London Map - draft

[celeryuk]

Hi - Ok please don’t laugh. I’m 37 and have few graphics skills and a dodgy old copy of Paint Shop Pro. But I’m a proud Londoner and I’ve been dying to get a good London map created for CC for ages. No-one's done it yet but there was a little discussion on it before here: http://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=76651&p=1960715&hilit=london#p1960715

I figured the best way to move this forward would be to do my best at a draft map to kick things off and hope that one of you design gurus could run with it? I'm just not going to have the skills any time soon!

I’ve kinda done some of the hard work in working out the size of the London area to tackle and established which London areas should feature etc.. The concept and game place needs polishing too.

Anyway, to the map:

Click image to enlarge.

Concept
CC needs a London map. There’s a lovely one likes NYC, Sydney, Vancouver etc.
Many people have visited (or know of) the places on the London map so it will hopefully ‘connect’ with them.

I chose to focus on the central area as the places are more interesting. Greater London is huge and there are loads of suburban boroughs but the place names are boring. I’d rather attack Soho from Covent Garden than attack Brent from Harringey.

Map Details

5 Continents
10 bonus regions
64 territories comprising of:

52 regular territories
7 royal park territories
5 tourist attraction territories

Hopefully fellow Londoners will agree with the demarcations. I worked from a Google Earth image and tried to follow obvious road borders to determine the areas.

The River Thames and the little River Lea in East London are obvious impassables except for the few bridges & ferry.

I have also created 7 Royal parks with limited ability to enter and exit from.
Parks can also attack each other which adds a bit of spice to the map.

I’ve also added a Olympic Park (OP) area in East London to show where the 2012 Olympics will be.

Tourist Attractions – these can attack and be attacked by anything near them.
Buckingham Palace is a hard one as it has several borders.
Tower Bridge is a bridge and a tourist attraction. You cannot attack through that particular bridge. You have to hold it.

Bridges – London has 12 bridges – you have to cut this down a bit for the sake of the map. I have also added the Woolwich Ferry over the East.


Transport?
An obvious missing element is transport. London has 270 tube (metro) stations. So it’s crazy to try to put them on to the map. I guess you could add a few lines like NYC map has. I did think of maybe add the main overground rail stations like Waterloo, Victoria & Kings Cross and maybe have the rail track as impassables? Maybe even get ahead of the times and add on the "Crossrail" link to the Olympic Park? (due to complete by 2012)

Bonuses
One thing I am aware of is that the some of the bonuses have quite a lot of borders to protect. Any thoughts?


Can you help?
So, the ugly design skills aside, what do you think? Any suggestions on this thread welcome.

As I said, I would gladly welcome someone running with this and I could just be the London guy to sanity check things. So even if you don’t know London you could create it.

Thanks for reading, now back to that PhotoShop training course…

[sailorseal]

I like the idea you have but maybe increase the legend to a readable size but yo will also need a graphics touch up before this can move on.
Good Idea

[Industrial Helix]

I say leave it a straight up London map and skip the transport.

I'm not sure what the purpose of the attractions are or how you're going to display that they're occupied. Do you get the bonus for just holding the terr. that they sit on?

The yellow section is going to be difficult to fit numbers in, you might have to remap it somehow, same for westminister.

The parks are cool, instead of hot dog buns you could use a little gate or something to designate the entrance? Do they count as part of the colored bonus?

If you want to spend this time hammering out the gameplay, I'll be glad to help with the graphics. For a taste of my stuff, somewhere around the drafts page is an American Revolution map. PM me if you want some help and best of luck with the map, CC def. needs one already.

[oaktown]

A london map is desperately needed... if you can hammer out the gameplay I bet somebody might take over the graphics from you. if it were me, I'd prefer working on a map set in a specific historical era.

[MrBenn]

London could make a really good map - previous attempts have run out of steam fairly quickly - although I think the idea of focusing on the area of central London that you have done makes the map feel a lot more city-like.

