[Abandoned] - Hawaii Map

[Victor Sullivan]

Click image to enlarge.

I apologize for my lateness in posting my thoughts, as I know youve been holding your breath for this. Allow me to let you exhale (I apologize if some of this has already been covered):

1. I absolutely love your graphical style, especially those rainbow connectors, that is sexy right there, and I rarely use that word (except when it comes to ljex, but thats another story...)
2. The outriggers are a nice gameplay touch to balance things out, good thinking!
3. The (Big Island) could be dropped from the legend, I dont believe you need the extra clarification.
4. The text colour of Niihau doesnt match the colour of the island.
5. I say the single territory islands, Niihau and Kahoolawe, shouldnt be autodeploys at all but standard +1 bonuses.
6. Careful with your borders, they have varying pixelation (as it seems your island images do too, yikes...), as the thick borders in Hawaii are rather pixelated, while the thin borders in Lanai are fine. Consistency in that area is certainly recommended.
7. Bonus changes: It seems Oahu would be harder to hold than Maui, as it has more borders to defend and more territories connect to its borders, so I think this justifies an increase for Oahu from +5 to +6. In addition, I believe Hawaii should be upped to +8, as it is at least worth +2 more than Oahu and it would be much harder to hold than Asia in Classic (which has a +7 bonus).

Cheers,
Sully

[baco]

good work guys. looks like a lot of hard work and constructive criticism. dont have much to add except the boat on top is a little hard to see. cant wait to play it!

[Industrial Helix]

If you guys want to get this moving, here's a list of things that must happen:
1) The rainbow connectors do not look good. They're fuzzy, jagged edged and they serve only to divide the theme of the map, rather than unify it. Swap them out for dotted lines. This is not your last draft, you can try out different ways of using the rainbows still in the time you have in gameplay and graphics.
2) Adding square photos of scenes in Hawaii is not a good idea (upper right and lower left). Pull them out for now.
3) Your ocean photo has too much going on for it to work. Everything about is clashing with the playable map. You want something dark blue with little to no white spots on it.
4) You have major problems with your theme. It looks like you're going for the satellite, semi-realistic look (Canada or Iceland). But, none of your islands are in their actual geographic location or relative size. A better route would be to do for something like a cartographic representation (Scotland, Eastern Hemisphere) in the style of an antique map. I mean, there you can exaggerate size and shape and maintain some creative license without being obligated to the rigors of satellite surveillance. Here's a antique style that I'm thinking: http://mysticmana.com/product_image.php?imageid=760
Here's a few Hawaii maps that I found inspirational:
My favorite: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_79TdQF9qAm4/R ... Hawaii.jpg
This one is nice for its compression of the islands, while still maintaining overall shape: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4hSzDourE-Y/S ... stcard.JPG

But yeah, I want to see a solid, unified theme for this map and I think that is the key thing that is missing. Right now, you've got too many themes going on at one time: Photo realism, satellite, rainbow/bright colors/tropical theme, ect. Not that these facets are mutually exclusive, some can work quite well in tandem, but the multiple themes are clashing with each other.

Don't let this get you down though, the gameplay and bonuses seem solid, maybe slightly too open (but that's ok). And lastly, its an area that is interesting enough to deserve a CC map, especially as the foundry is starting to lack in standard gameplay maps as of late. Don't give up, try a theme overhaul and if you need more help let me know.

[esiemer]

thanks for all the constructive criticism... especially the last 2 posts by Industrial Helix and Victor Sullivan

we will address them all point by point, but for now can anyone help us with activation keys for photoshop? the copy we got came with a file that was supposed to generate a key, but it isnt working. we have 13 days left of our trial, and are scared we wont get everything done before then.

Mahalo!!

[Industrial Helix]

download a new trial version? Otherwise I'm not going to be a whole lot of help... and you'll need more than 13 days of photoshop to make it through the foundry.

[esiemer]

here's a new version without rainbows and with a new background:

Click image to enlarge.

smaller version:


Thoughts?

[natty dread]

we will address them all point by point, but for now can anyone help us with activation keys for photoshop? the copy we got came with a file that was supposed to generate a key, but it isnt working. we have 13 days left of our trial, and are scared we wont get everything done before then.

GIMP is free. It can open PSD files so you don't have to start over... anything you need in mapmaking can be done with GIMP.

http://www.gimp.org/

[Victor Sullivan]

thanks for all the constructive criticism... especially the last 2 posts by Industrial Helix and Victor Sullivan

Aw, shucks... Flattery will get you feedback

The lack of rainbows depresses me... I think if you made them not so pixelated it would be perfectly fine. Did you check your proportions, by the way? The island sizes still seem off (I feel like a complete jack-you-know-what when Helix pointed that out, for the record ).

