💥 1941 Global Command Decision - Official Thread

[Captain Crunch]

*the more you know

@black_elk have you made any mods?

[Black_Elk]

Not sure if you're being serious, but yes. I've been contributing to this project regularly since like 2004 lol.

I did work on the following tripleA games, mostly on the graphics end, but also on the gameplay design side for some of the tripleA custom scenarios.

World War II Revised with Sean
Pact of Steel with Beagle, Madmat and Necro
Big World with Wandering Head
Europe and Pacific 2001 and v3 with Zero Pilot
The Great War and Domination with Surtur
Global 1940 and Pact of Steel 2 with Veq and Bung
Iron War with Frostion

Some other stuff as well, more on the casual player feedback side, but those are the ones I had the most direct involvement with. I contribute what I can usually in the form of maps or unit artwork, sometimes with xml grind, but I'm not as good at that part. Invariably it becomes a collaboration where motivated people step up and chip in.
I'm a big A&A enthusiast and this is one of my favorite hobbies. So yes, I am a nerd. Thanks

[Captain Crunch]

@black_elk nerds > geeks!

Ok, so you do help with other mods people made and do graphics so you arent yanking our chains thanks

eased my suspicions -.-

[TheDog]

@Black_Elk
Dont change your style of posts, I enjoy their balanced/both sides, points of view, it helps me as a non A&A come to an informed decision.
(or a cheeky translation is keep on rambling )

I noticed that in this map it isn't possible to land existing fighters on a newly built carrier deck
I thought I had fixed this by having LHTR set, have you tried it in your current release, because I have to admit I did not test it, I ran out of time?

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Unit caps
In not a fan of the unit caps, its the first time I have used, them, it was really to aid the AI in its over production, but it is getting in the way of the player experience.

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Next release will have these caps removed
Destroyers, Subs, Transports, all individually set at 10 and a sea stack of 20 of all types of ships
Fighters, Bomber-Lgt, Bomber, all individually set at 10 and a air stack of 20 of all types of air.

Your 3pu insight & Iwo Jima, Saipan & Okinawa
A thought provoking read.

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Base
Thoughts on a new unit called Base (forward base/supply depot)
It can "produce" a limited set of units, similar to the Industry-Med, produce 1 unit / turn, can be destroyed, one hit unit. Unit icon looks like a mound of supplies.
Could be limited in number, maybe 3 or unlimited.
Its just the look of Industry-Lgt/chimney stacks sprouting up all over the place does not look right, where there is not the population/infrastructure to support it.
(Sometimes even Im bothered by what graphics look like and that bothers me )
Thoughts on yet another Production unit?

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Painting
Likening what we are doing for the game to a painting a picture, I'm still on the broad brush strokes getting the look and feel sorted, so if I don't fix the finer details its because I'm still looking at the bigger pictures broad brush strokes.

[Black_Elk]

Right on! Will do haha

I definitely struggle with brevity when typing. It's an issue I have, to just be all chain thinkin my way into something entirely too long winded. Doubtless I need an editor! lol I think I'm also low key dyslexic which can be a challenge, and for sure a confirmed rambler, so I sometimes fret over whether I'm really onto something, or just going off. I'm pretty comfortable thinking about the A&A gameplay and general playpatterns though, like sometimes I can just see it, even if I struggle to explain. Like with the production spread of the map design I mean, that in particular. Like I've just spent way too much time thinking about this stuff, for way too long, and random stuff will jump out at me like a bang.

Sometimes it's tricky to unspool for me though, and I dart around and digress a lot probably. I also always try to keep in mind what it's like to be a new player trying to figure stuff out, cause A&A was a tough game to learn. Often I'll find myself musing on ways to simplify some stuff while still keeping the same charm or same underlying systems, but just kinda riffing on it in a way that makes stuff more accessible. I mean accessible to players who are already into this sort of thing at the baseline, since I know it's niche, but like for Classic players like me, cause that was my era. Or the tail end of that era anyway hehe. My enthusiasm seems to come in waves for tripleA stuff, like twice a year usually. So I try to ride the lightning while I can. I think it's a seasonal holiday thing for me, or some kind of nostalgia that always hits in the lead up to midwinter. Go figure hahah. Anyway that's a ramble and a half, back to the topic at hand!

