The R-QBAM main thread

[SupBros]

Hello, I'm a newbie and I rarely check AH, but...

Tanystropheus42 and others, your efforts are truly incredible. Ever since I found out QBAM's inconsistencies, I distanced myself from using its countless basemaps solely because of it, but, as of recently, this thread was posted on Discord and I had to check it out. Scrolling further, I became amazed by such collaboration and I wish success to everybody who is or will participate.

For now, I'll wait for updates and accompany the thread. Also, good luck on the tough bits (yes I am looking at you Chile!).

Hope everyone has a nice day/evening/night!

 

[Mr. Temporary]

Progress so far:

 

[Tanystropheus42]

As mentioned previously, I wanted to upgrade a couple of my old scenarios before doing more work on the R-QBAM. On the other hand, just updating the first scenario took about two weeks, and was a very labour-intensive process, which I don't particularly feel up for repeating right away. So I'll put upgrading the other maps on the back burner (they'll happen, just not for a couple of months), and get back to R-QBAM work.

To that end, Kazakhstan should be done in about two days, three in a pinch. After that, the rest of Central Asia (you sort of have to do Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan together, considering the way their borders tessellate together. Damn you Stalin and your annoying bordergore), then Afghanistan and the rest of Iran. After that, Arabia, then making a start on West Africa.

But first, replies;

How long before topographic maps?

I could probably whip up a quick and dirty combined topography-bathymetry map in an hour or two, if you'd still want that.

What app do u use for this?.

If I need to reproject a map I'll use G.projector. Otherwise I'm using paint.net. Don't ask for the original master file yet, its currently an incredibly messy WIP with about 50 layers. I'll need time to neaten it up before I post any of it.

I'm finally back, finally as I mentioned in my last post, we have a patch focused on intermittent dry lakes/waterbodies, but we also have other rivers here too, so the changes were in the following regions:

Nice to see you've still been working on this while I was doing other things. dry lakes and canals are another useful addition.

Shouldn’t Artsakh be shown with Armenian influence or as a puppet?

Yes it should, I'll update that with the next patch.

Do You have a map comparison of R-QBAM and QBAM. I'd like to know how they line up

I could make one, but it's ... annoyingly inexact. The problem is that the R-QBAM is a little taller than the vanilla QBAM, and what's more the locations of the major landmasses don't quite line up with each other. You could line up, say, Switzerland to get an idea of how closely they resemble each other, but if you go only a little bit north to Sweden everything will be off by a couple of pixels. You can compare local regions but nothing larger.

Not really much point till everything else is done IMO.

I will extend to the rest of russia as it is made.
governorates in 1897, I'm sure it can be incorporated with some minor changes to the 1914 map
the rivers are already aligned, except for when they're not if there's a reason (eg. river was slightly different back then.)

Another useful patch, nice to see it finished (I used this one with some moderate tweaking when making my last map, so thanks).

Hello, I'm a newbie and I rarely check AH, but...

@Tanystropheus42 and others, your efforts are truly incredible. Ever since I found out QBAM's inconsistencies, I distanced myself from using its countless basemaps solely because of it, but, as of recently, this thread was posted on Discord and I had to check it out. Scrolling further, I became amazed by such collaboration and I wish success to everybody who is or will participate.

For now, I'll wait for updates and accompany the thread. Also, good luck on the tough bits (yes I am looking at you Chile!).

Hope everyone has a nice day/evening/night!

Welcome to the forum, and thanks for the vote of confidence. As I've said every time I'm asked, it's always bugged me that the QBAM isn't quite right, and I've been using it for about seven years now. Eventually I just snapped and decided to do a complete overhaul, no matter how long that took me. If you don't mind if I ask, where abouts on Discord is my stuff being discussed. You've piqued my curiosity.

Eh, I did Norway already. Chile's about as bad, so I'm not too worried. I put in that amount of work once, I can do it again. Canada on the other hand ...

 

[James the AH Fan]

Belarus and LitBel, 1919

 

[Rac98]

Better late than never, Europe + Egypt and Iraq canals done... I hope? Nile delta, Benelux/Northern France and England have been pretty... Awful to get right, and not sure if I get then right; hopefully the US will be more simple than that.

Also, the river/waterbeds update whiteout the canals (mostly Egypt, Iraq and various tiny rivers paths in Europe):

 

[SupBros]

As mentioned previously, I wanted to upgrade a couple of my old scenarios before doing more work on the R-QBAM. On the other hand, just updating the first scenario took about two weeks, and was a very labour-intensive process, which I don't particularly feel up for repeating right away. So I'll put upgrading the other maps on the back burner (they'll happen, just not for a couple of months), and get back to R-QBAM work.

