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Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel 9.1 [2012-11-30] pg7

PostPosted: Sat Dec 01, 2012 7:25 am
by generalhead
I would like to see what it would look like with some color integrated into the Jordan river. It looks a little bland now.
Koontz is correct the bridges do look blurry.
I thought the mountains did have shading, does he mean a drop shadow?
like Koontz said the highlight too ex the bottom left of DIBON and Bottom of JEZREEL
Could you try lowing your bonus region borders to 75% opacity too see if that looks good. It might not, i will leave that up to your discretion.
There is a strange faint white line above the title of the map I don't know if that was meant to be there.
Is there a way to blend in the line better between the Jordan river and the Dead sea. It looks a little odd, like it is a seperate entity and not joined.
The highlight for Simeon blend in with the river around it. I don't know if you have any colors left to use but a different color might make the river stand out more.
The highlight around Rimmon too blends in with the water, especially with it being at the end of the river it looks like it flows into it. Again I don't know if you have any colors left to use.
Sorry I haven't commented lately, I am no good commenting on game play. I like looking at graphics though.
As always these are suggestions, just trying to give a new way to look at the map. I am no where experienced in the graphics field. just trying to give my opinion for what it's worth

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel 9.1 [2012-11-30] pg7

PostPosted: Sat Dec 01, 2012 9:02 am
by koontz1973
Line between the dead seas, give it a fluid look (curvy) so it is not so straight. :P

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel 9.1 [2012-11-30] pg7

PostPosted: Sat Dec 01, 2012 11:27 am
by Seamus76
koontz1973 wrote:Rivers
Mountains need shadows
Bridges look very blurred
Some of the glows do not reach the borders

Why are you asking, you must know these things already. ;)

You know how it is after you look at the same image for weeks at a time, you miss some of those little things. I'll work on the glows, which might be off just a tad. The bridges are from an extremely large and detailed image, so maybe it's the drop shadow that is making them look blurred, but I'll try loading them and scaling them again to see if that helps as well.

You need to be more specific when you say "Rivers", I'm not sure what you mean. Also for the mountains as well. I've added the black side to them to give the shadow so I'm not sure what you mean.

Post by generalhead ยป Sat Dec 01, 2012 8:25 am
I would like to see what it would look like with some color integrated into the Jordan river. It looks a little bland now.
Koontz is correct the bridges do look blurry.
I thought the mountains did have shading, does he mean a drop shadow?
like Koontz said the highlight too ex the bottom left of DIBON and Bottom of JEZREEL
Could you try lowing your bonus region borders to 75% opacity too see if that looks good. It might not, i will leave that up to your discretion.
There is a strange faint white line above the title of the map I don't know if that was meant to be there.
Is there a way to blend in the line better between the Jordan river and the Dead sea. It looks a little odd, like it is a seperate entity and not joined.
The highlight for Simeon blend in with the river around it. I don't know if you have any colors left to use but a different color might make the river stand out more.
The highlight around Rimmon too blends in with the water, especially with it being at the end of the river it looks like it flows into it. Again I don't know if you have any colors left to use.
Sorry I haven't commented lately, I am no good commenting on game play. I like looking at graphics though.
As always these are suggestions, just trying to give a new way to look at the map. I am no where experienced in the graphics field. just trying to give my opinion for what it's worth


I want the Jordan to be that way actually. I want it to be a background thought and not really noticeable. I tried a couple of ways to color it, and stripe it, and give it a feel like the other rivers, but it didn't work, I didn't like it, and I'm not planning to put anything else in there. The Dead Sea is a separate entity, so it should actually look like that. The faint white line is just a part of the background paper image texture, and is there on TW-Fla as well, since they are the same image. I guess I have to work on the Rimmon color, since it is not a lake, and shouldn't be confused as such, if in fact that is what you are referring to. Keep up the comments GH.

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel 9.1 [2012-11-30] pg7

PostPosted: Sat Dec 01, 2012 11:56 am
by koontz1973
When I say rivers, you now have 3 types of water. The dead sea which needs to be different as it is a territ. Sea of Galilee is OK but it is the sea (under the legends)which is even lighter than this and the river impassables. Make the impassable rivers like Galilee and you might be onto a winner. Also, make them darker in the middle and try to give them some movement.

Mountains, try to give them a little shadow. This is up to you but I thought it might look nice.
Large bridges scaled down rarely work. Do them yourself, very easy to do and would look better. If you keep these ones, post the link from where you got them for royalty free checking.

