Wrap-around maps suck

[The Finn]

Wait, I just realized something...

There's no map that just wraps east/west unless you make it using the neighbor commands?

[Arralen]

Originally posted by Pocus:
on the other hand, the flat earth model has been abandonned some centuries ago by scientists (when they ceased being prosecuted for what they said)

... misconception I found especially widespread in the US ...

IIRC: 300 B.C., eastern mediterranean - they calculated the earth diameter .. from knowing the distance Alexandria - Luxor and the fact, that one day in the year sun was right vertical over Luxor and cast a short shadow in Alexandria.
And they got it mostly right (+- 15% or somewhat)!!

To calculate an earth diameter you must be shure the earth isn't flat at first, don't you?

A.

PS: And Galileo wasn't tortured, you know

[ December 24, 2003, 13:09: Message edited by: Arralen ]

[PvK]

Very interesting!

Of course, that was with an assumption about what the shape was. I presume they were assuming it was spherical.

One could make Doms II maps with polar regions to try to simulate a sphere.

However, unless it were an enormous map, it'd be a pretty small sphere.

From an ancient/medieval Earth perspective though, a relatively small flat chunk is perhaps more appropriate and realistic than a sphere. If everyone in the world believes the world is a flat chunk, then for all effects and purposes, it is, until someone discovers otherwise.

PvK

[Endoperez]

If everyone in the world believes the world is a flat chunk, then for all effects and purposes, it is, until someone discovers otherwise.

Especially if the seas around it are inhabited by things that will want to suck your brains for a lunch and can paralyze you before you can say
"Cthulhu fghtagn"... (thanks Slogan... My knowledge about Cthulhu ends in the local library where they have no books of Lovecraft)

[ December 24, 2003, 19:09: Message edited by: Endoperez ]

[Saxon]

The Greeks knew the world was round, but that knowledge was lost to Europe during the “Dark Ages.” The Muslim civilization kept this knowledge, as well as a lot of other Greek advances, alive during this period, as well as making a lot of other neat advances like algebra. As Europe came out of the Dark Ages, it was not so much that they were discovering things, but that they were getting information from the Islamic world. The key difference, and why the world is as it is today, is what Europe did when they put the information together.

[PhilD]

Originally posted by sfsuphysics:

quote:

---

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
Perhaps also to simulate a non-flat world? Sort of like a globe?

Yes but the maps that wraparound both north-south & east-west do NOT simulate a globe. It simulates some weird geometry that'd give you a headache if you physically saw it in all its dimensional glory.

---

Actually, the geometry isn't that hard to imagine: it's a torus - something like the surface of a rubber ring (with or without the duck head; it doesn't change the geometry much).

Still, I'd like to see a decent explanation for why the world is like this (it can be a "fantasy" one, but still...)

[Gandalf Parker]

There are alot of wierd ways to show a globe as a flat map. http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapPr...C/cartTOC.html

These can be used in this game if you are serious about it. Keep in mind that the image is the .tga file. This can look like anything, and has nothing to do with what provinces are actually "neighbors". The neighbors are defined by #neighor lines in the text .map file.

Things on the image file are often there as just visual aids to the players so they can understand what the .map file has already set. Such as what is water, land, mountains, extra thick borders for un-crossable. Nothing says the image has to have those at all. The .tga is an artistic view of the settings in the .map file.

So if you do your world as a sinusoidal or a homolosine map then make the #neighbor commands right you can create a realistic fantasy world. The neat thing about that, is you could have easily get a spinning globe of your map to display on a web page.

Personally Id recommend something like this till I see better. Realistic enough, but not too hard to make. http://www.odt.org/Pictures/vansant.jpg
http://www.cnr.colostate.edu/class_i.../robinson.html

But the simplest would be to create a big maps with a few polar areas across the top and bottom. The topmost would stretch all across the top and connect to 5 or 6 long provinces which connect down to 4 or 5 for each of them. Although they would appear extra long on the .tga the .map can still declare them to be small (no extra wealth for size), and it would properly reflect a world globe.

[ December 29, 2003, 17:23: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]