So I decided to continue the work of @Tethys00 on the river map since I already had the same resource he used and I wanted to see a full river map. I'm now officially done with the Western Hemisphere, Old World coming soon
Amazing work, what was your process, happy to help re: Asia/Europe
Why do you have Denmark border
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Why is the colour of the Mexico/USA border different from the rest of the world? Also, Europe's borders are different colours. Europe's are the same colour as coast...
In addition the connecting lines of the islands are the same colour as the white on the rest of the map
Perhaps you have a blank map with no borders that does not have this issue?
See here I selected by colour and a random assortment of borders are different colours
I'm trying to fix that but I have no idea where the lakes are on the borders of countries which may have the same colour.
Random white pixel in Balearic islands
Unbordered islands with white pixels
Some here too
What's with the difference between say the Maldives and French Polynesia? Those should be of similar design but they're not.
It's a bit weird cause OP is different
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I just forgot to delete it
This is what I currently have of the map, Siberia killed my motivation pretty hard.
It's common to have some islands be one black pixel + one white pixel, especially when they are very very small
Great job on the rivers.
How did you go about it? Why you don't like Siberia? There are maps like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ob_(river)#/media/File:Ob_river_basin_map.png
How should I decide which pixel is water and which isn't
Also, it doesn't make sense to me that one pixel is black and one white. Look at Maldives. Isn't a black pixel = water/land sharing a tile? What rule would be used to give it white instead of black? And, they aren't there in the original post on this thread
Looking at the VT Bam i could find no place where it was like that.
Ideally the base map should be perfect, I'm surprised so much effort was spent on doing administrative divisions prior to it being pixel perfect.
In terms of priority I would imagine it would be:
Base map (land and coast)
2021 International Borders
1900 Base Map (ie pre-lake changes)
River Map
International Borders for various major years (1914/1945/etc)
1st admin 2021
2nd admin 2021 etc
After all if you want internal divisions there are maps for those per country and having them on all one map is rarely ever used.
I have my own GIS-generated resource, and tracing the rivers pixel by pixel takes a lot longer in an area as big as Siberia
I know it's used in the Worlda, can't remember if QBam has it. VTBam is not really a good example since it's freaking huge and you have enough pixels to represent tiny islands.
In general, it's better to have a more or less complete map, with subdivisions and rivers, rather than a coastline only map, even if it's perfect to the milimiter. You can always patch stuff later, but you want the map to be usable ASAP so it doesn't die.
Having admin borders is, in my opinion, a higher priority than historical borders. And it's not easy to translate internal divisions, at least not if you want a rather precise map, since most maps on the internet are not in the shape you want for them to fit the basemap.
But 99% of maps on this site are for alt-history and so historical borders are needed for ease of use no? WorldA is a perfect example with having a complete timeline of human history. No wonder it's the most used map on this site. QBAM comes in next and it also has the most.
Aren't almost all maps for these kinds of things equirectangular? I thought that was yet another way equirectangular maps were superior.
95% of the use case for administrative divisions will be single nation maps. And, if there are even statistics for those administrative divisions then whoever did the statistics probably has made a map anyway to demonstrate them.
Who's writing timelines about 2020? Next to no one. If your map doesn't have major dates then no one can use it in their timeline or in their threads in general. If I want to write a timeline set in 1800 I have no choice but to use QBAM or WorldA. Which is a nightmare for Pacific timelines.
If you're going to do that then why bother using black for coasts at all? If there's no consistency then it's difficult to read the map. I am not sold that patching because whenever I go to the OP of a thread the maps are always outdated, again here WorldA is a rare example of someone who actually knows how to present information, a very easy to access single post.
There are probably thousands (if not tens of thousands) of very useful and usable maps in the threads on this forum but if you want your map to be used organisational skills probably come before even the quality of the map.
If someone writing a timeline comes onto this forum looking for a base map to use to show their alt-world and they click on this thread or the QBAM or most other threads they'll be like "wat".
I guess so, though aren't South America or Subsaharan Africa way bigger than Siberia?
I also do not know where to get that to assist