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Re: World Cities (V3, 3/30/09)

Postby sully800 on Sun Apr 26, 2009 11:48 pm

iancanton wrote:
sully800 wrote:
gho wrote:Jakarta definitely needs to replace Singapore, Singapore is 0% Oceania, at least Jakarta is partially Oceania

Jakarta can replace Singapore, I think you are right in your analysis that Jakarta is much more a part of Oceania.

jakarta and singapore are both on asian islands, though jakarta is part of classic australia, while singapore's not on that map at all. i prefer singapore because it's a genuinely world-famous city and major aviation hub, while jakarta isn't even the best-known place in indonesia (that honour belongs to bali).

to solve the issue of some bonus regions feeling cramped, u could explode them (as the usa map has done), then increase the size of nafta and europe, while shrinking africa and mercosur down to size.

at the moment, it's not completely clear whether honolulu is in nafta (correct politically and economically) or oceania (correct geographically). changing the colours ought to solve that one.

ian. :)


As you may notice, I did switch Singapore to Jakarta in the latest version. I think that both are very important world cities but only one can be featured due to their proximity. This may become a non-issue however if I cannot find a better trade agreement than CER, because if not then Jakarta and the Manila will both be dropped (in favor of Auckland and Cairns I suppose).

As for an exploded map, thats not a bad idea but I don't like them nearly as much as geographically accurate maps. People are very familiar with maps of the world, and scaling the continents differently would make the map feel "off". I have already increased the vertical scale just a bit to give the map more space, but I don't wish to distort the continents relative to one another.
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Re: World Cities (V4, 4/26/09)

Postby thenobodies80 on Mon Apr 27, 2009 12:57 pm

This is a fantastic map!
You're doing a great work Sully =D>
I don't like the actual lines, but probably is only the color, i like very much the old white, with more trasparency.
I like to see a link from cairo to dubai and the african union bonus changed to +3, actually the tehran, dubai and mubai zone is very useless, the game could be played only in hong kong,tokio and novosibirsk.
But could be only that it's strange to see africa and asia not connected :)

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Re: World Cities (V4, 4/26/09)

Postby sully800 on Mon Apr 27, 2009 1:18 pm

Thanks for your comments nobodies! Yes, I need to decrease the opacity of the new lines, and adjust them so they flow better. I think CER looks good right now because the lines seem to continue in a smooth path from one circle to the next. I will try to carry that principle through to the other bonus regions which don't look as nice. Also I just noticed there are two lines connecting Toronto and Montreal, which will be fixed.

As for the Africa/APEC borders, I don't wish to increase Africa's bonus for the reasons mentioned earlier. Instead I want to make it clear that those cities do not connect even though they are relatively close. It seems like a lot of people want me to add lines for greater connectivity just because lines can easily be added or because the cities are close together. The current connections were chosen for gameplay reasons, and may not reflect the most convenient geographical routes which is something that may need to be adjusted. Graphically I would like all connections to be clear, but also intuitive so that you don't imagine a connection where there is not one.

Connecting Moscow to Tehran instead of Novos would make Tehran and Dubai more important in this map, but then the APEC border countries are not all connected, and as I said in my last post that will make it slightly harder to hold. Instead of that I could also connect Dubai instead of Novos which I think is a better solution, but Dubai is hard to connect to the EU while maintaining clarity. And I don't really want to connect Dubai to Cairo because that will change the balance and make Moscow/St. Petersburg much less important. :-k
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Re: World Cities (V4, 4/26/09)

Postby AndyDufresne on Mon Apr 27, 2009 4:28 pm

Right now, I feel like Europe could use another attack route...

Perhaps switch the border of Mumbai/Jakarta...and replace it with Tehran/Athens or Tehran/Moscow might be better...

So Apec would look like...borders:

Tokoyo
Hongkong
Novo
Tehran

This would keep the logic of the 4 border territories for Apec connected, yes?

This would, however, make it a little more difficult for European Union to expand...it wouldn't be as easy...but EU, right now, looks like a better option than APEC (though both are bonused the same value), because of the EU's current general options for easy expansion without increasing borders.

Hm. I don't know if I made any sense.


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Re: World Cities (V4, 4/26/09)

Postby sully800 on Mon Apr 27, 2009 4:36 pm

That does make sense, and I think it is a good idea. The EU (similar to classic's NA) is probably worth about 4.7 or 4.8 instead of 5 right now. Creating an additional border city would make it way too hard to hold, but connecting Athens to a city from APEC sounds perfect. That way EU can still be held with only 3 borders, but it can be attacked from 4 places (3 different bonus regions).
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Re: World Cities (V4, 4/26/09)

Postby bryguy on Mon Apr 27, 2009 5:19 pm

Click image to enlarge.
image


First time looking at this map, and I have to say, Im impressed!

Good textures, colors, bonuses, title, and more!

I have to ask though, is the globe self made, or is it taken from another site? It looks a lot like one that I have seen somewhere else....
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Re: World Cities (V4, 4/26/09)

Postby sully800 on Mon Apr 27, 2009 9:49 pm

bryguy wrote:
First time looking at this map, and I have to say, Im impressed!

