Here's my post from June 9, 2008:
oaktown wrote:As you work on the graphics you should try to give the borders a bit more space - the Bern to Brig attack route could easily be bigger, and as it is you could overlook it. And Geneva needs something to make it more obvious - it's like Sri Lanka in both the Asia and World 2.0 maps, I always think I have the region wrapped up and then I realize I forgot one terit.
Well, the Bern to Brig attack route has been opened up, but all of the other problems that plagued this map 1 year ago still persist. The borders are still hard to pick out (does Basel border Aargau, or is that a river?), and the three-way Uri-Brig-Ticino border - which I have been critical of for over a year - is still sloppy. The mountains were really bad, then they got better, and now they're a little bit worse. The water doesn't work, and the borders come through it. Territory names don't fit in places where they could.
One thing that really troubles me visually is that a lot of time has clearly gone into weathering the background, but the elements of the map itself don't look old. In fact, the font, colors, mountains, and style are all quite very modern - it's as if somebody laser printed the map onto a transparent sticker and pasted it to a wall. The weathering should be on top of the image, not behind it. And the image should only be weathered if it's meant to look like an old map. Well, the font would work if this were a Roman map, but as it's not it makes the font look out of place in a post-modern kind of way.
Weird having a mini map AND a key to tell you which region is which... for me, a color blind user, the key on the top right is entirely useless, as it doesn't indicate what's what or give bonus info.
I think this map needs a game plan. Taking over a map that somebody else started is fine, but it needs to be approached with an entirely fresh perspective or else it just becomes a hack job. Right now this is a hack job.
Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 9:16 pm
