Conquer Club

I have to say I kind of agree with Dim here, although not necessarily with the way he expresses his views.

Remember nobodies when I had pixelated lines on my london map? I also had lots of trouble fixing them, at one point I thought I couldn't do it with the tools I had available. But after a while I figured out a way to make them better, because people kept pushing me to try harder on it.

If I can share another anecdote, there have been lots of times when I've thought I've had a great looking map, then some people have come along and pointed out things that are really annoying for me to fix due to the way the map image is constructed or something, really small things that are proportionally hard to fix - like on Eurasia map having to figure out a way to even out the dashes on the sea routes or add the piece of land in greece - those would seem to an outsider like small fixes but due to the limitations in the software I use and the way I've constructed the map images they were both really much harder to fix than you'd think. But in the end I've always ended up making those fixes, even though I first feel like "shit, that's a lot of work for small gain, I'm not going to do that"... but I guess my inner perfectionist always takes over in the end.

I guess I'm just saying, that the foundry has always pushed me to do my best, and I think a lot of my maps have ended up better for it - even though many times, at the time of the feedback I've felt really frustrated and didn't feel like going through all the effort. I think the question is, should we let mapmakers settle for maps they think are "good enough" or should everyone be pushed to their limits, to create the best possible maps they can?

I pretty sure cairnswk will do his job if people will let him alone for a while.....without continue to tell him what he "is not able" to do...I've already suggested to cairsnwk to take the time he needs. In any case I don't like the recent attitude to throw shit on people face....it certainly doesn't help the foundry to grow, because when you work for free you have to enjoy what you do and not hear people "insult" you all time.....made comparison with mapmakers that are no more here, tell that half of your map are shit, tell you are treated in a different way.....this is not constructive criticism.
Tell him how to achieve the objective.....add to the map what the map is missing...that is constructive criticism....but it seems to me that I don't read that here...in fact if the mapmaker preferred to ask to me via pm instead of posting in the thread....maybe there's a reason. It's a while I say the foundry can't work in this way...construcitve criticism is share your experience with him, not tell to him how much better you are.

Now give to cairnswk the time he needs, please.

tnb80, i am going to reply to natty, and answer some of the criticisms that have been applied to me in the last few days by Dim.

natty, i'll reply to you on this one. you are entitled to agree with Dim if you feel that way. But the rest of your argument raises more questions than it answers.
So here is a few of my answers, and this is not being nasty but simple truth - the way i see it.

Your london map still has blurry lines on it where they are supposed to be straight/perfect - if I magnify the image up to 200% - unfortunately again much of this is lost in translation, but i can clearly see it with my eyes.



But am i kicking and screaming about this - no - because of the way i see the time over gain productivity element of working as a volunteer for a site where we don't get paid "professional" rates and thus cannot be expected to work as professionals producing top quality print material items for the boss.

So far now i have used your suggestions for gridding on the first attempt which produced some perfect stations and others blurry.
The second attempt i downloaded the trial version CD X5 to use the hinting, but still to no availe as the same result as attempt 1 was produced.
The third attempt took 2 days to rework the background into Illustrator and rework every single station and text element, still to no availe.
You cannot say i have not pushed myself to try to solve this issue. and yes, i absolutely feel there is a lot of "shit for no gain" because this issue is going to not even be noticed by most players because apparently my maps are unpopular anyway, yet almost every other day i see another tournament started on one of them.

If you have an inner perfectionist in you, then i say good for you and also Dim. But i don't have an inner perfectionist in me. I will do my best for my standards and what i beleive is achievable, but then move on. I am rather older than you guys and life has dulled my desire for perfection which i used to have when i was your age.

The other thing i have to say about the foundry pushing you...i have ask you on a number of occasions to push yourself with your maps where i have commented, but was retorted at the time with "this is not my vision for the map" which to me tells me that there is an element of laziness in you (and others) also. In fact we all have it. Some simply recognise it better than others and don't try to disguise it.

Dim on the other hand has other goals. He needs to be:
* the most popular mapmaker on the site from his constant quote of statsistics of games played
* the mapmaker with the quickest number of days quenched for a map
* the mapmaker who would try to win a contest with a map that was loudly/ever so proudly announced as "i did this is two hours" (and the results show; even now he still has lots of blurry lines around that map)
* the mapmaker who accusses me of importing graphics from the web for my NZ map for the borders without realising they are my "own work" while he has flourishes all around his former PNG map that i doubt he could have drawn in two hours and are entirlely inappropriate for the map but yes they look very much imported from the web
* the mapmaker with the loudest voice (insulting everyone) when he returns to the foundry. or was that Dim simply announcing that he was back
* the mapmaker who insists on professional standards when he cannot produce them for the site himself
* the mapmaker who would have everyone struggling to read the instructions and the territory names because of his desire for "something different" on each map but infact all he wants to do is rush each of his maps through the foundry process because his character doesn't have the patience to let it rest until everyone has commented
* the mapmaker who accesses me of rolling out the same-old same-old when his first three maps were a series of the same map with moderate changes to the graphics/gameplay on the first, and since then has managed to roll out a couple more version of land/sea/volcanoes plus a couple more versions of parchement backgrounds
* the mapmaker who thinks everyone should aspire to his standards: there was another mapmaker who tried that one on me, he also was rude and insulting but when asked to fix his army circles on his prison map, couldn't be bothered because he thought they were perfect; he has since started his own site - Dim please follow him and apply your standards on your own site, it seems to work somehow. perhaps you'd have much more satisfaction where you can be the boss.

