The Citadel [Quenched]

[TaCktiX]

I'm glad that you're sticking through with this map Tac, but I'm not really getting it so far. I appreciate that you've attended this school and have strong personal feeling for it, but the rest of the world could probably care less. That's kind of why I abandoned my Charleston, SC map. I love the city, and thought it would make a great map, but as much as I love it, most people have never heard of it. I just couldn't get the support.

On the other hand, you seem to have more buzz around this map than I had with mine. And you're taking the constructive critisism pretty well. So that's good. But here's my 2 cents.

Whether it be stubbornness or patience, only time will tell.

I think the grass has to be toned down some, or if you would prefer, take it out from the background behind the legend and the text on the field. It's just too distracting (overall).

I think I'm going to opt for Black 50% Opacity boxes with white text around the entire map. That way it's clearly readable universally. I'd like to replace the legend background, but I have no idea what to put there that would be "appropriate" to the map theme. Ideas shoot them my way.

It took me a while to find where the tower was. Is there a way you could make it stand out a little more?

Behold the upcoming power of Stroke! Or something similar to highlight it. My earlier worry was making sure people could tell "hey, this is part of 2nd and can be attacked 4 ways (both Quads, Echo, F-Troop).

The whole bottom 1/3 of the screen looks very confusing. The checkerboard pattern doesn't help either. There are too many flags / dotted-lines and hard to read words that don't have any kind of flow. I wouldn't stand a chance at this map without bob script help.

The entire thing follows the same adjacency rules, they're just weird. Note on my upcoming version 7 I'm going to alternately eliminate the quads for solid color or tone them down significantly. You'll see the results of both when I post it.

The red flags ontop of the checkerboard don't work. When you put armies on top of this, it will be way too confusing.

The box for the armies is BELOW the red flag. Suppose that's not exactly apparent as it is right now.

so does the parade deck get an autodeploy bonus every turn? It should.

Why should it? It's a territory that can access the rest of the map with ease. Holding it is a privilege all its own. By that argument the people who keep on accusing me of copying CCU should be advocating there be a +1 auto-deploy to the Quad on that map.

Your other buildings look fine, with good colors and good use of shadows, and walkways.

Virtually satellite-accurate.

try bringing your building name font down a bit. It looks a little too big now. Use a plain font like tahoma or arial. You may want to take the anti-aliasing off and just make it like 8pt. italic with 1 pt. white stroke / or something very plain. I kind of don't like how some names are larger font than others, even when the words still are overlapping the building outlines.

A few of the territory names are cramped for space (namely President). The Company names need to be enlarged. In Versions 5 and before, they had to be that small to fit at all, but Version 6 liberated me of a ton of space, so expect a few "bigger" names. Aside from those, all territories are universally 3 point type.

But good luck with the map. We need a good South Carolina map on CC !!

American Civil War and USA don't count? Bummer...

[RjBeals]

But good luck with the map. We need a good South Carolina map on CC !!

American Civil War and USA don't count? Bummer...

Technically I guess.

And yes I can tell the army boxes are below the red flags. It's just that there's too much going on. When I said no "flow" wasn't really referring to attack directions, but the overall feel of that area of the map. I more of a simple style person. that's why Cairns's map's scare the hell out of me.

[RjBeals]

What about something very simple like this for fonts? Top is Arial, bottom 2 are Gothic 11 point, italic. Toned down grass noise also.

[TaCktiX]

I think a major thing in the way right now is the solid black borders of everything, now that I look at that. If I grayed it down or something similar, everything would be instantly readable. Another addition to the pile, I guess it's a good thing I went running today.

[RjBeals]

How did you make your dotted lines? Did you adjust the spacing in a photoshop brush to make them? They might be also adding to the busyness of the map. How does it look without the white stoke on them? Now it looks like ants. Have you tried smaller round dots with no stroke? Maybe not black but a different color?

(EDIT)
Like this?

[RjBeals]

I posted this in another forum, but thought you might find it useful.

Dotted Line
Hit F5 to bring up your brushes pallet. Click Brush Tip Shape. Adjust your spacing until you are satisfied.

[TaCktiX]

When I don't know the PhotoShop shortcut, I make up my own. The attack lines were originally one short line rasterized ("one dash"). I duplicated it twice, spaced one duplicate out a bit, and created "two dash". Then I took "two dash" and "one dash", duplicated them, and made "three dash". Using transform controls, I created One-Three Dash "Up". I then used those layers all over the map, duplicating and moving them as necessary. Some of them I can remove the stroke from instantly, but others got some merging done to them (parade deck routes, mainly, when I extended them) and the layer style got cleared. Then again, the attack lines were before I dropped the opacity on all the "fluff" so I don't think the white is necessary now. *Adds to the pile for Version 7*

Dang you guys, Version 7 was going to be a bit update and now it's going to be crizazy.

[CatfishJohnson]

Don't ever say Crizazy again mori, ever

[TaCktiX]

Version 7

Updates:
- Changed the reigning font from Verdana to Arial
- Standardized (nearly) font size around the map
- Switched to white text with black strokes
- Checkerboard patterns removed in favor of solid color
- Quad flags/army squares re-positioned to be more readable
- All buildings were changed from black outline to gray outline
- Moved bonus and special feature text around a little bit to free up map space



Discussion Points:
- Are the new quads good?
- Is the text more or less readable? I seem to change to one scheme that works for 90% of the map and fails in 10% of it. Need to get this resolved ASAP.
- Is the position of bonuses and other special features alright, or do they need some moving? If so, where?

