Matrix Games Forums

Wow! Those maps arequite amazing. I spent a couple of years in Wurzburg in the army back in the early 70s. Those maps really give you the feeling of being there.

@dbt1949: Thanks for that little Christmas present . Any ideas for your favourite site for a map?

We were always told they were coming from and were always playing "real" wargames in the Fulda Gap.So that is of course the area that interests me. That and Nurnburg.

The maps do look pretty good, though I agree that the checkerboard fields are perhaps a little too perfect and that the yellow should be a little browner/tanner.

I am going to be a spoil sport with regard to the towns. In my opinion, I see too much vegetation in the towns, and the towns are not dense enough. German towns don't have tree-lined roads. The buildings are built right up to the road. There may be some trees in backyards but not many. The maps also consistently show what I would guess is a nice residential loop with houses, big yards and lots of trees. This is more appropriate for American towns, but I don't believe it captures Germany.

Save for the past decade or maybe two, German towns were primarily farming communities, and there were relatively few new houses built. The towns are dense with a well-defined perimeter or demarcation between the town and the surrounding fields. Land is/was too valuable to build long lazy residential loops and plop houses down on them. I did see an American-style subdivision being built in about 1990, but this is very rare and, because it was being built on former crop fields, there were no trees. More typically, new houses are built individually either within the existing boundaries of the town or on the edge, and they are built with the same small yards and packed in tight to the rest of the town.

Bottom line, I think a typical town would be largely circular with a tendency of bleeding out along the roads. They would be dense with buildings, light on trees, and the area immediately around the town would be largely devoid of trees since most of the land is either being actively farmed or was until recently. There may be some orchards or a tree line of small trees, but few "woods" adjacent to the town and very few American-style residential streets with big yards and large trees.

Just my opinion.

As long as we're talking about asthetics (sp), I'm still hoping for something other than the "cardboard counters" for units.....Perhaps a "top down view" of an appropriate vehicle or something like that?

Originally posted by Swamp_Yankee
As long as we're talking about asthetics (sp), I'm still hoping for something other than the "cardboard counters" for units.....Perhaps a "top down view" of an appropriate vehicle or something like that?

Yes, I keep thinking about that too... We have either a 28 x 28 pixel unit counter or a 40 x 40 counter to work with depending on the map zoom level. We can basically put anything on it that we want as long as it draws instantly. I went with WW2 standard because that is the most widely known visual representation, and I want this (or more accurately, was told to make this) accessible to as wide an audience as I could.

So what we have now is a size identifier (I for company, *** for platoon), WW2 graphic to show branch of service (inf, tank, arty, etc), a number representing the number of steps (typically vehicles) and another number representing mobility (typically best current speed in kph divided by some number to give a range of 1 to 9. On the larger size icons there is a historical designation running sideways in the upper right. Big yawn.

There is a lot of other info that we are also interested in so if you hit Ctrl-I you can change these captions to something else. There is a rotating progression of steps / morale / training / fatigue / ammo / current orders / # of enemy units sighted / posture / and time until next report. You just keep tapping Ctrl-I until you have seen them all or are where you want to keep it for a while. Better, but....

To the right of the map is a panel that highlights the unit that has been currently selected. The screen area is about 108 w x 85 high. It contains the unit name in full, the detailed subunit list (14 x M1A1, etc), strength, ammo, fatigue and morale indicators (words, not numbers) and a nice fat graphic. We had been planning to put a vehicle silhouette there. This works great if the unit is actually composed primarily of just one vehicle type but begins to fall down a little if there is a mix of types. Mixes can happen a lot at the company level on our side of the fence, and even sometimes on the other side. Using a silhouette then makes it look like we are just talking individual vehicles and not the grand conglomerations that are full fledged line companies. I want to stick in something that conveys more the 'company' flavor.

Marc S is doubtless chewing over this art issue in his mind and will come up with a killer solution. While I wait I was thinking of a series of overlapping silhouttes of the principal types together with an officers rank insignia (ie a captain's two bars or whatever). Maybe also a face of a soldier that personifies that person in charge so that when you are examining a unit you have the sensation of dealing with the person and not just the equipment. Or maybe I'm just visualizing how it was done in another game.