Yeah, I'm fully on board with the base/supply depot, I think that is the ideal way to do it. I understand the apprehension to introduce another production unit (especially where TT space for housing units is already at a premium) but that unit in particular is one I've been kicking around for a while. I think it has a lot of promise.

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/26089/g40-redesign-currently-taking-suggestions/2?page=1

The first page in that thread has some general ideas, but I think a limited type of "factory" which can spawn a smaller number of units (or units of a specific type, like say Inf) would be good as a forward production buy. Esp. for spots that may need something to jumpstart the action in a region.

Another similar concept was to produce infantry from the VC directly. So not as a unit per se, but just a feature of those territories. In A&A there are fewer of these, but because they're characterized as victory "Cities" this made sense to me. Like the player is just drawing on the key population centers to swell the ranks. This avoids the requirement of another unit on the gameboard, where space can also be at a premium.

I'm like you, I lean really hard into just having a nice aesthetic sweep. So my thought would be to reserve the factory as like an actual factory, where the tanks and such are built, but to treat the infantry fodder differently. Having those spawn either from bases or VCs or a combination of the two.

Sounds good to me, with the caps removed! I think we could probably do a more limited cap at some point, for units that are particularly potent. Like say fleet carriers, or handling some units the way you did with the elites. For the fleet carriers, if they were treated sort of like flag ships, only 1 to a tile, that might be another way to get the player to split fleets up, without making it like a hard limit. Provided the ship is badass enough and players can build a force around it, they'd be more likely to fan out perhaps. Not sure, but there's enough other cool stuff going on here that I really like, so if that one thing is causing it to drag a bit on non com, I'd like to try it without caps just to see how it goes. We can always bring it back, or tweak the concept if things get too hectic otherwise haha. I dig your direction for the broad strokes. Better to block in the major values and such, before hoping into the details too hard. Hopefully if we nail the foundation the rest will just sorta click into place as it grows.

Speaking of which, I was going to dive back in on the Relief if you're cool with how the baseline was looking in that last draft. There were a few SZ lines where I noticed what seemed like a rogue pixel or two, so I was going to clean it up and bang out a new relief from the base with all the correct Texas stuff and such.

Oh damn an LHTR toggle! I didn't even look hehehe. I had just been using the default settings unless you mentioned it like for the sub spawn prompts. I'll click that one next for sure.

Right then, off for the night! I gotta grab some shut eye
You guys take it easy, and I'll hit ya on the next one

[TheDog]

@black_elk
Most gamers/wargamers have varying degrees of aspergers so we all have that in common. Im also a little dyslexic, poor spelling & grammar, lucky for me spell & grammar checkers are everywhere.

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Please do a Base/Supply depot icon.

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reliefTiles
TT white borders, I noticed when using Tools> Find Territory that I have to turn off the reliefTiles to see the flashing white border I have just found, so what to do?

The borders in grey? Can we test it, send me a grey border that you like for my current baseTile and I will see if the find TT flashing white can be seen.

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base & relief Tiles
Yes redo both the the base & reliefs, split the desert into 2 TTs. If its tinkering at the border edges I dont need to know, but TT splitting I do and the new names.

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SZ flags
The SZ flags are currently 58px high, we could swap them for 32px high? Which would look better? In places the current ones look too small and in others too big.

[Black_Elk]

Sounds good, I'll try to come up with something with a look that says "army base" hehe

My first thought was that Frostion's AB might work, but then I was also thinking something with a more compact visual might be good, especially if they end up on islands since those ABs are kinda beefy. I like the design though with the little tents and such. Something along those lines perhaps. I'll sit with it for a night.

Oh interesting, yeah I hadn't thought of it, but there's no way to invert the color of that highlight line, so probably a lighter grey, so the white highlight will show against it. But like not so midrange that we lose the overall light border motif. Fingers crossed, but if that doesn't look good we could always go back to black borders I suppose. Here let me hack something together right quick...

