Conquer Club

sully800 wrote: This assumption could be wrong, but I personally wouldn't have recognized Caracas as being in Venezuela while I would be able to find Bogota in Colombia. How does everyone else feel?

Caracas is the capital district of Venezuela, so personally, I would recognize it. "Venezuela is divided into 23 states (estados), a capital district (distrito capital) corresponding to the city of Caracas..."

stahrgazer wrote:

sully800 wrote: This assumption could be wrong, but I personally wouldn't have recognized Caracas as being in Venezuela while I would be able to find Bogota in Colombia. How does everyone else feel?

Caracas is the capital district of Venezuela, so personally, I would recognize it. "Venezuela is divided into 23 states (estados), a capital district (distrito capital) corresponding to the city of Caracas..."

It's an important city for that reason, but Bogota is the capital of Colombia too. More importantly Bogota is the 4th largest city in South America (the other 3 are already included) while Caracas is only 15th (and not even the most populous in Venezuela)

BEAUTIFUL

Let's send this to Beta now!
Once everyone gets to start playing, they will forget about any other nitpicking.

BETA NOW!

Very cool map... good work!

very nice.
the Arrows for the Mag -Anch link are pretty much perfect (and a little jet fighteresque)

The fine-tuning of the city names is irrelevant to me at this point and the map is good to go ..though I do still think the saturated map is more subtle and the consummate version.

sully800 wrote:

ender516 wrote:I think the black on the title is just fine, and I think the difference in saturation has to do with the process of running the troop number tests and capturing that image.

Yes. But I also see no real difference in saturation, so either my eyes or bad or different monitors have different views. Probably the latter, which reminds me of the 'black' territories on the Germany revamp where I and many others could read the map text with no problem, yet some people were posting that it looked like black on black and they couldn't read a thing.

Anyway, the version that will be sent to lack will be a jpeg like the first one, so that is probably the kind of saturation we'll be going with. After I use the XML tool to place the army numbers I take a screenshot and then upload that png file for the second pic, so any difference in saturation is based on hosting the image capturing and then hosting in a different format.

sorry, i just looked back a little - do i understand it correctly that most or some people can not see a fairly major difference in the overall colouration of these two versions?

:-
Image 1-


Image 2 -



Image 2 - looks more beautiful to my eye. (other than the lovely arrows on the link of course)

jiminski wrote:

sully800 wrote:

ender516 wrote:I think the black on the title is just fine, and I think the difference in saturation has to do with the process of running the troop number tests and capturing that image.

Yes. But I also see no real difference in saturation, so either my eyes or bad or different monitors have different views. Probably the latter, which reminds me of the 'black' territories on the Germany revamp where I and many others could read the map text with no problem, yet some people were posting that it looked like black on black and they couldn't read a thing.

Anyway, the version that will be sent to lack will be a jpeg like the first one, so that is probably the kind of saturation we'll be going with. After I use the XML tool to place the army numbers I take a screenshot and then upload that png file for the second pic, so any difference in saturation is based on hosting the image capturing and then hosting in a different format.

sorry, i just looked back a little - do i understand it correctly that most or some people can not see a fairly major difference in the overall colouration of these two versions?

:-
Image 1-


Image 2 -



Image 2 - looks more beautiful to my eye. (other than the lovely arrows on the link of course)

From where I sit, Image 2 has had some of the green drained out, so the greens are less vivid and the ocean has shifted toward indigo. Personally, I like Image 1 better, because it has more life. I am hoping that the numbers test is simply adding an artifact that will not appear in the final version, but I will be happy to play any version you can get into beta.

Keep Bogota ahead of Caracas: Colombia is where the isthmus attaches, so that seems the right place to hold.

Ah I do see the difference in the greens now. In any case, consider the version without numbers to be the working version and just use the version with numbers to quibble about coordinates. Any complaints about them?

sully800 wrote:Ah I do see the difference in the greens now. In any case, consider the version without numbers to be the working version and just use the version with numbers to quibble about coordinates. Any complaints about them?

Okay... i spent a bunch of time looking at image 2, and my eyes are still burning, lol... so i'm REALLY REALLY glad it's gonna be like image 1...


So after all that looking, these are the only minor things i noticed:

* The Montreal-Reykjavik connection would be better curving UP instead of down since that would match an airplane... Think "Polar Route".

* The 88 on Lagos looks off-centered

I could find nothing else.



I'm sooooo ready to play this...

Lagos could go up 1 px. Maybe Cairo aswell.

Looking at the army circles...can you check they are all 20/22 pixels square...what i am seeing is a lot of off-centering, and this could be caused by irregular sizes.

Robinette wrote:

sully800 wrote:Ah I do see the difference in the greens now. In any case, consider the version without numbers to be the working version and just use the version with numbers to quibble about coordinates. Any complaints about them?

