Mystara

13 February 2016

Lining Up Mystara XI

I’m back on the project for a final push after my usual heavy workload for early February. (It’s entrance exam season at work.)

Here’s where we were at back in Lining Up Mystara VIII:

Lining Up Mystara, mid-January 2016 Progress Snapshot

We’re almost out of hex map sources to add to this. Basically, there is just Davania left.

But before we get into that, let’s have a go at adding in the Master Set world map to this.

Reconciling the World Map I

Brun

Home of the Known World, centre of the whole setting — Brun is undoubtedly the best detailed area of the world. It’s also the most problematic in many ways, since the hex sprawl from the Arm of the Immortals to the Sea of Dawn is now set in stone, and did not always follow the world map precisely. In fact, it seems to have followed the general coastline, but at an angle:

Note how this scaling fits the Known World, all the way up to Frosthaven in the far north of Norwold.

Now look at the Great Waste, the Serpent Peninsula, the Savage Coast, the Orc’s Head Peninsula, and the Arm of the Immortals. It seems that the maps in X4, X5, X6 and X9, upon which all of the later maps from the Great Waste to the Orc’s Head were based, angled the coast slightly differently from the world map’s version.

Could we make this fit better by applying a slight rotation?

Master Set world map, scaled and rotated 1.85º clockwise to fit Brun, overlaid on the hex maps — *Master Set* world map, scaled and rotated 1.85º clockwise to fit Brun, overlaid on the hex maps

This seems to fit the Known World coastline and Norwold better. And we now have a reasonably tight fit from Frosthaven in the north all the way round to the Gulf of Hule, ignoring the slight bulge of the Northern Reaches.

Unfortunately, the Savage Coast area is better, but still not close enough.

There’s no way round this — there is simply no best fit for Brun’s continental outline. My solution is therefore to create two best fits, and merge them wherever seems to fit best — likely on the northwestern coast somewhere.

Before we get into that, take a quick look at the rest of the continents. Everything from the Isle of Dawn to Skothar and Davania seems pretty out, doesn’t it? And yet the scaling is not too bad — it’s the locations that are off. Because of this, I propose that we simply treat each landmass separately, or in logical groups, at least, and try to get the best fit for each. For most of the stuff in the Alphatian Sea region, it doesn’t really matter anyway, because we don’t need the world map to expand these areas. Where it starts to matter is in the parts shown only in white here, or on the periphery, as these are the regions for which the world map is the only source. Of course Skothar and Davania will need to be placed and fit with reference to the small areas of each appearing on the hex maps.

One thing’s for sure: it’s going to be messy, and quite arbitrary. You can see why I’ve been putting this off for so many years!

Back to Brun… Let’s get rid of the other landmasses for now. Here’s the best fit for the Savage Coast et al:

Master Set Brun's best fit with the Savage Coast area — *Master Set* Brun’s best fit with the Savage Coast area

I’ve based this fit on the Orc’s Head Peninsula, and you can see it’s the same placement I used back in January to place and expand the Arm of the Immortals.

Let’s see how these two best fits look like together, with the Known World placement in black, Orc’s Head in red:

Master Set Brun's best fit with the Known World (black) and the Orc's Head Peninsula (red) — *Master Set* Brun’s best fit with the Known World (black) and the Orc’s Head Peninsula (red)

We want to change the northwestern coastline as little as possible, and it looks like there’s an easy point to merge them in the northwest of my Arm of the Immortals map. The whole coastline from the Orc’s Head Peninsula to northern Norwold will of course not be taken from this outline, so the fact that the Savage Coast doesn’t line up with either fit is not a problem.

Here’s a very basic preview of what this will look like:

Looking pretty good!

For Brun, there is actually a more detailed coastline available from the Companion Set/CM1, but it should be quite easy to scale it to this model in the same way as I have done with the Master Set map here.

Rotation & Scaling

The next big question is whether to carry the rotation we applied to Brun to make it fit over to the other landmasses. Brun needed a 1.85º clockwise rotation to get a really good fit with most of its hex map representations. Does this mean we should apply the same rotation to the other continents and landmasses?

Similarly, my first instinct is to use the same scale for all of these landmasses now that we have Brun’s locked in. Is this correct? Or should be consider scaling each landmass separately?

Let’s take the Isle of Dawn and the isles south of it as a test case. With slight rescaling, we can get a near perfect fit for these using a 2.61º clockwise rotation:

The Isle of Dawn region with coastal outlines from the Master Set map, rotated 2.61º clockwise and scaled to Brun — The Isle of Dawn region with coastal outlines from the *Master Set* map, rotated 2.61º clockwise and slightly enlarged

This is a pretty good fit. Clearly the coastal outlines were far more detailed on the hex maps, so we can’t expect perfection. But overall it looks pretty good.

That we had to rescale this is troubling. I’d prefer to keep the same scale throughout. Let’s look at the other areas before making a conclusion on this.

But adjusting the rotation for a best fit seems to definitely be on the table. This is a good situation, because I’d rather go with little or no rotation for the Master Set versions of Skothar and Davania if possible. Skothar is long, and rotating it even a little can drastically change the location of its far eastern “tail” and Zyxl.

Alphatia

This is a problematic one, because the world map depiction of Alphatia is very different from its hex map form:

It’s hard to say what needs to be done here. So let’s just ignore it — we don’t need it, and it’s clearly no use as a reference. The islands north of it on the world map (not shown here) can be placed together with Skothar instead.

Bellissaria

How about Bellissaria? It’s a similar situation to the Isle of Dawn, fitting very well with slight upscaling. But it actually fits with its rotation the same as Brun:

It seems, then, that we can adjust scaling and rotation, but it would be best to try to keep this to a minimum.

And that brings us to a close for today. I’ll leave you with our customary progress snapshot:

Lining Up Mystara, 13th February 2016 Progress Snapshot

Next up: Skothar and Davania.

23 January 2016

Lining Up Mystara X

Atlas of Mystara, Mystara, planet renders 8

I couldn’t resist playing with the 3D model a bit more.

Specifically, I noticed that the way I had applied the maps to the model yesterday was not right. Count the latitude lines on this image from yesterday and see for yourself:

The map together with the Hollow World map applied to my 2012 model of Mystara — Yesterday’s post’s globe

Notice how nine small squares fit into the space between the equator and the extreme northern point of the world? This is why I had to stretch the continents to make them fit more into the polar openings. Do you also notice how the squares are not in fact square, even near the equator? They should be almost square at the equator, getting squeezed more and more as you near the pole. But they’re squashed into rectangles at the equator.

In other words, the map is not correctly applied to the globe. The Outer World should go further into the polar openings, and the Hollow World shouldn’t be poking out the top quite as far as it is.

Unfortunately there is no super precise way of doing this, but that’s okay — unlike with the real world, this globe is just a visualisation of the maps, so it doesn’t have to be pixel perfect, as long as I can get it to look roughly the same each time I make it.

So I reverse-engineered the graticule (the grid lines) so that 66º sits roughly at the start of the polar opening, then squashed the Hollow World graticule to compensate. Here’s what the texture map has to look like for this model (prepare for weirdness!):

Revised texture map for Mystara's globe — Revised texture map for Mystara’s globe

Each part of the map has to be squashed into the texture in order to display on the model correctly. And for some reason it all has to be vertical like this!

Apply it to the globe, and…

The Revised Globe

The revised texture map applied to the 2012 globe model

Much better!

Note that the graticule squares are indeed almost square near the equator.

Let’s take a look inside, too (complete with an improvised Red Sun):

Cross-section showing the Hollow World beneath the Far End Ocean

Cross-section showing the Hollow World beneath the Known World continents

Mystara's north pole from the outside — Mystara’s north pole from the outside

Mystara's south pole from the outside — Mystara’s south pole from the outside

The southern hemisphere of the Hollow World

The northern hemisphere of the Hollow World

Does anyone have any objections to these placements of the two worlds? There’s lots of room for tweaking, but in general I’m pretty happy with this configuration.