OK this one shows the borders with an amlost 20% grey (hex D6D6D6), so keeping with that lighter borders vibe, but off-white rather than white.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vndy8p710hm1yu6/Domination 1941 relief 25 opacity gray borders.png?dl=0

The borders don't pop quite as hard, but I can still see where they are, so I think that might be enough value to still show the flash of the highlight at 1 px white line. But we'd have to try it on for size to know for sure. In GIMP when I tried it the line still popped for me against that color, but probably would have to double check to see how it holds up when zoomed out a bit, like say 50% to make sure it still reads. It's also possible to play up the lines by changing the blue hue of the sea zones, since perception of color/value is relative, so that might be another option. Not sure if you like the look, or if there's a better way to do it, but just to test it out. It has the newer lines and no beacons yet, but should still display the same in Europe if you want to see what it feels like real quick to see if the highlight thing works. Or it might be an opacity thing, where I need to open the center line to let the base show through maybe? Not entirely sure, but we can play around with it.

Righ on, Flags at 32 px for the next one then. I'll bang that out tomorrow and put em together for the next package

[TheDog]

Your supposed to be in bed

I refuse to comment on the map. (shakes head), but thanks.

I have the Flags already, so done.

[TheDog]

Base-Camp in game for the next release and even better bought by the AI to defend a VC in Borneo on Turn 2 and in production on Turn 3.

Currently its called Base-Camp, so what to call it?
Currently it is 0/1/0 has some AA defence and produce 1 infantry / turn, costs 9pu.
It does not generate, nor does it consume PU (no maintenance/upkeep, no rail links, so no move 3)
Its a base, camp, army training acts as a supply depot, but does not actually supply anything in game.

[TheDog]

I have caught the flashing, you can see it on the image below on the factory, the white "n" shaped arc.

It did not work as hoped. Does it matter? How many players search for a TT ?

I only found out because I wanted to find 200+ forest TT, otherwise I would not of found out, and then I had a work around.

For reference its linked to this file
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vndy8p710hm1yu6/Domination 1941 relief 25 opacity gray borders.png?dl=0

[Black_Elk]

Right on!

Base-Camp works for me as a name. I also like Army Base, Troop Base, Garrison, or Barracks, but Base-Camp seems fine. I think they're all sufficiently generic and would probably convey the basic meaning/gist of what the unit is meant to do hehe.

Yeah, it's a trip there with the flashing highlight thing. I think tripleA just wasn't really designed with white borders in mind, since it seems to be built around the assumption of black line borders. It also wasn't really designed to support reliefs either, or at least not initially, since that was added along the way hehe, so it might just be that I haven't fully understood the opacity requirements for the border lines and need to iron out the kinks.

It would be better if that flashing highlight was like bright neon green or something, so it'd still show through against either black or white, but not sure if it can be changed. I guess the question is also whether it's just a color thing, or a transparency/opacity thing.

From a usability standpoint, not sure how much it matters. There are a few other instances where that flashing line is helpful though. In the Edit Mode for one, the highlight will indicate which tile is being selected, and I think it's used as well for the "unmoved units" cycler. Might have some other uses as well.

I think I prefer white lines over black lines for a basic visual, but probably black lines over gray if it's a choice between those two. I'm still not sure if it's maybe a relief layer opacity thing.

If that's the case, either color border with the opacity dialed down may yet work, but this would also have the base 1px line borders showing through. Likely displaying as a gray for the interior line. So sort of a 2 tone effect if doing that. Basically skinny black/gray line inside a thicker white/white-ish line at like 50% opacity or whatever. Might look decent, but I'll have to try it to see. Worst case we can just go black borders, since we know that can work, and it's fairly standard on most maps. But I think I might have to tweak it so the black isn't truly black, but more of a transparent black, to show the baseline borders through the thicker relief borders.

[TheDog]

Might a dark silver work like;
Silver Filigree #7f7c81
Sonic Silver #757575
to replace the white line, like I know what I'm talking

[Black_Elk]

Here is a black border relief which should work, since I carved out the 1 px base and allowed that to line show through the relief at 100% opacity.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/swym3w2j27mr95x/Domination 1941 black line relief 1px open.png?dl=0

The same could be done with a light gray, or a silver although the visual effect there is to make the borders appear somewhat more muted overall. Basically the skinny black line, set against a light or off-white backdrop, will just make the whole border line appear to be a midrange gray when zoomed out. Our eyes doing the blending there.

If it's a choice between black borders that still pop and which have that highlighting functionality vs grayish borders that sort of recede into the midrange, I think I'd go black. Like we'd want to prioritize readability and functionality probably, over the novelty of a white/light border. The prob with doing the same thing with the thicker white borders, is that the 1 px black line from the base will show a harder edge, whereas when set against the thicker black that edge appears softer, cause it just sorta blends into the blur. Like you probably wouldn't even notice the 1 px line, unit it was being highlighted to turn flashing white when the TT is selected. I'd say we just go Black Line for now, until I figure out if there's an optimal way to do a white border motif without losing that highlighting functionality.