[Wippit Guud]

Ok, so I've been on the site a whopping 20 hours or so, I've yet to even complete a game (well on my way to losing 2 of the 4 I'm in), have never even posted in the forum until this post, and I've never been to Hawaii. I must be imminently qualified to offer suggestions to maps, right?

Suggestion: Add 6 volcanoes. One on each island, two on Hawaii. Controlling 3 volcanoes on different islands = +2 units. Three volcanos = +3, and so on counting up. Perhaps even have a bonus for all 6, but didn't want to suggest counting both volcanoes on Hawaii in the chain.

Hawaii - Mauna Loa
Hawaii - Kilauea
Maui - Haleakalā
Oahu - Wai'anae
Moloka'i - Kalaupapa
Lana'i - Kaumalapau
Kaua'i - Wai'ale'ale

Locations I think are accurate for actual existing volcano craters (or volcanoes for the active ones)

[Victor Sullivan]

Sounds quite interesting, Whip It (whip it good). If you add volcanoes, maybe it'd be best to give them bombardment powers. Maybe allow them to bombard all territories in their bonus area, or allow them to bombard designated areas, etc. What are your thoughts, esiemer?

[Industrial Helix]

Still not a fan of the photo background, but its an improvement still. For the background I'd try maybe a dark blue, lighly textured (use opacity to do this with a texture image beneath). Then add a white or sandy glow to the islands. It's progressing nicely though and I'll see what the others say.

[baco]

i would also like to keep the rainbows instead of the doted lines.
good flavor!

i like the backdrop lighter to.

[Joodoo]

Love the graphics.

[esiemer]

I apologize for my lateness in posting my thoughts, as I know youve been holding your breath for this.

1. I absolutely love your graphical style, especially those rainbow connectors, that is sexy right there, and I rarely use that word (except when it comes to ljex, but thats another story...)
2. The outriggers are a nice gameplay touch to balance things out, good thinking!
3. The (Big Island) could be dropped from the legend, I dont believe you need the extra clarification.
4. The text colour of Niihau doesnt match the colour of the island.
5. I say the single territory islands, Niihau and Kahoolawe, shouldnt be autodeploys at all but standard +1 bonuses.
6. Careful with your borders, they have varying pixelation (as it seems your island images do too, yikes...), as the thick borders in Hawaii are rather pixelated, while the thin borders in Lanai are fine. Consistency in that area is certainly recommended.
7. Bonus changes: It seems Oahu would be harder to hold than Maui, as it has more borders to defend and more territories connect to its borders, so I think this justifies an increase for Oahu from +5 to +6. In addition, I believe Hawaii should be upped to +8, as it is at least worth +2 more than Oahu and it would be much harder to hold than Asia in Classic (which has a +7 bonus).

Cheers,
Sully

1-thanks for the support on our graphic style. there is still work to be done, and we are still trying to get the rainbows to look good. living in Hawaii makes me appreciate them, and i realize there is lots of prejudice against them in other places, but we are trying to be true to the Islands. That being said, if they don't look good, they don't stay.
2-yeah, we needed the outriggers. when we play the original board without them, whoever gets Kauai will always win. Also, the yellow canoe symbol on them is a nod to the Kanaka Maoli & King Kamehameha's personal flag.
3-the Big Island thing is something we are undecided on. on one hand, every body in Hawaii calls that island "big island", nobody calls it Hawaii. on the other hand, Hawaii is its name, and the extra clarification in the map key is sorta distracting. i could go either way on it.
4-we will make sure the text color matches the color of the island. like i mentioned elsewhere, we are using each islands official color
5-we have come around to agree with you about changing from autodeploy to standard +1. i assume its possible to have them start neutral though, so during gameplay some lucky player doesnt start with a bonus. makes it less fair.
6-yeah, that variance in border thickness/pixelation has got to be fixed. Maui and Big Island look the worst b/c of all their resizing. we will fix it.
7-bonus changes- we agree with all your sentiments. well put and argued. i'm sure as this map progresses through the foundry other people will have a say in this too, and we are totally cool with changing these values. the map has to be fair to be fun, right?

good input Sully
Mahalo!

