World cup challenge & major milestone achieved: all writing system previews completed! (Patreon)

Here's the latest news from the project management world of Atlas Altera:

We've finally completed the last set of script preview SVGs that required custom type design (yes, we drew glyphs from scratch because sometimes the writing system was not yet supported by unicode or didn't even have a Google Noto font). This means the Gaia Polyglotta proto database/spreadsheet is finally complete, and we could theoretically generate the language cards for every country on the map, as well as do something as cool as creating a feature map on prevailing writing systems used around the world. After coming across this obscure, slightly problematic, but insanely curious book, I've already decided that map will be named Pantographia.  

I've updated the download links for both the GaiaPolyglotta spreadsheet and the PDF export of the Pantographia sheet (which specifically categorizes and showcases all 106 writing systems). You can find the links in this old post or this other post. As a bonus, I'm also providing to the general public the SVG script samples that we onerously created from scratch to complete this milestone. Download all the script samples here. 

Next, I've managed to finish setting the toponym texts for Nicaragua, the last major update that I needed to complete before I could systematically start patching and exporting all map graphics. Next time you pore over Nicaragua on the Alter map, I hope you appreciate just how painfully difficult it is to squeeze that amount of text in such a small amount of area.

The fall update will feature the addition of over a dozen more countries and territories, plus major revisions and corrections that I've logged for the past few months. Expect the fall update to happen by next week.

And finally, the news of the upcoming November football mania!

In place of this month's feature map, we will be producing a series of map infographics related to soccer/association football, specifically the world cup. One of the map infographics, as you may have guessed from the teaser cutout above, will be travel/transportation themed.

The graphics will pair with our community's very own World Cup Challenge. Running concurrently with the FIFA 2022 competition, I'll be doing a sort of game prediction competition built from the lore of Altera's version of the world cup. You can knab real merch prizes by participating in the challenge on the discord server. To learn more, message me or join the discord server.