Conquer Club

While we wait:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9cvBVyLRY0

If I'm not mistaken, California was in the Graphics Workshop for a very long time, compared to most other maps. Now that it's in the Final Forge, practically nobody is saying anything useful about it.

Does that mean it's ready for Beta testing, or what?

I, for one, am aching to play it.

We've submitted the XML to be tested, we're still waiting on the approval.

Well, how long does it usually take for the XML to be tested?

Vlasov wrote:Well, how long does it usually take for the XML to be tested?

I'm asking myself that exact same question. I feel like everyone went out for an extended smoke break and haven't returned.

ironsij0287 wrote:

Vlasov wrote:Well, how long does it usually take for the XML to be tested?

I'm asking myself that exact same question. I feel like everyone went out for an extended smoke break and haven't returned.

I know, I know, but trust me this happens every time to every map.




Except for First Nations Americas, cause that was special!

I believe our XML checker is a bit swamped with this and other things. Just give it time

-Sully

I havn't read through all the posts, but whenever I look at this map I really dislike the Bay Area inset; it is quite strange that it abuts the coast. It should be seperate and with the dark border all the way around.

I want to start by saying Great Effort on putting this map together so far. After all the negatives that have been said in the past about making individual state maps this ones coming along rather nicely. i didn`t look through all the pages , is there a map with the army circles in each tert? The reason i ask is because the bay area inset , really isnt to much bigger than the map. the army circle will not fit in these territories . I always thought the purpose of the inset was to enlarge the area for the purpose of labeling and circles . i like how you put these insets right next to the areas in question. My suggestion would be to move the seal and bear from the right hand side of the screen and shift the whole thing to the right and then you can enlarge the bay area inset so the circles will fit.. Then you can add the seal and the cities bonus index on the left hand side of the map..

melech14 wrote:I havn't read through all the posts, but whenever I look at this map I really dislike the Bay Area inset; it is quite strange that it abuts the coast. It should be seperate and with the dark border all the way around.

I agree. It muddles it up without having a discernible border all the way around especially when the LA inset has a full border.

I also agree with Danfrank and Melech. Maybe you could reduce, relocate, and/or rearrange those graphics on the right side, and shift the main map to the right? That would free up space on the left side, in order to enlarge the Bay Area inset and give it a distinct border all around (like the LA inset).

[bigimg]http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/223/californiaupload.jpg[/bigimg]

I do not think this looks better. I think the legend and title looks squashed, the Cities bonus legend had to get moved to somewhere that doesn't make any sense, and there's no visual harmony. All of these things sacrificed just so that the Bay area inset isn't partially covered (an area that is mostly empty space any way). I think it's much better to just leave the inset partially covered. Honestly I don't see what the big deal is. A mere 2 seconds of looking at the map should allow you to deduce "oh that's and inset of the bay area, it's just partially covered by the main map". Like I said it's just ugly empty space any way.

That's how I feel, but If you guys really honestly feel that this is better I guess we'll go with it.

What if you angled the right side border of the Bay Inset inward so it ran sort of parallel with the coast of the state? That would allow you to nudge the state back to the left a little bit.

ironsij0287 wrote:What if you angled the right side border of the Bay Inset inward so it ran sort of parallel with the coast of the state? That would allow you to nudge the state back to the left a little bit.

Tell me, do you freak out when the corn on your plate touches the potatoes?

[bigimg]http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/7039/californiauploadl.jpg[/bigimg]
That's the best I can do. I admit, It doesn't look... terrible. I don't have room to fit the bear nder the City bonuses though. I'm kind of reaching for a place to put it. I could take out the seal in favor of the Bear but that leaves the top left kind of... bear. I know how it's spelled but it's a pun!

The Bison King wrote:[bigimg]http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/223/californiaupload.jpg[/bigimg]

I do not think this looks better.

I do. Better than the one with the cut-off inset.

Also, someone brought up a good point imo, of the insets not being much more zoomed in than the areas on the map... and at some places, the insets themselves seem a bit cramped - isn't the point of insets to make room for things? You have room to zoom in the insets, so it could be something to consider.

natty_dread wrote:I do. Better than the one with the cut-off inset.

It's much worse in my opinion and here's why I think so:

I mentioned visual flow. A map, like a painting should carry the eye through it. It should answer the questions, 1)what the map is of, 2)where do I play it, 3)how do I play it, and (least importantly) 4)who made it, with ease

As you can see this version is tightly organized and has a simple easy to follow flow.


This version on the other hand is all over the place. The legend is arbitrarily split up, there is a big empty wasteland between the actual map and the insets, and worst of all the title has been crushed up against the margin of the map. Blech, no, it's horrible. I will never use this version it's just bad.

natty_dread wrote:Also, someone brought up a good point imo, of the insets not being much more zoomed in than the areas on the map... and at some places, the insets themselves seem a bit cramped - isn't the point of insets to make room for things? You have room to zoom in the insets, so it could be something to consider.

Well, the Insets are enlarged, and I have enlarged the Bay area inset even more since the version on the front page. I haven't tried it with digits yet (since this has all been done today) but I'm sure there'll be a lot more room this time, when I get around to testing it.

my humble opinion is something in the middle
I think cities bonus and the bear logo work perfectly together with their stars
I don't mind the angled bay area inset but I think you should do less
only half the height

my solution would be angled version (less angled)
cities bonus and bear upper left corner
moving the map half the way right
bonuses as a vertical list on the right
and getting rid of the seal (sorry for it)
or making it much more smaller in the lower right corner

IMHO, the top version (with the angled Bay Area inset) is just fine exactly as drawn... like you said, it's tightly organized and has easy flow.

The thing about the flow is easy to solve, you just need to rearrange the elements a bit. The things is, the map, title & legend, which I would call the "primary elements" should be the first priority, the secondary elements of the map should be 2nd priority - first put the map & title in optimal positions, then arrange the secondary elements as possible, and if you can't find room for all of them, then you don't need all of them.

I like the flow of the angled inset. The bear is fine up in the top left, but if it's not there I don't think it takes anything away either. If there's nothing up there then there's nothing up there. I don't see the point in adding superfluous items simply to fill white space. I do see the point in arranging key map elements to maximize the white space that is there, which you have done very well.

I think with your nicely done background design the top left space will look just fine whether it be bare or bear.

[bigimg]http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/3618/californiauploadw.jpg[/bigimg]
[bigimg]http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/1262/californiasmallupload.jpg[/bigimg]

Sorry for the long delay.
With a little text resizing the bear found his old home under the cities legend. I'm satisfied with the changes, & the whole Bay area inset is now visible.

The slanted inset just doesn't look right.

I would strongly recommend exploring other options.

i think it looked fine before. either way it won't look uniform, and at least with old one it wasn't so smooshed together.

Look, every time I make a change to please one person, another person becomes upset. Enough people complained about the overlapping inset so I changed it. No matter what I do, it is not going to please everyone, so I think it's best we just move on. This means I'm going to need a new version of the XML with updated coordinates. So Victor I'll be needing that from ya. I know you already submitted the old one but, I guess it's obsolete now.