Sphericalization of the Regional Map, A One-Of-A-Kind map

NS-Globe
Not to be confused with NS Earth, which is nowhere near as awesome
PNG | Google Earth KMZ | SVG (R-click->Download) | GitHub

NS-Globe is a project to create a pseudo-realistic, spherical map for multiple NationStates regions. Among the members are The North Pacific, the International Democratic Union, and, of course, the Eastern Islands of Dharma.

Currently, EID is primarily an archipelago 8°N and 34°N, with Belshaft further north, and Glen-Rhodes on the nearby continent. The next region to the northwest is the IDU; the region to the southwest is not yet claimed, but will likely be The South.

If you are interested in being represented on this map, please post in this thread.

RULES:
* BE REASONABLE
** You may claim any unclaimed island or islands you want, and as many as you want
** You may make claims for as many puppets as you want
** You may make claims for nations who, in game, aren't in the region or don't exist (but are or do for RP purposes)
** However, you can't be ridiculous. There's no exact standard here, but just be reasonable.
** You may not make claims for all 132 of your switcher puppets, or any other ridiculous number of puppets. (Mapped nations should be at least semi-RP anyway.)
** You should bear in mind that not every nation can be the size of Russia. Don't claim a massive area.
* BE REALISTIC
** You may suggest changes to existing land, or for new land to be made
** However, you may not have your own island the size of Africa. (See above, about large claims)
** Your island can not be a geometric or artificial-seeming shape. If you want an artificial island for a nation, that's fine. But it probably won't be big enough to show up on the map. (Bear in mind the global scale of this map.)
* BE PRESENT
** If your nation CTEs or moves out of the region without prior approval, your claim might be revoked after some time.
** This revocation will probably be at least 6 months after you're last seen in EID.

Special exceptions may be made on a case-by-case basis.

Don't be intimidated by the length of those rules. It's basically just common sense. Make your claim!
[spoiler=Original posting]Save for the regions that use RL Earth, I don't think anyone has done this before. If you ask me, this is incredible, amazing, awesome, and all those other words.

First things first: I have some proof of concept here. It's a very rough site right now. It's really just a trick I'm able to pull with my college's servers (a side effect of professors' pages), so I don't have a CMS or much scripting capability. (Speaking of, anyone who wants to throw out ideas for a domain name I could buy, PM/TG me. Unfortunately, embolalia.com is taken.)

So: Basic details. Google Earth has an "image overlay" feature. Basically, this allows you to replace their satellite images with your own. What we'll do is put a fictional map in, thus creating an easy-to-access spherical model of our "world". Thus, we can have a realistic regional cartography (in that it occupies a semi-sphere rather than a flat plane), which can lead to more realistic climatology, travel paths, etc., while also being able to see each nation in a relatively undistorted way. I'll put a more detailed explanation of why this matters on the page, along with more technical detail. One last detail I should mention is that I plan (if the region wants to do this) on making both an overlay (low-detail, no distortion) and a scalable PDF/SVG (higher detail, high distortion).

Now for the issues: As you may know, it is impossible to put a flat image on a sphere without distortion, and vice versa. It's not as big of a deal near the equator, or with small nations. Fortunately, Dharma is both tropical and (at least partially) archipelagic. Long story short, if you already have a nation mapped out that you want on the globe, it'll be hard to put on if it's large and/or not near the equator.

Next come the concerns, specifically my stylistic concerns:
I'm a fan of continental cartography. If you look at my IDU map, you can see generally how I do (and an idea of the level of detail I would try to provide). That's not to say I can't or won't do archipelagic cartography. Note that Embolalia itself is an archipelago. But it feeds into why I want my greater vision of an entire world, which we'll then "lease out" to other regions.
Secondly, I like cartography that a non-expert might find realistic. There's a fair bit of leeway in this, but... how to put this... we may have a bit of a disagreement if you want a 500km-long phallus. (Though, there probably will be at least a few mildly phallic shapes, since those do tend to occur naturally.)

And finally, a general concept: The region is the Eastern Islands of Dharma. I figure there are two options of how to make a good map-to-name correlation here. One: the islands are toward the eastern edge of a planet called Dharma. Two: the islands are off the east coast of a continent called Dharma. Personally, I prefer the latter, since I'm strongly considering moving Embolalia (which is supposed to be near a continental mass) to Dharma, and that would improve things.
That does raise problems with bringing in Bel's work, either way, since having a major continental mass (Sanctaria) would break the connection. With specific regard to that, the easiest way would be to tweak Sanctaria into the western part of a (preferably slightly smaller) large island.

Anyway, I figure this will be a fun project. I'm probably going to try to do it either way, so if this is completely off-base and nobody wants it, I won't be offended.[/spoiler]

Remember, my map was simply an early WIP. If something I cam up with doesn't work, feel free to scrap it.