To that end, Kazakhstan should be done in about two days, three in a pinch. After that, the rest of Central Asia (you sort of have to do Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan together, considering the way their borders tessellate together. Damn you Stalin and your annoying bordergore), then Afghanistan and the rest of Iran. After that, Arabia, then making a start on West Africa.

But first, replies;


I could probably whip up a quick and dirty combined topography-bathymetry map in an hour or two, if you'd still want that.



If I need to reproject a map I'll use G.projector. Otherwise I'm using paint.net. Don't ask for the original master file yet, its currently an incredibly messy WIP with about 50 layers. I'll need time to neaten it up before I post any of it.



Nice to see you've still been working on this while I was doing other things. dry lakes and canals are another useful addition.



Yes it should, I'll update that with the next patch.



I could make one, but it's ... annoyingly inexact. The problem is that the R-QBAM is a little taller than the vanilla QBAM, and what's more the locations of the major landmasses don't quite line up with each other. You could line up, say, Switzerland to get an idea of how closely they resemble each other, but if you go only a little bit north to Sweden everything will be off by a couple of pixels. You can compare local regions but nothing larger.

Not really much point till everything else is done IMO.



Another useful patch, nice to see it finished (I used this one with some moderate tweaking when making my last map, so thanks).



Welcome to the forum, and thanks for the vote of confidence. As I've said every time I'm asked, it's always bugged me that the QBAM isn't quite right, and I've been using it for about seven years now. Eventually I just snapped and decided to do a complete overhaul, no matter how long that took me. If you don't mind if I ask, where abouts on Discord is my stuff being discussed. You've piqued my curiosity.

Eh, I did Norway already. Chile's about as bad, so I'm not too worried. I put in that amount of work once, I can do it again. Canada on the other hand ...

Got in here when someone named BigChungus (yes, that's their Discord name) posted the thread on the r/ImaginaryMaps Discord server. I thought it was another QBAM-related project at first, but my expectations were shattered once I gave a chance to read a fair bit of the comments.
And yep, the Canadian lakes will be certified pain. I'm hoping you'll manage to complete it, no matter how many days it takes.

 

[Mr. Temporary]

Delaware, Connecticut & Rhode Island counties

 

[Tanystropheus42]

I haven't been able to find that much time to work on the R-QBAM much over the last few days, so Kazakhstan took a little longer to finish than I expected it to. That and geography patches continue to be a pain. My normal sweep of satellite photos shows that the East Aral sea was completely dry in late December, though oddly for some reason there aren't any photos from early January to confirm that. NASA just leaves it blank, while zoom.earth uses a default map that still shows a bit of the East Aral sea as full - you can tell its a default map as it doesn't change at all for several weeks, and the change from dry in late December to surprisingly full just a week later in early January is jarring enough that I don't think its a real signal. Annoying either way, but what can you do. As an aside, I'm planning on cranking out a patch for the Aral sea before it dried out at some point soon, but as mentioned I wasn't able to find the time over the weekend.

Quick note, I'm also still really not happy with how the Dead Kultuk came out, though this may not matter much - while checking the Aral sea I also took a peek at that corner of the Caspian, and low and behold, the Dead Kultuk appears mostly dry (albeit suffering from the same basemap deficiencies mentioned above for the Aral Sea). I've not patched it out yet however as I only noticed this a couple of hours ago, and I slept terribly last night, so I wasn't feeling up to a finicky geography patch right when I thought I'd finished the rest of the country. It'll have to be included in the next patch unfortunately.

Anyway, next up, either the rest of Central Asia (plus hopefully the last Caspian revision), or the Aral Sea patch, whichever I finish first.




Patch 54 - Kazakhstan;
- Added Kazakhstan. Not much more to say really.

 

[Mr. Temporary]

Update on progress maps

 

[Hypersauce]

snip

I like the map, but what happened to lake tuz?
I know it dried up completely recently, but as far as I know it's still a seasonal lake? can you please clarify your decision?

 

[Rac98]

I like the map, but what happened to lake tuz?
I know it dried up completely recently, but as far as I know it's still a seasonal lake? can you please clarify your decision?

The current R-QBAM is set in the last January, and by that time Lake Tuz has been dried-up, that's why is not there; but It's on my map of dried waterbodies as one of these intermittent lakebeds

 

[Mr. Temporary]

Europe Basemap for anyone who needs it (gaps filled accurately)

 

[Tanystropheus42]

This one was another fiddly one. Quite a few fairly complex borders (damn stalin), a surprising amount of lakes, and the first large areas of permanent ice cover since Norway. But yes, it's now all done. Even got around to patching out the Dead Kultuk (as mentioned I'm pretty sure it was dry last December/January, so it got cut). Next up, finishing Iran and adding Afghanistan, then grinding through Arabia in three chunks (UAE+Oman, Saudi+Qatar+Bahrain, Yemen), then starting on West Africa.