We should probably get the exact dimensions of the world locked in before playing with this stuff any more. Changes to the size of the Outer World will doubtless cause changes to the model anyway.

A preliminary draft of the Mystara Outer World map

22 January 2016

Lining Up Mystara IX

Atlas of Mystara, Mystara, planet renders 12

I’ve been working on lining up the world map with what we have so far. This leads naturally into Davania and the problems with latitude, and I think I’m starting to get a handle on all these.

But that’s for another day. Because today I want to share a sneak peek at what else I’ve been working on.

Revised World Map, Take One

In order to do this, I had to piece together a world map. So you can see here my current position thinking on placing Davania and Skothar, and indeed the latitude problem. (Of course it may well still change.)

Note how large the Far End Ocean is — and this is not likely to change much. It takes up more than half of the world! Ripe for development…

But let’s get going! Now that we have a 2:1 ratio world map, it’s time to have some fun.

The World of Mystara?

The world map applied to a spheroid. Note the pinching at the pole.

Here’s what happens when you apply the above map to a spheroid. Of course, we all know Mystara is not a simple ellipsoid, so it’s not going to look quite like this, but this is the basic idea.

Do you see the pinching at the north pole? Hyborea is all squashed and tiny, and the Pelatan Peninsula is more of a blob. These can be redrawn slightly to restore their familiar shapes, but their small size is unavoidable.

Thankfully, since Mystara has no poles, the distortion will be rather different from what we see here.

Back in 2012, I created some scale diagrams with my calculated world dimensions of the time. Take a look:

Cross-section of Mystara with hex map-based dimensions and Polar Lip beginning at 66°

I don’t really remember the exact basis for these measurements, but I will need to revise the Outer World figures when I have everything locked down.

The axial tilt of 24º, combined with the polar openings beginning at the Arctic Circle, 66º, was an arbitrary decision that I’d like to stick with — unless there are any objections. Neither of these were detailed much in official sources; the tropics and Arctic and Antarctic Circles were shown on various maps, but without much consistency.

Cross-section of Mystara with Axial Tilt of 24°, Polar Lip starting at 66°, summer time in Northern Hemisphere

So what would this look like in 3D, with the preliminary world map applied?

The World of Mystara!

Not bad at all!

I actually cheated and expanded the land somewhat so that it starts to fold into the opening. On my final model, I think I’ll want to make it do so even more. This is going to be a tricky calculation, because how much the land folds over will decide the eventual size of the world.

My grid here is a regular square grid, 12 large squares by 12 large squares. Each of these is 30º of latitude, but due to the polar openings this has been thrown off somewhat. We’re going to need to redefine the grid based on where the Outer World/Hollow World split is considered to be. It looks like the last visible line in this picture, just visible before plunging into the Hollow World, may be the best bet.

In any case, let’s leave that sort of thing for another day. This model is not precise. Nor are the maps used to make it. Let’s take a look at it from some other angles.

Cross-section showing parts of the Hollow World and its openings

This is almost the same view as the image above, but with a cross-section applied. You can actually see inside what should be solid rock too, which is a bit confusing. But the Hollow World is right there! That’s Jomphur, Aerical and Suridal.

Cross-section with the diagram superimposed

Here’s a straight-on view, which allowed me to add in the cross-section diagram. It’s a bit of a hack, but you get the picture. Here we can see eastern Iciria on the right, with Aerical and Suridal on the left.

Looking straight down through the northern polar opening

This is a fun one! That’s northern Iciria poking through the opening, with northern Brun at the bottom. Hyborea and Pelatan don’t look nearly so bad on this model as they did on the ellipsoid.

Do you think that Hyborea and Pelatan should be further into the polar opening? I think they should be almost a full small square further in, personally.

Inside the Hollow World, looking down through the south polar opening

Here’s a fun one, with the camera inside the Hollow World looking out. You can see the pinching effect of the south polar opening, although it’s far less than it would be for a south pole proper.