Matrix Games Forums

European map has arrived!

The Maginot line needs work

The Baltic from Riga to Leningrad.

I just got the bitmaps. I have to place all the icons and names correctly.

Italy. Naples is wrong but that's just data and easy to fix. I have to go over every hex in detail to see if there are any others.

The Kerch straits in level 8 zoom (maximum). I just realized that is a 3 resource point hex inthe Ukraine.

The registration needs a bit of a touch up here, moving everything west (or the hexgrid east). For example, Evpatoria should have land to its west. Currently it is all wet.

Last in the series. This is at level 2 zoom (50% for you CWIF types). The screen actually shows more hexes but I had to trim this a bit to get it under the 200KB limit for uploaded files.

Hard to say how great I feel this is !!!!!

As for the remarks :

- The desert mountains are not dark enough
- The white on the coasts is not good looking for me.
- The Names of the Sea Areas are not appearing. They should be followed with the name of the country who own the islands in that sea area if no text is written.
- No need for the (Gr) text to tell the player that the islands in the Aegian Sea (East Med) are Greek.
- Have you thought about having the coastlines being outlined with the same blue line as the WiF FE maps ? I don't know if it would make the maps more beautiful, just asking.


As for the possible errors :

- Jaffa (Palestine) should be the name of the minor port in the hex, and Tel-Aviv is the city in the hex.
- There is a lake hexside betwenn Amman (Jordan) & Jerusalem (Palestine).
- There seem to be some right shif in the graphic from the hexgrid : There should be some clear terrain southwest of Smyma (Turkey). It shows also west of Nikolayev. Post 285 shows the right shift even more even more clearly, but maybe this is what you are talking about in post 285.
- Bari coastline seems unfinished too.


As for the queries :

- Please allow the player to add names in the hex he wants through the CSV file, because I'd love to write the name of the city I live in on my MWiF game's map (and I'd love to add names for some islands who are not named on the map, you know, I love maps & geography).

Anyway, wow, what a marvel you did !!!

Can't wait for the planes & ships graphics on the counters now !!! and for the 3D effect on the counters too [:D] [;)]

Patrice

On my map there is no city in the Jaffa hex, just the minor port. Tel-Aviv definitelly should not appear on any WiF map (if it existed at all it was certainly smaller then Jaffa at the time).

The map looks great so far, though I do agree on the desert mountains being slightly too pale (too close to desert).

Looking killer! I wonder if you can come up with better fort symbols for the Maginot line? They look a bit underwhelming compared to the rest of the map.

On my map there is no city in the Jaffa hex, just the minor port. Tel-Aviv definitelly should not appear on any WiF map

There were 3 printings of the WiF FE maps.
The 1996 printing, without Tel-Aviv
The 2000 printing, with Tel-Aviv, printed for PatiF, but made standard for WiF FE games sold by ADG from then on.
The 2004 printing, with Tel-Aviv, standard for WiF FE games sold by ADG from then on.
(I have a precise list of which features appeared on every maps and could pass it to you if you want)

Harry advised playing WiF FE with the new maps with the new cities (obviously not as capitals when there is another), with the new partisans number (which I believe CWiF also using), ignoring the new countries whose borders were drawn with a pink line instead of a red and a grey name (Pakistan, North / South Korea, East / West Germany, Israel...).

(if it existed at all it was certainly smaller then Jaffa at the time).

That I don't know, but I believe that city will be deletable for those who do not want it.

The terrian tiles look terrific! Super job. Certainly the desert mountain tiles could be darker but frankly I think that is very subjective because I feel they still get the message across to the player. Looking forward to see the hex grid set, all the various icons set correctly, the rail lines and of course the rivers! [:D]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

On my map there is no city in the Jaffa hex, just the minor port. Tel-Aviv definitelly should not appear on any WiF map

There were 3 printings of the WiF FE maps.
The 1996 printing, without Tel-Aviv
The 2000 printing, with Tel-Aviv, printed for PatiF, but made standard for WiF FE games sold by ADG from then on.
The 2004 printing, with Tel-Aviv, standard for WiF FE games sold by ADG from then on.
(I have a precise list of which features appeared on every maps and could pass it to you if you want)

Harry advised playing WiF FE with the new maps with the new cities (obviously not as capitals when there is another), with the new partisans number (which I believe CWiF also using), ignoring the new countries whose borders were drawn with a pink line instead of a red and a grey name (Pakistan, North / South Korea, East / West Germany, Israel...).

(if it existed at all it was certainly smaller then Jaffa at the time).

That I don't know, but I believe that city will be deletable for those who do not want it.

Harry was undoubtedly addressng the fact that WIF has one map for all the different add-ons. North and South Korea et al show that clearly. MWIF does not have that difficulty. It can add and delete cities and politcal boundaries at will.

Case in point, I somehow removed almost all the 'subcountries' as such from the map back in August when I first extracted the raw data from CWIF and placed it into CSV files. I discovered that fact this past week and spent some time yesterday putting the Polish Corridor, Sudetenland, Rhineland and the like back into the CSV files. Now, those have no effect on game play in MWIF product 1 but I believe they are vital for Days of Decision III. I like to keep everything tidy anyway.