Anyhow, give that one a shot and let me know if it worked. I can clean it up and add the canal stuff in once we know if it'll do the trick. I'll keep experimenting with the white/gray/silver combos to see if I can get something clean by playing with opacity of the 1px opening too, cause there might be a way to pull that off.

[TheDog]

Yes that works with find, but visually I have been spoilt with the white border, it looks so much better.

Keep researching the darkish grey/silver/middle ground colour to see if the middle ground works or is just the worst?

[Black_Elk]

Yeah I'll keep chipping away at it, cause I'm rather partial to the white lines as well, now that I'm all used to them haha.

I can think of a couple options. I'm looking at other maps right now to see how the problem has been approached elsewhere.

I noticed in TWW by Rolff and Hepps that the relief will block the highlight flash in the SZ tiles, so it is only displaying there for the land TTs (where the border lines are yellow/black.)

In Redrum's WAW the highlight effect works, but the borders there are all brown-ish gray and the overall aesthetic of that one is kinda muted for the color scheme.

In the Shogan Advanced I wasn't able to confirm, but I think in that one the highlight doesn't display. I've been using Edit Mode to check the TT selection thing, but that map has the Edit Mode blanked out as an option. I tried the TT finder, but didn't catch a flash.

Frostion's Iron War works as normal, but that's cause it uses the black line.

In Domination NML the highlight effect does not work, as the border lines there are white. I know the original had black lines for everything, cause that's what I drew initially, but I think Imbaked changed it to white lines at some point, or maybe it was Redrum.

Oil and Snow uses the 2 tone thing, black 1 px line set against a lighter gray. That works reasonably well, but again the visual effect is to make all the borders appear rather more subdued compared to the white borders which really pop. In general I think if going Gray or 2 tone for borders, this recommends an ocean Blue with a darker color value so the quick read remains reasonably clean.

There are definitely a few maps floating around which don't use the highlight feature at all, so I'm not sure if it will be missed? I'd hate to bend over backwards and compromise the overall visual for a feature that people don't even notice, but again, it's a bit of a bind. Like ideally you'd want a situation where the highlight was some color other than white for the flash. Or if that's like 1 line in the code to set the color value, it could be just about any bright or neon color with a lot of vibrancy, especially since the highlight appears only briefly. A white highlight flash is problematic, because white may be used elsewhere too, like for text or decorations. But more relevant, the 1px black line of the base is kinda unavoidable. Like you can either cover it entirely, let it show through entirely, or let it show through but tweaking the opacity of the layer that it's riding into. Those are the 3 options I think.

If I open the relief to let it show through then you got that black in the middle. If I change the opacity so that the black appears gray against the white line, then the highlight would also be dampened by the same transparency I think. So it wouldn't really do what it was supposed to. If the lines were 50% gray (black at 50% opacity inside white) you could probably disguise the 1px line but then you're stuck with very midrange gray borders with not much pop. And of course everything will change, if changing the Sea Zone color, since that's so much of what you're seeing at a glance. I think changing the hue on the blue may be necessary if going with light gray relief lines, but you'll instantly notice the change in the overall palette. Like other colors might need to get a tweak to make it look good. But I think I'd try just going up like 5% or 10% in value for the blue. Just a little darker, to see if that works without upending the entire slant of the overall color palette.

Here, real quick, give this one a shot and see how it feels...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/47lqoi54k9bmkn4/Domination 1941 gray line relief 1 px open.png?dl=0

If that one works (like where you can still see the highlight flash) then perhaps a way to do it is simply to expand the relief line by a couple pixels in width, so that when it's zoomed out those 2 tone lines won't appear quite so midrange. Basically using a 7px Gray border line (instead of a 5px border like you're seeing in the relief posted above), so the relief borders would be a bit beefier, but also brighter. Like appearing more white-ish, relative to the 1px black line, when zoomed out. That might do the trick, provided the flash still shows against that color gray.

[TheDog]

The image below is at 100%, the land border is black, the SZ border is red, yes I can see the flash of the Find TT in both cases, this is a reasonable compromise or variation thereof.

