Eurasia Map [Old thread]

by **oss spy** on Fri Jan 13, 2012 5:17 pm

Excellent looking so far. I can't wait for it

by **The Bison King** on Fri Jan 13, 2012 5:40 pm

I Would not split China again. I think It's fine as is.

by **Kabanellas** on Fri Jan 13, 2012 7:31 pm

Delightful, your art skills are at their finest here Natty... This will definitely be a favorite.

just a small note: it might work better if the great wall could have the same three-dimensional look as the mountains

by **natty dread** on Fri Jan 13, 2012 8:00 pm

Kabanellas wrote:Delightful, your art skills are at their finest here Natty... This will definitely be a favorite.

just a small note: it might work better if the great wall could have the same three-dimensional look as the mountains

Thanks..

As for the wall, I've tried it, and I really haven't got a 3d-look to work for the wall... it just ends up looking messy at this scale.

by **isaiah40** on Fri Jan 13, 2012 8:26 pm

natty_dread wrote:
Kabanellas wrote:Delightful, your art skills are at their finest here Natty... This will definitely be a favorite.

just a small note: it might work better if the great wall could have the same three-dimensional look as the mountains

Thanks..

As for the wall, I've tried it, and I really haven't got a 3d-look to work for the wall... it just ends up looking messy at this scale.

How about something like the Great Wall on Fractured China?

by **ndrs** on Fri Jan 13, 2012 8:44 pm

natty_dread wrote:
Kabanellas wrote:Delightful, your art skills are at their finest here Natty... This will definitely be a favorite.

just a small note: it might work better if the great wall could have the same three-dimensional look as the mountains

Thanks..

As for the wall, I've tried it, and I really haven't got a 3d-look to work for the wall... it just ends up looking messy at this scale.

You could probably draw some basic shapes pretty easily in Sketchup and import them to your program? But for some reason I suspect you don't like that program.

Another small thing: is the arrow in the legend a bit too close to the Svalbard-Severnaya attack path?
When I first looked at this map I instinctively assumed that sea route to be one-way. What if it changed place with "Region bonus is.."?

by **natty dread** on Fri Jan 13, 2012 9:56 pm

Now, I gather that the problem is that the mountains are drawn in a side-perspective, while the wall & tundra look more like top-down perspective?

If this is really an issue, then there's only two solutions: draw them all in the same perspective. Now, since there's really no feasible way to draw the tundra in a side-view perspective, I would be forced to change the mountains into top-down perspective.

I really don't want to do this, I feel like the current style of mountains fits the overall style of the map, even if it's not consistent with the other impassables. But if people really see this as an issue, then I guess I'll have to do that?

by **The Bison King** on Fri Jan 13, 2012 10:00 pm

Currently I have no issue with it.

by **ndrs** on Fri Jan 13, 2012 10:07 pm

The tundras are fine in a top-down perspective, they are not nearly as vertical as the two impassables. More like unplayable territories.
Tilting the view of the wall a little bit would make it all come together, IMO.

by **RjBeals** on Fri Jan 13, 2012 10:11 pm

best work you've done so far. In fact, the best work I've seen from the foundry in a long time. Nice work here Nat. You've really improved your skills.

by **natty dread** on Fri Jan 13, 2012 10:31 pm

Thanks Beals... I'm all about self-improvement

Anyway, I'll try a few alternatives for the wall... I kinda like the simplistic style of the current one, but I can try other options.

by **natty dread** on Sat Jan 14, 2012 2:38 am

One thing though...

Would it be more politically correct to make Taiwan a part of the Far East bonus?

Having it a part of China seems like it could have some... unfortunate implications.

by **Kabanellas** on Sat Jan 14, 2012 2:49 am

natty_dread wrote:I really don't want to do this, I feel like the current style of mountains fits the overall style of the map, even if it's not consistent with the other impassables. But if people really see this as an issue, then I guess I'll have to do that?

Keep the mountains definitely. The wall is not an issue but you can always improve it later.

by **natty dread** on Sat Jan 14, 2012 3:23 am

Ok, here's something I tried with the wall... not sure I like this, so I'll keep working on it...

Also, I made further changes to Eastern Asia - I made Taiwan a part of Far East, removed the Hainan-Taiwan connection and then lowered the bonus for East China back to 5. I think it works better this way, and Taiwan is officially not a part of China no matter what China likes to delude itself with...

Click image to enlarge.

Anyway, maybe it would be time for a gameplay check? I don't think there's much that can be done with the gameplay anymore. I'm quite happy with it now.

by **Kabanellas** on Sat Jan 14, 2012 3:41 am

I was trying something too:

these are png files with the alpha channel open, so you can insert them in your map if you want

by **natty dread** on Sat Jan 14, 2012 4:00 am

Hm... looks nice, but I think I'm going to try something a bit different... something a bit more in style with the mountains...

by **Kabanellas** on Sat Jan 14, 2012 4:08 am

I think I know what you mean.. maybe just the walls outline without any fill.. and let the region coloring appear on it

btw, how did you do that watercolor look?

by **natty dread** on Sat Jan 14, 2012 4:25 am

Kabanellas wrote:btw, how did you do that watercolor look?

Well, it's a bit complicated... I created 6 different texture layers, and overlaid them all on the map with different layer modes and maskings. The sea has one texture, the land has 2 texture layers, and then there's 3 texture layers that are on top of everything...

At the bottom, I have the sea texture which is on very low opacity, it basically just adds a bit more noise to the sea so that it doesn't look too smooth when compared to the land.

Then I have the land textures, which I make by taking a grungy brush - in this case, I mostly used a watercolour brush - and then painting with it in black & white all over the layer, with pressure controlling the opacity.

Then I have one of the land textures scaled up to 200%, and with the land masking removed, this gives a sort of lower-frequency variation to the texture and makes it more watercolourish...

Lastly, I have the two textures that are on top of everything, which are actually the same texture but in different layer modes - this is done so that the texture shows more uniformly on both light and dark areas. This texture is "finer" than all the others, it gives the map the coarse paper like feel, and complements the lower texture layers well.

I don't know if any of this makes sense, it's all a bit hard to explain with words...

by **Kabanellas** on Sat Jan 14, 2012 4:31 am

it makes total sense

..all on Photoshop I guess??... I've been trying that look on Adobe Fireworks but I just don't think that I'll be able to do it there.

by **natty dread** on Sat Jan 14, 2012 4:50 am

No, I use GIMP... Don't know much about fireworks but if it supports layer modes and masking, I see no reason why you couldn't do it with it, after all you can always use some other software for creating the textures... there are some good free programs for digital painting, and GIMP is also free.

Also,

Kabanellas wrote:maybe just the walls outline without any fill.. and let the region coloring appear on it

This wasn't exactly what I was thinking, but it sounds like something worth trying...

by **natty dread** on Sat Jan 14, 2012 5:14 am

Well, here's two options -

by **J_Indr** on Sat Jan 14, 2012 8:20 am

I prefer the first version. With Kabanellas' arrow ;-)

by **koontz1973** on Sat Jan 14, 2012 12:27 pm

The first wall is nicer, but it does not sit well with the mountains. Not sure about Kabanellas arrow but the idea could be used. Just do not have the curvature so tight.