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Huh. My windows tablet can run it semi-decently on its lowest settings. My gaming PC has no problems whatsoever with its maximum settings and quite a few graphical mods. I've heard that its performance tends to be unpredictable, though.

Also, be sure to get the Morrowind Graphic and Sound Overhaul 3.0. It doesn't really do anything for the outdated gameplay, but it looks very nice. Better than vanilla Skyrim, in my opinion. And its story is also infinitely better.

But really, just read up on the lore. It is amazing.

I have a computer with a lower-end Pentium Dual-Core CPU from 2008 and no dedicated graphics. I often experience 0 fps on Minecraft.

And yeah, I got all those things. It's a bit hard to get into the lore of any universe, though.

Hmm, simply buying a dedicated GPU would help a lot. Out of interest, what would your budget be if you decided to build a gaming PC?

Hmm, simply buying a dedicated GPU would help a lot. Out of interest, what would your budget be if you decided to build a gaming PC?

I actually built one, but I let others in my family (who happen to be more avid gamers) use it out of the kindness of my heart.

Lol, then "borrow" it back for a few weeks to play Mass Effect. I promise, you won't disappointed. Just accept that Mass Effect 3's ending is useless and should never have existed.

And here we go again, derailing a thread for the umpteenth time today.

We could make it the neutral center of the Wintreath Union, where many foreign dignitaries, journalists and whatnot stay almost permanently, thus explaining its size, as we'd have a whole hell of a lot of people staying on it, and then just expand our world map with everyone's actual countries.

Have we decided we agree on this? It seems everyone liked this suggestion, and I do too. If there's no further objections, then I suppose this is official.

And we'll have two medium-sized continents nearby; one somewhat larger than Africa for Laurentus, and the other larger (but not massively so), for everyone else.

A final brief matter for discussion; placement. Since the previous map is a center, I think it would work best to fit with everyone's specifications if one continent is above the center, and the other below. That way Laurentus can be cold in the south and Zemas could be cold in the north.

Although actually, wasn't the old map supposed to be absolutely frigid? I think we could still place it in the center, if we could explain how it got so cold (I think Weiss had an explanation; I'll go trawl through that thread again to check).

Oh! I didn't mean a physical centre.

I meant that it would be the neutral ground for all our countries, thus being the diplomatic centre

It would definitely make sense for it to be in one of the poles. My continuity also doesn't depend on things being exactly the same as they are in other RPs. As long as the climate and plant growth are maintained, the actual empire can look like anything. Laurentus States and New Hatfield could be neighbours, for instance, with New Hatfield just being slightly more to the north (or south, depending on how we want place it), since a part of Laurentus States is semi-desertous too and would naturally flow into New Hyperion.. Hatoria and Kuncache could then just be further north (or south) into the equator, thus explaining their tropical natures.

That would reduce my empire's size considerably.

The Laurentian Offspring Islands could then even be close to the neutral center that will serve as the diplomatic centre, because of its frigid environments.

Hope that makes it easier for everyone!

We could have the neutral ground be at one of the poles and project the map as a polar azimuthal equidistant map projection, sort of like this:

Spoiler

which is used in the emblem of the UN, or do something more like this:

Spoiler

As you can see, the further from the center pole, the more distorted it is, so we could try to have most of the lands between that pole and the equator to reduce distortion. We could have the largest area of land closer to the pole so that the majority of the nations are in a temperate to cold climate (which would make sense why its called Wintreath), and it would make more sense why the pole is the diplomatic land: it's also the physical center.

We could have the neutral ground be at one of the poles and project the map as a polar azimuthal equidistant map projection, sort of like this:

Spoiler

which is used in the emblem of the UN, or do something more like this:

Spoiler

As you can see, the further from the center pole, the more distorted it is, so we could try to have most of the lands between that pole and the equator to reduce distortion. We could have the largest area of land closer to the pole so that the majority of the nations are in a temperate to cold climate (which would make sense why its called Wintreath), and it would make more sense why the pole is the diplomatic land: it's also the physical center.

We should have place that is perfect for farming. Kinda like how Russia has Ukraine, or had Ukraine as its bread basket.

We should have place that is perfect for farming. Kinda like how Russia has Ukraine, or had Ukraine as its bread basket.

Yeah, as you can see in the second map, there is plenty of that in the mid- to outer-latitude rings.

My only concern with that sort of projection is that it's not very intuitive for drawing borders. Perhaps we could go for a standard Mercator-ish projection - we wouldn't necessarily even need to recreate most of the political center in that case. The outer borders would still have to be drawn in due to its size, but most of it could probably be on the pole off the map. We'd just need a note saying so and a link to the map on the thread for the map.

A Mercator projection would also allow for greater diversity in climates; although Wintreath is certainly composed mostly of cold climates, there's no reason we can't have plenty of land for others. To reflect the bias towards cold climates, we could just lower the overall temperature of the planet so that the cold climates stretch closer to the equator.

To reflect the bias towards cold climates, we could just lower the overall temperature of the planet so that the cold climates stretch closer to the equator.

I'm gonna be honest, I did not think about that. Makes sense. In that case, yeah, Mercator or similar would make more sense.

Any other objections or needed clarifications? If not, then I think we've reached a consensus.

Yeah, I think I have a general idea. I'll start working on a few different maps over the next couple days then post them on here, and we can work from there. I'll probably just work on the shapes of the continents first.

So, some bad news, guys... The GIS software I used in college apparently is not really useful for creating a map from nothing like we're trying to do. It's more for creating and representing data to be used in a pre-existing map. I’ve been working pretty much all day to figure something out in it, but nothing really works. So sorry about that.

I've also been trying to create maps in other programs – mostly GIMP. The only real progress I’ve made is to simply create a pseudo-hexagonal grid that I then fill in one at a time to distinguish land from sea. It won't really look anything as good as I wanted since I'm only OK with GIMP, but it can get the job done of merely showing boundaries. So if that is an acceptable option, then I can continue down that route. Very similar to that is doing this: http://imgur.com/gallery/aVEIx/

But if anybody has a better option, we could try their idea. Also, really anybody can try to make a map using the above processes, so I’d completely understand if we had other people (who are more experienced in GIMP or have a specific idea of what they want it to look like) try to do it. I’m not trying to shirk my duties and I’d be glad to make maps still, I’d just understand since I’m not really able to bring to the table anything close to what I had originally thought.

I'll be back on in the morning.