Proposed Map: Domination 1941

[Black_Elk]

OK I'm getting pretty close now. Just on the last few islands and such.

At full scale I was able to get the terrain relief at 16000+ down to about 15mb for the full size file indexing the colors.

True color is closer to 50mb right now for the one I'm working on, but can probably slim it down a bit. Here it is at 25 percent with the optimized palette according to GIMP skynet with a frostier blue I guess hehe.

Looks pretty decent I think though. Like some kind of A&A National "almost-Geographic vibe lol.

Once I get the last islands dialed and clean it up, there a few different things we can do with it, depending on what sort of paint job we want to give it with the border colors and gradients and whatnot. I think G40 look is probably what something like 50% opacity with a national colored border line? We can try a few different things. Desaturating the terrain map will allow more of the selected HEX to show through, preserving the terrain colors with an opacity gradient is another option, or just choosing HEX's that play well with the terrain colors in the core region. Different things probably look better in game in tripleA depending on how abstract one wants the patterns and such to look, but anyway. Least we almost got something to tool around with hehe

[Black_Elk]

Alright here's our terrain world...

True color is 63 mb, before messing with it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hv8l6j6cntfncxp/Terrain World.png?dl=0

We can clean it up some in the details, but it's basically blocked in.

I'm right at the limit here on filesize for a preview attachment on the boards, so here it is at 20% with a little crunch to get it under the 4.1 mb threshold.

Indexed Color is at around 15mb for the full size image...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gvotomlf59xg9ko/terrain world indexed.png?dl=0

You lose a little detail doing that but it's mainly in the smoothing. Not too bad though honestly, without something to compare it against I'd probably be happy that for a template, since it's pretty easy to work.

Guess it just depends how camo light you want your terrain to feel lol. I think you could probably add back in some dithering or another opacity layer or whatever, and most people wouldn't really notice the difference unless they're at 100% view and like right on top of it at 16000.

Not sure what's best for a standard G40, if trying to keep the filesize down as low as possible, but I saved one out just in case people like to see it with no borders at all. Or if they want a map in the 17th century or whatever, with completely different TT borders lol. GIMP had a minor stroke trying to heal transparency on the big one hehe, but the indexed it handled, so that'd work for a preview at least. Otherwise the true color is still pretty light and reasonably clean I think. I didn't tool around with the Baseline borders yet really, but they're pretty close. In most cases where it's borderline I'd either shift the border to follow the terrain or just knock it out.

Here's a very crude color map, just using the other quickie paint job I had crammed on top a desaturated terrain relief with the opacity at like 75%.

We'd want something more polished with a nice gradient and a border that pops a bit and more of the terrain showing through a for the real deal, but just wanted to see some color before heading off to sleep, so I did the hard and fast ash and ghosts version hehe

This is not how I think it should look in game of course, too muted and some borders are off, but just for a quick effect. I couldn't help but think it'd be a cool visual for a paused game or something. You know, like ghost menu style where it goes all specter on the fade out lol

Black line for the crazy one lol

Quick Color up

Catch ya next round!
Night!

[Black_Elk]

Quick G40 mask in RGB with the opacity at 75%. Took a minute for gimp to put em together compared to the desaturated terrain map, but you can see it pulls a bit nicer with more color showing through hehe.

Kinda the simplest form of indicating ownership, it reminds me a bit of like a bomber's eye view lol.

[beelee]

@black_elk looking way sweet ! If this the G40 version Yukon needs another line and WUS and CUS.

[Black_Elk]

Oh good eye! I'll fix that up this week and anything else I missed.

I think I need to shift the N. America split too, keep meaning to do it but then got busy with other stuff. Basically so we don't have a hanging Gulf of Mexico Hudson bay sz hanging on the wrong side of the board haha.

That should be easy enough though. It's be better anyway, I can clean the relief a bit while I'm at it, in case there were any artifacts or weirdness I didn't catch there.

Let me know if anything else comes to mind!
Catch ya next round

ps. More like this right? I'll correct it on the big base when I get some time free this week.

Terrain

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nsuiz1tnk8d7ya1/terrain world warp.png?dl=0

Base at 6px white line with the TTs transparent

World War II Global draft (Atlantic fixed)

ps. here is the baseline with the corrected split at 1 px for the utilities. I think it's good to go

World War II Global 1940 Base
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4740bj0l87sbb57/World_War_II_Global_1940_baseline.png?dl=0

[TheDog]

@black_elk
Your map has 4SZ New York to Iceland. There appear to be some annolomies in the mid atlantic.

I might be using the wrong G40 map, but the one Im looking at, has 3SZ from New York to Iceland.

