[Abandoned] - Vietnam

[porkenbeans]

Ditch the army circles... they make it exceptionally ugly.

I have a problem with the USA and landing craft in North Vietnam because landings didn't happen. The USA's military actions in the north were generally limited to air strikes, making North Vietnam the most heavily bombed country in the history of war.

oh, operation 34a did happen, it was covert and it was landing south vietnamese commandoes it didnt really mention american troops landing though it was coordinated by them. it just wasnt a big deal since it wasnt landings like say d-day, they would have been at night and only small amounts of troops at a time to attack small targets like bridges and stuff.

Well yeah, it may have happened but it was not a large scale thing, which is what this map is proposing it is. When players play this game, they're going to be invading the north in droves and that is totally contrary the American part of the vietnam war.

IH is right. However they did bomb the shit out of Hanoi.

[Victor Sullivan]

A few things for this update:
1. You still need to have the same color font for all territory names, so to make it easier to look at from afar and easier to read up close (the grey in North Central Coast is extremely hard to read).
2. I don't understand the one-ways in Ho Chi Minh Trail. They make that bonus area rather overpowered (though the small +2 bonus does a decent job to balance this)
3. I had trouble finding Hanoi and Saigon. You should highlight those more since they yield a +2 bonus.
4. The Operation 34a territories aren't purple, but it's purple in the legend...?
5. Good job with the Mekong River Delta close-up

-Sully

im afraid same colours fonts would make some bits hard to read, i mean dark on dark or light on light isnt very good thats what i had before kind of. different colours also helps to distinguish between regions. i could use some more opinions on this.

Just make HMCT lighter and use black or you could make Red River Delta and Northeast a tad darker and use white

A few things for this update:
1. You still need to have the same color font for all territory names, so to make it easier to look at from afar and easier to read up close (the grey in North Central Coast is extremely hard to read).
2. I don't understand the one-ways in Ho Chi Minh Trail. They make that bonus area rather overpowered (though the small +2 bonus does a decent job to balance this)
3. I had trouble finding Hanoi and Saigon. You should highlight those more since they yield a +2 bonus.
4. The Operation 34a territories aren't purple, but it's purple in the legend...?
5. Good job with the Mekong River Delta close-up

-Sully

yup, i will probably make them brighter, you are talking about on the legend right? or on the map as well?

I meant in the map. Maybe try making them a nice, bright color (you still need to desaturate your colors more, anyway) to make them more easily spotted.

-Sully like you mean it

[RedFlyingGolf]

I like this. I recommend saving it as a .png, because the quality is always better. I agree with Victor Sullivan, you should keep the color of the font the same and make it a bit easier to read.

[kengyin]

Ditch the army circles... they make it exceptionally ugly.

I have a problem with the USA and landing craft in North Vietnam because landings didn't happen. The USA's military actions in the north were generally limited to air strikes, making North Vietnam the most heavily bombed country in the history of war.

oh, operation 34a did happen, it was covert and it was landing south vietnamese commandoes it didnt really mention american troops landing though it was coordinated by them. it just wasnt a big deal since it wasnt landings like say d-day, they would have been at night and only small amounts of troops at a time to attack small targets like bridges and stuff.

Well yeah, it may have happened but it was not a large scale thing, which is what this map is proposing it is. When players play this game, they're going to be invading the north in droves and that is totally contrary the American part of the vietnam war.

dont some maps deviate from reality for the sake of gameplay also? whether it be geographically or politically or whatever many maps adjust the real life situation so that the gameplay is enhanced right? i mean this is for CC not a history lesson. for example in the western front map italy is included though western front generally refers to the sweep through france and belgium into germany, the campaign through north africa and italy was started long before d-day and not really western front. is that not the same reasoning?

A few things for this update:
1. You still need to have the same color font for all territory names, so to make it easier to look at from afar and easier to read up close (the grey in North Central Coast is extremely hard to read).
2. I don't understand the one-ways in Ho Chi Minh Trail. They make that bonus area rather overpowered (though the small +2 bonus does a decent job to balance this)
3. I had trouble finding Hanoi and Saigon. You should highlight those more since they yield a +2 bonus.
4. The Operation 34a territories aren't purple, but it's purple in the legend...?
5. Good job with the Mekong River Delta close-up

-Sully

im afraid same colours fonts would make some bits hard to read, i mean dark on dark or light on light isnt very good thats what i had before kind of. different colours also helps to distinguish between regions. i could use some more opinions on this.

Just make HMCT lighter and use black or you could make Red River Delta and Northeast a tad darker and use white

A few things for this update:
1. You still need to have the same color font for all territory names, so to make it easier to look at from afar and easier to read up close (the grey in North Central Coast is extremely hard to read).
2. I don't understand the one-ways in Ho Chi Minh Trail. They make that bonus area rather overpowered (though the small +2 bonus does a decent job to balance this)
3. I had trouble finding Hanoi and Saigon. You should highlight those more since they yield a +2 bonus.
4. The Operation 34a territories aren't purple, but it's purple in the legend...?
5. Good job with the Mekong River Delta close-up

-Sully

yup, i will probably make them brighter, you are talking about on the legend right? or on the map as well?

I meant in the map. Maybe try making them a nice, bright color (you still need to desaturate your colors more, anyway) to make them more easily spotted.

