[Abandoned] Research & Conquer

[ender516]

Would you like back into the fray or left here?

This made me think of Bugs, Daffy, and Elmer. Would you like him to shoot you now, or wait till he gets you home?

[-=- Tanarri -=-]

I don't have time to properly comment on this; however, a few brief notes regarding the design:

* The landscape looks nicer, perhaps if a few grey dots were added to the tan area, it would help add some extra texture? Looking great though
* I assume the instructions will be added later?
* The colour matching in the tech titles appears to be mostly gone and I think that helped make it clearer as to what was required for what getting the advanced techs
* The purple/pink color coding for the conscription techs is difficult to read on the current background.
* All the mine and capital symbols have gone missing from the map
* The new font face and colour are easier to read, nice work

If I notice anything else, I'll let you know, but hopefully this helps get the ball rolling

[isaiah40]

I don't have time to properly comment on this; however, a few brief notes regarding the design:

* The landscape looks nicer, perhaps if a few grey dots were added to the tan area, it would help add some extra texture? Looking great though Thank you.
* I assume the instructions will be added later? Yes they will be.
* The colour matching in the tech titles appears to be mostly gone and I think that helped make it clearer as to what was required for what getting the advanced techs I get it clearer once I get working on that part.
* The purple/pink color coding for the conscription techs is difficult to read on the current background. That will be changed
* All the mine and capital symbols have gone missing from the map They will be added back in once I find good icons to use
* The new font face and colour are easier to read, nice work And again thank you!

If I notice anything else, I'll let you know, but hopefully this helps get the ball rolling

[-=- Tanarri -=-]

Hi Isaiah,

I just noticed East, SouthEast, and West homelands don't have the colours around them to help differentiate them from the other territories. Also, how are the numbers going to fit into the dial area? If the dials can be figured out properly, I think they'll end up making the map look better, since it breaks up the columns of techs. That`s it for now, but I`ll post more as I`m able to find time to take a look over the map.

[isaiah40]

Hi Isaiah,

I just noticed East, SouthEast, and West homelands don't have the colours around them to help differentiate them from the other territories. Also, how are the numbers going to fit into the dial area? If the dials can be figured out properly, I think they'll end up making the map look better, since it breaks up the columns of techs. That`s it for now, but I`ll post more as I`m able to find time to take a look over the map.

The colors will be worked on, and the 888's fit on nicely on both sizes, but I'll double check again to make sure. Here's a quick update!

Click image to enlarge.

[-=- Tanarri -=-]

Looking really good, good work The colours look like they match quite well.

Is this the small map version or the large map? If this is the large map and you'll need to shrink it down, then there's a few of the 888's that look like they may be a bit tight.

Just a brief note for Open Conscription, I believe with some updates to the XML that happened a year or so back, we'll be able to have the bonus be +1 for every 2 territories instead of the +3 for every 6. The former was changed to the latter when we found the XML got overbloated, but now the XML has changed so we should be able to go back to +1 for every 2.

[isaiah40]

I will have an update by Monday Jan 14th!!

[RedBaron0]

Make it snappy.

[isaiah40]

Okay, finally another update.

- redid the landscape a bit
- added in the instructions
- tweaked the region borders and moved some of the region names
- tweaked the brass plates

Click image to enlarge.

[RedBaron0]

The rest of the landscape likely will need more of your texturing, I feel the too 2 corners are extremely bland and textureless in comparison to the rest of the map.
You've got a long way to go with the plates, the text really seems to be on them, rather than engraved into them. And not only that the text is often infringing on the screws in some cases... which will absolutely not fly.
The whole background is just... meh, gives me no illusion of a electronic-type panel what-so-ever.
I also think the "screen" should have a bit of static/hazyness of a 60's/70's era screen.

You've probably answered this at some point, but I just wanna be sure, this is a 6 players(or less) only map?

[isaiah40]

Here's another quick update.

Click image to enlarge.

[isaiah40]

I fiddled with some of the rusty brass plates and the text on them.

Click image to enlarge.

[RedBaron0]

Kinda like National Pride and Deep Mining also looks pretty good.

[-=- Tanarri -=-]

I have to say the map graphics are starting to look much, much better than they were previously. Great work Isaiah! Here's a few thoughts on the current version of the map:

- I like how the Standing/Mobilized Army and Conscription researches looked in the previous version compared to the current version. The current version's colours don't match the rest of the graphics well at all. The orange and dark cyan colours seem to match much better

- The new borders and territory names on the map look better. Good work

- I can't think of a way to fix this, but the names for Oliver, Tacktix, and yourself are pretty small and hard to read. If there's some way to make them a bit bigger, I think it would be nice to have your guys' names be a bit more legible.

- Standing Army looks like it's touching the screws. The font size might need to get knocked down .25 or .5 in size or the kerning (or whatever the space between letters is called) getting knocked down a fraction may work as well. The Standing Army in the previous version seems like it was a good size, if that helps.

- Mining also has the same problem with "Mining" and the mine icon touching the screws.

