Maps for MWIF

[Glen Felzien]

Unfortunately these are small samples but I lke the "halo"or beach like effect. My only concern would be that given a full map, this effect may be overwhelming. When you look at all of the UK, does this effect look good?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Glen Felzien

Unfortunately these are small samples but I lke the "halo"or beach like effect. My only concern would be that given a full map, this effect may be overwhelming. When you look at all of the UK, does this effect look good?

Putting all the pieces together is what I have been striving for for the past 3 days. I am pretty close to getting that finished and should have something I can show tomorrow. I think the 'beaches' will be a subtle effect - if not, well nothing ventured, nothing gained.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Once again software has been beaten into submission - but it is still making growling sounds over in the corner.

This is the result of the design for the detailed map I worked out in September. I didn't get the graphics for the British Isles from the artist until December 20th or so but I made my self-imposed deadline of incorporating them into the game before the new year. This is all automated now. The artist does a detailed bitmap of the coastline (taken directly from the ADG WIF FE European maps), runs a processing program I wrote to overlay the terrain bitmaps, and then MWIF proper incorporates the results into the detailed game map. The screen refresh for this map is the same as for the CWIF map.

There still is a lot to fix here. All the icons are still the old size (small). There are two hexes that should be coastlines, but the CWIF data I'm still using has them wrong (I'll correct the CSV data file next to fix that). The rivers have to be transformed into an overlay that looks as good as the coastlines. Some of the city icons are floating in the sea (Belfast). The rail lines have to be added at the new scale. The names have to be repositioned so they do not overlap each other (I changed the font for all map labels so it is easier to read but that loused up the non-overlapping positions). Give me another 10 minutes and I'll find more stuff wrong.

But, despite the blemishes, I like it. I hope you do too.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Here is a close up of England and Wales. The first screen shot was at zoom level 4 (100%). This one is at zoom level 6 (150%). The range is from 1 (25%) to 8 (200%).



I'll show you some more tomorrow with units. It's after 1 AM right now and I have been working on this since 6 AM this morning. Hard to see things on the screen.

[c92nichj]

Looks absolutely beautiful!

[Froonp]

This is great !!!!
[X(] [:D]
It is even (except for the mountains graphics) better than the paper map !!!! Congratulations !
When the cities, rivers & railines will be finished, and cities placed on the right place in the hex, it will be astonishing, great !

Just make it more clear that passage between Sheffield & Hull is forbidden [:-]. It's an all sea hexside between them, and it doesn't really show here.

Cheers !

Patrice

[Froonp]

I especialy like the way the blue of the sea close to the shores goes toward a deeper blue that is close to, but not the same as the blue of the open sea (hexdots).
When you'll have time, could you also show us how the sea boxes are looking ?

Ah, also, maybe you can do something so that the sea area boundaries extend into the coast hexes when needed (here, in the hex with the island west of Liverpool).

Frankly, it seems so beautiful that it is hard to believe you'll make the whole map this way.

Best Regards, and thank you for that.

[stretch]

I really likt it too, very nice.

ORIGINAL: Froonp

could you also show us how the sea boxes are looking ?

I'd like to see them as well. Adding the sea boxes fixes my number one gripe with CWiF... units at sea felt lost since they were not visible on the map and only in the window below the map. That's a huge fix.

[Glen Felzien]

2) leave it in and do the thresholding modification I have used in these pictures, which gives the little beach-like effect along the shoreline.

Steve, super job. I would definately stick with this one. It really does add some artistic flare to some already super terrain graphics and it really is good to see such a complimentery transition from land to sea that is not jarring to the eye.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Froonp
Ah, also, maybe you can do something so that the sea area boundaries extend into the coast hexes when needed (here, in the hex with the island west of Liverpool).
Best Regards, and thank you for that.

I am glad you-all like the new coastlines.

I am still using CWIF's code - untouched - for the the sea boundaries. I haven't really looked at this code.

I don't think I can duplicate the lovely sea area boundaries on the paper map becasue they would each have to be entered by hand, and zooming them allowed for too.

