Ancient Empires: 222 BC
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@Hepps To me that looks fine, even with default zoom (100%). Though I can see the value of viewing more of the map at once. But Cernel got me thinking about higher resolutions. Forcing people to smaller units in that case seems suboptimal. But I might not be getting everything right, this is one more new field of discussion for me.
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@Name So as @Cernel mentions the ideal situation is you keep units at 100% though given your map size, I think you'll struggle with having adequate placements in many of the smaller territories. So unless you want to actually make the map larger, I'd agree with @Hepps that something around 75-87.5% is probably gonna be better.
Taking a look at some other existing maps might help. Many of them have honestly done a pretty poor job and Civil War is an example of one that is mechanically a great map but very difficult for many people to play as the units and territories are so small. On the other hand, TWW did a pretty good job around this as units and territories are a pretty good size and allowed for a good number of placements in most territories.
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@redrum I'd like to enlarge the map, with focus on some aspects I neglected to a degree (placement space, line shape/size, island size and there's probably some other thing I'd come across after a lot of work:p). My main issue (and one of the reasons why I cut a bit of the south and east) is that it was getting laggy - almost unbearable - in the map editing utilities, even with 6GB allowed ram.
So if I don't go that way, and with the varied pros and cons discussed here, I'm not sure yet if it's going to be 87.5 or 100%. I think I could manage the later with extra units extending to the generally larger sea regions and using lines both to the left and right accordingly. Not matter what units won't be that small like in Civil War.
Whatever extra advice regarding the map, unit size and related issues is very welcome, before I go deeply into it.
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@Name Interesting. I'm not a map/graphics expert so I'd defer to folks like @Hepps @Frostion as they probably have more insight into these things.
I can try to take a look at improving performance of the map utilities though if that is becoming a limiting factor. Though I'd need a bit more detail and probably the image you are working with so I can try to reproduce it.
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It really is difficult to say exactly what is best for your needs at this point because a great deal depends on how many actual unit placements you will need on average for most territories. So I'm not sure whether the examples you have are the exact number of unit types that might actually be in any given territory during the course of the game.
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@redrum I guess you'd need the enlarged image to do that (though the current one is also laggy in things like the placement picker). In my limited experience something like 10k pixels wide is fine, 15k bareable, 20k really problematic (depending on height as well, but assuming a 4/2-ish ratio).
@Hepps I'd say it's going to be like 3-7 slots for structures and on top of that 7-9 land unit types per player (plus any extra allied or enemy armies). So in really odd cases it could reach a scary 30 or even 50+ present unit types in a territory (experienced players could do a better guess than me I think).
If I end up redoing the map, it would have to be over 22000-ish pixels wide for a meaningful change. I'm not at the right computer now, but I think my current map is about 19 x 9k.
Another consideration is the faster way to get good looking borders. So far my efforts have been with editing paintable territory maps for strategy games or their mods, as it provided a good starting point and often almost ready borders. Then copy-pasting bits of the lines to move them around as desired, or deleting smaller, in-between territories. The stroke tool in Gimp is also a bit laggy with such map sizes, and without great results, so I'm eager for related advice as well.
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@Name Have 100% units zoom and go for double dimensions then what you have now by doubling all coordinates in the various txt files with excel. And any time you have to do anything, just use the 50% map, then double what you obtain with excel. That way you will go around the limits. Just keep in your map both the doubled files and the original, in case you have to retake the originals for modifications (then doubling again).
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@Cernel In this case, use units at 50% zoom when you are making the placements, of course (that way, once you double, the coordinates will be fit for 100%).
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@Cernel That's interesting but such levels of extra work would be a serious drain on my motivation. I'd rather reduce something in the scope (number of territories, structures or covered region), reduce the icon size or just enlarge the map and deal with lag (until completion or until redrum updates the utilities). Btw I wonder if it would be a good idea as solution to allow the game even more ram than 6 GB (out of 12 in total).
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@Name Assuming you are on windows 10 with 12GB and not much else open, you should be fine to push it up to at least 8 GB maybe even 10 GB. Whether that helps, I'm not sure as depends if the slowness is due to memory swapping or if there are certain computations that run that need further optimized and its more of a CPU bottleneck.
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@redrum windows 7 and I'll test that.
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Starting clear from a wiki image. Enlarging islands to a size where the even smallest region should fit 10 units at 100% scale, when the image gets to full, x5 size (22400x11200p). Should i got even larger?
Edit: @redrum with 9GB ram allowed, my old map (19000 x 9000) runs significantly smoother in the placement picker, and that's with firefox, gimp and a couple of minor programs open.
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@Name Here is an example of your Spartan Capital at the sizing you had initially posted.
When I did this it appeared your unit size was 36 pixel by 36 pixel.
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@Hepps Units are 48x48, but I was using a smaller scale for that pic, not sure which one, but 75 makes sense with your dimensions. Mid sized territories like Sparta should be fine anyway, issue was with small and really small ones.
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@Name Good to know. So that would indicate the limiting factor is ram and probably needing enough so that your map can all be held in memory and avoid swapping which is probably what can cause the slowness. Luckily these days most PCs have 12-16 GB so can handle editing that size of map then. The other obvious question is when you actually run a fully implemented map at that size, how it would run and how much memory it would potentially need. The engine does break the map into tiles when running an actual game so it should be a little more forgiving with memory than the map utilities.
I'd say that probably a good size and as @Hepps shows if you are creative with placements and pack them in then you should be able to get a pretty good number even in smaller territories. Best thing to do would be take a few of the smaller territories and show how placements would look like @Hepps example (though using 48x48 instead). Usually islands need less as they usually don't have as many units so wouldn't worry as much about those (plus they are easier to just make larger if necessary).
@Hepps Out of curiousity, what size is GD?
TripleA Developer with a Passion for AI: https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/105/ai-development-discussion-and-feedback
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@redrum Never had performance issues in game with the 19x9k map, before increasing ram allowance. No clue what will happen with multiple times more territories and units though.
Only thing worth mentioning is that if I reopened the map several times, without having exited the game (5+ I'd say), I experienced from small to total freezes. That should be already known I guess?
I tried something similar to @Hepps' image and any island ter is able to hold 10+ at 100%.
GD is? The larger map made so far?
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@Name Alright, that's good. I do think we have a few memory leaks when relaunching games without restarting TripleA and a few may be fixed in the latest pre-release.
GD is Global Dominance which is probably the largest map "being made" but it still has a long way to go to become a working map: https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/95/global-dominance
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@Name Even with your unit counts I think your original size was pretty good.
If you factor in that most territories will never have 1 of every single; building, resource or unit... then you look like you are in pretty good shape. I have to imagine that you are not planning on loading the entire map and that lots of the map will be rather sparsely filled from the beginning. You may have to reconsider some smaller territories and SZ but if you use a template like Sparta while designing for the areas of the map that are likely to be loaded... you should be good.
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@Hepps I'm troubled because say 10% of the territories that might get loaded are smaller (often half or less size than sparta).
Also a new map will allow me to better define borders, if I ever get to find a way to draw them more smoothly. How did you do the ones in GD? What tool/settings and about how many pixels wide?
Edit: Here's progress so far (my old playable territories are ready). Drawing my own borders seems faster, I wonder how good they're going to look. Any feedback before I try remaking the XML?
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