[Abandoned] - Zodiac Map

[gimil]

Nice to see new guys making an attempt at map making! Since your actively developing the map ill move it on over to the right forum

[moved]

[rsacheli]

This is something i just quickly whipped up over the last hour... potential background?

Needs more work thats for sure... but for a basic idea for the BG i think its a good start...

IDEAS??




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[bbqpenguin]

This is something i just quickly whipped up over the last hour... potential background?

Needs more work thats for sure... but for a basic idea for the BG i think its a good start...

IDEAS??

mmm not bad, certianly not to start with. should go over ok with the lighter colored zodiac stuff

[rsacheli]

... im planning on re-vamping the other one i posted anyway... i needed to make it smaller... and yea...

[rsacheli]

as soon as i get a few things tweaked in the next draft... its gonna look AMAZING! it already does... i should be able to post it up tonight or sometime this weekend...

[yeti_c]

Your main problem is that none of the stars join to anything - thus it's all 1 border continents.

C.

[rsacheli]

Your main problem is that none of the stars join to anything - thus it's all 1 border continents.

C.

This has been fixed... Tho I think i might have too many connections now... Zodiac v2.2 will be uploaded this evening (yes i know i have missed a few versions from... I have made SOOO many changes, Nothing looks the same... NOTHING!!!

[rsacheli]

v2.2 uploaded to first post

[Ethitts]

It would be good to have a zodiac map, so I hope this one progresses through the foundry. First initial thoughts though:
It's very bright, understandable being stars but if you can somehow dim it down but give it that "bright" look then that'd be great. Also the top right of the legend is far to bright, so much so that I can't read all of it. I'm also a little confused as to how the bonuses work. Is it +10 for each winter area (Ares, Pisces, Aquarius) or +10 for all of them. In which case what does the +18 relate to.

I can't see where Libra fits in on the bonuses.
Piecies is spelt wrong (it's Pisces).

All the best with this, i look forward to the next update.

Edit: After looking at the map a bit more I'm pretty sure I know how the bonuses work now.

[rsacheli]

all i did with the bonuses was count up the number of territs... then devide by 3... so basically its just doubling the base bonus if you control the areas...

its hard to make the legend bigger... i have a lot to fit into such a small space... ill see what i can do tho... perhaps ill just make the text darker to make it more readable... idk...

i knew i spelt it wrong... i just wanted to get the update out... iv been workin on it for a while and all the discussion up to this point was on the previous idea... which if you saw the previous before i removed it, it was HUGE and UGLY!!!

this is still kinda ugly... but its a LOT better than it was... i think i can increase the brightness of the stars in the background image so that the foreground seems less bright... i can also reduce the brightness of the foreground slightly... i dont want to make the connecting lines any brighter and if i make them darker it gets hard to see in areas...

anywho... ill work on it this weekend and post v2.(3-5) either sunday or early next week

[rsacheli]

it has been brought to my attention that my circles might be too small... they are 19 pix... i can do 20 probably... but anything large might get really crunched in certian areas and ultimately destroy the map...

my next update will have 20px circles...




This should be getting close to recieving the ideas and graphics stamps...
I will start the XML within the next week.

[rsacheli]

V3.0 is uploaded in first post, please help me finalize the graphics!

[bbqpenguin]

is there any way you could make the stars a little less.... bright? normally they'd be ok but the contrast against the dark background kind of hurts my eyes...

[bbqpenguin]

also, is there any way you could spread out the stars on the right side a little? i'm thinking you could maybe move capricorn, sagitarius, and scorpio up and maybe a little to the right, then use the spare created there to spread some of those stars out a bit. the same might be doable down in the lower left corner with taurus and gemini, also

[bbqpenguin]

one last thing, i think you should reduce the connection lines by about 20%

as it is, there's really no way to realistically be able to hold any of even the medium sized constellation, let alone the larger ones. try to make it so that the bigger constllations have only 4 or 5 connections to other constellations, so that if someone wanted to take it over they would only have to defend 4-5 points, not 8 or 9.