[t-o-m]

since the text is only small and thin, the black lines around it make it look blury to me, that maybe just my eyesight??
but the text is still readable

--tom

[RjBeals]

Ehh...

I still think you could get a better font. The thin white with black outline just doesn't look good. It doesn't even look crisp. The grass is still too distracting. The Quads do look better and so do the flags / flag placements. Way better without the checkerboard pattern.

Overall though, I'm still not feeling it. Too many hard lines. That about sums it up for me. And are you sure your army rectangles are big enough? Have you put the "88" test army in to see if it fits? Even if it fits, I think it will barely fit, and look cramped.

[TaCktiX]

Ehh...

I still think you could get a better font. The thin white with black outline just doesn't look good. It doesn't even look crisp.

Help! I honestly don't know what to do. The map itself has a lot of contrast between the grass/sidewalk and asphalt bits, so I don't know how to make the text show up without it not showing up, if that makes sense.

The grass is still too distracting. The Quads do look better and so do the flags / flag placements. Way better without the checkerboard pattern.

I forgot to touch up the grass texture. I'll de-noise it some next version.

Overall though, I'm still not feeling it. Too many hard lines. That about sums it up for me. And are you sure your army rectangles are big enough? Have you put the "88" test army in to see if it fits? Even if it fits, I think it will barely fit, and look cramped.

I jacked the exact army pixel count from one of the map-help topics, and gave a little room inside the box for them. I want the top dimension to be closer than the side ones, but other than that they should work. I'll see if I can 88 them when I tone down the grass, and if not I'll resize. I'm taking any suggestions for what can reduce the "hard lines" problem you speak of. I need a bit more detail as to how to fix that If it means rounding out the edges on all the buildings, I think I can do that relatively easily. Anything else some pointers would be appreciated.

[RjBeals]

I think it may have to do with the attack routes. Do you really need those? Why not use the sidewalks instead - you already have those in place. Just up the visuals on them and of course the building "rooms" can attack adjacent "rooms". Maybe you're trying to keep your map too true to the real architecture. Maye you should take some of the rooms off, or simplify some of the sidewalks.

[mibi]

the readibility issue here is not one of fonts. It's about placement. You have busy text sloppily placed over a busy background. It won't be readable no matter which font or styling you use. I suggest you re-archetecture most of the buildings to fit the type.

It's quite a shame really, you have all this free and open space in the middle, with only one army placement, and everything else is all squashed, crammed, and mangled.

[t-o-m]

It's quite a shame really, you have all this free and open space in the middle, with only one army placement, and everything else is all squashed, crammed, and mangled.

exactly what i was thinking,

i think this map has a lot of promise and i would like to see it in action, but obviously there are a few issues to address, the grass is a little distracting, but youre planning to fix that,
the text is a big problem for me though, just hard to read and as ive said, a little blury, but that can be fixed

overall i think this will pull through, good luck

--tom

[TaCktiX]

The To Do list for Version 8:

- Denoise the grass
- Enlarge all buildings to take up more space, making text easier to put inside of them.
- Revamp attack lines to account for the larger building size
- Ditch layer effects if at all possible

Yeah, screw satellite accurate now.

[t-o-m]

Yeah, screw satellite accurate now.

but thats the thing about it that you like and take pride in,
and youre taking it away?

good luck, hope it goes well

[TaCktiX]

It's holding the map back, that's why I'm dropping it. I would rather have to make some sacrifices and see the map Quench than to sacrifice nothing and have it die here.

[t-o-m]

i suppose..

off topic question: what do you have to do to get your map stickfied on the map ideas sub-forum?

[TaCktiX]

Gah, this isn't possible...

I started enlarging all the buildings, and got about 3/4 of it done. Then I found out that there is no possible way to enlarge the battalions by a factor significant enough to stick the text and the flags and space for armies (i'd like to eliminate almost all of the squares, they don't look good) without having them all mush up against each other. I COULD use a shortened form of all the company names (one letter, 2 letters at most), and that might work.

But that leaves unaddressed the other problem I have: I drew the map to scale, in its entirety. Making things larger and moving them in on the oversize Parade Deck is nigh on impossible because of all the scaling errors that would immediately introduce. So other than starting the map over from scratch, I don't know what to do to make it work.

On a plus note, denoising the grass was easy and it looks much better now. Bummer I can't fix any of the other glaring problems with the map.

[RjBeals]

Can you post what you have, even though it's in the middle of being edited? Just so I can see what you're up against?

Edit..
I'm most likely not going to be able to check back in until tomorrow as I'm going out tonight.

[TaCktiX]

The edits I was making looked so bad I exited out of PhotoShop without saving the changes. I'm going to try a few other things to make it work after this weekend. I'll be gone for this weekend so I won't be able to show a new version until afterwards.

[cairnswk]

I'm very interested to see where you are going with this map. Some changes sound like good, others not so...have you tried "creative license" to decrease the size of the grass assembly area and increase the size of the buildings.
These maps don't have to be exactly accurate,as there has to be some practicality involved with youir design work...that's where creative license comes in. Just a suggestion.

[gimil]

I'm very interested to see where you are going with this map. Some changes sound like good, others not so...have you tried "creative license" to decrease the size of the grass assembly area and increase the size of the buildings.
These maps don't have to be exactly accurate,as there has to be some practicality involved with youir design work...that's where creative license comes in. Just a suggestion.

May you can give him some of that creative juice

[RjBeals]

Here's some creative juice.