Conquer Club

What is it with the cities again? They're ugly, they look smudgy and unfinished.

It's like, I make a beautiful work of art, and you go "meh", then dig up some crumpled up sketches from my trash bin and go "hey, make it more like this!"

natty_dread wrote:What is it with the cities again? They're ugly, they look smudgy and unfinished.

It's like, I make a beautiful work of art, and you go "meh", then dig up some crumpled up sketches from my trash bin and go "hey, make it more like this!"

It's a little thing called style. The cities have it the stations don't. The cities fit in with the map because they look painted on there. They fit with the visible brush strokes. The stations are just super boring, and lack style. They look like copy pasted clip art.

That's my opinion any way.

As for the brush strokes, they're something I experimented with - I created them on another program, one that's a sort of "painting simulator" - and I'm still not sure if I'll keep them or come up with a different texture.

As for the cities, I don't really see the appeal. Sure they might look "hand drawn" or painted or something but they just don't look good. I made them in like 2 minutes.

Either way, further updates will be coming after x-mas, so I have some time to think this over.

How about another party on the city/station matter, eh? I gotta echo Industrial Helix and The Bison King on the cities, sundance, they look sweet and fit really well with the style of the map. As for the stations, I think you can have them as a different style from the cities (like you already have), since they're the focal point of the map. I think I prefer the red/yellow/blue to the lime/teal/blue, they matched a little better, methinks, though I think you could still come up with a better set of colours.

-Sully

new update is posted here in this post right after the words stop

[bigimg]http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/1016/transsib9.png[/bigimg]

The stations look better. The cities are ok. I don't like what you did to the mountains, they looks fuzzy, like you hit them with the blur tool for some reason.

Yeah, I'm not really satisfied with them either. I'm just going to redo them all over.

[bigimg]http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/599/transsib10.png[/bigimg]

Experimenting with mountain styles

[bigimg]http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/599/transsib10.png[/bigimg]

If everyone is happy with the latest^ I could start working on the small version...?

If my opinion counts for anything you could try sharpening the peaks of the mountains and make the line that separates the shadow and light a bit more dark and defined. Then, try to integrate the base of the mountains in with the color a little more slowly, something more like a smooth transition between color to gray mountain.

I'm not a fan of the stations or the cities... they look like toy blocks. it really contrasts with the textures you've used for the map to a bad effect. That's what I liked about the doodle stations. They matched your map in gritty style. Perhaps you could try something more in line with Russian Architecture?

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... tion_2.jpg
http://wnights.com/journeys/russia/tran ... _journeys/
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/56466 ... on-Archive

Of course your opinion counts... don't even doubt it!

Anyway, I appreciate your advice on the mountains, and I'll see what I can do with them.

When it comes to the stations and cities though... I don't subscribe to the view that just because something looks "hand drawn" it's automatically good... personally I'm quite satisfied with the current stations & cities and I don't really see them clashing with the map.

natty, maybe you could try to move "tower" of stations from left side to the centre and the left side make as right side now. what I saw the stations (old ones) had tower in centre...

Not a bad idea... I might try it later.

Here's more on the mountains:

[bigimg]http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/5081/transsib11.png[/bigimg]

Forgot 1 industry center.

[bigimg]http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/5081/transsib11.png[/bigimg]

Instead of using colour on the stations to distinguish types, you might try slight style differences: the terminus might have three towers (one small one on each end and a large one in the centre with the clock), the transsib station could have two towers (clock on one) and the regular station could look like what you have.

Hm. Not a bad idea, but I kinda think it's easier to distinguish the stations by colour...

natty_dread wrote:Hm. Not a bad idea, but I kinda think it's easier to distinguish the stations by colour...

Do both! Use ender's idea, but keep your colors.

The colours are certainly easier for those who are not colour blind, but the different styles will be visible to everyone. Using both is a good idea.

The colours are good for colour blind. GIMP has a built in colourblind filter...

At this point I'm leaning towards keeping a uniform style for the stations for clarity reasons.

[bigimg]http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/5774/transsib12.png[/bigimg]

much, much better

Agreed, I like that WAY more. You need to fix it in the legend though. Also did you change the texturing on the map to give it more of a canvas feel?

Also I'd suggest taking an eraser to the mountains around Zavkhan and touching up the edges a bit. Just some of the semi-faded bits that stretch out from the base.

The Bison King wrote:AAlso did you change the texturing on the map to give it more of a canvas feel?

You noticed!

Also I'd suggest taking an eraser to the mountains around Zavkhan and touching up the edges a bit. Just some of the semi-faded bits that stretch out from the base.

yeah, will do

I'm also considering a minimap.

Would you put the mini-map in place of the table of bonuses on top of the picture of the train? That could work provided it didn't obscure the train. That's a nice graphical feature which it would be a shame to lose.