if it helps, think about it in terms of the classic map. there are well-defines, strategic points you want to hold in order to be able to defend a bonus. take, for instance, north america. although there are 9 territories, once it is taken over you only need to defend greenland, alaska, and mexico. however, take, say capricorn in your map. it had about the same amount of territories, but there are 7 territories where it can be attacked from about 12 different places. it would be almost impossible to hold this bonus. essentially, all your constellations are like europe on the classic map; hard to take over and even harder to maintain

[rsacheli]

all good points!


actually iv already remedied a few of these... i have reduced it to 121 territs, spread them out a little with some rearranging... made the circles 22pix instead of 20... all i have left right now is to fix the brightness yet again, and make the connections... look for an update in a few days... possibly tomorrow night if i have enough time on my hands...

[whitestazn88]

i'm going crazy.... not a fan of the overlapping lines....

[RedBaron0]

It's a great idea you have here kiddo, I hope you go far with it!

My suggestions:
It's huge. Crossing lines create lots of confusion I say you drop half the territories, at least. You don't have to have a territory for each star in the constellation. This I think will lend to a better overall look for the map, less cluttered and the map becomes... well a map instead of a collection of dots. Put some stars in as a part of the backround to show the major shape of the constellation and "territories" perhaps at brighter well known stars and pheonominon. Take Taurus for example, you could drop that down to 4 territories say(just a suggested number). The main well known star, Aldebaran(alpha Tauri) - the Bull's eye, The Pleiades, well know open cluster- the shoulder of the bull, The Hyades, a lesser known open cluster, relatively very close to Earth(only 150 lys) - the head of the bull, and the Crab Nebula(M1), well know as a supernova remnant from 1054 - near the last star represented by the hind legs, just south of the line of the ecliptic.

Personally, territories should have names, not just numbers. With constellations each star has a greek letter designation(i.e. alpha Tauri) and at worst, would be a better territory name, that's more of a personal preference, but I think it'd make for a more pleasing map. This goes along with what I said earlier.

A lot of things will flow if some of these changes go down. Some constellations don't really have much in the way of bright stars(Pisces, Capricorn, Libra, etc.) Some of those could be just 1 or 2 territories folded into a larger 'continent'

I don't like the black hole, the Earth should be in the center. With the Earth at the center the map become more like the celestial sphere, but just the ecliptic.

Ok... that's probably a ton of stuff to deal with, and I'm sorry to give you a lot of work, but astronomy is a passion of mine. A lot of the map does look good, and you've done a good job! Keep it up and you'll get this map up and running!

[rsacheli]

i started with the sun in the middle and then there was a big debate on what should be the middle so i made it a black hole... HAHA



btw, the newest update was just uploaded!!

[RedBaron0]

Better, but still bright, there's just too many dots. There are definately to many lines and territory connections. And I still think it's too big, too many territories.

I read though the debates, and you get a black hole? It's your preferance, but here's the thing. Astrologically the Sun takes an apparent path though the sky and signs of the zodiac. That's how they define the dates of the signs of the zodiac.(Well... sort of, those dates are based on the postitions in the sky the signs of the zodiac appeared with the sun, 2000 years ago. Presession of the earth's axis has shifted one constellation over in that time) The Celestial Sphere always appears with the Earth in the center, like a giant sphere surrounding the earth with painted stars on it. The Black hole is something different, I'll give you that. But I'd suggest putting the earth in the center

After I work on this Mars map I'm developing, no matter the outcome, I think I'll work on an Orion constellation map, so many bright stars and well known phenominon that it's a map by itself!

[rsacheli]

i appreciate your comments, however, i dont know how many more territs i can take out before i completely destroy the closeness to reality... iv already removed a lot...

also, as for too many connections, the most connections any one territ has is 6... i can remove SOME more, but right now i want to get a little more input...

[whitestazn88]

i like the new version... but i don't see a bonus for each individual constellation

[whitestazn88]

and black hole is -10???? how does someone who gets deployed on there do any damage?

[Ethitts]

The brightness still hurts my eyes......

[bbqpenguin]

i like this version much better, i'm glad you worked on spacing out the stars a bit and using up some of that empty space. also the fewer attacking lines is a big improvement, and is much less confusing. i'd still like to see a few fewer inter-constellational connections, but i'll let someone else put in some input about that