I’ve been working on Text Mapper again. The result is shown below. It probably only affects maps with a reduced number of peaks. In those cases, the altitude can drop down until it meets the sea. At those lower altitudes, I was seeing some strange effects:
Altitude is measured in integers and it drops slowly. That is, on your way to the sea you might see altitudes dropping like this: 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1 0. Thus, it sort flows in “steps,” and the way I had written it, once a river flows into the next hex and this hex has the same altitude, a swamp forms. Thus it had a swamp on every second hex. In effect the map showed “stripes” of swamps.
The map also had no concept of “dry” land. As we move away from the mountains, however, there are fewer rivers. I was at a loss. How did the landscape look in ancient Germany, with fewer mountains and everything being flat compared to Switzerland? I hear the Romans thought it was heavily forested. But was it forest (dry ground) or swamp (wet ground)? I don’t know. So I went with forest. There can be swamps along the river, but without a river, there is no swamp. Right now, when I place a forest, it will grow up to two hexes into “dry” hexes without a river. In the image below, the forest on the left edge would be an example.
At the same time, I now had a better idea of what “dry” land is: that’s the land that isn’t mountains, or swamps (along a river) or forest. Just for variety, I decided it should have some hills (for a while I had 50% hills but that seemed like a bit much so I reduced it), and grass. I had seen some nice prairie pictures on social media and wanted some grasslands even thought I don’t think ancient Switzerland had grasslands. In the image below, the grass lands in the bottom left would be an example.
Anyway, as Hex Describe also uses these maps, I’ll have to think a bit more about grass land encounters! 🙂
Oh, and enjoy the temples of Law in the mountains and the temples of Chaos in the swamps! 😀
If you are interested in the icons, take a look at the Gnomeyland example.
Oh, and for a weekly map, follow @textmapper. 🙂
#RPG #Old School #Text Mapper