- Deep Mining - Do you guys think the explanation needs to expressly state "Doubles mining bonus" or is the current description good enough? I think that it's pretty obvious what it's saying right now, but I fear I'm too close to the development of this map to be unbiased.

- It would be nice if the mine icons could make it back onto the map sometime in the next few revisions so we can make sure they look good and are positioned well on the map.

- Not sure about this one, so getting some feedback from someone else would be nice, but the bottom mountains, particularly the one on the right, may be able to use some extra shading to make it clear that it's a mountain.

- On the same note, do impassables have to be listed in the legend or are mountains and rivers such a given around the site that they don't need to be expressly stated?

And just as a side note in case I manage to forget later on, there's a few glitches in the code that I brought up forever ago that should get resolved once we get back to the XML part of map design. If someone wants to make a note that there's existing issues, then I'll go hunting for the original post when we get to that point.

I think that about covers everything I can think of. I have to say it's nice to see the progress on the map start picking up. With the free speed games, once this map gets released it may just get me back to Conquer Club

[isaiah40]

Thank you for your comments Tanarri!

Here is an update!
- Selector knobs are done and all the text engraved into the plates.
- Colors of the text have been due to them not passing the color blind test. Though if any color blind players have problems they can be tweaked some more. Yea I know the green stands out, but it passes the color blind test.
- Sigs have been moved and enlarged
- Reduced the size of the bridges a tad bit
- Increased the opacity of the region borders so they blend in with the map a bit more

Things to do:
- Tweak the mountains some more
- Add in mining icons and capitals (stars)
- Redo the screws on the plates and TV screen
- and i can't think of anything else at the moment

Click image to enlarge.

[-=- Tanarri -=-]

No problem at all for the comments, I'm just happy that someone's still working on the map. I likely would have taken it over myself and worked on it bit by bit if I had the ability, but I'm just not anywhere near skilled enough with Photoshop to make a map. Thanks for all your work on the map, I for one really appreciate it and I hope this map gets the serious gameplay it deserves once it gets to Beta.

Here are some thoughts that pop out right away. If I can dig up some more time over the next week I'll give it another look over and see what else I can find, unless you've already got the next version out by then.

- The knobs look a lot better, great work!

- "Only the Most Advanced Shall Triumph" is touching, or really really close to touching, the screw on the right. It looks like maybe the right screw is a couple pixels further in than the left from the border, so moving it over to match may fix the problem.

- For the colours of the techs, I think what you have there looks good then if there's colour blind test issues. It's also admittedly a lot easier to tell the difference at a glance even without colour blindness.

- I like how the bridges look now, they have always looked a bit big for how the rest of the map texture looks. Good work

- It's nice to see the 888's are fitting well. If you've kept the same size of map, then they'll fit perfectly well there as well... they get a bit cramped, but they're all clear from what I recall of previous versions of the map.

- Mining's bonus explanation seems to be have changed to +3 instead of +2 per mine

- The sigs looks nicer and you can read them now, which is great. Thanks!

I think that covers it for now. Keep up the good work Isaiah

[-=- Tanarri -=-]

Hey Isaiah, just wondering how the progress on this is going? I noticed it's been almost a month since the last update and just wanted to provide some glimmer of interest in the map for encouragement

[ender516]

Echoing the glimmer...

[isaiah40]

I am still working on this. I should have an update by Friday!

[-=- Tanarri -=-]

Yay! Good to hear

Do we have anyone who's willing to work on the XML once the graphics are done? I don't know if anyone has access to the old XML that Oliver did. I tried PMing him a couple weeks back for it but haven't heard back from him. I know he doesn't visit CC very much anymore, so it may be quite a while before he returns the PM.

[ender516]

I might be persuaded to look at the XML, especially if the old stuff is available. Even if it isn't, we might be able to find it via the Wayback Machine.

[-=- Tanarri -=-]

That's good to hear, ender

I tried looking back through the thread, but the account Oliver was using to host the XML was closed, so it's no longer available through the link that was posted in the thread. I thought I had a copy of the XML myself, but when I went looking for it, I found never downloaded a copy for myself and only ever looked at it through the link Oliver posted. If there's some other way to get a copy of the old XML, that would be great. Most of it was completed already, with a few modifications being needed. I had noted a few of the required modifications a few times in the thread and can easily find the list again if needed. Some recent changes to code have also made some other changes necessary and will greatly help reduce the bulk of the code.

Anyway, it's good to hear that someone may be willing to take a look into it. I may be able to help a bit with it myself if a worst case scenario ends up happening, but my time is very limited these days and for me to even do a portion of the code would end up taking months at best. I'm also limited in my understanding of the coding system.

[ender516]

Well, sadly, the XML didn't get picked up by the Wayback Machine. So unless someone else downloaded it and still has it, I guess we are starting over.

[isaiah40]

If either one of you ender and Tanarri want to do the XML that will be great!!

On another note, I'm a little behind this week, so an update will be forthcoming this weekend, not tomorrow like I was wanting.

[-=- Tanarri -=-]

Well, I took a look into my own little "Wayback Machine" on the really off chance that I would have thought to save some contact info for Oliver when I left CC and it turns out I did. Hopefully the contact info is good and he still has the XML