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I have a National Geographic map of Australia which has a satelite image on the reverse side. If you can't find anyting let me know and I'll scan both sides and send it to ya in JPG format. BTW there's not a whole lot of green, except around the coast.

Cynic Al, yes that's great thanks.

BTW, I've been thinking this one over and I think the trick is going to be having a map that is aesthically pleasing to most people while also managing to indicate unambiguously what terrain "type" is in each hex.

In other words the number of textures has to be restricted so that they represent particular terrain types (open, forest, dry/desert, swamp) but we still want "open" country in Australia to look different from the siberian steppes or farmland in China.

I would be interested to hear some opinions on how well that was achieved on the UV map

Going to have to think about this one and try a few things...

I would suspect that the open terrain in Siberia is tundra, not desert as is most of Mongolia or western Australia. If I were constructing the WITP map (oooh what a fantasy for an amateur geographer), I would determine what areas of the Pacific you plan to have operational. how many terrain types my database can handle and determine what and where those types reside (the hard part). Looking at the big beautiful map you've shown us I would think that interior Siberia, Alaska and the water surrounding that far (Arctic) region are not in play for this game.

To CynicAL

That map you linked to is misleading.

It correctly shops that most of Australia is dry.

But it also shows that the Philippines and Indonesia are dry. Very weird.

What can I say? I linked the first decent map I came across after a quick search - I can't spend all day doing this, you know!

Could it be that the map shows vegetation, rather than rainfall? I found the map, but not the legend explaining it. It may well be that the map is an accurate representation, but is not depicting what we think.

Im afraid that Australias terrain cannot be easily tagged.

It ranges from Tropical rainforest in the north-east to extensive temperate rainforest in both the southeast and west of the country, forests of eucalypts over 60metres tall.

The red centre ranges from "sahara" like sandy deserts to vast plains of semi-arid woodland.

we have mountains, snowfields in winter, I could go on....

All this, just a tiny bit smaller than the US of A and only 7 million people in the whole country during WW2.

The possiblities are endless.

If Matrix spend the time to get it right....

Take a look at the map on this page. It is, presumably, a contemporary map but shouldn't be too different from what Australia was like 60 years ago.

http://www.geog.umd.edu/landcover/8km-map/p7fullres.html

Most of central Australia consists of 'scrubland', which is basically arid plains with light scrubby vegetation, and the occasoinal bit of real (sandy) desert here and there. The north and northeast is tropical (grassland/'jungle'), the east is sub-tropical (grassland/forest), and the southeast and southwest is temperate (graasland/forest). Of course that is a very general and vague description!

I hope this helps...

That will be a big help.

I cannot speak for how many terrain types there will be or how they will affect game play. Those kinds of decisions are in the capable hands or Mr Grigsby et. al. My job is to take their scheme and make a (hopefully) attractive map for us all to play on.

Obviously, it is a decision that could have far reaching effects in the game. I certainly wouldn't want to end up with a terrain model that was designed to generate an attractive map at the expense of game mechanics.

So, as I said in my previous post, it's clear that the map needs to be spruced up. However, there is a limit to how closely it can ever represent real local terrain conditions because it also has to function as a "game board" which can contain only a fairly limited set of terrain types. We will obviously have to try and reach some compromise between generic terrain textures which homogenize the terrain globally (leading to this sort of discussion), and too much variation in texture which will make it difficult for players to know what terrain exists in which hex.

Keep the suggestions and information coming. I can't promise to use it all, but it all helps.

Hi General staff,

Some links to help you on your way in discovering some more detail of this great southern land.

http://www.walis.wa.gov.au/walis/conten ... untry.html

hope it helps.

Stubby

Hello all.

Did some digging on WWW, based on the link I posted earlier today.

Found a great site where you draw on real data from an extensive database to populate an Australian map with whatever info you want, to whatever scale you want, ONLINE!

Just go to this link, and click on Mapmaker.

http://audit.ea.gov.au/ANRA/atlas_home.cfm

Interesting stuff.

Both links duly added to favourites. Now, anybody go similar stuff on Asia?

Hi,

Here is a (very large) world vegetation map:


http://www.geog.umd.edu/landcover/8km-map/p7fullres.html

It is again present day but should be helpful.

I also found an online scan of a 1922 atlas world vegetation map. I copied the part covering most of Asia and uploaded it to my personal website. Here it is:

http://member.melbpc.org.au/~akbrown/Vegmap22d.JPG

This map is pre-satellite so I would say that it's accuracy would be a bit suspect in parts. In particular, I doubt that the centre of Borneo and Sumatra are 'woodland, grass and cultivation'. But it might help as well.

By the way I am happy to help with any map making tasks if that would help...

Once again, very helpful. Thanks again!

ic

A little late, but here is a site that I posted in another forum which has satellite photos of earth (sans clouds). Just FYI (if you haven't seen the other).

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/

Here's an example of what the pictures are like. This is a portion of a 8192w x 4096h .tif file at full resolution (saved as jpg). There are even higher resolutions available but the demand is currently high and you have to get permission at this time. This is as much of Australia (almost entire) that I was able to get while selecting 1024x768.

(I tried to edit my previous post and add the attachment, but I didn't see how. Still new at this.)