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel 9.1 [2012-11-30] pg7

PostPosted: Sat Dec 01, 2012 12:03 pm
by isaiah40
koontz1973 wrote:... post the link from where you got them for royalty free checking.

I would say Public Domain because royalty free does not necessarily mean you can use it for commercial purposes. Now if a commercial license was purchased, then that is another thing.

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel 9.1 [2012-11-30] pg7

PostPosted: Sat Dec 01, 2012 2:19 pm
by cairnswk
Seamus76
what i do with my rivers is try to keep them the all the same colour and a slightly different colour from the ocean.
you have a difficulty 'coz u have no ocean
what i suggest you do, and i don't know what software you're using...
is create non-stroked layers with the pen tool that have a water/fluid texture to them so that you fulfill the requirement some are asking for in that the water looks like it is flowing...
place this layer under your land terts so that the land outlines create the river/inland-sea edges...give the Dead Sea another very faint slightly washed edge so it appears just slightly different from the other rivers at the edges, perhaps something like a very weak washed out light brown
for the terts on the Dead Sea indicate them with dotted/stroked lines atop the water layer so that there is still continuity with the water that is not interrupted by plain strokes as you have now.

Hope this helps. :)

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel 9.1 [2012-11-30] pg7

PostPosted: Sat Dec 01, 2012 2:23 pm
by cairnswk
addition. the river mouths to the sea and inland rivers have to be open-ended :)
check what i did on my NZ map

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel 9.1 [2012-11-30] pg7

PostPosted: Sat Dec 01, 2012 3:02 pm
by generalhead
Cairns is correct, the rivers in his New Zealand map look more natural. Give it a look when you get a minute.
New Zealand
Here is another one that shows the rivers opening up and matching the ocean
map

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel 9.1 [2012-11-30] pg7

PostPosted: Mon Dec 03, 2012 3:14 am
by iancanton
the layout is certainly unusual, though faithful to tribal war florida. the bonuses are mostly good, except for there being not enough differential between the larger areas and the smaller ones.

my first observation is that judah, which has 15 regions, is lkely to be a wasteland that no-one wants, unless u hike the bonus to something that really cannot be ignored, such as +10.

gad also deserves an additional +2 to bring it up to +7 because trying to occupy and defend such a high number of easily-accessible regions is risky when there are quicker ways to earn a bonus.

an extra +1 for nephtali, making +5, is in order. like gad, it has more regions than most other bonuses and borders one of the war zones.

ian. :)

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel 9.1 [2012-11-30] pg7

PostPosted: Tue Dec 04, 2012 12:36 am
by Seamus76
CURRENT UPDATE INFO - 2012-12-04:
- Updated all of the rivers. Let me know some thoughts. This is how I had the river on TW-Fla, but for these I added some additional color.
- Redid all of the bridges by hand. I think they look pretty good.
- Updated bonus numbers based on Ian's feedback.
- Removed the main color on the Dead Sea terts but left a little glow around the edges. Also, changed the divider line.
- Fixed any border glows that were lacking.

CURRENT MAP VERSION:
v10.0 - Large (840x800)
Click image to enlarge.
image

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel 10.0 [2012-12-04] pg8

PostPosted: Tue Dec 04, 2012 1:33 am
by generalhead
Muy bueno mi amigo! bonito trabajo ImageImageImage

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel 10.0 [2012-12-04] pg8

PostPosted: Tue Dec 04, 2012 12:12 pm
by Seamus76
Gracias GH.

So now that the bonus values are done is there anything left for gameplay, or can we get a stamp on this? Thanks all.

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel 10.0 [2012-12-04] pg8

PostPosted: Tue Dec 04, 2012 3:22 pm
by cooldeals
I really like the concept of this map Seamus. Keep up the good work.

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel 10.0 [2012-12-04] pg8

PostPosted: Tue Dec 04, 2012 9:57 pm
by nolefan5311
I'm going to go ahead and sticky this for the GP stamp, but give it longer than the usual 48 hours to make sure we can get a headline posted and get the rest of the community to pop in.

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel 10.0 [2012-12-04] pg8

PostPosted: Tue Dec 04, 2012 10:05 pm
by Seamus76
Sounds great! Thanks so much.

