thenobodies80 wrote:About the current standard diatribe...please never forget to understand what software people use to develop a map...
this is the second or third time i heard this excuse. i've never taken it seriously but now that you mention it i'm starting to wonder.
wtf is this? since when did the software used become an excuse for poor graphics? if i have only mspaint should my crappy maps be accepted just because my software can't do miracles?
ok, not everybody should be forced to buy photoshop but gimp is free and it can produce really great graphics. look at natty's eurasia which looks awesome and is done in gimp.
excuses like "my software is not good" or "my skill sucks" are lame. great free software is available and the skills are there to be continuously improved. if you really can't evolve and it comes a time when you're left behind compared to the standards then it's time to give up and go to landgrab.
thenobodies80 wrote:I'm of the opinion that cairnswk has his own style, we can recognize his maps easily, many of them have a simple graphics,
having a style is not that good especially when that style is simple and spread over 30+ maps. it's ok to make a few maps share the same style especially when they're in the same series. but other than that it's actually kinda annoying to have dozens of maps that look virtually identical.
i designed my piglandia map in such a way that it's sort of like a template. i can easily go and in 2 moves switch it from a pig to a sheep a horse or a dragon. same style different map. assuming the map wasn't about a pig but rather about something accepted as good and interesting, would it be ok to produce 30 maps using that template?
it's as easy as finding 30 different islands and adjusting them for my template. i wouldn't spend more than 30-40 minutes per map including drawing the borders and adding the names.
should i do this? apparently it's ok and if somebody says the gfx is not nice i can simply say my software can't do better
thenobodies80 wrote:he is a creative person who produces lot of maps,
i agree with the bolded part but his creativity has dwindled a lot in the past years. there used to be a time when he was challenged to do better and better maps with better and better graphics but at some point nobody bothered to say anything and his style and technique stopped improving. and after a while when some people dared to step in and comment he had become so accustomed to being left alone he started bullying those that dared to comment negatively. and if bullying did not work he either ignored those that commented or he vacationed his maps for months until the protestors would give up and he was free to have his own way.
anyway, if you all consider that this map is truly showing 5 years worth of improvement over the rail usa map then it's clear there's nothing i can do about it.
sadly in the long run this map will prove to be another fiasco played for a couple of thousand games and then abandoned.
but hey according to cairns the number of games is not important. so the fact that most of his maps are the least played maps of this site is not relevant.
i'd say constantly being at the bottom of the rankings for close to 5 years with almost 30 maps actually says that something is wrong.
but who am i to judge? maybe it's for the better like this. i mean somebody has to be at the bottom, right?