The existing unit description panel might not be large enough for all this but I can make it a little bigger if needed. What I can't do is figure out how to compress all this visual info into a unit icon of the size just mentioned. It plain won't fit!

That hasn't stopped me from trying things out though and I have a nice truck silhoutte that I can draw to an icon and it looks quite good. What I lack is the artistic ability to try and scale a T-80 to that same size. Assuming our art guys can help me out it would be a relative snap to add these as alternative counters to the mix. It might be pretty hard to tell them apart as this resolution though. The old AH game Panzerblitz had the best counters ever and I'd be happy to use that design but the lack of screen resolution really makes a mess of it.

Is this the kind of thing you were thinking of? You mentioned 'top down' view but I have an indelible association in my mind with single vehicle counters when doing that. Would you really want to see that for company / platoon fighting? Just trying to find out!

Cheers, Rob.

Originally posted by RobertCrandall

So what we have now is a size identifier (I for company, *** for platoon), WW2 graphic to show branch of service (inf, tank, arty, etc), a number representing the number of steps (typically vehicles) and another number representing mobility (typically best current speed in kph divided by some number to give a range of 1 to 9. On the larger size icons there is a historical designation running sideways in the upper right. Big yawn.

There is a lot of other info that we are also interested in so if you hit Ctrl-I you can change these captions to something else. There is a rotating progression of steps / morale / training / fatigue / ammo / current orders / # of enemy units sighted / posture / and time until next report. You just keep tapping Ctrl-I until you have seen them all or are where you want to keep it for a while. Better, but....

To the right of the map is a panel that highlights the unit that has been currently selected. The screen area is about 108 w x 85 high. It contains the unit name in full, the detailed subunit list (14 x M1A1, etc), strength, ammo, fatigue and morale indicators (words, not numbers) and a nice fat graphic. We had been planning to put a vehicle silhouette there. This works great if the unit is actually composed primarily of just one vehicle type but begins to fall down a little if there is a mix of types. Mixes can happen a lot at the company level on our side of the fence, and even sometimes on the other side. Using a silhouette then makes it look like we are just talking individual vehicles and not the grand conglomerations that are full fledged line companies. I want to stick in something that conveys more the 'company' flavor.

Is this the kind of thing you were thinking of? You mentioned 'top down' view but I have an indelible association in my mind with single vehicle counters when doing that. Would you really want to see that for company / platoon fighting? Just trying to find out!

Cheers, Rob.

- I edited the quote a bit to reflect the points I am speaking to. The "side bar" that is on the side of the map, as I've seen in screenshots is a good idea. Somewhat reminisent of the ones on Talonsoft's Campaign series. I think you could be able to set it up so that when you select on a unit up pos the sidebar, with a breakdown and even a small sillouette (sp - sorry) of the vehicles (and men) - elements - that comprise the unit selected. Even if you have the option of "scrolling" down that side bar, that would be better than you having to try to compress too much into the area. In the CS games, if there were a bunch of unit in the stack, you scrolled up and down, same principle in my idea. As for the counter itself, Let me make the statemnent up front, I don't know jack about the nuts and bolts, so I don't know if you can, but, for a mixed unit of say, Abrams and Bradleys, kind of a top down of both, side by side or perhaps canted or as a "scene" of them fighting together? I know the counters are small, it may not be possible... For Mech infantry, a few men in a foxhole with an APC dug in behind them, that sort of thing. It's all secondary to the gameplay, obviously, but one gets tired of the "cardboard counter" look, you know? If I had to prioritize, I'd say the sidebar that pops up is more important than the counter, If you look at some of Volcanoman's custom unit art on the Unofficial Panzer Campain page - http://members.shaw.ca/gcsaunders/downloads4_VM.html
It gives you an idea what can be done for the individual element art within the unit itself.

I hope this has been helpful, or at least not too confusing!