Globe or map?

I disagree. Having a globe is opposed to my Flat Earth Society beliefs, as well as probably meaning the terrain generation will suffer from it. I prefer maps of a more local feeling, such as you see in the maps of almost any fantasy book. A small area by the sea, with an impassable mountainside to the east perhaps.

Maps will be flat and non-square (to fit the 'fantasy map' feel), though I'm sure this will be tweakable.

If you do something cool like fall off the edge, then the flat will help fit the fantasy!

Maybe we'll get to see some elephants on the way down into darkness!

It would be cool to have maps that include sub-maps.  So, you'd be able to do some kind of a campaign, where you can conquer regions of a submap, and then use those resources to continue the campaign in another area.  Very epic.  Reminds me of the Battle for Middle Earth map.  And probably similar to the Total War games from what I recall.

I perfer worlds that are tubes (They wrap east to west but not around the poles)

Sammual

Give us a disc world!

Just make it so that the map borders aren't just a line but, like in Terry Pratchet's books, a cliff falling down to the turtle below.

I think the maps should be donut-shaped.

As far as I'm concerned as long as the distortions are kept to a minimum especially at the polls and one is allowed to change the orientation at will all will be good.

The opportunity for a gorgeous animated rim-fall is surely too great to pass up?

I would like world shaped like a woman body (or I could live with only certain parts of it) :)))

I'd waste time watching it. And I'm really glad to see the reply from BoogieBac.

personally, I'd like a map shaped in 6 dimensions. but having a gorgeous rimfall would be sublime too.I like the look of the old style 2D maps SD seem intent on having, it would really lend some authenticity, at least for me.

I used to spend hours in school drawing fantasy maps for my RPG games i used to run. They were terrible, truly ugly things but i used to love creating them (even if i only had any use for some of them). In fact i remember buying the LotR rpg (can't remember what it was called but was based on the Rolemaster system i think) and, much to my everlasting delight, i found a colour map of the entire Middle EArth. Wow.

I liked how in Civilization you can switch between globe and regular map.   I hope Boogie's mention of it being non-square and tweakable is true.   I am also down with the multi-dimensional.  so whatever works with that.

I prefer the flat map but if SD decided to include a global view as a max zoom I would not complain.

The only problem with this is that it would be incompatible with the 'extend the world' idea.  In terms of a fantasy game, I think it would be more suited to a flat world, simply because in general fantasy lore, there is always an unknown land beyond the known world (see Lord of the Rings, Narnia etc).

I'm more in favour of extend the world, but it would be hard to implement

Both options would be good. Then modders and map/world builders can go crazy.

Tweakable in what way? There are a lot of things you can do with terrain that can all be displayed as a flat map. For example, a diskworld is just a round flat map. A ringworld would take the form of a very wide and thin map that connects at the top and bottom to form continuous terrain. You don't actually have to form a ring configuration in a visual sense but that would be totally awesome.

Maybe even floating continents and islands in the sky? Just replace ocean with air.

I would expect flat, globe, and donut (toroidal) would all be pretty easy.

It would be pretty awesome if the whole 'zoom out and see a map' thing held to a globe as well.  Like if you zoomed out and saw a olde-style globe.

I think it would also be neat if it was a map, but the map itself scrolled.   Like when you zoomed out everything went from 3D to look exactly like ink on cloth, but if you zoomed back in and scrolled then zoomed out again the map would be different.   You could also have new things (like new towns and such) burn themselves into the map if the player is all the way zoomed out when it happens.

Instead of ships, we'd have zeppelins and airships. Talk about high fantasy.

I expect you'll be able to mod something like that - I'm thinking Last Exile here

+1

Since its supposed to be full scalable from outmost-zoom to extreme closeup zoom i'd guess a map makes most sense.

I kinda like the idea of a globe though. Surely channelers of that magnitude would go for nothing less then global domination (insert MUHAHAHAWWWWW here). I'm sure it could be possible to make distortion minimal if the land doenst get divvied up in nice squares (like civ4) If you allow for "odd-shaped" lands i'm sure globes area feasible. In mostly zoomed-out mode you could then move the map/turn the planet quickly to zoom in again at your preferred point.

btw what it poles? I believe you havent invented magnetism yet (and having poles does not necessary mean impassible ice barriers either - thats just how it turned out on our world)

Thats true, and I want multiple and different worlds personally.

However the poles are pretty much doomed to be bizzar no matter the planet.     The only exception is if whatever world has its rotating axis pointed towards the governing gravity well, at which point the poles are still doomed to be bizzar, but they will be bizzar in different ways.

No matter what, the equater is going to be the largest strip of similar climate.    If you look at europa, its equator is all cracked and crazy and the poles are the only calm place.  So What I'm getting to say, is whatever you have, the poles are going to be most likely different in some way.  If you classify the equator as 'habitable' then you are most likely going to be able to classify the poles as different and therefor 'not-habitable'. 

It is also easy to say something cheesy as well like 'the channeler's essence doesn't work as well near the magnetic poles because its too close to the dead heart of the world"

Only on a map *with* an equator

I haven't caught any word about the current map options other than what BoogieBac said in reply 2: "...flat and non-square..."

So, having an equator might be an option, or an equator of some sort might be a result of choosing an option or set of options that sum up roughly as Has Two Polarized Regions at Center Top and Center Bottom. The polarizations could be complicated: opposed elements (e.g. fire vs. water); a divided element seeking to re-unite (e.g. flood the world); good vs. evil for a given element, etc.

My real preference would be to have the map generation options strongly reflect the back story, so we could have something like what you describe for when "the channeler's essence doesn't work as well near the magnetic poles because its too close to the dead heart of the world."

In other words, I want the story of magic in Elemental to be woven directly into the algorithms that generate game maps. Even if we can't see it directly as players, I want it to be there. There was a World Before the Game. Great Powers wrecked the world, and the current channelers have some sort of (Elemental?) connection to those powers of old. So whatever input players give to generate a map for a new game should run through algorithms that know the Shards were all part of One Thing, remember where that Thing might have been, have some ideas about how a few choices made by Great Powers might have gone differently, etc.