If you ask me, people who live in glass houses should beware that the glass doesn't fall in around them.

so basically you're saying:

"i'm not bitching about your mistakes so stop bitching about mine"


by all means, go to my map threads, show me my blurry lines and ask for correction. show me the pixelation and demand change. i have nothing against this. nobody will be able to push himself to the limit. outside help/force is always necessary. in fact i wish all map makers would do this. if you don't like a map go on and say it. make a suggestion, propose a change, offer advice. come out of your shell and look at all maps there are in production then unleash your criticism and help the map makers improve them. if we all sit around in our own threads and be bothered only with our maps, not going in other threads and never criticising anything we'll pretty soon start churning out crap after crap after crap.

i saw you on several occasions lately trying to auto-suggest yourself as a graphics CA. would you ignore blurriness and pixelation on maps? would you go and tell map makers "don't worry about your blurry borders, you're a volunteer so top notch gfx aren't expected. the time spent over net quality gain is simply just not worth it". would you?


sitting around letting others slide, hoping you'll be allowed to slide too is the worst thing that can happen to the foundry.
if all the mapmakers did this then we could close down the foundry and adopt a landgrab system where anybody uploads anything.
yeah sure i'm not diplomatic, in fact i can be a complete ass at times. yeah and i'm also arrogant and boastful . so what? i'm not trying to win a popularity contest here. i'm trying to get the best possible maps out of this foundry by any means necessary. this was and will always be my goal when it comes to the foundry. if you can see beyond the "aggressiveness" and realise my intentions are good then everything will be fine. if you become all "he hurt my itsy bitsy feelings by criticising my blurry borders so i'm gonna bin my map" then it's your own fault. suck it up and do the crisp stations that you proved you can do. then go to my maps and nitpick the hell out of them. after that go to all other maps and do the same.
in the end it will mean we all make better maps and that's what counts.

PS: as for your attacks directed at me. all i can say is .... meh. i couldn't care less. there used to be a time when i looked up to you. sadly time has turned you into a bitter vindictive man that i couldn't even recognize. it's sad. if it makes you feel better and gets you past this mooshy phase and back on track to finishing graphics, then go ahead and vent some more. i really don't mind.

cairnswk wrote:If you have an inner perfectionist in you, then i say good for you and also Dim. But i don't have an inner perfectionist in me. I will do my best for my standards and what i beleive is achievable, but then move on. I am rather older than you guys and life has dulled my desire for perfection which i used to have when i was your age.

Really? How old are you then? I turn 30 this year, so you must be middle-aged by now. Funny, I always thought you were around my age.

cairnswk wrote:The other thing i have to say about the foundry pushing you...i have ask you on a number of occasions to push yourself with your maps where i have commented, but was retorted at the time with "this is not my vision for the map" which to me tells me that there is an element of laziness in you (and others) also. In fact we all have it. Some simply recognise it better than others and don't try to disguise it.

How long are you going to keep remembering things I've said or done when I was doing my 3rd map in 2010? The suggestions you made on the orient express map were entirely counter to the kind of map I wanted to make. You basically wanted me to scrap the project and do a completely different map, the kind of map you'd make. And it's entirely legitimate for me to say in that situation, that it's not what I'm looking to do with the map. The stylistic or thematic direction is not a technical aspect of the map, it can't be judged objectively. Only the execution can. So if several people would have told me at that point that the theme wasn't executed well, I would probably have done something about it. But all there was was you telling me that that's not how you imagine orient express and it's not how you'd design the gameplay or graphics.

So no, it's entirely un-comparable.

My god you guys are getting angry over the silliest little thing. None of you three are perfect and I am sure anyone can point out flaws in any of the maps made by anyone. Shouting about something in a map thread is a stupid way of dong this. We have a proper forum for this. And the way you two are going about it (natty and DiM) it is coming across as if you just want cairnswk maps to fail and have now taken it to a level of pure hatred.


