New official look of maps - in the future?

[CapnDarwin]

ewikie, no way to do that with a fixed image file. The elevation overlay function gives you that info numerically.

[jenrick]

Having grown up in the age of table top wargaming, I find the maps perfectly functional for what they are. If I have a choice between "prettier" maps of the battle space and new features/theaters/etc. The later wins everytime with me.

-Jenrick

[MikeAP]

I dislike the maps because I can't tell the difference in elevations, which leads to poor intelligence prep of the battlefield, which then results in losing battles.

I'll never understand the ideology of wargamers, which is why I will never consider myself one.

These are the same guys who are still running rigs using Windows XP from earlier in the millennium, that refuse to upgrade.

I wake up every day and ask myself how I can be better, and how can I improve myself. I don't ask myself "how can I be slightly less crappy than yesterday?". I feel bad for anyone that does so.

Just because the game looks better than an early 1990s PC wargame, or a 1980s board game doesn't mean it's acceptable.

I appreciate the hard work by the devs, but this is probably something that should've been tasked to an artist.

Functionality doesn't mean a thing if the basics aren't in place.

[jenrick]

I dislike the maps because I can't tell the difference in elevations, which leads to poor intelligence prep of the battlefield, which then results in losing battles.

As mentioned previously take a look just below the map on the status line above the battle log/sub unit viewer. It will tell you the elevation, cover, and movement modifier for any hex you mouse over.

-Jenrick

[jack54]

Okay...I'm in favor of 'wishlist' priority. Taking programming time away for nicer maps seems like a lot to give up. The thought of this game with varying route and waypoint orders is awesome. A wish list is posted elsewhere on the forum; if half of these are implemented this game will really be something special.
Just my opinion, gameplay first! New maps would be nice but these map are fine and there are modders...

[Tazak]

Making maps pretty should be low on the list of priorities IMO, as jack54 notes the current set of maps are fine and there are a number of modders showing what their capable of doing in terms of 'improving' the current maps.

I see 3 aspects that will help grow this game, improvements and new features in game play, a greater number of maps, a greater number of scenarios and campaigns. What I'd like to see is us the community pulling together to help make this game great, we can do that by working on maps and scenarios/campaigns thus leaving the dev team to focus on game play features and improvements.
What I think we're short of at the moment is people producing new maps, which is leading to a shortage of new scenarios and campaigns (I've got 4 scenarios and 1 campaign in the works but I am graphically challenged so making fresh maps is my blocker)

[CapnDarwin]

Tazak, we hope to remove a majority of the blockage with the mod guides and the map making template files with 2.03 early next week (barring any more disasters). This will help with making our "ugly but functional maps" easier and I'm sure the more graphically inclined can improve the basic graphics at the cost of losing the auto-values function of the Map Values editor in game.

@ Mike and others: I am at a loss on comments on elevations. The greens are distinct and MR did a great job of leaving elevation lines in the trees and failing that there are 3 places to get elevation info and a LOS overlay. Maybe it's a bit easier if there is 3d shading but in our case we did not have the time to deal with the additional headache of getting the auto-mapping to work with that function. Sadly having the best artist in the world wouldn't have got us 30 maps in the time we had. As stated earlier you can have a few pretty maps or a lot of functional maps. We do offer modding at almost every level of this system.

We did talk about maps briefly last night while dealing with this one stubborn bug holding up 2.03 and we will have a more constructive talk after 2.03 leaves the nest. So help me out on this. What specifically helps you see the elevations on a 2d map? Lets get a list going so we can use these as talking points in our Dev call on which direction we take on maps and future game content.

Thanks guys!

[budd]

My $0.02, i find the maps perfectly functional and i'd rather they spend the time improving the game [i'm looking at editable waypoints here, first and foremost] and doing other content. If there's a way to make things easier for the modders i'm all for that as the maps are just awesome. as i'm a WW2 guy i cant wait for that stuff to come out and see how the system plays out with WW2 goodies.

[cbelva]

ORIGINAL: **budd**

[i'm looking at editable waypoints here, first and foremost]

That has been high on my wish list since my first involvement with this project. I have campaigned repeatedly for this issue and a few others. However, even as one on the development team, getting the game playable and functional has taken priority over our own wants.

Hopefully, we will eventually see this feature. Adding new features takes time. Ever time you make a small change it can effect another area in the game. That is why it takes time just to make small improvement. We have to make sure we are not breaking others parts of the game. Rob quit adding new features several weeks ago. For the past several weeks we have been chasing down the bugs that the improvements in 2.03 has caused. Chasing the bugs have been the cause of the delay. We didn't realize it would take this long. But hopefully as Capn D mentioned we are almost at the end of it.

On the bright side, Rob has a pretty good list going for what he wants to do for 2.04.

[budd]

don't suppose we could get a peek at that list for 2.04[:)]

is 2.03 all about pbem? or are there other things in that patch.

[CapnDarwin]

The preliminary 2.03 update list is in the top area and I will be updating it more tonight with explanations of game play changes. 2.04 will be focused on Sudden Death and Fog of War improvements and any post 03 issues.

[budd]

thank you sir for the reply.

[budd]

read the list, impressive, could you explain this one a little more

" Newly created maps that have a different aspect ratio than the FPRS standard maps are better supported by the game user interface."

is this all the game maps?
does this mean that the modded maps we have installed now won't work?

[cbelva]

ORIGINAL: **budd**

read the list, impressive, could you explain this one a little more

" Newly created maps that have a different aspect ratio than the FPRS standard maps are better supported by the game user interface."

is this all the game maps?
does this mean that the modded maps we have installed now won't work?

I believe that this is referring to the thumbnail map in the lower left hand corner. We had been having trouble getting non-standard size maps fit properly. They should fit now.

[CapnDarwin]

Charles is correct. With certain maps and certain monitors the mini-map was causing a rollup of tabs in the BIC. I'm posting an updated 2.03 list shortly too.

[Sabre21]

How hard would it be to utilize actual military style topographic maps to depict elevation using contour lines? The sample below does not have the grid system overlaid on it.

[HeinzHarald]

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

For me, that's acceptable. After a very short time of playing the game the map elevations became second nature to me.

I think this is key. To me the main purpose of a map shouldn't be eye candy but conveying important information as best as possible. The current maps do this well when elevation becomes second nature, but not as well until then.

At least to me elevation was a bit of a treshold as a new player. It was almost like learning a few words and some grammar of a foreign language. Dealing with it became much easier when I actively tried to cram the information into my brain rather than sucking it in through osmosis while playing.

It was not so much about memorizing the individual numbers as the differences between colors so I didn't have to do calculations. This made it much easier to take in the whole picture of the maps.

[CapnDarwin]

I guess I can let this cat out of the bag with the hopefully soon release of Mod Guide 1 on Maps. We are talking about doing some minor 3d tweaks to the maps based on some recent work we have done. It's nothing earth shattering, but the map does gain a bit of easier to see 3d pop without losing the simple and functional look they have. I have no ETA what so ever on this and we are still talking about it in house and need to make sure this is worth the additional time at this point or better for a go forward effort and back tracking when we can. So let us know what you think.

[JohnOs]

Well, I like it.

[CapnDarwin]

Sabre21, check here on what a few folks are doing. tm.asp?m=3527541