Good textures, colors, bonuses, title, and more!

I have to ask though, is the globe self made, or is it taken from another site? It looks a lot like one that I have seen somewhere else....


Thanks bryguy! The globe itself was not made by me, which I realize is probably in violation of copyright. I intend(ed) to draw my own version of the globe using the shapes and colors from my map in a future edition.
Last edited by sully800 on Tue Apr 28, 2009 9:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: World Cities (V4, 4/26/09)

Postby TaCktiX on Tue Apr 28, 2009 8:30 am

I like the idea, and the gameplay is an interesting reversal of the standard Classic (North America holding the mega-continent vs. Asia, plus'es in my book). My only bone is that it looks so plain. The map doesn't grab me, even though it has pleasing textures and a nice rendering of the earth's continents. I guess it looks a bit too "flat" for what I'm expecting. Maybe some bevel or something similar to create more "pop" to it.
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Re: World Cities (V4, 4/26/09)

Postby MrBenn on Wed Apr 29, 2009 3:21 pm

The double-bendy lines going to Beijing look a bit out of place, but they may fit better once you've turned the opacity down a bit?

My one thought is that there aren;t any territories in the extreme North of the map... Svalbard (Europe), Kamchatka-ish (Asia), Alska-ish/Greenland (Northern America). I don;t know how you feel about adding another couple of territories? I don't think you'd need to make them connect continents (ie Kamchatka/Alaska), but you could add them to make the map feel a bit more complete?

Part of me thinks that CC really needs some sort of classic-equivalent map that is more suitable for 8 players - and there's plenty of room to bump up the territory count to 56ish... I know that's a bit of a departure from your current train of thought, but just thought I'd throw it into the mix... feel free to tell me where to go (LA would be nice :lol: )
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Re: World Cities (V4, 4/26/09)

Postby bryguy on Wed Apr 29, 2009 9:52 pm

sully800 wrote:
bryguy wrote:
First time looking at this map, and I have to say, Im impressed!

Good textures, colors, bonuses, title, and more!

I have to ask though, is the globe self made, or is it taken from another site? It looks a lot like one that I have seen somewhere else....


Thanks bryguy! The globe itself was not made by me, which I realize is probably in violation of copyright. I intend(ed) to draw my own version of the globe using the shapes and colors from my map in a future edition.


Glad that you intend to :)

Here is a tutorial that might help, and with it you could probably make a globe out of your map if you want to ;)
http://www.tutorialwiz.com/globe2/
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Re: World Cities (V4, 4/26/09)

Postby sully800 on Thu Apr 30, 2009 9:47 am

Thanks for the tutorial, that looks awesome. I was just playing around with it, but I apparently don't have all the filters that must people do. I have no "distort" option in my filters and therefore no ability to spherize, at leas that I can find :?

*Never mind, I was able to accomplish almost the same effect using a fish eye transformation instead of a spherize distortion. Ooooh look at me, I almost sound like I understand a thing or two about photoshop :lol: Next draft will be posted tonight I think.
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Re: World Cities (V4, 4/26/09)

Postby sully800 on Thu Apr 30, 2009 10:57 pm

V5

Reduced the opacity on the connections, and spent a while refining them so they flow more smoothly from city to city. I think this helps the overall appearance a lot but please let me know if they need more work (probably yes).

Created a new globe based on the tutorial that bryguy linked. It could use a little more spice but I think it looks decent!

For now I am holding off on changing the intercontinent borders as per my last post to Andy. It's still up for consideration though.

Click image to enlarge.
image


Tacktix - I agree with your comments about the map being a little flat overall. I played around with some embossing in an earlier version and I will try that again in the future. Right now it looks like the ocean and land are on the same level, and I definitely want the land to pop out a bit more.

Benn - The old double bendy lines I had were far too strong, that was just me playing around. In this version I kept only a few to maintain continuity but they are much straighter and I think that makes them look better. As for cities in the north, I think it is okay in its current state because most major cities are not very far north. If I wanted to go up to 48 or 54 total cities than that would be the first place to add because it is pretty empty as you mentioned. For now I will stick with my original goal of creating a 42 country standard map, and there may be more developments on those goals soon...
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Re: World Cities (V5, 4/30/09)

Postby MrBenn on Fri May 01, 2009 11:56 am

The globe you've done looks fantastic =D> The only minor(?) observation is that your map is centred on Australasia, but the globe isn't. This is the kind of minor detail that isn't very important but bugs me :lol:

The attack paths look a lot better now they're not so bright, although you could possibly afford to reduce the opacity by a further 10-15%??
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Re: World Cities (V5, 4/30/09)

Postby thedon5 on Sat May 02, 2009 7:42 pm

=D>

I like it.

Only thing, is that in NZ, the main city is Auckland ;) .
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Re: World Cities (V5, 4/30/09)

Postby edbeard on Sat May 02, 2009 8:04 pm

the compass seems like it belongs on a different map

the purple and orange text on the legend is done differently than the others. text is black with a coloured stroke instead of coloured text with a black stroke. they should all match and for the legend text the style which blue, green, yellow, and red have is much better.
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Re: World Cities (V5, 4/30/09)

Postby gho on Sat May 02, 2009 11:08 pm

thedon5 wrote:=D>

I like it.