Also; this is looking very cool.

Hokay, progress updates. Overview of this part of the globe and projection of the entire globe so far.
Some notes, which are numbered on the map:
1) Glen-Rhodes requested a continental spot. Obviously, given the name of this region, this will be the exception. There are a few reasons I decided to do this for GR, not least of which being the ease with which his existing map fit into my overall goals.
2) I'll probably add some more islands in this general area, to allow for expansion and give a better feel. I may also either add to the northern "tail" or shift it southward a bit; not sure yet.
3) Sanctaria and territories are not even close to final. They'll need a fair bit of detail added, and I'd like to shift them around a bit.
4) I've provisionally added the IDU's northern landmass in. This is still a topic of discussion there, to that's not final. I think they'll be fine with this, and from the few people I've talked to here, there hasn't been any objection to that. Let me know if I'm wrong.

This is an awesome intiative. Keep up the amazing awesome work!!!

Wow. Um... my nation's map is available in my factbook.

Just an update: This project is currently more or less on hold, until I hear from at least a few members of the IDU (mainly Bears, since he's the most likely to actually care) about whether or not I should go ahead with having our regions so tightly connected geographically.

Also, I mentioned on IRC and at the IDU forums that I'd like to consider putting AO in the globe's antarctic. This is more a convenience thing, since it's hard to make poles that aren't distorted. Since AO's map is just Antarctica, I could copy existing maps of that continent that are already properly projected. I've heard from Kenny, who likes the idea. Nobody's said either way in the IDU, but I imagine it will go over well there. That leaves Dharma. I know the two regions don't get along very well, but bear in mind you would be in separate hemispheres. Any opinions?

I reckon that it would be a good idea to put us on the same sphere, precisely because we don't get along. We already have (bad) relations with them, so it makes sense.

I apologize that I have not actually made a map or yet produced any more specific information, but here is some general information about Quelesh:

A nation of 32 small tropical islands.
The islands are grouped into three clusters: western, central and eastern.
The clusters are widely geographically dispersed, as in general are the islands of each cluster.
The total land area is about 700 sq km.
The population is about 100,000.
The nation straddles the equator.
(It also, in the conventional RL system of reckoning longitude, straddles the 180th meridian, though that may not be relevant in your globe. Quelesh uses a different system of reckoning latitude/longitude.)

You can use the RL nation of Kiribati as a general guide.

Unibot is located Latitude 4.815, Longitude 162.342.... so that would put me closer to AO if Dharma takes up the North Pole.

Um, I'm not sure what you mean, Uni. I assume you mean 4.815° N, 162.342° W, but that puts you near the equator. (Even if you meant 4.815° S, you're still much closer to the rest of Dharma than to AO.)

I was under the impression that Dharma was mainly tropical, so I haven't been planning on putting it anywhere near the north pole. I put myself significantly further north than Dharma, and my northernmost point is only around 50° N.

Regarding longitude, I'd like to avoid actually crossing this globe's 180° meridian. Otherwise, I have to put parts of the region on both edges of the flat image, which would be a pain. I might end up doing it, when I start work on other continents, but for the time being let's not worry about longitude.

Lest anyone think I'd forgotten or given up:

MASSIVE PNG alert!
It's the whole globe, 7200x3600px. You can right click -> view image to see the whole thing up close

I haven't been focusing on Dharma as much, since Bears is a bit specific in his strong suggestions in how I should be doing this. But, progress is progress, and the more I know about the IDU, the more I can do to make Dharma look realistic.

That looks very cool.

I have an updated map of Belschaft if you want it. Having looked at it on a world map, I've made her a bit bigger and would quite like her to be move further north.

Just to be sure everyone knows, this is still not dead. The North Pacific has signed on, as they have very strong ties to the IDU (in that the IDU was originally a group of TNP "refugees", and Grosseschnauzer maintains nations in both regions). If you have nations to add, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

And it is still still not dead! See, I even made a GitHub repo for it!

Oh. I just realized that the version that's up right now has Eastern Islands of Dharma written three times over the region, so you can't really see what's going on there. If you download (click worldmap.svg, then right-click "raw" in the middle-left of the screen and select save as.) it and open it with inkscape, you should be able to see it.

Good news! The IDU and EID portions of the map are just about finalized! Really, I just have one more nation to add before we start adding new nations. You can view the (very large) PNG flat projection here. You can also download a Google Earth overlay here, which allows you to see the entire globe on a spherical surface. The entire project is being kept up-to-date on GitHub, where you can find the latest versions of the above files and the source SVG file.

If you have any questions or comments on the project, you can ask them here, TG me, or find me on #NSGlobe on irc.esper.net.