All 27 Red Storm maps re-done, in summer and winter colors

[WildCatNL]

ORIGINAL: Paulus

Did You by any chance changed the destroyed units crosses? It is a screenshot from my ongoing pbem game (that's why some vital info boxes are whited out ), crosses in the eastern part of Emsburen are all blue, but for 100% they were not my units but soviet - so they should be red. Looks like the change occured during the game, after I copied Your map files, because there is one red cross (northernmost square row, second from the left square) indicating soviet unit destroyed early in the game. All later soviet victims appear in the blue.

Hi Paulus,

the updated maps you downloaded have nothing to do with the map icons such as the crosses, mines and bridges. The maps (bitmaps) go in totally different folders than the map icons.
You can verify the presence of the (Kill_B.png, Kill_R.png) crosses by looking into the following folder:
Flashpoint Campaigns Red Storm\Assets\Map Markers
Terrain map bitmaps go into
Flashpoint Campaigns Red Storm\Modules\FPRS\Maps

Please check with your PBEM opponent if he/she sees the same problem, and submit a bug if so.

Good luck with your game!

William

[WildCatNL]

Sitrep:

I've been polishing the maps (and map renderer), improving the road network to better match the game's roads, and tweaking the map style.
After seeing Plodder's work in this forum, using colored roads (yellow, orange and grey roads as in Google maps), I experimented with that as well, and it looks better.
In response to discussions about Vietnam maps and 9 elevation levels of jungle canopy, I tried blending the tree color with the underlying elevation base color, and it works reasonably well.
You'll see these improvements a couple of days after the next game update arrives, as I intend to cover the new maps as well.

Finally, I've been toying with something I've been wanting from a war game for a long time: (b/w) printer-friendly variants of the maps, so I can make/use notes while planning/playing using 1980's technology.
(CS Red Storm 1 shown, with road numbers, bridges, town names, etc.).



Let me know what you think...

William

[MikeAP]

I think that's cool.

A thin sheet of laminate and some markers would do you wonders

[rooivalk]

Brilliant idea

[pzgndr]

ORIGINAL: Capn Darwin
I'll just say the 2.X game engine is hex based. It would be a whole new deal to go squares again. That doesn't mean you can't make maps with squares on them, you just have to know movements are still in hex style as are locations for objects on map.

What I was suggesting was a simple toggle for an optional 1000m grid square overlay over the existing maps, not a change from the underlying 500m hexes in the game engine. Just a cosmetic thing.

[WildCatNL]

I just updated the first post with examples of the maps re-done again (with many improvements), and a web page offering downloads, examples and instructions.

Feedback is welcome.

I'm looking forward re-making the new maps coming with patch 2.03.

William

[CapnDarwin]

William,

Very cool work. The maps are important tool for planning. James Sterrett runs off these table top size ones when we do Staff exercises at Origins.

How are you placing bridges? Are you adding them after the fact or as a routing from processing?

[JohnOs]

Great job on the maps? I like what you did for the naming of the main roads.

[Enigma6584]

Really superb work. [&o]

[MikeAP]

Very Impressive.

I love the theme. It's colorful and clean.

[MikeAP]

So I just downloaded. Something looked weird when I compared them to your old maps.

It seems that your images have become 'blurry'...maybe in compression?

[Mad Russian]

Make all your images png files and not jpg files.

Good Hunting.

MR

[WildCatNL]

ORIGINAL: Capn Darwin

William,

Very cool work. The maps are important tool for planning. James Sterrett runs off these table top size ones when we do Staff exercises at Origins.

How are you placing bridges? Are you adding them after the fact or as a routing from processing?

Thanks for your comments.
The bridges were manually annotated. Since then, I've started scanning the .png file for roads, and I should probably be able to automatically detect the bridges given the road connections, obstacle ids and water hexes.

William

[WildCatNL]

ORIGINAL: MikeAP
It seems that your images have become 'blurry'...maybe in compression?

Correct. The hex backgrounds, vegetation and (to a lesser extent) roads are blurred now, by design, not because of compression - the labels' font edges are still sharp. See the first post for changes since Dec 31.
The blurring is meant to be easier on the eye when zooming in, and it hides a few jaggies due to a geometry bug.

I want to get rid of that bug. Ideally, I would be rendering the maps at 200% of the target size, and scale them down in a final step - that would keep the detail sharp without looking too pixelated.

Anyway, let me know why you (don't) like it. I might have been spending too much time writing an map render tool instead of looking at the maps in game...

William

[MikeAP]

To be honest, I don't play much, and wasn't aware of that bug. However, your logic makes sense.

On that note, I wish we had actual map zoom in game.

[CapnDarwin]

Mike, we do have map zoom in game. The bug he has is in the graphics package he is using to rebuild the maps from our FP9 files. Without some form of anti-aliasing with the various graphic elements you can end up with pixelated edges (jaggies). We had similar issues initially with our Mid-East cell based map maker until Rob did a number of post processing blurs to soften edges and better blend various art pieces.

[RichyRambo]

Outstanding. Can't wait to try them out.

[WildCatNL]

I just uploaded an updated set of maps. They match patch 2.03 (which didn't change anything to the existing maps except some tiny detail in CA 2 Red Storm, AFAIK), provide a cleaner hex outline (more organic, less "hexy"), and fix issues with streams running along the map border.

Here is an example of the updated look.

See first post in this thread for download links. Enjoy!

William

[CapnDarwin]

Looking really good! Thanks for posting! You should put up a link to your website too.[&o]

[eddie01]

ORIGINAL: Capn Darwin

Looking really good! Thanks for posting! You should put up a link to your website too.[&o]

He did, but you kind of have to watch closely for it,lol Check the first post in this thread, its right under the second map. [:)]