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[Meph]

I'll have to see how magma will end up ingame before I really do the fire snakes. If they look too similar, people won't be able to spot them.

[Meph]

There is progress on the worldmap front.

Among the things on the table are coast lines. Any preferences here?

[Cruxador]

I think the most sophisticated (furthest rightward) is the best in this case, though I think the color on the beach itself falls short of perfect. It could be that it's too dark and saturated by just a bit. The transition into it also seems to have details that are off, and it's hard pinning down what those are, but the clearest one is that it's too homogeneous. I guess it can depend on various things including latitude, but it seems like there shouldn't always be a clear line where the sand meets the greenery with always the same thickness of beach. Whether the coast is mainly erosional or mainly depositional, the beach should be thinnest at bits where the coastline protrudes out into the sea, and thickest where the green coastline recedes from it.

[Starver]

In playing-level exploration, you get waves on (sea) shores, and tend to get a differentiated 'beach' (though maybe more never-grown-upon and flotsam 'bits' than actual sand - but it's been a while since I paid much attention to the specifics) so "sand and waves" seems reasonable.

Also it brings back memories of some renderings of Earth's topology I did a long time ago.
if (height>nearlyzero()) { colour=between(green(),white(),height/maxheight)
} elseif (height<nearlyzero()) { colour=between(cyan(),blue(),height/maxdepth)
} else { colour=yellow() }
Or code to that effect.

ETA: Trying to remember more about inland lake shores, and what happens on ice-sea boundaries. I presume you've got those variations in mind, as necessary.

[Criperum]

I think the second from the right in the best for world map. Since we usually don't see those waves and small sand lines from such height.

[funkydwarf]

I like the beach but favor the water in the third one with just the gradation instead of waves. I like the waves in 4 too, but may look weird around a whole continent un broken.

[Real_bang]

I really like the 4th one

[Meph]

I like the beach but favor the water in the third one with just the gradation instead of waves. I like the waves in 4 too, but may look weird around a whole continent un broken.

It's not really waves, it's lines like in a map of this style:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Lurker28]

#1 with a simple hard beach outline or #4 which uses both the hard beach outline plus the cartographer water border.

[Starver]

(It may well be that the lines of that style are themselves figurative waves. Waves are generally observed as coming into shore, no matter what the direction of the shore, and not noticed - except in storm conditions - away from land, so a sailor would "know" that waves line the coast. The bits out there in funny pinches, like between (say) the Gulf of Patras and the trio of Islands including Kefalonia, is depicted with funny wave-emergence patterns because of the natural tendency to continue the pattern to as far as possible to the desired limit, without crossing any lines, even when it makes no wave-sense, because it works to the illustrator. As any doodler will know who carefully buffer-outlines some other complex and partly concave 'seed' shape to sufficient degree. Anyway, whether waves or "land shapes splashed into the ocean with outward rippling", or just cartographic approximation of sloping continental shelf-depth contouring I like it, but it's probably more useful with monochrome line-art than in full-colour where hue/intensity variation can serve as both landward/seaward differentiation and suggest distance-out-in-the-littoral. So I'm easy with losing the lines. While thinking they're not at all overkill if present either. But I've already registered my preference, so this was supposed to be a short aside.)

[Magistrum]

One day I'll learn the ability of full paragraph short asides.

Personally, I find the lines pleasant. Don't know if it would be the same on a full map tough.

[Lurker28]

Personally, I prefer a more graphical map. The stylized art of the (super not done by us) map hits at the heart of what I believe the "dwarf fortress style" should be. I have little statistics to back this up, but I believe the spacefox tileset is what closely mirrors the "style" of dwarf fortress. It has a mass market appeal, helps ease people into a fairly complex set of mechanics, it's easy to read, colorful, and whimsical (which plays into the "fun" of dwarf fortress). The graphical style map seems to align with this fairly well — as well as the tileset you have started creating. I believe a cartographer style map would not only be difficult to procedurally generate but it could easily suffer from readability issues.

Here are some examples that go from pixel art to painterly I personally find appealing:

Low Density Pixel Art:


High-Density Pixel Art:


Hybrid:


Painterly:


Because I'm vain, I'll link my own attempt at map making using my own textures, someone else's brushes, and many hours of digital painting (not recommended for dwarf fortress):

[Superdorf]

Ooh, painterly is nice... elegant, readable, and just a little bit archaic.

[Cruxador]

Ooh, painterly is nice... elegant, readable, and just a little bit archaic.

That's a hand-crafted map, though. You can get a painterly look with tiles (see for example, Orteil's NeverEnding Legacy) but it's not easy and it gets less easy the more different kinds of things you intend to show.

[Death Dragon]

(see for example, Orteil's NeverEnding Legacy)

I was just playing that some days ago. Here is what the map looks like there if anyone's curious:

It's all square tiles, but they blend into each other so well that you can barely notice it.

Edit:
Here is a fully scouted and explored world map from the game: