Proposed Map: Domination 1941

[Black_Elk]

Right on, let me know if I missed anything. From playing around with the flag display, I think the 12x12 circular roundel is probably best, just given the current limitations for the display sizes there. Going oval would only gives us 12x9px for the smallest size, which is too small in my view, like just not really enough pixels to get the job done. So better to keep it round I'd think.

Most of the standard circular roundels look pretty good in the unit flag display. I gave the Soviets a Red Star for their ABs so that may stand out for now, but I think it gives those ABs some charm.

The only thing I noticed that I really want to fix on the next pass has to do with the Naval Units at flag display size small. The flag always displays on the lower righthand corner of the unit field, so on the right-facing Allied ships, the 12x12 small flags looks like they're sitting on the bows of ships. Basically I want to extend the field for those naval units by like 12px or whatever we can manage, so that the roundel will be more off to the right instead of smacking the Allied naval units on the nose lol.

I think I do prefer the Oval puck roundels for the capital markers the more I sit with them. Just for a little more visual variety in the colors and for the national flare. Like Italy looks nice with that splash of Green and Red I find. I included the Flag Oval roundels as unit images in the folders, because I think it'd be cooler if these were treated like capturable units rather than permanent/fixed map decorations.

Doing them as capturable units the display image could change dynamically when a capital is taken, e.g. Moscow becomes the Iron Cross roundel if taken by Germany, or vice versa, if Berlin falls to show then we get a Sickle and Hammer there or Stars and Stripes, or whatever. Control marker flags would work the same way, basically like it's handled in Iron War. So that when a TT changes hands the control flag changes to the reflect the current "owner." I think that'd be nice.

[beelee]

@black_elk said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

Moscow becomes the Iron Cross roundel if taken by Germany

H yea ! Love it ! lol

[TheDog]

@black_elk
I agree 12x12 round roundel is the way to go.

Adding +12px to naval units is a nice to have, hold off and lets see if we can persuade a new Dev to add a new feature to the map.properties file to position the flag with coordinates, so not in the corner.
Currently he is working on this (Its not Justins group, but ArieLevental on GitHub)
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/3311/student-group-studying-triplea/2?page=1

Capturable Capital oval roundels infrastructure units is on the TODO list.
"I think that'd be nice." Yes it would be nice.

[Black_Elk]

Sounds good! That'd be cool.

It's a relatively quick fix if they can't pull it off. I think the canvas can go to like at least 96px wide right? Basically Allied ships and Axis bombers are the only units that clip the flag display in the lower right. For display Flags "size large" the roundel graphic is backgrounded, but still reads too large for me. It works better with some roundel designs than others there, depending on the color of the outer ring or whatever, but mostly I think it's not a very useful view at that size. Something like a 18-24px flag roundel would be best I think. Larger to give more visual information at that super tiny scale, but still small enough not to clip too hard into the unit, if it were to remain in the foreground.

The other reason it would be nice to select the flag display location is to avoid overlap with any other symbols included in the unit graphics, like the radar symbol or heavy bomber symbol etc. I'd think it would be nice to center the flag for most units, basically so it looks like it's right below the unit instead of off to one side. I think that would be cleaner and show less overlapping or clipping for the tiny flags.

Like ideally we could just extend the field from 54px tall to 68px tall and stick the flag dead center at the bottom. This would be nice for unit flipping too, since then the small flag wouldn't move position relative to the unit when the image is flipped.

I think a good feature to focus on would be that one - the flip. Something that allows us to dynamically flip units in-game, because that's a feature that the players could really engage with I bet. Like I think if it existed, players would probably use that one all the time.

The coolest would be if we could flip units based on the TT. But even if it was a universal flip for all the units by nation, I can still see that being a lot of fun during gameplay. Some view features are a lot more useful than others, map scaling and unit scaling for example, those are super useful, the other stuff in the view tab is more like set it and forget it based on the preferred view. But a Unit flipper would be hotkey worthy. I think players would dig it.

[Schulz]

@black_elk BTW I wonder is there any way to make AI handling this sub spawn feature?

I guess if the German subs spawn after the end of German turn, AI can respond but this will probably make these subs doomed to be killed before taking any action.

[Black_Elk]

Yeah the sub spawning unit in Iron War would basically just add a sub during the placement phase, but then there were some issues if the facility had already placed it's max units since it was tied to coastal factories. Also that game used a different phase order with purchase after combat, so it fit a bit better there. I think a combat move first phase order is a faster paced and more entertaining. Purchasing after, you can make more straightforward purchasing decisions, so players don't have to spend as much time prognosticating about it, and keep things moving at a steady clip. For G40 I like combat move before purchase, though they still run the combat phase proper after the buy. I guess it's maybe more dramatic that way, like 'oh goodness, let's make the right call here and not goof the buy!' lol But I think purchase/placement last is equally entertaining.

For spawning subs out of just random zones in the Atlantic, you'd want that to happen prior to combat move as like the first phase I guess. That way they can be used in attacks which are fun. Whereas if they just spawn to cause distractions on defense, that seems rather less entertaining hehe.

Reminds me that I never really finished the submariner dude lol. I'll have to add that one to the unit pile when I get a minute. The current _All Units stickers I added to the unit folder shows duplicates for the factories and resources etc that don't really need to be repeated for each nation. I'd like to tighten up the rows, and then do something down at the bottom for all the factories or generic unit graphics like that in one spot. Then add in a set of sculpts for the Neutrals or all the extra flags or rando alt inf dudes or whatever hehe.

[Schulz]

@black_elk Probably <stepProperty name="resetUnitStateAtStart" value="true"/>
</step> should be put under German combat move. It had worked in my previous map. Idk why it gives me error in this time.

[beelee]

@black_elk so combat move, combat then purchase, place is how Iron War rolls ?

Yea Ive seen combat move first before. Think it was NWO and that's how they did it. The G40 CM first seems a little different.

I don't think you can trigger it with a map option. ISU kids, we got another feature request lol

Probably hungover from celebrating there basketball win against north carolina last nite lol

Edit
Oh yea NCM before Purchase as well lol

[Black_Elk]

Haha no doubt!

OK here are the Baselines and the Reliefs for the 4k maps...

Global Baseline
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pcvl7jjpenpld7t/World_War_II_Global 1940 relief 25 opacity.png?dl=0

Global Relief
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pcvl7jjpenpld7t/World_War_II_Global 1940 relief 25 opacity.png?dl=0

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

Domination Relief
https://www.dropbox.com/s/x1qei5rhc137hip/Domination_1940 relief 25 opacity.png?dl=0

I've posted the terrain map I used at 100% opacity a few times. To create those painted previews I've been pasting my color map at 75% opacity on top of the terrain map at 100% opacity, so here I basically did the exact reverse. The terrain relief windows are at 25% opacity so when they paint over the base colors it will create that same visual look.

I have used the following Hex colors in the map previews thus far... So to recreate that look you'd use those in the map properties and then tripleA should produce an image that looks like the one's I've been posting.

Americans: 026400
ANZAC: 5ba399
British: 9e7035
Chinese: 533c69
Dutch: e77600
French: 0063a5
Germans: 656565
Italians: 6c4513
Japanese: e19521
Mongolians: a13030
Neutral Allies: d9ab6f
Neutral Axis: 6d664e
Neutral True: e7d2b5
Russians: 940000
Ocean: 66ccff
Ice: d2eef4

Now we just need someone to do the grunt work of busting it up into tiles and getting the skeleton going so we can start mapping the centers and the like lol. I feel like I've taken it about as far as I can for the stuff I enjoy doing. The nitty gritty of the mapmaking utilities makes my eyes glaze over, but I can add to the unit graphics and such as it gets built out.

[beelee]

@black_elk said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

Now we just need someone to do the grunt work of busting it up into tiles and getting the skeleton going so,

heh heh I got the time but not the knowledge lol. See if I can figure it out lol

[Black_Elk]

Right on! I updated the reliefs just now with a little more noise reduction on the borders. Should make it a bit cleaner when scaling hopefully. We can fine tune that stuff if we want. I tried to kinda optimize it for displays at 75% and 50% as much as at 100%. It's a bit of a trade off there, cause sharper borders display somewhat cleaner when zoomed out, but softer borders looks better when you're right on top of it at 100%. I went with noise reduction 4 for the lines on these, but maybe 5 or 6 would be better? Kinda hard to say till I see how it displays in-game, but I think this should work to get the ball rolling.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pcvl7jjpenpld7t/World_War_II_Global 1940 relief 25 opacity.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x1qei5rhc137hip/Domination_1940 relief 25 opacity.png?dl=0

Let me know how it goes or if there's anything I need to fix lol

Fingers crossed!

TripleA 2.6 has a lot of cool stuff going on already. I think if we get to TripleA 3.0, having a bunch of trick new stuff for the G40 package would definitely be a draw hehe

[Black_Elk]

Also, here again is the terrain map at 100% opacity.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rsf949i4qih94c5/terrain world ocean fill.png?dl=0

If one wants adjust the opacity of the relief, or to change the color or detailing of the oceans, or modify/improve it however, they can use that image.

To create the relief, I did the following in GIMP...

Terrain Map set at at 25% opacity for the bottom layer.

From the baseline I isolated the Ocean SZ by color selecting the blue, then pasted that on top of the Terrain at 100% opacity.

Then to get the borderlines into the relief, from the baseline I color-select the black, expand that selection by 2px, fill with white, copy/paste onto the final layer at the top of the relief.

Merge visible for the Relief

Then Anti-Alias, Filters/Enhance noise reduction 4, Blur Gaussian 1. For the blur I did the lowest setting, I think default is 1.5, but I used 1, which kept things a little sharper. Too much blur and it'll make you want glasses at 100%, too little and the edges appear kinda hard/pixelated, so it's sort of just striking the right balance there I guess. But for those lines you can pull from the baseline bitmap for the selections, and just add to the terrain/relief as the last step. Like if one wanted to change any of the borders in the baseline and transfer to relief, that's a good method. Or at least we got all the puzzle pieces available I guess if people want to tinker with it down the road lol

I'd actually be curious to see the next steps, as this is the part of map making process that I'm least familiar with. I'm like low key dyslexic when it comes to parsing a bunch of txt and coordinate information in the map properties and some of that stuff honestly like using the polygon grabber just gives me heartburn hehe, plus I'm a terrible typist so I usually tune out at this part to focus on whatever else. But I'd imagine G40 would be simpler though right, because the XML is already built out for that? Like once it's pushed through and busted up? Anyway, let me know how if we make any progress on that front. Meantime I'm going to double check the units again. As I'm sure I probably missed something somewhere. I mean I banged out so many that day, there's gotta be something that gave me the slip lol

Here's the other stuff again...

Global Baseline
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pcvl7jjpenpld7t/World_War_II_Global 1940 relief 25 opacity.png?dl=0

Global Relief
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pcvl7jjpenpld7t/World_War_II_Global 1940 relief 25 opacity.png?dl=0

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

Domination Relief
https://www.dropbox.com/s/x1qei5rhc137hip/Domination_1940 relief 25 opacity.png?dl=0

HEX Colors
Americans: 026400
ANZAC: 5ba399
British: 9e7035
Chinese: 533c69
Dutch: e77600
French: 0063a5
Germans: 656565
Italians: 6c4513
Japanese: e19521
Mongolians: a13030
Neutral Allies: d9ab6f
Neutral Axis: 6d664e
Neutral True: e7d2b5
Russians: 940000
Ocean: 66ccff
Ice: d2eef4

[TheDog]

@black_elk
Below are some suggestions for SZ merging, that is removing some lines within the red areas.

I did base the removal on not removing G40 lines, but worth checking.

These are only suggestions. (As Im not an avid ww2-er)

[Black_Elk]

Sounds good, I'll give it another crack tomorrow most likely to nix whatever ya don't need in the SZ stuff.

Checking out the other thread in map making, I wonder if the gaussian blur I did at the end to soften the borders there in the relief, might have made the under terrain a little hazy, like happened with my attempt at that Iron War tweak lol. I did a quick paste to the color map and it looked pretty much the same to me, but I didn't have it way under the magnifying glass. I think there's probably an acceptable level of blur one could allow, especially since the terrain is more suggested flare here, maybe it's better not quite as sharp? Like when the units and other graphics are laid down, and the eye has something else to cling too besides just the map itself, the gaussian might seem less noticeable. On the other hand if there's a cleaner way to only have that effect on the border lines, that'd probably be preferable. Just to have it separated by layer. I'll take a closer look when I get home later

[Black_Elk]

Ok here ya go...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xnvwl23sf092dia/Domination_1941_baseline.png?dl=0

Let me know if you want to ditch anything else on the baseline. I'll just pull a new relief from that, since I wanted to fix the blur anyway hehe

[TheDog]

@Cernel
what SZ would you change for this new map.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xnvwl23sf092dia/Domination_1941_baseline.png?dl=0

Transports, Battleships, Subs will move 2
Fleet units Destroyers, Cruisers, Fleet Carriers will move 3
Harbours do not add +1 move

[Black_Elk]

For what it's worth, I think Sea Zones are pretty abstract in A&A, and naval movement/combat is really kinda hard to make sense of as anything other than just sort of gamey. Whatever you decide on probably the starting unit distribution and the TT values will be the key factor in making it all hum together. I think players will generally tend to shuck along the shortest path available for their transports and usually you end up with just a few very large combat fleets converging on the main chokepoints on either side of the board to face each other down. Sorta playing chicken or cat and mouse till one side offers a gambit or a goof. The balance typically tilts on aircraft and spamming fodder every round for the big naval stand offs, till one side breaks and either has to withdraw or just gets smoked in a decisive blow out. Or at least that seems to be the standard A&A naval dynamic.

I think on the Pacific side, it's good for the gameplay to inflate the values of the TTs in the Central Pacific, like if you want Japan to have some reason to face off against the US there rather than just making the B line for India, or slamming into Russia, as tends to happen in most A&A games, I think that's a reasonable method. In A&A there's just not really enough production contested there to give Japan much reason to sprawl vs the US or ANZAC, but I think you could fix that by juicing the TT values a bit. Then the IJN ships would have more reason to stay forward to guard the contested tiles and shore up their lines there.

Anyhow, let me know what you come up with, and I'll try to get it dialed. Many of those sz subdivisions I made kinda on the fly just based on the what was flying at me from the requests earlier, but people can always just go back and mess with that earlier base if they want. I saved the new one with 41 in the title, so I'll just make it however you want into the next phase heheh

[Cernel]

@thedog said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

@Cernel
what SZ would you change for this new map.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xnvwl23sf092dia/Domination_1941_baseline.png?dl=0

Transports, Battleships, Subs will move 2
Fleet units Destroyers, Cruisers, Fleet Carriers will move 3
Harbours do not add +1 move

This is really a weirdly vague question, but, shortly after opening the map, I've been struck by the nonsense that going from Gibraltar to Malta by moving north of Majorca and Sicily takes 3 movements, whereas going to it via would would be the shorter sea route takes 4 movements. Moreover, on the realistically shorter route, there are (as said) 5 sea zones between Gibraltar and Malta and only 2 sea zones between Malta and Palestine, whereas in reality Palestine is farther away from Malta than Gibraltar is.

And I guess you fogot to add a sea zone border somewhere in the Turkish straits?

[TheDog]

@cernel
Yes, a deliberately vague question, as I wanted your opinion.

Thanks for spotting the Med area SZ.

Are they any more SZ that leap out at you that are wrong?

[Black_Elk]

@Cernel good eye, must have forgot a break for the Bosporus. That needs to go in for sure!

Hahah yeah, well, I'd only point out that a realistic distance with an unrealistic scale is a bit of a challenge lol. I mean given that Europe is considerably larger and quite contorted, and Africa is considerably smaller and quite contorted, this creates a situation where the Mediterranean is going to become somewhat weird somewhere right? Like there's just more space in the Western Med than the Eastern Med to insert additional tiles given the Global warp.

Probably it would be better for sense of distance from Gibraltar if sz 94 just didn't exist OOB, but of course it does, so that's a bit of a kink lol.

I'd say the ready solution here is to shift Malta back, so that it's as far left in sz 96 as possible, rather than riding the line of that inserted SZ tile in the central/eastern Med. This probably makes the Malta TT rather less useful as a fighter transit, but it's whatever I guess, like I'm not wedded to having it ride a line.

The idea for inserting more sea zones into the Med was basically to push the air routes and give ships a few more tiles to maneuver around each other somehow, esp. along the North African coast, without inflating the other distances too hard. Hence trying to keep at least one route a bit tighter. I guess it could have been the reverse, like an extra Zone out of sz 93, rather than out of 92 or 94, but that seemed less interesting to me than doing it along the Algerian or Tunisian coast, which was a more active warfront. But I guess just remove those breaks? Like I only added them and shifted Malta initially to see how many might fit before it got too ridiculous, but we might have hit that point and passed it. We can just ditch em hehe.

Another option is to do the extra sz breaks horizontally rather than vertically, but you'd get the exact same issue doing that, except then we'd be talking about North/South distances rather than East/West distances, while still basically arriving at the same conclusion that the relative distance between one given point and another is kinda nonsensical sometimes. Either way you're going to get distortion and places where there's just not a whole lot of room to add new zones from the existing G40 ones. Also in A&A there's another factor, beyond just how many tiles are between point A and point B for true distance in gameplay terms, since presumably there are actual naval forces in play too, blocking ready movement along certain paths. My default is to consider distance as the crow flies too, ie 'can a fighter still land there in one movement? Or not?' cause that's a bit more binary with a pretty clear cutoff. Also cause the effects of fighter transits on the gameplay are usually a lot more pronounced than ship movement per se. Naval engagements generally hinging on aircraft in range. But I agree, it's all rather weird, if you sit with it for very long there's going to be cracks haha. NBs and ABs can complicate the distance vibe too, just by adding extra movement if starting the move off a base. The Med has 4 NBs across 5 sz tiles OOB, which makes it more of a lake there I guess. Like Gibraltar to Suez is only 1 move off the NBs OOB, provided there's not a giant fleet parked in your way, to turn that move 1 distance into a move Zero situation lol.

Probably the entire Med could be collapsed into just 3 sea zone tiles, like v3, and that would be more realistic - basically the same movement situation you get with the NBs in play in G40, but then that wouldn't exactly accommodate the other gameplay needs of a G40.

Overall, the med situation is similar to the distortion in the western USSR around "Russia", since the map has to give somewhere. If there's no morph, then Europe will simply appear as an enlarged inset that doesn't align with anything around it, or else it can be realistic in scale, but too small to service the OOB game. Meds got the same thing going on. That is the general situation we get on many WW2 maps, the ones that aren't also trying fit a G40 mold I mean and can just use Mercator or something similar for the warp, like your Big Worlds, or Ultimate Worlds etc, or similar WW2 maps that we see from time to time. Like Iron War has the same thing going on, despite being a fairly gigantic map, so it's a bit of a bind. I'm not sure if Larry or Kevin had a totally specific idea that sz sizes or the number of divisions needed to be consistent from region to region?

Clearly there was some acknowledgement of keeping the distances somehow the same, while somehow further too, just with the inclusion of the NB as a unit there to keep with the playscale. I tend to see that stuff in the same way I view the OOB production values over various editions, where perhaps the initial conceptual model is a bit off from the gameplay now. Like for Production it's really clear that Larry had an idea about what IPC was supposed to reflect and kinda static, but I think that must have had to bend a fair bit over the course of successive editions to accommodate new added tiles and such. For the midscale games you can see that going down a bit for sure I'd say. Perhaps the SZ conception was similar? Like where it started pretty solid and clear, then got hazier over time. I mean you look at the Baltic and see it split from 1 tile into 3 sz going from V3 to G40, and have to kinda wonder about it all, like it maybe gave them some headaches too if they really sat with it for too long hehe.

My quick take here would be to nix the extra zones around Algeria sz 92/94, keep the extra zone carved out of sz 96, but move Malta off that line to be a true island again. At least then you'd have an equal distance between Malta and Gibraltar compared to Malta and Suez by sea, basically 2 spaces from each. If that works for ya, I'll just bang out the eraser and do a quick copy paste hehe

ps. Here's a quick look at how Hepster did his Med in that 1914 game. That seemed kinda interesting to me, though the basic sz splits don't follow G40 there. Like where the sz hits at Tunisia and across Libya, OOB has different lines. Perhaps something like that might still work though, like with rectangular inserts rather than circles or something? Honestly it's one of those things, where I'll just do whatever you guys think best for the ideas you got in mind. As long as G40 looks OK, I'll be pretty happy. For that I think I just need to shift Malta back for the visual right? I remember sliding it a bit right to try and add that sz similar to the way Hepps broke it across a line, but that was a while ago and it really doesn't work for the G40 sz divisions with Malta the way it's positioned there. The Med has been made relatively larger since then as well. So we can change it to whatever you guys think looks cool.