Giant World Map

[ernieschwitz]

For those of you who know me, it would come as no surprise that i have been working on something. And this time its a HUGE project. A Giant Map of the world, bigger than any map so far of the globe. This map is 393 x 184 hexes. A whopping 72k hexes.

My original plan was to have every of the 55 nations that are in GD 1938 to have a seperate regime, just like in that scenario... but... i ran into memory problems around 45 regimes.

I scrapped the plan for a while, but after speaking with bwheatley, i resumed the project, and made a neutral regime, for the less important regimes, and i have marked them with different numbers in areaslot 1. Currently 9 nations share the neutral regime. I also had to unify some regimes, still... so the country of BeNeLux now exists... (Belgium Netherlands Luxembourg) as one entity. And Denmark and Norway is now one country as well...

All those things are just minor.. .compared to the process of making the map itself.

My overlay only has borders, cities and rivers on it. So i have had to use my old dictionary from 1970s to determine landscapes, and such. Borders were alittle hard as well, since i decided to have the map start off as in the year 1938...

So far I´ve done Europe, and Africa. I expect I will begin with south america soon.

Most of the work with this map has been done while i bounced ideas off of bwheatley...

Here is a look at europe.

[Krafty]

Wow very nice work. Spain and the Basque area look fantastic, and Goteberg is nice to see.

[Josh]

Wow 72K hexes to conquer! [:D] 
I hope Vic reads this and maybe get this in AT PLatinum??

[ernieschwitz]

Oh i hope to get it done way before AT Platinum... If that title ever hits the shelves that is...

[ernieschwitz]

ORIGINAL: Kraftwerk

Wow very nice work. Spain and the Basque area look fantastic, and Goteberg is nice to see.

Just for you Kraftwerk, here is a closer look at Spain

[CSO_Talorgan]

It will be interesting to see how peoples' computers handle this.

[ernieschwitz]

I don´t think it is the biggest map ever. I think that the ETO map is in fact bigger... I should check, but it is up there in size with this one... I have a feeling as long as I keep to the plan i have, it should work out fine.

FYI, I am breaking two of the rules Vic set up as recommendations. Not over 20k Hexes, not over 10 regimes. Both have been broken before. In the current version of WaW i believe there is about 30 regimes, and in GD 1938 there is 55 regimes.

I think I am ok. But we will see... if not, I am going to have to go for more RAM

[LazyBoy]

Thats a very nice looking map

[Bombur]

I like this map, did you check how much RAM the game is eating? It seems to me that you could have the 55 regimes if you do all of them human controlled and create rules for them to join a certain regime when attacked by the major players. This is just a thought, however.

[ernieschwitz]

Yeah Bombur, I would wish it was so, but it runs into RAM constraints when saving and there are more than 30 regimes. So I have cut it down to around 27 regimes... and 3 of them are dummy regimes just called Neutrals. The others are:

The 8 Major regimes, that i suspect will be playable:
Germany, Italy, Japan, Soviet Union, France, Great Britain, United States and China.

The Minors, that i will make non-playable, but which are able to join each regime and declared war against are the following:
Denmark/Norway, Sweden, Finland, BeNeLux, Spain, Poland, The Baltic Countries, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey and Persia.

Here is a look at the Middle East btw.

[ernieschwitz]

The Neutrals are everything else.

They will be placed in the dummy regimes i made for neutral countires, and i will mark out the countries using these dummy regimes, as well as differently valued areaslots. For instance Ireland is areaslot 0, value 1. And if i wish someone to diplomatically take over Ireland, it is possible to do so, by joining areaslot 0, value 1, with that regime. Areaslot 0, value 2, is Albania, Areaslot 0, value 3 is Portugal and its colonies... and so on...

The only real problem with this way of making countries, is that you cannot declare war on them. Which is alittle annoying.

Using Areaslot values is cheaper "RAM Wise" than using regimes. It´s a method that BWheatley and I came up with, and which i have tested in a small test scenario i made.

Originally i planned for Brazil and Argentina to be seperate regimes. Now they will be different values in different neutral regimes. That way you can still see the borders, and take over the countries diplomatically, but not declare war on them....

[lion_of_judah]

nice map, looking forward to playing this!

[Krafty]

No port at Bandar Abbas in Persia? Was a fairly big port at the time, easily served as much tonnage as Abbadan. With the larger map, might be worth the addition.

[ernieschwitz]

Sure i could add it No problem... I expect there will be many different places i need to add once i have done my first draft...

So just keep coming with those suggestions.

[ernieschwitz]

After losing a bit of steam, and disparing over the large number of cities in India, i got kicked in the rear (by BWheatley) and i finished off the indian subcontinent.

So here it is, along with Bandar Abbas, in Persia, just on the map to the north and west.

[ernieschwitz]

And here is South Africa... well more like the most southern part of Africa.

[ernieschwitz]

And this is the East african area...

Err... i mean west africa of course...

[Jeffrey H.]

Looks a bit like West Africa.....

[Jeffrey H.]

Actually, this map with Bomburs GD mod could be very very fun.

[ernieschwitz]

ORIGINAL: Jeffrey H.

Looks a bit like West Africa.....

Of course you are right