Now without blowing the maps up to 10000% of anything else ridiculous, the stations look fine and should not hold this map back. The one thing I did spot and without going over multiple pages of thread, I cannot see if it was pointed out but the G5 above W.Chinese could be centred better on both large and small.

koontz1973 wrote:My god you guys are getting angry over the silliest little thing. None of you three are perfect and I am sure anyone can point out flaws in any of the maps made by anyone. Shouting about something in a map thread is a stupid way of dong this. We have a proper forum for this. And the way you two are going about it (natty and DiM) it is coming across as if you just want cairnswk maps to fail and have now taken it to a level of pure hatred.

Really, koontz? All I've tried to do is give constructive criticism. I've even said that I don't agree with the way Dim presents his views and tried to be more diplomatic about explaining my view on the matter. So can you point out to me what exactly have I said that constitutes as "pure hatred" here?

I don't want cairnswk's maps to fail, in fact I want the exactly opposite. I want him to create the best possible maps he can create, no more & no less - the same I would ask from any other mapmaker.

natty, you have been a tad more diplomatic about this and have tried to help but this has now become more than helpful. It has become destructive.

As for the hatred part, that may be a little strong but in no other thread has DiM pestered a map maker like this and said the things he has said. He has said himself he rarely posts in other threads nowadays but the majority now seem to not be of any use apart from to point out all the bad points, in a bad way while making his maps seem so superior. Comparing his posts in my knights thread to his in this one, there is a clear difference in style. But this is all now off topic. More than happy to continue this in a proper thread though.

koontz1973 wrote:Now without blowing the maps up to 10000% of anything else ridiculous, the stations look fine and should not hold this map back.

so you're saying you can't see any difference between the central station on the left image and the one on the right image?

clean sharp station in the middle .................... current blurry version

koontz1973 wrote:As for the hatred part, that may be a little strong but in no other thread has DiM pestered a map maker like this and said the things he has said.

wrong. just check out the research and conquer map.
and no it's not hatred. i haven't hated anybody in my whole life. i'm not gonna start hating somebody online

Okay, everyone needs to take a break from this. There is no need to continue bickering back and forth.

isaiah40 wrote:Okay, everyone needs to take a break from this. There is no need to continue bickering back and forth.

do you have a way to fix these lines isaiah40?

I hate to see this map in the recycling box !

I seriously hate everyone for letting this be binned.

cairnswk wrote:

Click image to enlarge.

Click image to enlarge.

http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s282 ... l-test.png
http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s282 ... l-test.png
http://www.peeje.com/files/359944427/Ra ... inal_6.xml

I am ready to play this!

Image deleted and moved to next page.

This looks really great cairns! Good job.

This is puuuurrrrrrfect cairns!! Well done!!

guys, you can well jump up and down at this if you want but i still far from impressed at PS
I still have to go through now and re-size every single station again on the grid because when up-scaling the image, PS doesn't keep the outer edge of the stroke lines on the grid.
it's a shame that i had to go through this process for the lines, not mention the other shit that went with it. Version 29 was still overall better than this version even though it now has perrrrffffeeeccctttly straight boxes.
This has taken 4 attempts at re-doing stations from wow to go in three diferent programs just to satisfy this condition, and i consider that unreasonable for a site that doesn't pay professionally, nor for other commentors who can't also live-up to their own professional ideals.
And i am still not happy that i have had to re-draw this in PS and lost the quality of the background image because it had to be "placed" in PS.

So...there is still a way to go yet.

Good work cairnswk. Stations look perfect.

Posted this but removed and now reposting it.

let me just say that the new stations are wonderful.

cairnswk wrote:And i am still not happy that i have had to re-draw this in PS and lost the quality of the background image because it had to be "placed" in PS.

How is that?

Can't you export the background image (ie. the map without the stations) as a bitmap in the original software, then import that bitmap in PS and add the stations on top of it there? The background should stay unchanged that way.

That said, I don't really see anything wrong with the background though... what exactly is the problem with it?

Version 31.





http://www.peeje.com/files/359944427/Ra ... inal_6.xml

1. the top of the tbs station is faulty. a and j aren't aligned to form a proper tip. not sure how to explain this better...


2. the dsh station pentagon is slightly tilted to the right, thus forming a weird skewed pentagon. also the way the corners form is a bit off. like the little isosceles trapezes aren't aligned


3. alignment issues on the bjn station too.

I have a bad feeling that the misalignments in the various polygons that DiM has pointed out may be due to restricting the vertices to an alignment grid, which got us the very crisp lines we are seeing now. I do hope we are not faced with a choice of one or the other.

ender516 wrote:I have a bad feeling that the misalignments in the various polygons that DiM has pointed out may be due to restricting the vertices to an alignment grid, which got us the very crisp lines we are seeing now. I do hope we are not faced with a choice of one or the other.

There is a compromise...above.