(i suppose i could look this up but i'm a bit lazy today, the 1st) is there something significant about those two islands ie.are those 2 islands active volcanoes ? is there something historical that would lend itself to a +1 auto-deploy ?

+ is that a typo 'outriggers can attact each other' - attack

There are no active Volcanoes on those islands, they are special for other reasons, but we were imagining this map as a pretty straightforward traditional map. Our next map (assuming there is interest) will be of Hawaii with Volcanoes, Tiki gods, boats, amakua, Capt Cook, King Kamehameha, Heiau, and all that stuff. Baby steps brah

[esiemer]

If you guys want to get this moving, here's a list of things that must happen:
1) The rainbow connectors do not look good. They're fuzzy, jagged edged and they serve only to divide the theme of the map, rather than unify it. Swap them out for dotted lines. This is not your last draft, you can try out different ways of using the rainbows still in the time you have in gameplay and graphics.
2) Adding square photos of scenes in Hawaii is not a good idea (upper right and lower left). Pull them out for now.
3) Your ocean photo has too much going on for it to work. Everything about is clashing with the playable map. You want something dark blue with little to no white spots on it.
4) You have major problems with your theme. It looks like you're going for the satellite, semi-realistic look (Canada or Iceland). But, none of your islands are in their actual geographic location or relative size. A better route would be to do for something like a cartographic representation (Scotland, Eastern Hemisphere) in the style of an antique map. I mean, there you can exaggerate size and shape and maintain some creative license without being obligated to the rigors of satellite surveillance. Here's a antique style that I'm thinking: http://mysticmana.com/product_image.php?imageid=760
Here's a few Hawaii maps that I found inspirational:
My favorite: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_79TdQF9qAm4/R ... Hawaii.jpg
This one is nice for its compression of the islands, while still maintaining overall shape: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4hSzDourE-Y/S ... stcard.JPG

But yeah, I want to see a solid, unified theme for this map and I think that is the key thing that is missing. Right now, you've got too many themes going on at one time: Photo realism, satellite, rainbow/bright colors/tropical theme, ect. Not that these facets are mutually exclusive, some can work quite well in tandem, but the multiple themes are clashing with each other.

Don't let this get you down though, the gameplay and bonuses seem solid, maybe slightly too open (but that's ok). And lastly, its an area that is interesting enough to deserve a CC map, especially as the foundry is starting to lack in standard gameplay maps as of late. Don't give up, try a theme overhaul and if you need more help let me know.

1-roger that, Industrial Helix, we posted a new one with dotted lines (which could use some improvements themselves, but it was our first try). whichever connectors we end up with, we want them to look good.
2-yeah, those were placesavers and they were distracting. they will obviously look better when we are done, but your point is well taken.
3-we changed that ocean photo, but its still not perfect. will work on it more.
4-we would like our theme overall to be a more satellite realistic look. the problem is that with the map size constraints (840x800) we end up having to squish the islands together and change their sizes. if we went with a true sat image:

there is not enough room to label the territories on the smaller islands, and there is so much dead space/open ocean on the map compared with landspace. is there any flexibility in Conquer Clubs rules for map dimensions? if we could use a landscape/widescreen size image it would work much better, and we could better keep the islands relative position/sizes. otherwise, we could just drastically decrease the number of territores (Kauai would have to be 2-3, Lanai 1-2, etc) and attack routes (or maybe just more outriggers? -but if we shrink their size anymore they look terrible).
We played with moving the islands around trying to maintain as much realism as possible, but keeping playability and visibility in mind. Our most recent version of the map is the best compromise we have come up with. Do you have any other suggestions for keeping the realism theme while conforming to the Conquer Club map size requirements?

we really like the maps you posted, and in fact they were ones we have been looking at for inspiration. after this map is done, we really want to do another, more cartographic and creative map of Hawaii with a unification/Hawaii mythology aspect to it. I hope there is still enough interest because working on this first project of a standard, traditional map has just generated about half a dozen ideas to make other Hawaiian themed maps. we will keep going as long as there is interest and we produce quality (not redundant) work.

Mahalo for the feedback and direction, this is going to take longer than we thought, but nothing good comes easy

Aloha,
team Hawaii

[esiemer]

GIMP is free. It can open PSD files so you don't have to start over... anything you need in mapmaking can be done with GIMP. http://www.gimp.org/

Mahalo bruddah, we got Gimp already, but its not as user friendly as Photoshop. However, looks like we will be gimping it up in about 8 days, and I did not know Gimp would recognize .psd files so that is a huge relief and for that i thank you.

