Unit Depictions on Screen

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

Yes, I thought about placing the BB et al somewhere else, but I just like the "CV Coral Sea" and BB New Jersey". If you learn to say carrier when you see CV and battleship when you see BB, then these become "the carrier Coral Sea and the battleship New Jersey were engaged with the Japanese fleet ..." Separating the BB loses a little something. Perhaps I am being overly senstitive?

I agree with this.

Oooh, how about placing the BB above left (as you suggested) but only if the name is so long it wouldn't fit in front of the name? Two different styles for the same item (always incorrect for design work), but a possible compromise.

I don't like this.

I will have to abbreviate BB Mass. and BB B. H. Richard.

This is ultimately ugly [:(] (also, Bon Homme Richard is a CV)

Really, as amwild said it too, there is space verticaly, so why not give it a try ? You can anchor the middle of the text zone in a definite place in the counter (in place of anchoring the top of the text zone to a place), so that names that are on 1 line are not higher than names who are on 2 lines, so only some ships will be crowed wit their names.

It will only concern a handfull of ships (10 at most), but it will be sooooo pretty !!!!!

Parizhskaya Kommuna, Oktyabr'skaya Revolutsiya, Sovetskaya Belorussiya, Sovetskaya Ukraina, Schleswig-Holstein thats sooooo great !!!!

Maybe. Let me sleep on it - its midnight (again) and my ability to make intelligent decisions is fading rapidly.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

I have updated the placement of the unit names for the bombers. As part of that I set up a second name in the database (CSV file) for some of the units. If there is no second name, then the primary name is used. So, I only had to create specially formatted/hyphenated names for some the more difficult units. Patrice sent me information on how to name units which helped a lot too.

Here are the Italian aircraft with improved nomenclature. I need to hyphenate some of the bomber names and eventually the SM.82 will have its range (white circle) repositioned above the wing. Note the problem with the Japanese tank buster. I plan on changing the outline for the circle from black to white. Then the black text for the name will be legible - right now it looks messy because they are both black.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

So far, I only have about 10% of the air and naval units as bitmaps. But I was worried about some the of the longer British names.

Surprisingly most of them are not a problem. The night-mission capable aircraft will need to have their name abbreviated. Notice that the Mosquito name easily fits on the non-night fighters. of course the Beaufighter is always a problem. But happily the Wellington and tbe Sunderland look ok.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Last in the series. These were my primary focus for the last set of revisions. I need to move some of the plane images higher in the frame to get away from the extended range icon. I already moved them some. The Liberators have a long way to go though. I made some progress on the Skymaster (probably the hardest unit for which to get the graphics to fit). I will move the white range circle down and to the left and change the white L to a NATO infantry corps symbol - which will go above the right wing.

However, I am going to put all of these aside and wait for the remaining 90% of the bitmaps. The system for doing this looks like it works ok.

I'll make another pass at the naval units tomorrow.

[Neilster]

They look a bit "leery". I prefer the original. Great work overall though. Looking good.

Cheers, Neilster

ORIGINAL: Froonp

Hello,

Watching at the planes profiles closer, I spotted something strange.
Look at the picture below.
The top couple of planes are from your latest screenshot.
The middle one is from a scan of the actual countersheet.
The last one is a screenshot from the PDF version of the countersheet found in ADG's Companion CD 2.

Why is there this difference in the camouflage of the planes ?

It is not limited to those planes, all the planes have strange camouflages.
Here, the F2A & P-40 camo looks like a tiger skin.
Is there something the graphic artist is doing that distord the camo ?

[Froonp]

What is leery ?
I don't understand. which ones do you prefer ? Over which ?

[Mziln]

Main Entry: leery
Pronunciation: 'lir-E
Function: adjective
: SUSPICIOUS, WARY

I don't understand either [X(]

[Neilster]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

What is leery ?
I don't understand. which ones do you prefer ? Over which ?

Sorry. I was in a hurry. I meant that I like the designs on the cardboard counters. The new ones look too "busy".

Cheers, Neilster

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Neilster

ORIGINAL: Froonp

What is leery ?
I don't understand. which ones do you prefer ? Over which ?

Sorry. I was in a hurry. I meant that I like the designs on the cardboard counters. The new ones look too "busy".

Cheers, Neilster

I assume you mean the cameo? The rest of the counter is the same to my eye.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

I have been working on getting two lines of text under the ships to accommodate the longer names. I believe I have this mostly worked out. There were difficulties to get it to scale well, but I've gotten that in hand now.

My solution was to offset the movement point number to the left of center (number in orange circle). That let me raise the image of the ship higher in the frame without it overlapping the orange circle. The extra room below the ship image could then be used for the second line of text.

What remains is to:

1 - center the text vertically when there is a single line.

2 - raise the text 1 more pixel when there are 2 lines of text, so the distenders don't overlap the yellow circle.

3 - leave the movement points (orange circle) in the center when the unit is a convoy (the unit between the BBs Pennsylvania and the New Hampshire is a convoy unit of size 27 = 27 convoy units). The final graphic image for convoys will be tall but there will just be a single line of text: "Convoy".

