World maps for Athas

neujack · October 29, 2020, 8:20pm

I agree. Judging from The Athasian Cartographer’s Guild, as well as the other “Dead Lands of Athas” supplement by Gerald Lewis, I would estimate our area of interest is about half again larger in both directions than the Tyr Region Tablelands map from the original Dark Sun Boxed Set.

If we were to compare it to the map you just posted, I would very roughly estimate the width would equal to distance between the west edge of the Valley of Dust and Fire to the western edge of your map, and the height would be equal roughly to the distance between the Obsidian Fortress and the top of the Troll Grave Chasm. While there is a lot of black there, it does wind a bit across the map. Personally, I think the Cartographer’s Guild made this area a bit too big to be any fun for game purposes. Besides, it’s kind of a creative cop out to make this as big as the rest of the known world put together.

I’ve made a development folder, where I’ve taken the Cartographer’s Guild maps, and made a composite on their unrolled planetary map of all the known maps we have, so that gives us some idea of the layout. Have a look if you like.

Does that help? Drop me a message if you’re willing to discuss. I teach Photoshop and Illustrator, so I might be able to help make this a bit easier for you:

Sebastian_Grove · October 30, 2020, 8:02am

I have worldographer, which can trace hexmaps out of blank maps. I’ve been experimenting with it over the last few months – I’d be interested to try to convert some of this material into large hexmaps if I can get decent blank versions to work from.

Update: I’m having difficulties with the psd. format – the online platforms won’t open files this big; is there anyway you can make all these files pngs? I see that some of them are.

To give you an example of what I’m thinking about, here’s a first run at converting the region around the tablelands from the world map: hexmap tablelands

neujack · October 30, 2020, 3:38pm

Okay. That’s an interesting idea. So you’re looking for a way to do a larger conversion based on the maps we have?

I still think it will need to be refined and drawn. But I’ll see if I can get you another conversion.

What format do you need? Can you send me a sample of what you need?

Sebastian_Grove · October 30, 2020, 3:47pm

Yes – the issue with what I have is that most of them have labeling. The tracer in my program will try to recreate city markers and labeling with hexes. I need just the terrain. I sliced a very large image of the whole continent into a smaller image to make that one, but it was rather out of focus, so the results were kind of so-so if you drill down. However, it would be better if the image I was working with was more in focus/higher resolution. Even if someone could whip up a blank map of the areas we want to detail, I could work with that, I just need something without labeling.

This is what I was working with. The program had some difficulties in the sea of silt area, because it couldn’t really tell what the terrain was. I think the results weren’t terrible for what I was working with, but I could do a lot better with a higher res image.

As far as I know, only png and jpeg works for worldographer.

You can edit the images after you make them, so I could clean some stuff up after I got the basic map to work with. The goal would be to make maps for most of the world that were 1 mile per hex or less.

I can make images that are about 2,000 hexes on a side (what I posted was the 472 x 409 version), and have like 4 million or whatever hexes, but I have no idea where I can host them. If I put them on googledrive, you can download them, but it won’t generate an image preview b/c they’re too large.

Garolnemay_Montego · October 30, 2020, 5:38pm

Hey @neujack ,

Would be nice. The main problem is the time I have to spend on mapping. What part of the Dead Lands do you want me to draw?

Garolnemay_Montego · October 30, 2020, 6:48pm

Hey Jack;

I have done this version too which is larger that the first with a part of Dead Lands. I think could be interesting for you

As the previous one is not finished.

nijineko · October 30, 2020, 7:32pm

Has anyone ever thought of recreating Athas in UniverseSandbox?

neujack · October 30, 2020, 8:20pm

Thank you again Jhonny. This map is a great help!

I have an idea to grease the wheels on this, if you’re game to help:

I’ll take this map, add some roughed out sections from all the sources we have for our dead lands (starting from the Athasian Cartographer’s guild world map), and pass it back to you to make it pretty.

How does that sound?

neujack · October 30, 2020, 8:21pm

I’ll add some .jpg files to my Pcloud link above which you can experiment with. Try those.

Is there a maximum image size you can use?

neujack · October 30, 2020, 8:22pm

Universe Sandbox, eh? I’ve looked it up. Interesting.

How does that work? Feed it a map and it does the topography for you?

Garolnemay_Montego · October 30, 2020, 8:47pm

Sounds cool Jack!
To be honest I am pretty excited to do something different and add Dead Lands with landmarks. I’ll gonna play!

Waiting for your feddback!

neujack · October 30, 2020, 11:18pm

This should be interesting no matter how we do it. I should say this is going to be a risk, as there’s no telling how the community may respond to our efforts here.

But if we pull it off, it will be something genuinely new for the community!

Rovewin · October 30, 2020, 11:40pm

I’ve considered using something like this to try to simulate Athas and it’s moons as well as create a whole solar system for it. I’ve done a bunch of research lately with Athas in mind. Considering names of planets and orbital periods etc. It would be interesting to see how the physics actually play out. Maybe I get the program and try it out. I’m not so sure you can keep the eclipses occurring every 11 years on the dot for 14500 years.

darkinterloper · May 17, 2021, 10:29pm

Hi, new here, I’m currently working on a fan Green Age map based on the Athasian Cartographer’s Guild stuff for a campaign, and been hunting for a quality map of the Sundra Peninsula: I’ve only been able to find two at extremely low resolution, one of them being the one above in this topic, posted back in 2016. If anyone still has the high-resolution image somehow, you’d be a sorcerer-kingsend.

neujack · May 18, 2021, 8:52am

The cartographers’ guild stuff is the best of what we have on most of this. They were supposed to be the ones assembling the best of what everyone else has made. I think they still are doing that, but I don’t know how actively.

May I ask on which tile of the Athasian Cartographer’s guild’s big map would I find the Sundra Peninsula? I can see what I have on my resources.

Kalindren · May 18, 2021, 9:26am

Isn’t the Sundra Peninsula tiles G4/G5 on the Cartographer’s map? IIRC.

darkinterloper · May 18, 2021, 10:42am

From what I’ve been able to dig up the Sundra Peninsula map and accompanying “Word Beyond Tyr” netbook over on twinmoonscircus were made by a Virgil Cole? As opposed to Brian Sanchez, who made most of the Cartographer’s Guild Maps. And yup, it looks like it would occupy G4 and possibly G5 on the grid.

neujack · May 18, 2021, 7:15pm

Sorry, looks like I’m totally lacking maps for that area myself.

darkinterloper · May 18, 2021, 8:03pm

Thank you for looking, nonetheless.

Grummore · May 18, 2021, 11:50pm

Here is the one I had on my HD. I hope it’s better than the one you had.