Tech

World Map

This Atlas is built using Semantic MediaWiki with the Widgets extension, getting mapping information from a GIS backend. The map widgets are built with Mapbox.

The map is created in QGIS using Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator as procedural generator for the large-scale. A simple script adds random details to the cells to increase the visual detail and make things less blocky at higher resolutions.

Town and City Maps

Watabou's Fantasy City Generator is used as the procedural generator for the small-scale maps, then converted to GeoJSON using a script I wrote by myself. The result is imported into QGIS and Centroids are determined in order to place building labels. A small amount of cleanup work is also necessary.

For the businesses and other details, I am using both https://www.welshpiper.com/medieval-demographics-online/ and https://www.rpglibrary.org/utils/meddemog/ as well as several random name generators. A bunch of other generators such as https://www.kassoon.com/dnd/town-generator/ provide additional details or inspirations.

Heraldry Generators used

There are many generators for heraldic shields, flags, etc - but not all of them follow the actual rules of heraldry. For a fantasy world, that is sometimes desired and sometimes not. Here are the generators that I have used:

• http://mightandfealty.com/heraldry/ (requires account)
• https://ironarachne.com/heraldry
• http://www.myblazon.com/coatofarmsmaker
• https://drawshield.net

Additional Scripts

To integrate everything and make my life easier, I also wrote a bunch of scripts to automate work steps:

• add_random_points - does just that, it randomizes the cell data by adding additional randomized offsets (keeping topology intact). This adds detail and makes the voronoi cells of Azgaar's generator appear more natural.
• fix_population - a simple script to parse and split up the rural/urban populations
• get_bounding_boxes - a helper script to get the bounding box of an entity from a GeoJSON file
• svg2poly4 - is my tool for converting Watabou's .svg output to a GeoJSON file. It isn't perfect, but it does the job.
• merge_overlays - combines the four overlay output files from QGIS into one for Mapbox usage.
• smw_province_stub and smw_town_sub - generate a simple stub output from the provinces.geojson file that I can copy into an empty Mediawiki page, with basic data and the mapbox template link pre-filled.