Im looking at this one.
https://www.axisandallies.org/p/axis_allies_europe_1940_preview_4_the_global_rules/

[Black_Elk]

Good eye! Thanks

I must have missed a line when expanding the Atlantic sz107 and sz117

ps. OK I think I got it fixed. Somehow there was an extra zone. I believe this should be correct, though my eyes are starting to glaze over a bit. I'll check it again tomorrow when after some sleep hehe. Guess I should probably do one with labels just to make sure lol. I'll update the db links

Baseline 1px
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4740bj0l87sbb57/World_War_II_Global_1940_baseline.png?dl=0

Terrain with with Border 5px
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1e7aj1e8ipqzmmo/G40_alternate.png?dl=0

Terrain Relief LT Indexed color at 16.5 mb.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gvotomlf59xg9ko/terrain world indexed.png?dl=0

Quick Paint
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1qlojy8bbgkujvz/World_War_II_Global_1940_painted.png?dl=0

[TheDog]

@black_elk Suggestions follow;

Can most of the Pacific SZ hold 8+ units? In particular SZ18, 10, 13, 27

SZ50 Fuji is a weird shape and will confuse players, any chance it could be made a more regular in shape.

SZ31 Wake Island, can it hold 8 ships in a C shape and say 4 Land units with an overflow to the right?
SZ23 could be more rectangular to hold 8 Sea units and give more space to SZ31

ps. Remember to increase the unit icons to x1.25 in size, so they will be 68px high for testing above.

[Black_Elk]

Here's an example of Wake when the map is at 16816 with units at 125%

Yeah Fiji was annoying me all week. We can just move Samoa or whatever. The map is highly abstract in other places so I don't know if there's any huge advantage to keeping the islands all snug. In general OOB used horizontal compression for a lot of stuff in the global south, this map shows more vertical compression. Compared to OOB, if you placed your ships vertically you could fit more sculpts that way I'd think. OOB pushes many islands very very far apart to create more sz space, but I just don't if it's needed here. I mean they're all like twice the size of the current World War II global right? lol

Here it is with units at 150%

[TheDog]

@black_elk
Excellent, so only SZ50 Fuji to reshape, then call in Cernel when that's done for his critical eye.

[Black_Elk]

@thedog Sounds good! Honestly when I got to that part of the pacific I think I was pretty zonked lol.

What kept tripping me up was that I was using tripleA with bung's map open, but then I think the wrap gotta a little weird when I got close to South America haha. I'll redo that lower right hand corner of the map tomorrow and hopefully she's fit to sail

[TheDog]

@black_elk
lol, getting closer .... to the end.

[Black_Elk]

I think one could maybe upscale the units to like 200% with no halo, before the fuzz starts to get annoying? I mean if you're planning to play all panned out anyway, it probably wouldn't even be that noticeable. Only difference is that you'd have few centers before it spills over, but even there still more space than the current I think for just about everywhere.

It would be nice to have some super clean units at like 100px or taller, but that would be hard to produce from the existing unit graphics.

The only thing I can really think of is just to find someone who has some really nice painted sculpts and then to create units graphics from photographs of those.

Basically we just need a consistent light source and something that looks nice while being original enough to be distinct. Something hand painted basically. Photographed with some dramatic lighting and punched up that way, before being shrunk down to super tiny scale. Doing it from illustrations or photographs of the actual equipment is harder obviously, cause you have to make it your own and fiddle with the pixels to get it even read anyway lol. Still I'm pretty happy with the Frostion units as a basis. They look cool to me. I think it would probably work fine with the standard default units display as well. They're more abstract so they upscale somewhat better, with just less visual information to enlarge, and for people who prefer that more familiar. I'll do some unit work to keep myself engaged, before giving the map a last pass hehe.

For TTs that are shown on the map here, but which don't exist in Global we basically got a couple options. Either erase it, or attach to a nearby tile for the purpose of ownership/color, but treat the tile as impassible for the purposes of connection. An example would be Sakhalin, the North of the Island would be attached to say Amur, while the South of the Island is attached to Japan, with no connection between the tiles. So the map will present with the right colors and players will just now that the visual information is extra. You could do the same in many places, instead of incorrectly assigning control of British possessions to Saudi Arabia they could just be attached to TransJordan. The first time the TT changes hands the change in color indicates what's going on. Works better if there isn't too much distance or confusion. Basically exactly how Sicily and Sardinia were attached to Italy in earlier games. Though one could probably go further afield if they wanted. Like maybe Falklands is just attached to British Surinam, or Jamaica and Bermuda to Newfoundland etc. Given my choice I'd prefer to keep more stuff as opposed to erasing it. But maybe that's just my dream of A&A Svalbard, like they did for Risk in Risk2. You know, where we get an unlock for some zones like that in some alt variant of the same. Something rather simpler than the domination map, that'd be a bit more serviceable at that playscale, but still fun. The baseline for the crazy complex Domination map will prob take me longer to get together, so it's to get my head around the global revamp before attacking that again hehe

