Among my many roles on SQ was the job of World Architect. Every version of SQ that I worked on included a new set of custom-terraformed planets, with interesting land features and alien characteristics. I’m not too proud of the earlier ones, but by the end I created some pretty neat landforms. Ginger_Walnut’s reborn StarQuest has been reusing the planets that I made back then, so some of these are still playable there, and their maps can be viewed here.
I’ve switched computers a few times since then, so the only examples that I can find are these top-down views of some of the planets from StarQuest 4: Imperial Dawn.
This trailer for the fifth version of StarQuest demonstrates the new custom planets that I constructed for that version.
Kattadi was a southwestern twist on the desert planet theme that had previously been explored on Quavara, Grun, etc. The southern region featured mesas and canyons, and the eastern region resembled the valleys of California.
Canora was SQ4’s plains planet. It was very cratered, and featured some high mountains and forests around the edges. Multi-biome planets were new in general for SQ4, but I remember that it was difficult to come up with 2-3 biomes for each planet.
Arenstad was the best-made planet of SQ4 and the most popular. It was inspired by the alps and Scotland. I learned a new mountain-building technique between SQ3 and SQ4 and I applied it liberally here.
Xylos, a volcanic planet from SQ3
Grallion was a planet that featured very high oceanic cliffs with an alien climate. Based on Acualis, an SQ2 planet designed by Moneybags which I very much disliked for being unrealistic, but which was very popular with the playerbase.
Izifo was an SQ4 planet with a diseased theme. It had a sort of fungus spreading across its forest from east to west. It was unsettling to live on and players didn’t like it much.
Sabaka was SQ4’s jungle planet. It had cool high cliffs on the eroded coastlines in the west, and some realistic river action in the east.