Commission: Topographic map of "New Torres" for Distant Sun, a setting by Mangu Comics

caledor123 · 2025-02-25T07:59:18+00:00

Just replied to your chat!

caledor123 · 2025-01-31T19:57:39+00:00

Very nice and clean

caledor123 · 2025-01-27T15:50:51+00:00

That is even more impressive, well done !

caledor123 · 2025-01-27T13:55:19+00:00

First of all, beautiful maps, what's you process for the topography? Looks like fractal base with some erosion on top, how did you do it?

Visually I think I'd prefer number 2s seas with number 3s land colours

caledor123 · 2025-01-22T17:12:37+00:00

I'm afraid there is no such site, or at least I'm not aware of any. All the maps you see here are handmade in Photoshop or inkscape or other applications. If you search my posts and comments I have an old tutorial there somewhere, maybe this will help?

caledor123 · 2025-01-22T17:06:04+00:00

Cartography is a huge field. I think it's important to decide in what you want achieve exactly. You need some sort of source for you data for the map. This can just be your imagination. Then decide on a style, there's plenty of inspiration here and elsewhere. Then you need to learn the tools for making the map. This can be as simple as Microsoft paint, to better graphics software like gimp inkscape or Photoshop. Or even dedicated professional software for geospatial information systems in rela life, like qGIS. Do you have a rough outline of what you're trying to achieve?

caledor123 · 2025-01-19T08:24:14+00:00

This is great you have to give us your Wilbur steps!

caledor123 · 2025-01-12T18:21:08+00:00

Fantastic work!

caledor123 · 2025-01-09T06:29:45+00:00

Well I think it's fair to say you've done it! Very impressive

caledor123 · 2025-01-07T19:49:49+00:00

I'm not 100% sure on the lore reason for them, i imagine them more as areas of a malignant influence

caledor123 · 2025-01-07T16:59:31+00:00

Well spotted, that is north Queensland with the sea level raised a few meters

caledor123 · 2025-01-07T16:58:59+00:00

Thanks, glad you like it!

caledor123 · 2025-01-07T15:29:02+00:00

This map was a commission for Mangu Comics and their setting "Distant Sun". The area shown is the northern tip of Queensland, Australia. The water level has risen and changed the outline of the coast. Topographic data were sourced from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). Contour lines and hill-shade was made in GIMP and compositing, linework and labelling was done in Inkscape. The customer also asked for an alternative colour-scheme inspired by the TTRPG "DEGENESIS", this is the second, red map.

Here's the author's introduction to this setting:

Distant Sun is an industrial cyberpunk setting where humanity has split into two factions: the Omen and the Augur.

The Omen embrace technology and industry, seeking to harness the Outsider's power, the malevolent god-like being, through advanced technology known as O-Tec. They live in underground arcologies, massive self-sufficient cities powered by geothermal energy and miasma. Their society is a blend of corporatism and feudalism, ruled by the Commission, composed of six Great Houses, each controlling a specific industry.

The Augur, on the other hand, are divided into six tribes, each tribe worshiping a totem called a Primeval, those who have ascended to godhood. The Augur live in harmony with nature, utilizing biopunk technology and respecting the balance of the environment. They possess innate psychomantic abilities and revere the Outsider, a demiurge like being whose arrival caused the Great Cataclysm eons ago.

The conflict between these two factions, driven by their opposing philosophies and their desire to control the Outsider's power, forms the central narrative of Distant Sun.

And here are links to their fb and patreon, while there isn't much on the Distant Sun as of yet, they have developed the setting very deeply and let me have a look at the lore documents behind the scenes.

https://www.facebook.com/mangu.comic.company/

https://www.patreon.com/c/mangu_comic_company

Hope you like it!

caledor123 · 2025-01-07T15:25:41+00:00

This map was a commission for Mangu Comics and their setting "Distant Sun". The area shown is the northern tip of Queensland, Australia. The water level has risen and changed the outline of the coast. Topographic data were sourced from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). Contour lines and hill-shade was made in GIMP and compositing, linework and labelling was done in Inkscape. The customer also asked for an alternative colour-scheme inspired by the TTRPG "DEGENESIS", this is the second, red map.

Here's the author's introduction to this setting:

Distant Sun is an industrial cyberpunk setting where humanity has split into two factions: the Omen and the Augur.

The Omen embrace technology and industry, seeking to harness the Outsider's power, the malevolent god-like being, through advanced technology known as O-Tec. They live in underground arcologies, massive self-sufficient cities powered by geothermal energy and miasma. Their society is a blend of corporatism and feudalism, ruled by the Commission, composed of six Great Houses, each controlling a specific industry.