The lack of rainbows depresses me... I think if you made them not so pixelated it would be perfectly fine. Did you check your proportions, by the way? The island sizes still seem off (I feel like a complete jack-you-know-what when Helix pointed that out, for the record ).

Rainbows are more Hawaiian than hula skirts. We are still trying to figure out how to make them look good, we used the "warp" technique in photoshop the first time, and it pixelated them and we couldn't figure out how to make them better. do you know any program that could manipulate the size and shape of the rainbows without pixelating them?

Yeah, we know the proportions. did you know Oahu can fit into the Big Island district of Puna (we had to cut out Puna b/c then BI would have too many territores). did you know all other 7 main Hawaiian islands could fit inside of the Big Island?
So we are kinda in a tough spot. We want our map to look real, but geography doesn't always help you. Do you think we should make Big Island bigger/add more territories? Do you think we should shrink Oahu/Kauai/Molokai/Lanai/Maui and take out some of their territories?

Honest question, because judging by comments we should make them more proportionate, but that will make some territories harder to read and will eliminate some territories too.

Ok, so I've been on the site a whopping 20 hours or so, I've yet to even complete a game (well on my way to losing 2 of the 4 I'm in), have never even posted in the forum until this post, and I've never been to Hawaii. I must be imminently qualified to offer suggestions to maps, right?
Suggestion: Add 6 volcanoes. One on each island, two on Hawaii. Controlling 3 volcanoes on different islands = +2 units. Three volcanos = +3, and so on counting up. Perhaps even have a bonus for all 6, but didn't want to suggest counting both volcanoes on Hawaii in the chain.
Hawaii - Mauna Loa
Hawaii - Kilauea
Maui - Haleakalā
Oahu - Wai'anae
Moloka'i - Kalaupapa
Lana'i - Kaumalapau
Kaua'i - Wai'ale'ale

Locations I think are accurate for actual existing volcano craters (or volcanoes for the active ones)

dude, that is rad. and i applaud your knowledge of Hawai'i
we are gonna incorporate your idea for our next map, which will be a much more advanced/imaginative map of Hawai'i. Big Mahalo for the input, and welcome to Conquer Club. I'll invite you to a game soon, I love Canadian cooks

[Victor Sullivan]

Make Hawai'i bigger, as shrinking the other islands would reduce your territory count too much. And be careful, I'm not sure how welcoming the Foundry will be to a second Hawaii map, so you might want to consider that before going too far with this one, if you'd rather do the other. I mean, both maps sound fantastic to me, but I don't know how others will feel.

[esiemer]

Make Hawai'i bigger, as shrinking the other islands would reduce your territory count too much. And be careful, I'm not sure how welcoming the Foundry will be to a second Hawaii map, so you might want to consider that before going too far with this one, if you'd rather do the other. I mean, both maps sound fantastic to me, but I don't know how others will feel.

cool brah, thanks for the quality input. we will work on a version with better proportions tonight...

so what does the CC community think? is there enough room on this website for 2 Hawaii maps? one of them standard/traditional and the other using history/mythology/geography/etc to make it a completely different game?

Mahalo for input!

[Ron Burgandy]

If there can be three age of realms, then there is room for two Hawaii maps! Ron Burgandy has your back. Game on.

[TaCktiX]

You've taken positive steps to getting the map on its way, and have definitely listened to our criticism. You've got a foundation going, so keep on building upon it in the Gameplay Workshop.

[MOVED]

[esiemer]

If there can be three age of realms, then there is room for two Hawaii maps! Ron Burgandy has your back. Game on.

awesome! thanks for the support, lets drink some scotch!!

You've taken positive steps to getting the map on its way, and have definitely listened to our criticism. You've got a foundation going, so keep on building upon it in the Gameplay Workshop.
[MOVED]

shoooooooooooooots!!!! thanks brah!!! we goan get dis done chheeeeee-whooooooo !!!!

[esiemer]

ok, saberty and i worked on this tonight. we didn't get as much work done as we wanted (its always slower than you think it will be) but we did create a poll (please vote!) and are super stoked that our map has moved to the gameplay workshop.

---pictures moved to original post-----

keep the constructive criticism flowing, and ALOHA!!!

[baco]

so we cant have the tru proportions? just a teaser?

i like the backdrop even more, and there is a rainbow in there

[saberty]

Ya, a rainbow sneaked in. That is what happens when Esiemer and I drink bourbon and "fix" map versions

[Industrial Helix]

I like that new arrangement a lot better. How's it look at small level?