As oaktown said, the draft is fine to be working from for now (yes, the graphics will o9bviously have to improve) - but the primary focus has to be getting the gameplay sorted out

[Teflon Kris]

Nice start and as Benn says,focussing on central London makes your idea much more workable - nice background although you may need to increase the size of the actual map to get more quality.

Good luck, we need a London map (+ Paris too - and, historically, Ancient Rome / Vatican City).

[celeryuk]

Thanks for the positive feedback guys. I was nervous about posting with such a rough graphic!
I will revisit the gameplay element and get back to you all.

If anyone else has any feedback then please do chuck it in and if anyone else would like to run with the idea let me know

cheers
Celeryuk

[MrBenn]

I have my reservations about the interconnectedness of the royal parks... the map seems fairly open as it is, without long-ranging attacks from the parks The parks could work as a 'collection' bonus (ie +3 for any 3 or something)...

Have you had a look at previous attempts at a map of London? In addition to the thread you refer to in your opening post, there are a couple more lurking around: Clicky

Some of those threads made reasonable starts (although the Underground ones hit a stumbling block with copyright), and there are some good suggestions on a couple of them which might help give some more inspiration... I'd try and look through those that are in the recycling bin first, as they would have made a bit more progress

[iancanton]

u might like to zoom in even more by using the london travelcard zonal map, not a normal topographical map, as a guide to space the regions. this increases the proportion of the map covered by the tourist attractions in the central area, while minimising areas that are less interesting. i think zone 1 plus a bit of zone 2 is about the right size.

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/lon_con.pdf

ian.

[nagerous]

London is famous for its underground network as well, if you were to make a London map, I would like to see it included in some form, like the NYC map has the metro system.

[lozzini]

London is famous for its underground network as well, if you were to make a London map, I would like to see it included in some form, like the NYC map has the metro system.

i disagree, i think the rail maps have been overdone a bit

i think this is a good draft, but also think that maybe zooming in a bit would make it only the more interesting places, and make the territs bigger. I will definatly be staying around on this one to see how it develops

lozz

[Elijah S]

London is famous for its underground network as well, if you were to make a London map, I would like to see it included in some form, like the NYC map has the metro system.

I agree with this.
London is known, among other things, for it's underground, and I don't think they've been overdone at all. -Yours could have some unique graphics and/or gameplay to make it stand out.

[Hopscotcher]

I think a london map is a cool idea. When I read the title of the post, i thought it would be a little seedier. I imagined it would have a Jack the Ripper or perhaps Sherlock Holmes feel to it. This is probably just a yanks perception, but good work so far!

[NemesisChild]

If you really want a London transport map it would need to be done in its own right due to the complexity of the layout and the sheer number of stations and lines. As a geographical London map like how this is going

I have a few points on the map itself
1. Graphics (for whoever is taking this on)
- The borders are uneven and pixilated in places,
- some borders don't seem complete (e.g. Bermondsey / Peckham)
- Kensington is to close to the river to be blue makes it a little difficult to differentiate between the 2
- the links to and from the royal parks looks like a yellow smudge on the map, a better attack identifier could be used(a good example of this is Land and sea) or may be a Gate icon on the border (just a suggestion)

2. Gameplay
- the atrractions seems like a great idea but I agree with Industrial Helix as I don't understand how they will work , are they just linked to the territs they sit on?

- also how abut naming the continents after the Post codes, they are such a big identifier in London so you would have continents like SW19, NE1 etc etc.. dunnio if it would look but if you know london well it would be cool to see.

[MrBenn]

[Moved]

It would appear that development of this map has stalled. If the mapmaker wants to continue with the map, then one of the Foundry Moderators will be able to help put the thread back into the Foundry system, after an update has been made.

[laughingcavalier]

Nice idea, mate. Would be good to move it on.
Agree that London transport would make it too complex - someone else can do a tube map, and stick with this concept now.
Instead you could use major roads and rail lines to block off bonus-territories from one another - eg the Euston Road blocks between Euston and Soho/Covent Garden, and South London is cut into vertical pieces.
Not sure the parks should interconnect. Maybe 2 entrances for at least some of them.
Rename Newham as Olympic Zone, Docklands as East End?