All 27 Red Storm maps re-done, in summer and winter colors

[CapnDarwin]

Thanks Eddie, missed that. [8|]

[jds1978]

Nice Job! Hat tip to OP[:)]

These are now my 'go to' default map settings

[Sabre21]

Nicely done. I like the looks of the grid lines, gives them a militaristic look to them. One thing I would say is that I think you over did the small individual type trees.

The thing I noticed about living over there was that there were 3 types of terrain. Built up area, heavy wooded areas, and farmers fields.

I attached a pic I took over an area that was referred to as "Little Switzerland" due to its hilly terrain. This was in Bavaria and if I can find more I will post them. Note that where there are steep inclines or hills, there are trees, and outside of towns and denser forests there are farmer fields with few if any individual trees.

The Germans farm every bit of land possible. There are very few trees outside of the towns and forests. By the way, the majority of forests in between towns are replants with very little undergrowth. The larger forests like the Black or Heurtgen Forests as well as the bigger mountain regions are still mostly natural. It's weird walking into one of their smaller forests and see all the tress "dress right dress" and no undergrowth.

[WildCatNL]

Another update of all maps, smoothing the river banks (not the stream banks), the hill sides and roads. This side-by-side comparison shows the change (for an area of the Red Storm 9 map). It's subtle but makes the maps easier to read.



See first post in this thread for download links. Enjoy!

William

[WildCatNL]

ORIGINAL: Sabre21
[...] One thing I would say is that I think you over did the small individual type trees.

The thing I noticed about living over there was that there were 3 types of terrain. Built up area, heavy wooded areas, and farmers fields.

I attached a pic I took over an area that was referred to as "Little Switzerland" due to its hilly terrain. This was in Bavaria and if I can find more I will post them. Note that where there are steep inclines or hills, there are trees, and outside of towns and denser forests there are farmer fields with few if any individual trees.

The Germans farm every bit of land possible. There are very few trees outside of the towns and forests. [...]

Great comment. I'm also not happy with the randomly placed individual trees. However, I was less happy with the empty "clear" aka "mixed" hexes, whose look didn't match their meaning the game: these empty "mixed" hexes are harder to see through (4 hindrance vs 2), and to move through (5 hindrance vs 3) than fields. It didn't feel right to put arty units or HQ units in empty "mixed" hexes instead of "fields" hexes, although this is the right thing to do.

Now the roads are positioned right (see post above), I like to try filling the "mixed" hexes in a more appropriate way. For "mixed" hexes containing roads (and most of them do), lining up these roads with trees and the occasional building probably looks better (as in the bottom of your Bavaria photo).
For other types of "mixed" hexes on hills, putting in small clumps of trees might be an improvement.
I'm not sure what to do with the remaining mixed hexes (probably representing breweries, landfills, power stations, automotive test tracks - I can check on Google maps),

William
p.s. Sabre21, thanks for your contributions to this forum. Your posts have added greatly to my understanding of helicopter tactics, and to me enjoying the game!

[Emx77]

W1ll14m, you did excellent job. I find your maps more informative and better looking than stock maps. However, I have two questions/suggestions:

1. Can you provide non-blurred version of your maps? IMO, non-blurred version would be more aesthetically appealing.
2. Why have you used darker shade for lower elevations? It's kind of unusual. On most maps, higher ground is represented by darker shade and valleys by light green. Is it possible to revert this shading?

[Mad Russian]

I had more terrain on my maps but was told they looked too busy. So, I cut some terrain back out of them.

Good Hunting.

MR

[WildCatNL]

ORIGINAL: Emir Agic
1. Can you provide non-blurred version of your maps? IMO, non-blurred version would be more aesthetically appealing.
2. Why have you used darker shade for lower elevations? It's kind of unusual. On most maps, higher ground is represented by darker shade and valleys by light green. Is it possible to revert this shading?

Hi Emir. I guess we have different ideas about elevation coding. But yes, I can do light to dark maps, and yes, I could disable blurring.
You'll find an example below. Since darker-is-higher doesn't click for me, please let me know what works best for you:
- inverted elevation colors (and some tweaks to tree shade colors), on the left side
- Plodder-inspired color palette, on the right side, also without trees in the "mixed" terrain cells. Obviously not as nice as Plodder's handcrafted maps, but the elevation of forests hexes should be easier to read.
The inset in the bottom left corner shows the stairstep jaggies that result from not blurring.

William

[CapnDarwin]

I like those new elevation colors.

[Plodder]

ORIGINAL: Capn Darwin

I like those new elevation colors.

+1. Those new colours look great. The trees still need a bit of work. I have a bunch of top-down tree pictures in png format that I use to make my maps with. They are all of single trees so if you want them for your program let me know, and I'll post them here for you.

[wodin]

I too like the new colours..maybe tone down the tree colour and add some different shades

[jds1978]

New colors are fantastic.....I'm with W1ll14m on the elevation colors. Lighter = Higher in elevation seems normal for my brain

[TAKODA]

W1ll14m, thank you for sharing your maps they are great. I was wondering if it would be possible to use the same tree pictures as the ones used in the 'Flashpoint Germany' maps?

[Emx77]

W1ll14m, as majority here, I also think new elevation colors are better. Also, I prefer your original color palette to Plodder-inspired palette (although, river color looks better on Plodder map). Stairstep jaggies are tolerable.

[WildCatNL]

I've added a set of 27 'Summer inverted' maps that use lighter-is-higher elevation colors. I still struggle grasping them, but they look pretty with the darker green of the hills matching the forest.
In addition, tweaks to the Summer elevation colors (now all deriving from green), more detailed trees (highlights and shades), and a map scale in the bottom left corner. The image below shows the changes.

The first post has the download link for the maps.

Have a good fight!
William

[jds1978]

These keep getting better and better

Any way you could make the version in your 3/21/2014 post available? I really want the olive green style map (perhaps easier on my eyes) with your original elevation codes (lighter = higher in elevation)

Thanks in advance

[z1812]

Great Maps! Do you think you may release a set with the lower saturated look on the right picture of your post # 48?

[WildCatNL]

jds1978, z1812: I would offer a set of maps with these elevation colors if I had the web space for them. A theme map pack is another 200MB, and bound to grow once Mad Russian or the community create more maps. But I don't have that space.
When Matrix Games starts hosting mods / scenarios, I'll happily upload all map themes to their web space. Until then, I'm not going to bother with annoying file hosters, or creating another personal Dropbox / Google Drive / Skydrive account to host the files.

The other thing that would help would be the game accepting .jpg maps, which (in my case) are about 60% smaller than (optimized for size) .pngs.

[jds1978]

No problem. Thanks for the reply and your work so far[8D]

[pekische]

I would be interested in maps from post 48 also