But it got me thinking, should those area deliniations and labels appear when playing one of the 11 scenarios in the basic game of WIF? They add historical detail but in some eyes that might just be clutter. Something to think about, but not vital to gameplay one way or the other.

The issue of which cities to include does affect game play. While the CSV files can be edited by the players and cities added or removed more or less as the player chooses (where's Berlin?), a standard/default should be established. Unless I miss my guess, whetever MWIF uses as the default will become the defacto standard. New players to the world of WIF are unlikely to edit the map files to make them match a WIF FE official version. My personal preference on this is to definitiely exclude anything that is post-August 1945 since that is the end of the standard global war scenario (the latest end date for any of the 11 scenarios in fact).

Looks nice indeed.

Things that need work:
-rivers (and canals) (especially area around Amsterdam).
-lake hexides
-mountain hexides!
-mountain hexes too dark ?
-swamp and forest hexes to similar
-resources in mountains could be more visible
-offsets between hexgrids and graphics (check baltic north of Riga!)

Wishlist:
-weatherized graphics, especially for Snow and Blizzard
-go through lists of hexes that have been clarified in WiF and make the maps clearer. Examples: Is hex SE of Bordeaux a coastal hex? Hamburg? Can you move between Odessa and Nikolayev in 2 moves or 3 ?
-There are many cases where it's almost impossible to tell if a hexide is all-sea. Adjust coastlines to make this clearer, or even better, use different coastal graphics for invadable and non-invadable coastline!

Oh, and:
-no rail lines
-Kiel canal needs work too (all canals?)
-city and factory graphics need work! Some cities (like sevastopol) are placed in the ocean. In general, hex layout could be better thought out in hexes with multiple game objects. Would it be possible to combine City and factory graphics?. The white boxes around factory stacks don't look to good!

ORIGINAL: Incy
Oh, and:
-no rail lines
-Kiel canal needs work too (all canals?)
-city and factory graphics need work! Some cities (like sevastopol) are placed in the ocean. In general, hex layout could be better thought out in hexes with multiple game objects. Would it be possible to combine City and factory graphics?. The white boxes around factory stacks don't look to good!

I posted the map as I recieved it - with no attempt to edit obvious mistakes.

I have a list of 30 or so hexes that should be coastal but CWIF didn't have them encoded that way (e.g. Naples). The lakes and rivers have yet to be placed on the map. I have their overlays so it is just a matter of writing the code to take the additional bitmaps and superimpose them on every thing else.

The CWIF version of canals can now be deleted. And the rivers too, once I get them drawn in.

I have the graphics guy working on redoing all the icons. He should be able to improve all of them (even the ones I played around with).

I am going to remove the "beach effect" completely.

Placement of icons and labels within hexes, individually - for each hex, has only been done for the British Isles. I can now do it for all of Europe.

Registration of the hexgrid is off for the eastern portion of the map. It starts drifting in Italy, doesn't start to matter until it gets to Greece, but it is very wrong by the time it gets to the Black Sea.

Your observations are very helpful. That I am aware of some of them already, doesn't matter. Additional sets of eyes reviewing the maps is an extremely good thing. I would be very distressed if the final MWIF maps have egregious errors.

Maps looks great!
Some comments.
+ Port of Turku (or Åbo as it is also called) is not a port in the map I have. The hex also looks a bit strange, maybe because of the stretching effect.
+ Swamp and forest looks a little bit to similiar especially when zommed out at 50%, but even at maximum zoom it is not obvious look at the hexes around Krasnodar.
+ The white line around the coast looks a bit strange.
+ As several other mentioned the icons needs work.
+ Why are the borders around some hexes Black and around some other Blue?

ORIGINAL: c92nichj

Maps looks great!
Some comments.
+ Port of Turku (or Åbo as it is also called) is not a port in the map I have. The hex also looks a bit strange, maybe because of the stretching effect.
+ Swamp and forest looks a little bit to similiar especially when zommed out at 50%, but even at maximum zoom it is not obvious look at the hexes around Krasnodar.
+ The white line around the coast looks a bit strange.
+ As several other mentioned the icons needs work.
+ Why are the borders around some hexes Black and around some other Blue?

To answer your direct question. I have given the coastal hexes a blue border that matches the sea area color. It makes the hex border disappear from view between the blue of all sea hexes and the blue of coastal hexes. When I used in everywhere, I didn't like the effect inland. What I did instead was to change the inland hex border color from black to gray. It makes it less forceful visually. So yes, there are two different colors being used for the hex grid.

Port of Turku (or Åbo as it is also called) is not a port in the map I have.

Right. It's on no WiF FE maps.
There is also a city north of Turku (Finland), called Tampere, who should not be on the map.
Also, what is this red line north of Hango (Finland).
Also, the hex east of the Finnish island called Alan should have a shore in it, and the hexwest of Turku should have a shore too.

Currently a blue-sided hex "overrides" a blacksided hex, so the shared hexide is always blue. Since hexides shared between non-coastal and coastal hexes are always all-land, I think it would look better if black overrides blue instead.

btw, the blue/black hexide trick is a very nice way to show if an hexide is coastal !!
How about a third color for all-sea hexides, so it can be seen at a glance what hexes are invadable?

Incy