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Yup, ordered a replacement battery this morning, hopefully that will work for a while.

Made some good progress today, I reached a small milestone by reaching the eastern edge.[:D]. I'm deleting the minor roads as I go. I also adjusted the thickness of the trees surrounding the East German Border Guards Kaserne at Groß Glienicke after I found an aerial shot from the proper time period. This is an important area as it's right next to the RAF station at Gatow Airport. Getting there!

This is really fantastic! I look forward to seeing the final results.

I've added the railroads as they create more breaks in the terrain. I've also done most of Wedding, and trimmed off some more minor streets.

ORIGINAL: The Plodder

I've added the railroads as they create more breaks in the terrain. I've also done most of Wedding, and trimmed off some more minor streets.

Thanks for the rail roads. Looks great.

Another thing that might help breaking up the terrain is to alternate the orientation of the high rise pattern by 45 degrees. Use a 0 degree pattern for one city quarter (Wedding), use a 45 pattern for the next (Gesundbrunnen), etc..

ORIGINAL: W1ll14m

ORIGINAL: The Plodder

I've added the railroads as they create more breaks in the terrain. I've also done most of Wedding, and trimmed off some more minor streets.

Thanks for the rail roads. Looks great.

Another thing that might help breaking up the terrain is to alternate the orientation of the high rise pattern by 45 degrees. Use a 0 degree pattern for one city quarter (Wedding), use a 45 pattern for the next (Gesundbrunnen), etc..

No worries. [:)] I change the orientation of the pattern in 90 deg increments as they look too jaggy if they're not square. Otherwise, I'd have them at all sorts of angles. I put enough variation in the pattern so it looks different enough at each angle but having roads or other terrain to break it up makes it look a lot better.

I've made some good progress over the last couple of days:

That map is looking killer. [&o]

ORIGINAL: Capn Darwin

That map is looking killer. [&o]

Capn, this piece of art will define the new 'gold standard' for your hopefully large customer crowd to compare to the future Flashpoint Campaigns Games vanilla maps [;)]

OTS can't just refer to the hope to let The Plodder (and William! and other map-artists too) to do all the work in the years to come after the release

(its not just a 'matter of art taste', or 'a nice to have'
yesterday i started "Thor's Hammer" on vanilla and had difficulty to read the terrain, after a 2 turns i quit, i hade made unfixable bad decision in unit start placements, then i restarted on Williams 'inverted Summer map' and it worked like a charm ...i guess mainly because i 'see' the 3d of the terrain and overall get an 'intuitive feel' for the landscape strategic features)

MikeGER, I don't want to derail Plodder's thread slapping paddles down on a dead horse, but OTS is focused on the game and not the scenery. We provided an open format for modders to do their thing. We are taking feedback and we will with our very limited time and budget improve the look of future maps, but artful, hand drawn maps is not the way we are going. Done. We will be making improvements. Done there too.

[:-]If folks want to once again pick up sticks and head for this horse, please start a thread in the Suggestions sub forum. I will delete further debate from this thread because Plodder should be able to showcase his art and not be distracted by another art versus function tangent. [:-]

NOTE: Thread started and pinned to the top in the Suggestions sub forum. Enjoy.

Thanks guys.

Have now made it to the north bank of the Spree.

Before I sign off for the night, I've been placing special buildings in and around the Tiergarten and over in East Berlin. They're not in their exact real-world locations (except the Brandenberg Gate)due to having to adjust the rivers to fit the hexsides but they're as close as they can get. The area around the Reichstag and Swiss Embasssy building are as they were in 1989.

Nice! Some seriously detailed work.

I've finished the areas around the Wall. I'm using screenshots from berlin.de to help me get them accurate. The site has an awesome interactive map of the Wall and also has aerial pics of the inner city wall from 1989. I can get those areas of the map pretty close to what they were back then. I've even managed to get a trace of Potzdamer Platz onto the map.

And an overview of where I'm at. Still got a bit to go, I've managed to cull a lot of the minor roads, all that are left are the big avenues and some streets that are reasonably significant.

the map is such an master piece of art [&o] ...i start to fear you will cut yourself an ear of one day when drunk[;)]

You Da Man Plodder!! [&o]

Good Hunting.

MR

ORIGINAL: MikeGER

...i start to fear you will cut yourself an ear of one day when drunk[;)]

LOL. Well, I'm not Dutch and I can't afford any booze so I think I'm safe.[:D]

Not every dutch do this.

ORIGINAL: harry_vdk

Not every dutch do this.

I'd hope not! [;)]