Actually quick note, unfortunately the peaks of the higher mountain ranges are both where permanent ice tends to accumulate and good places to put a border, so quite a few ice caps get overlaid by borders. I'll probably have to do a separate ice-sheets layer for the no-borders blank map. Now I think about it, there may be a couple of single-pixel glaciers in the Alps and Caucasus that are also covered by borders, so I'll have to add them to the list as well. Great, more work /s.




Patch 55 - Turkestan;
- Patched the Kazakh Caspian coast to remove the Dead Kultuk (see above).
- Added Uzbekistan (showing Karakalpakstan)
- Added Turkmenistan.
- Added Kyrgyzstan.
- Added Tajikistan (showing Gorno-Badakhshan).
- Added another chunk of Iran because why not.

 

[Mr. Temporary]

World Map Update

 

[Tanystropheus42]

This one wasn't too difficult. Borders were fine, few lakes and little ice to worry about, though the coastline got a little fiddly. I also got quite lucky timing-wise, as early January was a surprisingly quiet time in usually pretty messy Afghanistan. The taliban had only just swept to power and at the time there was little opposition to their rule - just remnants of the old government in the Panjshir valley stubbornly held out. As the year has gone on, various minor militias/warlords/tribal groups ect came out of the woodwork to cause trouble, but as of January 1st things were comparatively calm. I used the January 11th iteration of this map I found on wikipedia for specific regions occupied, in case anyone was curious.




Patch 55 - Iran + Afghanistan;
- Finished Iran.
- Added Afghanistan.

 

[CactusCartocratus]

Why isnt the frontline color used in Lebanon, Panjshir and Palestine?

 

[Tanystropheus42]

Why isnt the frontline color used in Lebanon, Panjshir and Palestine?

It's another one of my idiosyncrasies when making maps - I don't actually like drawing on frontlines as I consider them messy. You can get more detail in by just highlighting what areas a rebel group controls than if you also have to consider overlaying frontlines, IMO. Of course, if a civil war is complex and multi-sided enough then you kinda have to add them (see my takes on the Syrian and Libyan civil wars), but if it's just one rebel group then I'll try and just directly show how much territory they control, ditto if one country is invading another.

After many years making maps, one of my key takeaways has been that a one-size-fits-all approach for all internal conflicts doesn't work, and that they have to be mapped on a case-by-case basis.



For todays patch, we have Arabia part one of three. I didn't feel like taking on a big job over the last few days, so I saved the big Saudi-Qatar-Bahrain patch for later in the week/weekend while taking a crack at Oman and the UAE instead. I thought I'd have this done yesterday, however the UAE proved fiddlier than I expected, but oh well.

Quick note, this patch features the first appearance of coral reefs since the last Caribbean patches, though the UAE's reefs are rather piddly in comparison. I spotted them on satellite photos, then while looking for a more accurate map stumbled across this excellent map charting all world coral reefs on the website of the UN Environment Program. I was quite pleased to see that my work in the Caribbean was mostly corroborated, but mildly annoyed to find out I'd forgotten to add Egypt's reefs on the red sea. I noticed this quite late in the process (reefs was the last thing I added), so a patch for the Egyptian reefs will come with the next update.



Patch 56 - Arabia 1;
- Added the UAE.
- Added Oman.

 

[Mr. Temporary]

US Counties Update: Massachusetts

 

[Tanystropheus42]

On this fine Saturday morning, I present to you the second installment of the three part Arabia series, featuring Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. I was expecting this to take longer, but I've had a productive couple of days in spite of some very messy coasts and reefs. That UN map of world coral reefs I dug up on Wednesday continues to prove incredibly useful in the latter regard.

Next up is Yemen, which should take longer due to the messy civil war. I'd guess it'll be done in five days or so, but I have a busy weekend, so who knows when I'll be able to finish it.

I was also quite surprised to learn that Saudi Arabia has an actual lake - not just one big enough to show up as a single pixel, but a lake period. Oases are indeed a thing.




Patch 56 - Arabia 2;
- Added Qatar.
- Added Bahrain.
- Added Saudi Arabia.
- Patched the Egyptian Red Sea coast to add coral reefs.

 

[Analytical Engine]

Where too after Arabia?

South Asia? North Africa? More of the Americas?