4 - change the offset from the movement points from 10 to 9 so it has some space when the ship-to-ship combat factor is double digits (e.g., for the BB New Hampshire).

5 - go through all the ship names and make sure the longer ones are abbreviated so they fit. I might be able to get Delano in if I move it to the second line.

I am trying out new screen capture software here (HyperSnap 6).

[tigercub]

yes it seems to work well! CV Bon Homme Richard and so on look great.

[ravinhood]

I would so rather you change Japan color to the YELLOW (Rishing SUN <~~~ yellow) and China to a Light color or red or something. It just don't seem right Japan being RED....China should be RED as in RED CHINA that we know today. Just my 2 cents.

[Froonp]

1 - center the text vertically when there is a single line.
2 - raise the text 1 more pixel when there are 2 lines of text, so the distenders don't overlap the yellow circle.

It seems to me that the names on the cardboard counters are closer from the graphic of the ship.
I'm sure you could have the graphic lower, even if only a couple from the 2-lines texts, so that you could center the Orange Circle.
The Yellow & Orange circles could be smaller also.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

1 - center the text vertically when there is a single line.
2 - raise the text 1 more pixel when there are 2 lines of text, so the distenders don't overlap the yellow circle.

It seems to me that the names on the cardboard counters are closer from the graphic of the ship.
I'm sure you could have the graphic lower, even if only a couple from the 2-lines texts, so that you could center the Orange Circle.
The Yellow & Orange circles could be smaller also.

The distance between the text and the ship image for the cardboard counter remains the same no matter how far you hold it from your eye. To do the same for the text on the screen at all levels of zoom is quite difficult. In particular, the ship images are not all precisely in the same place vertically, from counter to counter. There is variation due to the fact we are copying the image from the ADG counters. Registration is not perfectly consistent over the 1000+ naval units (once we add in the units from Cruisers in Flames and Convoys in Flames).

Centering the orange circle strikes me as a minor thing to give up in our attempt to mimic the board game. In reality, I prefer the offset because it helps me remember that the top (offset) number is the weirdo aspect of ship movement. The yellow number at the bottom (range) tells you how far the units can move while the top number lets you calculate the excess 'movement' points it can expend in a sea area once it arrives.

If I were doing this from scratch, that top number would only be the excess. For example, a naval unit with a range of 4 and movement points of 6 would be labeled as 4 movement points and 2 'patrol' points. What is currently known as a 6 - 6 would be a 6 - 0. The use of the words range and movement points I have always found confusing and that has not changed over the 20 years I have been playing the game. I prefer movement points and patrol points where any unused movement points can be added to the patrol points. That is how I think of it when playing. The double 6's are very confusing.

Reducing the size of the circles might be possible, but the margin/space around the numbers seems about right to me. If you look at the squares, which use much less margin, they seem a little tight vertically. Not so bad that I would bother changing the code though.

This is my first post with my new computer and it is only half set up. I'll probably need a couple more days to get back to my previous efficiency.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood
I would so rather you change Japan color to the YELLOW (Rishing SUN <~~~ yellow) and China to a Light color or red or something. It just don't seem right Japan being RED....China should be RED as in RED CHINA that we know today. Just my 2 cents.

Happily, I do not have to worry about this, because my task is to duplicate the board game (WIF FE) as much as possible. Therefore I can simply mimic the colors from WIF FE and know I am doing it correctly.

Changing the background colors of the units would be extremely difficult for 2 reasons: (1) the hardcore WIF players would go insane (think of men in white suits arriving at the door carrying white jackets with extremely long sleeves) and (2) the colors choices in the game are all intensely interrelated (it is impossible to change one without changing many others - and always remember the contrasting colors need to be visible to color blind players too). I had to do some of this when deciding on colors for the divisional units and it was quite time consuming.

[Ballista]

Awesome looking stuff. Keep up the good work (and the updates)

[Neilster]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

ORIGINAL: Neilster

ORIGINAL: Froonp

What is leery ?
I don't understand. which ones do you prefer ? Over which ?

Sorry. I was in a hurry. I meant that I like the designs on the cardboard counters. The new ones look too "busy".

Cheers, Neilster

I assume you mean the cameo? The rest of the counter is the same to my eye.

Yes, the cammo.

Cheers, Neilster

[Neilster]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

I would so rather you change Japan color to the YELLOW (Rishing SUN <~~~ yellow) and China to a Light color or red or something. It just don't seem right Japan being RED....China should be RED as in RED CHINA that we know today. Just my 2 cents.

Well, they didn't become Red China till 1949 and Japanese counters in cardboard WiF are red. This stuff was covered in great detail on this forum ages ago and I think the current colour scheme is somewhat set in stone.

Who's the foxy silver-screen babe BTW? Man I love those 30s and 40s women. Ever seen Merle Oberon? Sheesh. I don't blame Howard Hughes or a certain minister for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment.

Cheers, Neilster

[Rexor]

Hey, by the way, I'd love to purchase that CD from ADG, but I can't find out if it works on a Mac as well as a PC (I work from a Mac laptop, play from a PC desktop). Does anyone know if it's Mac-compatible?

[YohanTM2]

Pretty sure they would not sell the CD.