-Sully like you mean it

i will make a new version with black fonts all around and compare them side by side

yellow would probably be suitable or maybe just blue on red and red on blue as with the legend hanoi and saigon text

[kengyin]

im going to start a poll about this, so far 2 people think all one colour and 1 person (me) think separate colours. the one with at least 10% more than the other will go through, if less then i will make the final decision (unless the majority of voters for the other option are more experienced and thus unofficially have more weighting).

All black text


vs

coloured text

[kengyin]

hey png is better quality, thanks for the tips!

[natty dread]

hey png is better quality, thanks for the tips!

Yes it is. JPG always loses some quality, while PNG is a lossless format. PNG files tend to be a bit larger though... you can use Optipng to optimize the file but they'll still be a bit larger than JPG.

[porkenbeans]

The carpet bombing of Hanoi was a huge controversy at the time, and I think that it should be included somehow.

[kengyin]

wait so before the poll it was 2 vs 1 and afterwards it is still 2 vs 1???? the whole point of the poll is to get some more opinions

[kengyin]

The carpet bombing of Hanoi was a huge controversy at the time, and I think that it should be included somehow.

hmmmm yes i kind of thought about that but then gameplay wise the north vietnamese regions would be more concentrated with attacks and much harder to hold than south regions and would also graphically look very unbalanced. or is that just me having OCD and wanting everything symmetrical? (currently there are the same number of territories in the north and south and same number of attacks). i mean its not like its south against the north when playing the map, but it still looks really uneven if you know what i mean

[kengyin]

i just checked it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Linebacker_II
this is from 1972 much later than when my map was set anyway, in which time, i havent seen an actual map but by this time usa was clearly losing which is why they would have had to resort to such measures. my map is set in 1964 when it was more balanced

[kengyin]

3 votes against 1? do i suck at this or something because i honestly find yellow on blue for example much easier to read than black on blue

[kengyin]

any more ideas? so far i have just de-saturated the image by 10 and darkened it by 5 plus made hanoi and saigon yellow with red and blue stars respectively. i am doing these changes on both images so the change of coloured text if happens will already be taken care of.

[kengyin]

v2.2
-desaturated by a further 10 points
-darkened by 5 points
-hanoi and saigon now yellow to be more easily distinguised
-army digits added to check fit


goals accomplished
-not much but we can see how the army digits fit, they fit nicely now but some adjustment is in order for the small version

continued discussion
-black or coloured text
-should i include operation linebacker 2 in 1972

notes
-these adjustments so far are being done on the image with coloured text but if i decide to use the other one i can change it later

[porkenbeans]

It is really starting to look nice.
The colors of the Central Highlands and the Mekong Delta do not match the mini-map. I would use the Mini-map colors.

[kengyin]

i made the smaller version only to see if the digits fit. they do


the text is now small but that can be worked on later, i'll do the actual smaller version once i have finished the large version to completion (if ever) this is just to see how the sizes of image and text are. in terms of size, the font is actually about the same as in classic so maybe i can also add shadows or other effects to make the text stand out like in classic but as long as i dont have to resize everything then im good, thats what i was worrying about the most anyway. in this copy i didnt make it sharper or anything it was just to test the digits. by the way do most people on here use small or large when they are playing?

[kengyin]

wait i cant actually do much to my text as all the lettering is 1 pixel wide! that means i cant have lighter inside with darker sides or whatever. how do other people do it???

[natty dread]

Actually you need to be able to fit 3 8:s

[kengyin]

someone might get 100 troops?????

[natty dread]

haha, Game 578682

[kengyin]

you jest! is that like on purpose or something?

[kengyin]

a lot less comments now for some reason i mean the text colour is still in discussion and so is the bombing of hanoi, apart from that all i have done is fix up some colours and also background proportions and soon add another digit to each army digits. is my map a lost cause or something?

[jefjef]

Nice start and work. Stay with it.

Try to go with a progressive color flow. Take a look at how this map was done. Other than the brightness of the yellow it has a nice color flow.

Go with black text imo.

Ho Chi Minh trail looks more like a land mass than a trail. I think you could get a better feel/look if ya play with it. Try it like a route 66 highway. You could also do away with red route arrows by just using connections. You also don't need the entire trail for a bonus. Say +1 for any 3. Something to think about.

I see in your legend intro it's 1964. Hanoi bombing not an issue.

I would do away with the "puppet of US" crack though...

[kengyin]

so i tried out your advice and made a different colour scheme going red to orange to green to blue instead of orange to red to blue to green. comparison (note that i havent bothered to change the text and legend colours in the new scheme yet)

new scheme



vs

old scheme



too bad i cant have two polls at once, so this can just be for discussion. so please discuss

cant really tell to be honest one has dark colours near the middle going to light colours near the top and bottom and the other vice versa.
the top of the new one is pretty good but the dark green looks a bit out of place

[kengyin]

also how come there has been so much talk about the graphics but not much about gameplay? the only gameplay thing i remember is sully saying that ho chi minh trail was overpowered. things that could be discussed: how good are the bonuses? how good are the impassables? would this map allow many strategies? is the strategies for this map quite different from others? which region would you go for first provided you had a decent drop on each one? etc
please discuss (you can also discuss my continuing use of the word discuss)