Okay... i spent a bunch of time looking at image 2, and my eyes are still burning, lol... so i'm REALLY REALLY glad it's gonna be like image 1...


So after all that looking, these are the only minor things i noticed:

* The Montreal-Reykjavik connection would be better curving UP instead of down since that would match an airplane... Think "Polar Route".

* The 88 on Lagos looks off-centered

I could find nothing else.



I'm sooooo ready to play this...

Oh right. So I know plane routes were the inspiration, but the reason that line doesn't curve upward is because it continues the flow from Edmonton->Montreal and Reyk->London. Wherever possible I tried to make continuous flowing lines like that because it looks a lot nicer, and reversing the connection would spoil that.

cairnswk wrote:Looking at the army circles...can you check they are all 20/22 pixels square...what i am seeing is a lot of off-centering, and this could be caused by irregular sizes.

They are indeed all 22 pixel circles (plus the outer glow). I agree some of the numbers need adjustment, but even with 22px circles the numbers never seem to look PERFECTLY correct

Sully800...can you post the 88 maps so i can check them please....currently the small map is confined by the quote boundary for zooming in.
EDIT: sorry don't need this...found the solution.

sully800 wrote:...but even with 22px circles the numbers never seem to look PERFECTLY correct

The methodology to get them perfrectly centered would be to take the outer glow off....get them centered and PERFECTLY correct...them put the outer glow back on.

sully800 wrote:

Robinette wrote:* The Montreal-Reykjavik connection would be better curving UP instead of down since that would match an airplane... Think "Polar Route".

Oh right. So I know plane routes were the inspiration, but the reason that line doesn't curve upward is because it continues the flow from Edmonton->Montreal and Reyk->London. Wherever possible I tried to make continuous flowing lines like that because it looks a lot nicer, and reversing the connection would spoil that.

Perhaps we can have the best of both worlds...
consider making a double connection from NewYork-Montreal-Reykjavik, with the polar route angle of course.



But i'm ready to play it just the way it is...

Robinette wrote:* The Montreal-Reykjavik connection would be better curving UP instead of down since that would match an airplane... Think "Polar Route".

That's overthinking it.

Besides, to be actually accurate with the "Polar Route",
-the Sao Paulo-Dakar connection should be curving down,
-the Anchorage-Vancouver should be curving up,
-the Edmonton-Montreal should be curving up,
-the Chicago-Los Angeles should be curving up,
-the Bogota-Sao Paulo should be curving down...
That's just the Americas...

Let's leave it. It's not worth changing part of the map to be accurate and not changing everything, and changing everything would definitely not be worth it.

The Neon Peon wrote:

Robinette wrote:* The Montreal-Reykjavik connection would be better curving UP instead of down since that would match an airplane... Think "Polar Route".

That's overthinking it.

Besides, to be actually accurate with the "Polar Route",
-the Sao Paulo-Dakar connection should be curving down,
-the Anchorage-Vancouver should be curving up,
-the Edmonton-Montreal should be curving up,
-the Chicago-Los Angeles should be curving up,
-the Bogota-Sao Paulo should be curving down...
That's just the Americas...

Let's leave it. It's not worth changing part of the map to be accurate and not changing everything, and changing everything would definitely not be worth it.

Lets just get beta. Anyone that's not happy is just being pedantic. I can't see anything wrong at all. Well done Sully

As I was trying to say before - the airline routes were an inspiration for the map, but in the end this map serves a different purpose. I want the connections to be clear and look good, as much as possible, to make the game more user friendly. If there are issues with regard to those two objectives I would be happy to investigate more. Thanks again to everyone for the support and critiques! It is truly appreciated.

Alright, here's the updated XML and final images again (I hope!)

XML:
http://h1.ripway.com/bjs309/_ClassicXML11

Small:
http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/5759/classic11.jpg


Large:
http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/328/classic11l.jpg



____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
(Note - these are just to show coords. The true colors are shown in the above images)

I am, of course, on the quench train, too. Can't wait to play the map.

That being said, one random "do we need to idiot-proof this thing further" question just popped into my mind... are the colors for Asia and Oceania too close? It's actually not an idiot-proof question, really; it's more of a "has anyone done the color-blind" test one? Yes, I realize that anyone who has played the classic map should know which city is which, but... it's probably worth checking to see how similar Bangkok and Jakarta look to those that are color blind. If it's a problem, switching North or South America's colors with Oceania's should do the trick. If it's not a problem, well...

I don't think there's anything left that should be holding up this map. A January 1st launch date might be a pipedream, but it sure would be nice...

Coordinates for Edmonton and Dakar could go 1 px to the left, I think.

After that:

I said from the start that I wanted this done by the end of the year.......

Quenching

---The Final Forge period has concluded for the Classic Revamp. All objections have had their time. The Foundry and I hereby brand this map with the Foundry Brand. Let it be known that this map is now ready!

Conquer Club, enjoy!