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel 10.0 [2012-12-04] pg8

PostPosted: Wed Dec 05, 2012 12:17 pm
by Seamus76
CURRENT UPDATE INFO - 2012-12-05:
- Added the scroll to the bottom right corner, and skewed the text a bit so it looked more part of the paper.
-Went through and tried to touch up some of the river borders.

Going to start with the small map since the text is going to be a killer to redo. The gameplay stamp should be imminent, so please let me know what graphics updates need to be made. Thanks everyone for all of the feedback. This should be a really fun team game, or an epic 1v1. :lol:

CURRENT MAP VERSION:
v10.1 - Large (840x800)
Click image to enlarge.
image

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel 10.1 [2012-12-05] pg9

PostPosted: Wed Dec 05, 2012 2:57 pm
by cairnswk
Seamus76, good job on what you've done the rivers...
can you slightly tweak the river mouths at the Med Sea so they fade into that cream background, either that or add the sea marking on the coastline...
and the river in the legend still has the light blue around it, but should show black edges.
apart from that. nothing else from me, well done! :)

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel 10.1 [2012-12-05] pg9

PostPosted: Wed Dec 05, 2012 11:00 pm
by Seamus76
CURRENT UPDATE INFO - 2012-12-06:
Thanks for the feedback cairns.
- Added the border around the river in the legend.
- Also, reversed the flow of the rivers on the Med Sea side so the mouths blend in more.

Going to start with the small map since the text is going to be a killer to redo.

CURRENT MAP VERSION:
v10.2 - Large (840x800)
Click image to enlarge.
image

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel 10.1 [2012-12-05] pg9

PostPosted: Wed Dec 05, 2012 11:53 pm
by cairnswk
Seamus76 wrote:CURRENT UPDATE INFO - 2012-12-06:
Thanks for the feedback cairns.
- Added the border around the river in the legend.
- Also, reversed the flow of the rivers on the Med Sea side so the mouths blend in more.
...

Nice! :)

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel v10.2 [2012-12-06] pg9

PostPosted: Thu Dec 06, 2012 11:20 am
by nolefan5311
Ok Seamus, I think there is only one issue holding you up. After doing a little bit more research into this, the only real issue I have remains the capital bonus.

From what I can see, 5 of the 12 capitals will start neutral. This leaves 7 capitals as droppable; Beer-Sheba, Shiloh, Samariah, Adamah, Edreh, Mahanaim, and Arder. With only 4 required for the bonus, that leaves a 16% chance that a bonus will be dropped in 2 and 3 player games, which is just too high.

You have a couple of options here though. The simplest is to code 3 of the above as starting neutrals, leaving 4 to be deployed at the drop. This drops the percentage to 1% in 2 and 3 player games. The other option is to code those remaining 7 as starting positions in the XML, giving a maximum of 3. It's up to you, but this will have to be changed before the stamp can be issued.

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel v10.2 [2012-12-06] pg9

PostPosted: Thu Dec 06, 2012 11:24 am
by nolefan5311
BTW, the spreadsheet I use to calculate this can be found here:

viewtopic.php?f=648&t=84998

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel v10.2 [2012-12-06] pg9

PostPosted: Thu Dec 06, 2012 11:33 am
by Seamus76
nolefan5311 wrote:Ok Seamus, I think there is only one issue holding you up. After doing a little bit more research into this, the only real issue I have remains the capital bonus.

From what I can see, 5 of the 12 capitals will start neutral. This leaves 7 capitals as droppable; Beer-Sheba, Shiloh, Samariah, Adamah, Edreh, Mahanaim, and Arder. With only 4 required for the bonus, that leaves a 16% chance that a bonus will be dropped in 2 and 3 player games, which is just too high.

You have a couple of options here though. The simplest is to code 3 of the above as starting neutrals, leaving 4 to be deployed at the drop. This drops the percentage to 1% in 2 and 3 player games. The other option is to code those remaining 7 as starting positions in the XML, giving a maximum of 3. It's up to you, but this will have to be changed before the stamp can be issued.


That makes sense. 16% is WAY too high. I hate games where there are bonuses on the drop. I really like the idea of coding the remaining 7 as starting positions in the xml, with a max of 3. This makes the chances of a capital bonus on the drop 0%, and keeps them very much in play if someone does happen to drop 2-3 of them. Plus, it also then becomes V.J.'s problem since he'll be doing the xml. :lol: Thanks Nole. So with that being said, does it solve the one issue holding us up?