However, I should be able to find a logical way to make it clear which sea areas connect to which coastal hexes. By the way, when you pass the cursor over a coastal hex, it displays a list of sea areas it is next too. That is how CWIF handled any ambiguity.

[stretch]

Wow imagine how long we could discuss where sea area boundaries should be placed. Better not open that can of worms right now.

I would like to throw in my 2 cents here and say that I compared your terrain side by side with CWiF and I much prefer yours.

I know the rivers still are to be transformed. Will the color stay the same? To me it seems that when presented with a full map they might be a little hard to see, especially when zoomed out. They don't stand out as well against the terrain next to it as they used to, IMHO.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: stretch

Wow imagine how long we could discuss where sea area boundaries should be placed. Better not open that can of worms right now.

I would like to throw in my 2 cents here and say that I compared your terrain side by side with CWiF and I much prefer yours.

I know the rivers still are to be transformed. Will the color stay the same? To me it seems that when presented with a full map they might be a little hard to see, especially when zoomed out. They don't stand out as well against the terrain next to it as they used to, IMHO.

The rivers you see on the map are not what we'll use in the long run. I have somehow messed up the colors CWIF used so the rivers and coastlines appear to be using the same color. That doesn't matter though.

The artist's first attempt was to color the rivers the same as from the exterior of the rivers used in WIF FE. That was too dark for my taste. He next tried the color from the interior of the rivers (they are two toned in WIF FE). That might be too light. It is easy to adjust as we go along. MWIF will have a monotone color to the rivers (unless I go off the deep end and try to figure out how to outline them - not very likely).

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Here is the same scrren shot I posted earlier but with many corrections made:

1 - Lighten hexagon outlines; the coastal hex outlines match the all sea area colors so they pretty much disappear there.

2 - Added the 2 coastal hexes that were missing (1 in Ireland, 1 in Scotland.

3 - Enlarged the icons for cities, ports, factories, and resources.

4 - Repositioned the items in 3 to match where CWIF placed them.

5 - Removed some cap coloring that CWIF used for coastal hex borders.

Created a new glitch in Ireland and Scotland for the hexes added in 2. It looks like it might be related to sea area boundaries. Slow it goes.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Here is a picture showing the flags in the hexes the Commonwealth controls. I haven't made any attempt to improve on what CWIF used here. I have simply taken all the icons and flags and doubled their size.

As you can see, the flags can be pretty overwhelming. CWIF used a lot of primary colors for the icons (Chris was working in 8 bit color) and that makes the icons quite forceful on the screen.

I have also shown the rail lines from CWIF. I need to replace them completely making them thicker and shortening the ones that head off into the sea so blissfully. Blub.

All the icons pictures will be reviewed and almost certainly replaced. We don't want to create new icons, just transform how they are rendered on the screen more in keeping with MWIF's evolving color palette. I do want the resource icons more visible - I never liked the ones in WIF FE maps.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

The last in this 3 screenshot series. The first was at level 4 zoom. The second at level 6, and this is at the maximum - level 8.

I have added the map labels for this screen shot. On the advice of Rob Armstrong (who is doing the graphics) I changed the font. This font has more spacing between the letters which makes it a lot easier to read. It comes across as shorter and wider than Arial.

However, that has loused up all the positioning that had been done for map labels. Essentially, each map label is individually placed to avoid overlaps with icons and other labels. I am sure it took a lot of time. I am going to learn how long it took, because I have to redo them all.

But first I want to reposition the symbols for ports, cities, resources, and factories. CWIF used fixed positions for each: cities in the middle, ports in the upper right, resources upper left, and factories lower left. This had the advantage of making the railroad lines never cross an icon (see the previous screen shot). However, I want the cities to be on land (Belfast is afloat in the previous screen shot).

To accomplish this I will give each icon a designated position between 0 and 24. 0 indicates the center of the hex. 1 - 12 are halfway from the center to the edge of the hexagon in the direction towards the positions 1 o'clock - 12 o'clock, 13 - 24 are 2/3rds of the way from the center to the clock positions.