Only thing, is that in NZ, the main city is Auckland ;) .

I agree. 1/3 of NZ's populations lives in Auckland (pop. 1.3mil), while only 380k live in Wellington (its the third largest city). From a airline point of view (that this map shows), aukland gets the majority of flights.

With the continents, if you cant use the real continents, why dont you just use a mini map without continent names on the xml just being colours?
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Re: World Cities (V5, 4/30/09)

Postby rishaed on Sun May 03, 2009 1:44 pm

you could add kabol in asia..to add another city it's in Afghanistan.
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Re: World Cities (V5, 4/30/09)

Postby sully800 on Sun May 03, 2009 3:47 pm

edbeard wrote:the compass seems like it belongs on a different map

the purple and orange text on the legend is done differently than the others. text is black with a coloured stroke instead of coloured text with a black stroke. they should all match and for the legend text the style which blue, green, yellow, and red have is much better.


Yeah the compass I'm not happy with its just plopped there for now but I agree that it should change.

As for the text, none have black stroke or text color. They are all the light and dark colors seen within each bonus region. In general I tried to make the font of the bonus region match the font of the city labels, though I reversed the coloring for Africa I see. I can change the bonus labels so that each one has the darker color as the stroke, but the city labels were chosen to stand out best from the continent colors.

As for Auckland, I guess I am convinced that it should replace Wellington, in the same way that I chose NY instead of Washington DC. I tried to study abroad at Auckland 2 years ago so I can tell you I am a big fan of that city!

The only minor(?) observation is that your map is centred on Australasia, but the globe isn't. This is the kind of minor detail that isn't very important but bugs me :lol:

The attack paths look a lot better now they're not so bright, although you could possibly afford to reduce the opacity by a further 10-15%??


I chose the current layout for the globe because it maximized the land area that would be visible. I will do another version centered about Australia, which will end up cutting off Europe, and post it for comparison. As for the line opacity, they are all currently at 50%. I think some could be further reduced but I'm worried that the lines over Africa won't stand out if they are only 35-40%. Perhaps I should keep them brighter and fade the ones over darker regions?

you could add kabol in asia..to add another city it's in Afghanistan.


43 cities would create neutrals for every setting which I do not wish to do. If I bumped the map to a total of 48/54/56 cities I would definitely include more from Asia. I think Kabul might be too close to Tehran but I guess it would be a possibility. I'm still pretty set on 42 cities however.
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Re: World Cities (V5, 4/30/09)

Postby edbeard on Sun May 03, 2009 6:21 pm

i was only talking about the legend. the other text is fine. btw, as I said before, both MERCOSUR and CER have the darker version as the main colour and the light colour as the stroke (not just africa's as you said)


other than that and the compass there's nothing else. this map should be in the main foundry too.
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Re: World Cities (V5, 4/30/09)

Postby sully800 on Sun May 03, 2009 9:03 pm

Right you are edbeard. Fixed both labels in this edition.

I also added a slight outer bevel to all of the continents to make them stand out from the oceans, and changed Wellington to Auckland. Then I created two versions with the globe centered about Australia and the globe as seen in the last edition.

V6a
Click image to enlarge.
image


I understand the point of centering it about the same point as the map, but it seems to cut off far too much land and appears to be mostly ocean.
V6b
Click image to enlarge.
image
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Re: World Cities (V5, 4/30/09)

Postby the.killing.44 on Sun May 03, 2009 9:07 pm

If you have "European Union" shouldn't it be "African Union" as well?

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Re: World Cities (V5, 4/30/09)

Postby edbeard on Sun May 03, 2009 9:11 pm

sully800 wrote:Right you are edbeard. Fixed both labels in this edition.

I also added a slight outer bevel to all of the continents to make them stand out from the oceans, and changed Wellington to Auckland. Then I created two versions with the globe centered about Australia and the globe as seen in the last edition.

V6a
Click image to enlarge.
image


I understand the point of centering it about the same point as the map, but it seems to cut off far too much land and appears to be mostly ocean.
V6b
Click image to enlarge.
image



quoted for new page


mostly ocean is boring. the fix is good. I like the bevel. main foundry worthy for sure now.
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Re: World Cities (V6, 5/03/09)

Postby mibi on Sun May 03, 2009 11:04 pm

I think Cairo to Dubai should be in there.
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Re: World Cities (V6, 5/03/09)

Postby the.killing.44 on Sun May 03, 2009 11:06 pm

Does Athens connect to Cairo? Kinda hard to see.
I think this is Main Foundry worthy, definitely.

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Re: World Cities (V4, 4/26/09)

Postby Incandenza on Mon May 04, 2009 1:49 am

MrBenn wrote:feel free to tell me where to go (LA would be nice :lol: )


It's been so freakin' gorgeous in LA recently (more or less), it'd make your head pop. :D

sully, a small small thing to start with, the line between cairo and athens is pretty obscured, it'd be great for it to be a bit more visible. NYC-Montreal could also be a bit more pronounced.

Thus far it's looking good.
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