 on 29 February 2016 in English.I’ve been recently busy with university. But I took small amounts of time to work in Aŭstrasuno Tero. Recently I’ve been updating the map, with the basic road network and the development of the capital, Aŭstraĉerfubo -South Capital, in english-. By the general geography of the country, I’ve made some new maps over the blank one showed in the previous diary entry.
The first map is about biome and mountains. Mountains are marked as puncted line. At the north, in dark green, the temperate forest, an area of dense forests and wet weather caused because the warm oceanic current. At the center south, in light green, the taiga. In brown the tundra and in blue high mountain glaciers.
It lefts many work on the physical geography, such as rivers and a better height map, but it is on the way.
Otherwise, the first polical map is done:
And their names:
I’m on the need to draw this in OGF. I know how to overlap a photo as a layer, but how do I build the borders in the map?
It’s all by now, I’ll keep updating as fast as I can.
Discussion
Comment from Luciano on 29 February 2016 at 05:16
This is awesome. I will be happy to help with border construction, or you are free to download and look at parts of Mahhal to see the details of how to build border relations. Just let me know.
Comment from Leowezy on 29 February 2016 at 14:30
That’s really awesome! If you need help with how to build border relations, maybe a live chat would be a good thing; that way it’s easier to solve problems the moment they come up. But that depends on what times you are available of course, so just look whether looking at Luciano’s Mahal or other nations will help you :)
Comment from Leowezy on 29 February 2016 at 14:34
Oh yes, another thing I wanted to make a recommendation about; although your mapping skills already seem superb, maybe consider waiting with your capital city until you have worked on or perhaps even finished another city in your country. It will really improve the mapping quality of your capital once you’ve started with it :) But then your beginnings already look very good and thought out, and in the end it’s totally up to you of course ;D
Comment from _zM on 29 February 2016 at 20:00
A small tip: your political map has areas of similar size all over the country, but they tend to be much smaller in regions with high population density. Otherwise: this looks awesome. I really hope you get it done reasonably fast, unlike me.
Comment from Ūdilugbulgidħū on 29 February 2016 at 23:29
The layout looks very good, coastlines especially. I think the north east coast is especially good, the south and west doesn’t look quite real to me yet. The broad rivers are great, you’ll need some strong bridges on these - watch out for jökulhlaups! You’ll also have to decide what your biome is. There is probably no real world comparison, because there is no continental land mass in this location in the real world. But I think we’re probably looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magellanic_subpolar_forests for all the forested areas in southern Antarephia. Some species of ‘‘Nothofagus’’ anyway. I’m already interested in visiting the west coast tundra but I can’t picture the southern ‘taiga’ - that is really a northern hemisphere ecosystem that has no austral equivalent, because of the non-representation of austral conifers. I also think the road S3 looks a bit ‘easy’ - with those big rivers, mountains and tundra this isn’t going to be that simple terrain for road building, especially motorways. Norway, Alaska etc all have major routes that avoid at least sections of the coast - or run along parallel to it - often on a raised beach resulting from post-glacial up-lift. But without Antarctica existing, I suppose that may not exist either, who knows.
Comment from Luciano on 1 March 2016 at 01:19
When I lived in Chile, I traveled quite a bit through Chilean and Argentine Patagonia. There are wonderfully strange alerce forests which could be a candidate for a “southern taiga”. These types of ecosystem are also what I visualize when I discuss the Mahhalian temperate rainforests.
Comment from Ūdilugbulgidħū on 1 March 2016 at 11:04
I think though that real world alerce is more temperate and less austral. I’ve only been to southern Patagonia, so I’ve never seen these amazing forests - or the araucaria forests further north. As I remember it, I was mainly climbing, looking at Magellanic bogs and drinking pisco - you can only do so much. There’s a nice description of the patagonian ecotypes here: http://kochj.brandonu.ca/older_stuff/fieldtrips/Patagonia/pataveget/pataveget.htm
I think - because there is no real world comparison with southern Antarephia - there is a great opportunity to ‘invent’ the whole biome here, bottom up. Then we can get to a stage where we can picture these austral taiga ecosystems (Even if you can already Luciano - Alejandro24 - at the moment I can’t!). The evergreen? Asperic temperate forest could have some conifer species in it. There might be a deciduous ‘band’ further east? The real world Patagonian forest has evergreen Nothofagus, rather than conifers. So we could ‘invent’ some more austral conifer species. I sort or think though that we also need an Antarctica, to explain how there is a worldwide distribution of these genera (assuming there is!). Perhaps, as I think we mentioned a long time ago, some austral or sub-austral islands to ‘allow’ this, and as breeding colonies for those poor albatrosses.
Comment from Alejandro24 on 6 March 2016 at 04:03
Thanks to all of you for your comments. Lets take this topic part by part: Biome: it’s true that there is no real equivalent for this place, but at least it is possible to try to create biomes starting with those mentioned by you all. I have no idea at all of how cold biomes are really, not more beyond than readings and photos, and all those proposals are a more clearly picture of how the biomes could be. I would like to see how is Mahhal configured for this. Borders: I’ve been looking at the borders in Mahhal, and sincerelly I don’t understand at all how it works. Maybe I’ll need your help guys, but not for now and maybe in two weeks. I’ll try to schedule it and announce it for you. Political Map: the sizes of the regions are more or less equals because… I don’t really know, I just made the borders thinking in a logical distribution of the population. Maybe this will be clarified in the next entry. Roads: due the extreme geography of the country maybe the roads looks easy, but It is just a draft of ideas, with the time it’ll change. Taking in consideration the Jökulhlaups, the island would be mainly volcanic. I was thinking in its primary resources, not sure if oil and volcanic activity are compatible to each other, but I take the second option as more accurate. Mapping skills: thanks for the compliment Leowezy, I always liked to draw maps as hobby. I started with the capital city because It seemed to obvious to start by there, but I’ll try to draft another cities and little towns.
Another things in work are also the flag and national symbols, a basic history, explanation for the origin for the Esperanto language -isolated language?-, the relations with another nations -starting with Mahhal-, and the name of the entire island.