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel v10.2 [2012-12-06] pg9

PostPosted: Thu Dec 06, 2012 12:31 pm
by nolefan5311
Seamus76 wrote:
nolefan5311 wrote:Ok Seamus, I think there is only one issue holding you up. After doing a little bit more research into this, the only real issue I have remains the capital bonus.

From what I can see, 5 of the 12 capitals will start neutral. This leaves 7 capitals as droppable; Beer-Sheba, Shiloh, Samariah, Adamah, Edreh, Mahanaim, and Arder. With only 4 required for the bonus, that leaves a 16% chance that a bonus will be dropped in 2 and 3 player games, which is just too high.

You have a couple of options here though. The simplest is to code 3 of the above as starting neutrals, leaving 4 to be deployed at the drop. This drops the percentage to 1% in 2 and 3 player games. The other option is to code those remaining 7 as starting positions in the XML, giving a maximum of 3. It's up to you, but this will have to be changed before the stamp can be issued.


That makes sense. 16% is WAY too high. I hate games where there are bonuses on the drop. I really like the idea of coding the remaining 7 as starting positions in the xml, with a max of 3. This makes the chances of a capital bonus on the drop 0%, and keeps them very much in play if someone does happen to drop 2-3 of them. Plus, it also then becomes V.J.'s problem since he'll be doing the xml. :lol: Thanks Nole. So with that being said, does it solve the one issue holding us up?


For the most part. Just waiting to hear from one person before moving it up to graphics :)

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel v10.2 [2012-12-06] pg9

PostPosted: Fri Dec 07, 2012 3:58 pm
by iancanton
if 7 capitals are start positions with a maximum of 3 each in 2-player games, then the 7th capital is put into the random pot for distribution to player 1, player 2 or the neutral player. there is therefore a one-third chance of player 1 receiving a +2 bonus for holding 4 capitals.

if u deal with this by coding 7 capitals as underlying-neutral start positions, then 8-player games will start with 7 neutral capitals, which isn't ideal.

while keeping the 7 capitals as start positions, how about changing the capital bonus to +5 for every 5 capitals? there is no chance of receiving this bonus from the start and it's big enough to encourage players to position themselves for or against it.

let the levite cities start as n2 rather than n3. they're likely to remain untouched in many games if players have to kill 3 neutral troops for only a +1 auto-deploy. a further possibility is to have shechem and ramoth-gilead start as n1, to force some action in the war zones, though this has some minus points in unlimited-forts games.

the name of the river: isn't it supposed to be river jordan, rather than jordan river?

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... k-asv.html

mark 1:5 And there went out unto him all the country of Judaea, and all they of Jerusalem; And they were baptized of him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

http://aum.edu.jo/en/student-life/location/79.html

Officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Jordan is on the East Bank of the River Jordan.

ian. :)

Re: Tribal War - Ancient Israel v10.2 [2012-12-06] pg9

PostPosted: Fri Dec 07, 2012 11:12 pm
by Seamus76
iancanton wrote:if 7 capitals are start positions with a maximum of 3 each in 2-player games, then the 7th capital is put into the random pot for distribution to player 1, player 2 or the neutral player. there is therefore a one-third chance of player 1 receiving a +2 bonus for holding 4 capitals.

if u deal with this by coding 7 capitals as underlying-neutral start positions, then 8-player games will start with 7 neutral capitals, which isn't ideal.

while keeping the 7 capitals as start positions, how about changing the capital bonus to +5 for every 5 capitals? there is no chance of receiving this bonus from the start and it's big enough to encourage players to position themselves for or against it.

let the levite cities start as n2 rather than n3. they're likely to remain untouched in many games if players have to kill 3 neutral troops for only a +1 auto-deploy. a further possibility is to have shechem and ramoth-gilead start as n1, to force some action in the war zones, though this has some minus points in unlimited-forts games.

the name of the river: isn't it supposed to be river jordan, rather than jordan river?


Thanks Ian. I think +5 for 5 capitals is a good solution. I'll update that for the next version. I also really like the 6 Levite Cities starting at n2 rather than n3. I don't think we need to force action in the war zones with some n1's, that should happen naturally, but could be something we rework during Beta as we see the games play out.

As for the Jordan, I've seen it both ways actually, in even earlier passages than the ones you posted. I don't mind either way, maybe BluU can crack an egg of knowledge all over us. :D