To land aircraft after combat I realise sometimes I have to use Find a TT, so I think we need accommodate Find a TT as it has a lot of new TT names.

ps. Im off to bed.

[Black_Elk]

Ok cool I'll work with that concept then. I think what's needed is a combination of a slightly thicker relief line, but also a blend for the one that shows through from the base. So instead of seeing just the 1px black line, you'd have another pixel (a 50% gray-ish pixel) coming between the black and the white-ish line. This would be on the relief itself. Basically so we can put some anti-aliasing or blur on that 1px black line. Otherwise it's a bit choppy. But that should be relatively easy to do, now that I know how it's working.

We'd have the 1 px hole in the relief to display the baseline at 100% opacity, then another 3 px hole where the opacity is at 25% or 50% or whatever looks nicest. This should produce a line that I can blend with the gaussian blur so it looks smooth. So a soft edge rather than hard edge, and less pixel-y lookin. To make it work the white/gray relief just needs to expand by like 1 or 2 px on either side, so fairly similar. I'll cook it up tomorrow night

[beelee]

yea Base Camp seems a good name. That's where reinforcements would show up

[Black_Elk]

Ok here's another relief to test...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pvyu2jj544jcxo5/Domination 1941 relief 2 tone borders.png?dl=0

I beefed up the white lines, then did a blend near the center to soften that 1px black line. It's a little tricky to get a good blend going across just 2 pixels, usually it takes 5 values to get a decent gradient going from White to Black, but we want more Tint than Shade I think for the read at a glance, so I tried get the out of what I had to work with, without making the borders too gigantic lol.

The idea was to get the whites to still pop when zoomed out, but where the black line wouldn't be too choppy when zoomed in, also where the overall register wouldn't appear too midtone. My solution for this last was to dial down the color value on the ocean blue, basically to play up the contrast there lightly, but without changing the overall hue too much. It's a little steelier, but doesn't upend the general sweep of the palette hopefully. I think it works.

Let me know how that feels for you, and if it seems good I'll start detailing in the canal stuff.

ps. I noticed just now that edit mode is also disabled here in the 1941 command decision. Not having Edit Mode definitely removes some critical tripleA functionality. I'd say not having it would basically make the map unplayable in a PvP context, since players would have no way to get around mistakes or errors short of loading an autosave. This isn't always practical, especially where a quick edit could fix something on the fly. I'd suggest including it here and in the Shogun map as well, for PvP. But even if the intention is only to allow play vs a Hard AI (like as a purely single player experience) the Edit Mode can still very useful. It allows users to adjust stuff quickly without having to close tripleA to go under the hood in a txt editor, and you can alter and save out the game state quickly, which would probably be helpful at this stage. Like where we're still iterating. Really it's useful at every point along the way, just as a QoL convenience, but as a design tool it can be used in cool ways too. Like to activate certain options in-game via the edit tech menu, rather than just from the launch screen. Anyhow, just a thought. Hopefully the new relief does the trick hehe. I can keep noodling it if not

Oh also here's the baseline, with the correct blue and those tweaks.

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

The additional tiles are West Texas and E. Colorado. The connection between Boston and Hudson-Delaware would also need to get nixed, because now New York comes between them. I'd also rename that tile from Hudson-Delaware to just Pennsylvania or Philadelphia-Delaware, or something like that, since the TT no longer includes the Hudson river really, that one is in the New York-New Jersey tile now, since I got rid of the blob and the weirdness in favor of a more state-lines look. Otherwise it should be the same across the rest of the board.

I'll work on the Base-Camp unit graphic when get a chance. Base-Camp works for me as a name, since you could abbreviate BC. The way Industrial Complex (factory) can be abbreviated IC. So it has a sort of parity. I like Army Base, but then we already got AB for Air Base in G40, so I like the BC shorthand. Also as a name that's sufficiently generic enough that if you wanted to spawn other units besides just infantry in a limited way, you could still have that idea that it's like a forward base of ops. Sounds cool to me

See ya next round!

[TheDog]

SZ 099 B caught on a flash at 100%

caught on a flash at 50%, 4K screen would see this

Its working, hopefully this helps?

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On my TripleA 2.5.22294 Edit Mode is fine, I have 3 versions installed and Edit Mode works on these three fine. AFAIK you cannot disable it