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Hi(gh)!
Of course I know that I can use procedural functions to generate terrain
reliefs and even entire planets (like I did back in 2010 with my
Ghurghusht project)... but when I want to have full control over the
distribution of land and sea, of river networks and terrain forms, there
is no other chance but doing it in the old-fashioned cartographic way
(like I did since I was eight years old, long before POV-Ray and modern
computers).
The main problem arising is: I want to paint my planet in a mostly
undistorted fashion, but then have to convert this original map into a
simple cylindrical projection. So I started with two circular
hemispheres (west and east), painted the landforms and then stretched
each line of each hemisphere to match the full diameter length, so that
finally I got a 2:1 ratio map to be wrapped around a sphere.
Even for a map of only 802 by 401 pixels (attached here) this is
cumbersome work when done manually with an image processor (I used
GIMP), so I will write a C++ program which does this work automatically.
Afterwards I made a few renderings of the planet: the second image
(after the map) shows the "water hemisphere" with Ktemalg, the central
continent, framed by Ramgalg, the outer continent and Xallalg, M 720s
"Antarctica" in the deep south. North of Ktemalg lies Elmialg Xuleel,
the "northern sea", while for the southern sea, I have not found a name
yet (though it also would start with "Elmialg", as this is the
Ilthanalgut word for "sea"...).
The third and forth images show the north and south polar regions
respectively, the fifth one the planet how it would actually appear in
space, with its regular axial tilt of 21.37 degrees.
Currently all this is not really sophisticated, but I will add height
and depth colors (to be expanded to full-fledged 16bit heightfields
later on, of course on a much greater scale), also "satellite views"
with terrain patterns gleaned from Blue Marble images.
But what is M 720/Ilthanalg about? Here is the story:
###
Way back in the 1970s, when Afghans merely were long-haired sighthounds
to me, my deepest desire was to travel on the Kli-Kla-Klawitter bus [a
1970s German children's TV series] to Krempoli [also a 1970s German
children's TV series; it was about a ficitious self-organized adventure
playground in Munich], the Place for Wild Children [the sub-title of
"Krempoli"] and frolic about with the other Krempoli boys in the Isar
river. half-naked in smooth shiny knee-length Bavarian leather pants.
Unfortunately, there was no Krempoli in Cologne, let alone an Isar
river, and play friends were hard to find, as nobody wanted to deal with
such an awkward goggled bookworm and sports failure like me.
So I dreamed me a world where all things were entirely different... nine
lightyears from here, in the Sirius system, there was a planet were all
people were my namesakes and nine years old... Jörgiania, also known as
M 720.
Properly, the Jörgianians weren't really nine years old, but just looked
that way... in fact, they were blessed with immortality and eternal
childhood, but their intelligence surpassed that of most Terran adults.
The Jörgianians were descendants of the Terran Atlanteans, whose
super-civilization had been annihilated by a global catastrophy in
prehistoric times; 720 of them escaped on an interstellar spaceship and
finally reached the small planet in the Sirius system.
Barely landed there, they were attacked by Andreatic space troops under
their supreme commander KDZ 666, who controlled the Sirius system by
means of a gigantic space fortress known as the Steel Death; the
Atlanteans took refuge in a cave, but, under the influence of the
Andreatic regression ray weapons, developed back to children. Soon after
that, the Andreates enclosed the whole planet in a regression force
field; but an unintended effect of this force field was that, from now
on, the Atlanteans experienced no aging anymore, and thus were, apart
from death by violence, practically immortal. However, KDZ 666 hoped to
exterminate the Atlanteans sooner or later, as they now also were no
longer able to reproduce.
But in that cave where the Atlanteans found shelter from the Andreatic
attack, a natural radioactive substance was found which stimulated the
brains of the regreded in such a way that soon the mental devolution was
more than outweighed and the Atlanteans were able to start developing
sophisticated strategies of survival, artificial reproduction and
military resistance against the Andreates. Eventually, they expelled the
occupants from the planet and built a civilization which even surpassed
lost Atlantis. Nevertheless, the war against the Andreates continued,
with the theatre being now in outer space. At least, KDZ 666 had been
able to erect another field of force around Ilthanalg to prevent the
Jörgianians from practising space flight beyond close orbits around M
720, so gradually a delicate military equilibrium evolved, albeit a true
peace never ensued.
On M 720, the economy was fully automatized, so that its people could
devote themselves entirely to science and arts - as long as they were
not conscripted every 100 years to 25 years of service in the space
fleet. There were glittering futuristic cities with all imaginable
amenities of a hyper-civilization, and as the Andreatic force field was
penetrable from the outside and a treaty existed to let civilian traffic
to M 720 pass unharmed, from a circumference of many thousand lightyears
intelligent lifeforms came to the planet to trade, to study at its
universities renowned thoughout the galaxy or simple as tourists
marvelling at the wonders of this astonishing small world.
Irrespective of its small diameter of only about 1,800 kilometres (this
is hardly more then half of the Moon's diameter!), M 720, because of its
core comprised mostly of platinum and iridium had an Earth-like gravity
and thus also an atmosphere suitable for higher developed lifeforms.
Also the distance to Sirius was appropriate, so that a multifarious
endemic flora and fauna developed. On M 720 all climates and landscape
types familiar from Earth, from rain forests to ice sheets occured,
thanks to the more rigid crust material its mountain ranges towered
twice as high as the Himalayas.
Hundreds of thousands of years passed by without any change to the
military stalemate between M 720 and the Andreates... but by the second
half of the 20th century CE it appeared that the Andreates were short
before breaking through the Jörgianian fronts and directly attacking the
planet. Meanwhile on M 720 the secret research in technologies to
penetrate the force field from the inside had evolved far enough that
for the very first time it was feasible to send emissaries to other
planetary systems, looking for allies in the struggle against the Andreates.
So they sent a volunteer in a small spacecraft with warp drive to a
yellow dwarf star nine lightyears away, where recently signs for
beginning space flight had been discovered. Unfortuately, also the
Andreates noticed that, so they aimed a focused regression ray at the
spacecraft, which caused the emissary to even re-develop back to infancy.
The spacecraft automatically found its way to Earth and went down in the
early hours of July 19, 1969 at the edge of a large city in western
Germany, where it was found by a young couple on a morning stroll. They
decided to adopt and raise the crying baby in its space capsule...
While the battles between M 720 and the Andreates escalated, the boy
grew in his Terran exile and pretty soon learned about his true story;
eleven years after his landing on Earth he was reached by an emergency
call from M 720, he instantly knew what to do. Back then, LEGO (tm) had
issued the Space series, and among the construction kits also was a
mobile rocket launcher who could sent rockets using warp technology on
interstellar trajectories.
Therefore, on the morning of his 11th "birthday" one of these rockets
was launched, covered the nine lightyears to the Sirius system within a
few hours - and the incredible happed: unnoticed by the Andreatic
defense radar, the rocket made its way to the Steel Death, entered an
open reactor vent and started a nuclear chain reaction which caused KDZ
666s space fortress to explode within seconds into a giant fire ball.
The nightmare of the Andreatic siege, lasting 518,400 Terran years had
come to an end, from now on a free Jörgiania should confidently find its
place among the community of galactic civilizations.
###
Many years later, inspired by a fellow history student who also
daydreamed of a sophisticated sci-fi/fantasy project, started to re-work
and further develop my childhood fantasies of M 720 under the name of
"Ilthanalg"... but this is another story. To those of you capable to
read German, I recommend you to read this:
http://www.assoziations-blaster.de/blast/Ilthanalg.html - later on,
there will be also an English version of this text!
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