[TheDog]

@black_elk
If you want to be creative missing icons are;
Industry-Med
Industry-Lgt
Im using Frostions Factory for Industry-Hvy (Yes there are 3 Factories in game)

missing Command icons are;
HQ-Air
HQ-Army
HQ-Fleet
HQ-Submarine
Im currently using

For Air

For Army

But Im sure you can do better

[Black_Elk]

Ok I'll see what I can come up with. For factories there's all kinds of free clip art looking things I've seen around, but they're all kinda generic modern. For a good WW2 era vibe maybe something simple like just a single smoke stack to indicate the Industry-Ltg?

So something like that, but we paint it up with more rust color to look like Frostion's vibe hehe.
I took that from a WW2 era photograph of a factory in Iowa.

Here's Frostion's for scale...

So maybe if the single stack is the base, a medium or heavy might just have more stacks and a slight upscale to indicate which is which?

[TheDog]

@black_elk
Re: For the TTs, might this work in Inkscape, have a TT layer for Global and another layer with the additional lines/borders to make the 1941 Domination map.

One one layer = Global (plus other layers)
Two layers = 1941 Domination (plus other layers)

This way it is WYSIWG for both maps and it has no deletions.

Re: Factory Icons, yes stacks is the way to go, as that is quick and easy on the eye, 3 stacks = Heavy Industry. So it might be better as you allude to, to start with a new Industry-Lgt and so add building and stacks to that.

[Black_Elk]

Sounds good not sure if for inkscape you want just the line work by itself to start (only BW) or the sea zones colored in as well for the base layer?

These bitmaps should be identical, meaning if you overlay the latter on the former you'd basically have your two layers as described, at 16816px in BW.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4740bj0l87sbb57/World_War_II_Global_1940_baseline.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/khxkql58g73q1n3/Domination_1940_baseline.png?dl=0

It has Fiji sz adjusted and Samoa shifted. I updated the terrain files for the same. It looks like this now with the quickie paintjob...

I'll try to bang out those units this week, and finish clipping the roundels for the nations I didn't get around to yet lol

Catch ya next round

ps. lol I'm looking at it now and realizing I still need to get that weird ass OOB 4 point in there off the coast of Mexico. Agh heheh

Figures I'd be all on top of it half the night and still miss that. Must have happened when I changed the split in N. America to keep the Gulf and Hudson bay all on the left side of the board. Basically that last transit SZ south of Mexico, it has to hit the TT of Eastern Mexico at a 4 point, or that sz will appear to connect to stuff that it shouldn't. 4 points at the edge of the map are annoying. I'd try to avoid them if doing an original design, but that one is in there OOB, so gotta raise that line. I'll deal with it tomorrow I guess.

ps. Aha! I finally figured out what was making it so weird. Somehow I'd inserted an extra tile while trying to enlarge Hawaii and I had the W. US sz splitting at Mexico instead of including everything there. Whatever I'll have to rework that whole zone now, to get the connections to land right lol. A butterfly flapped it's wings in Fiji I swear and now there's a whole hurricane hehehe. The Domination map will have to just get blanked there until I can it worked out properly

[beelee]

@black_elk said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

A butterfly flapped it's wings in Fiji I swear and now there's a whole hurricane hehehe.

:face_with_tears_of_joy:

[Schulz]

Does anybody know is it really accurate to portray Sinkiang as Chinese territory in WWII? AFAIK Sinkiang was ruled by a Soviet backed warlord until late 1942. Sinkiang wasn't part of Chinese United Front. for a very long time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheng_Shicai

[Black_Elk]

OK so I think I got it figured now. Basically SZ 10 just needed to beef up, to encompass all of Mexico on that side of the board, which isn't a bad problem to have I guess. You stay classy San Diego lol

I was able to do Hawaii as a perfect 1000 px square, which seemed to make the other pieces fall into place like some kind of Vitruvian mystery hehe. Was able to get Wake and Midway a little larger in the process.

Hopefully I didn't miss to much else. I'll update all the DB links and the Previews when I get a chance. Haven't touched the domination draft yet.

If the Sea Zones are good, I'd like to return to the border contours like for Germany and such, to incorporate those ideas mentioned a few pages back. I'll make that the plan for the week, just keep chippin' away at it.

Good Q about the Warlord. Not sure, prob Cernel would know. It's funny every time I look at the OOB map with no free Tibet and China looking all extra massive I wonder if it was like maybe the printers in China going crazy or something lol.