My current plan is to:

1 - Place the icon in the center of the hex if it is the only icon in the hex. This means I do not have to enter any data for the vast majority of the icons. They will just have a blank (zero) value.

2 - Violate rule #1, if that places a non-port icon in the ocean.

3 - Violate rule #1, and place ports at the intersection of the land and sea. For example, Portsmouth will be at position 18, 2/3rds of the way towards 6 o'clock. That should place it a little below the 1st O in the label Portsmouth. Pembroke will be at position 6. Holyhead and Harwich at position 9.

4 - When there is more than 1 icon in the hex, try to achieve the same results that rules #2 and #3 are aiming for.

What is especially important here is that every thing be arranged as much in advance as possible for when I put in the railroads. The flexible positioning design for the icons will let me shove them around easily to minimize obscuring them with railroads.

Lastly will come adding the map labels/names.

Oh, there are rivers too, but they will go whereever they want to. Rivers are like that.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

I meant to mention that the underlying terrain is going to have to be reviewed after we get everyting else in place. I find the clear terrain too monotonous when there are broad swatches of it. I have also looked at the area around the Caspian sea where a lot of swamp and clear are juxtaposed and it is hard to distinguish the one from the other. The swamp definitely has to become more distinctive. And adding some gray to the mountains will be investigated too. This is an iterative process.

Posting screen shots doesn't get code written. On the other hand, working in isolation has some serious dangers about heading off in the wrong direction and wasting hundreds of hours of effort meaninglessly. There actually is a solid productivity gain in posting all these screen shots.

[stretch]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

There actually is a solid productivity gain in posting all these screen shots.

not to mention I (we) love seeing them, and then I can post back how much I love the maps and shower you with compliments.

Then, I can say something kinda silly which will make your head explode, like "don't forget to make the hexside south of Hull clearly impassable like Froonp commented the other day".

And then I duck and run for cover. [:)]

But seriously, I love the way these look and IMHO they are going to be a vast improvement on CWiF. The CWiF map always makes me jump a little when I open a game and see it. Yours on the other hand are smooth and mellowing and pleasing, which it needs to be considering how long we're all going to be looking at it.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: stretch
Then, I can say something kinda silly which will make your head explode, like "don't forget to make the hexside south of Hull clearly impassable like Froonp commented the other day".

Danke schoen.

I will have the artist revise the map between Sheffield and Hull so it is clear. Leed's hex is not a coastal hex though, so it is a little tricky to render.

Are their other hexes like this? I seem to recall reading a list of them somehwere once upon a time. I can have the artist make them clearer than the paper maps.

No substantitive changes though - just improved clarity.

[Glen Felzien]

I find the clear terrain too monotonous when there are broad swatches of it.

Before making any changes, may I suggest having the finalized rivers in place. I think they will go a long way to breaking up the clear swaths. Regarding the mountains, what bothered me most about the brain terrain of the paper map was the shades of grey used. Very jarring to my eye. May have been better if it used shades of brown instead? Same textures different colour shades maybe.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Glen Felzien

I find the clear terrain too monotonous when there are broad swatches of it.

Before making any changes, may I suggest having the finalized rivers in place. I think they will go a long way to breaking up the clear swaths. Regarding the mountains, what bothered me most about the brain terrain of the paper map was the shades of grey used. Very jarring to my eye. May have been better if it used shades of brown instead? Same textures different colour shades maybe.

I would like to have 6, maybe more, clear terrain hex templates all taken from the same cloth (so to speak) so the pattern isn't identical in every clear terrain hex. I agree that England will look better with the rivers done more artistically, but the Ukraine has an awful lot of clear terrain unbroken by any other features.

Yeah, there is something about the mountains that doesn't look very "mountain like". And I don't think it is the color alone. Adding stripe-like ripples in brown doesn't appeal to me though (CWIF did that, with mediocre results at best).