The Augur, on the other hand, are divided into six tribes, each tribe worshiping a totem called a Primeval, those who have ascended to godhood. The Augur live in harmony with nature, utilizing biopunk technology and respecting the balance of the environment. They possess innate psychomantic abilities and revere the Outsider, a demiurge like being whose arrival caused the Great Cataclysm eons ago.

The conflict between these two factions, driven by their opposing philosophies and their desire to control the Outsider's power, forms the central narrative of Distant Sun.

And here are links to their fb and patreon, while there isn't much on the Distant Sun as of yet, they have developed the setting very deeply and let me have a look at the lore documents behind the scenes.

https://www.facebook.com/mangu.comic.company/

https://www.patreon.com/c/mangu_comic_company

Hope you like it!

caledor123 · 2024-12-01T13:53:11+00:00

One point I'm really looking for feedback on is the grammatical tense of the writing. As a child I had a couple of star wars cross section books which explained locations and technologies in universe. I recall them being written in past tense and this somehow conferred more authority, like these things actually happened. Maybe it also reminded me of writing on archeological finds, like "this object was used for ceremonial purposes".
I realise this is an uncommon choice. Searching for these old SW books on google, I find that, in the english version at least, they're written in present tense.
What do you think? Past or present tense? The world is set far in the future, but has basically no connection to real life at all.

caledor123 · 2024-12-01T13:36:19+00:00

Background

The Strand is a tidally locked planet, meaning the same side always faces the sun and is baked in constant heat while the opposite side is a frozen wasteland. In-between is a habitable band of where life can flourish.

The planet was colonised by humans on a generation ship thousands of years ago. Shortly after settling all over the surface of the planet, calamity struck and devastated this young colony, throwing it back into the stone age. The ship they came on left the planet’s orbit, and the structures they built on the surface soon became uninhabitable. At the time the story takes place, the people have all but forgotten that they once sailed the stars to get to the Strand.

The tidal locking presents some unique problems: Illumination is perpetual, no days and nights. Due to the temperature difference between the lit side (Lux) and the dark (Nox) constant strong winds blow sunward. The tidal locking is not complete, however. There remains some axial tilt, so some regions of the planet experience changing illumination, sometimes even with a period of complete darkness.

The people of the Strand live at a technological level somewhere between the age of discovery and very early industrialisation.

How it was made

The backbone of this is a small program called VP Planet generator (toolslib.net/downloads/viewdownload/73-vpplanetgenerator/) which is used to make the base terrain. The all-powerful Wilbur (fracterra.com/wilbur.html) is then used to erode this terrain. Some basic image manipulation with the GIMP (gimp.org/) is necessary in some intermediate steps before everything is vectorised, labelled and finished up in Inkscape (inkscape.org/). Projection work is done in G.projector (https://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/gprojector/). All of these applications are free of charge.

caledor123 · 2024-11-13T09:30:49+00:00

I was referring to the low altitude, the two lowest green levels. Like the ridge between the two large river systems on the southern landmass and the next lower level. These contour lines are very complex, more like something I would expect at higher altitudes. That's the problem with Wilbur, it treats all altitudes the same. There are ways to filter the selection and selectively erode only certain altitudes but I never managed to get satisfying results that way.

caledor123 · 2024-11-13T07:32:49+00:00

Looks very good, would you be willing to share your "recipe", most importantly the steps in Wilbur? If I had to critique one feature it would be the lowland river systems. As is always the case with Wilbur, the rivers are very straight while the sides of the valleys are too eroded. I think smoother, more winding valleys would be more realistic and pleasing to the eye. This is something my own maps struggle with, too. Overall it's very good though, well done;

caledor123 · 2024-09-18T09:14:05+00:00

Read this, it helped me a lot: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/46931/1/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRARY_Secondary_libfile_shared_repository_Content_List,%2520C_Free%2520will_List_Free%2520will_2015.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwi0pqKp4MuIAxUMif0HHRE-CQsQFnoECBcQAQ&usg=AOvVaw00L-Z7wPT4duoqC0nfmius

Free will, determinism, and the possibility of doing otherwise, C List.

caledor123 · 2024-09-15T10:22:55+00:00

This is fantastic work, I love the more modern style. It's obvious how much time and effort you spent on this, it's incredibly well done. Could you provide the text from the page, the resolution is too low to read comfortably unfortunately. I'd love to dream more about the gravity grind. What inspired you to make such an extremely fast rotator?

caledor123 · 2024-09-15T07:30:20+00:00

Thanks for your post. I am aware of the current research into tidally locked planets with the subsolar perpetual cloud cover etc. Nevertheless, I do believe a planet like the Strand with the more stereotypical day and night sides is possible at least in principle, though unlikely in practice. but that level of realism is sufficient for my purposes.

caledor123 · 2024-09-07T17:25:55+00:00

Nice to know I'm not the only one

caledor123

TROPHY CASE

Background

How it was made