[Official] Germany Revamp

by **pepperonibread** on Mon Apr 06, 2009 2:32 pm

New update, complete with finished xml:

Large:

Click image to enlarge.

Small:

Large 88's XML Test:

Click image to enlarge.

Small 88's XML Test:

Large 888's XML Test:

Click image to enlarge.

Small 888's XML Test:

XML Link: http://h1.ripway.com/pepperonibread/Germany.xml

Changes:
-Scooched a couple mountains around.
-Darkened the coats of arms on the six continents. I think these are basically set - as whenever I bold them, there are complaints about the map being too busy, and whenever I dull the arms down, people say they're too hard to identify. It's more of an aesthetics thing anyway, looking at the Great Lakes map you can see the same effect with flags, and many of those are certainly not easy to see.
-Thinned down the bridge between Rugen and Rostock.
-Completed the XML. So those army # tests above are the real deal now, not just 88's that I pasted on. I posted the 888's tests as well.

To do:
-Fix 88's, if any are off-center or misplaced.
-Comments?

by **the.killing.44** on Mon Apr 06, 2009 3:03 pm

Important things first (in order of importance)…

Large
888 covers Chemnitz "C"

move co-ords a couple px left888 clips Osnabrück "O"

move co-ords a couple px down and left888 clips Eisenach "a"

move co-ords a couple px leftSmall
888 covers Chemnitz "C"

move co-ords a couple px left888 clips Osnabrück "O"

move co-ords a couple px down and left888 clips Eisenach "a"

move co-ords a couple px left888 clips Schwerin "S"

move co-ords a couple px leftThen the small but easily fixable ones…
Large
Heilbronn (L)
Mainz (L)
Bremen (L)
Passau (L)
Small
Passau (L)
Mainz (L)
Bremen (L)
I also suggest you move the Nürnberg numbers up right under the name, instead of the bottom of the territory — it looks like you have room.

Nice job =D>

.44

by **pepperonibread** on Tue Apr 07, 2009 12:22 pm

the.killing.44 wrote:Important things first (in order of importance)…

Large
888 covers Chemnitz "C"
move co-ords a couple px left
888 clips Osnabrück "O"
move co-ords a couple px down and left
888 clips Eisenach "a"
move co-ords a couple px left
Small
888 covers Chemnitz "C"
move co-ords a couple px left
888 clips Osnabrück "O"
move co-ords a couple px down and left
888 clips Eisenach "a"
move co-ords a couple px left
888 clips Schwerin "S"
move co-ords a couple px left
Then the small but easily fixable ones…
Large
Heilbronn (L)
Mainz (L)
Bremen (L)
Passau (L)
Small
Passau (L)
Mainz (L)
Bremen (L)
I also suggest you move the Nürnberg numbers up right under the name, instead of the bottom of the territory — it looks like you have room.

Nice job
.44

Thanks, I'll try to get to these soon. Some of them, like the Chemnitz number, are an especially tight fit, but I'll see what I can figure out.

Also, to anyone knowledgeable with XML's (yeti?): I need some help with adding umlauts to my code. I think it has something to do with Unicode, but I can't exactly remember. Any suggestions?

by **gho** on Sun Apr 12, 2009 11:20 am

whats happening with this map? why isnt it moving?

by **oaktown** on Sat Apr 18, 2009 2:10 am

pepperonibread wrote:Also, to anyone knowledgeable with XML's (yeti?): I need some help with adding umlauts to my code. I think it has something to do with Unicode, but I can't exactly remember. Any suggestions?

I had the same problem with the Berlin map. here's a good list of character entity references...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_XM ... references

by **pepperonibread** on Sun Apr 19, 2009 7:47 pm

oaktown wrote:
pepperonibread wrote:Also, to anyone knowledgeable with XML's (yeti?): I need some help with adding umlauts to my code. I think it has something to do with Unicode, but I can't exactly remember. Any suggestions?

I had the same problem with the Berlin map. here's a good list of character entity references...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_XM ... references

Thanks oaktown.

by **Seulessliathan** on Thu Apr 23, 2009 11:15 am

wasn´t there a river in the north of Münster? Rhein isn´t there exactly , but .... mountains? There aren´t any mountains around. Can you change this back to river please? (although the river is wrong, because there are only small rivers, and the Rhein is elsewhere, but mountains doesn´t exist there.

by **MrBenn** on Sat Apr 25, 2009 2:21 pm

MrBenn wrote:Nice work pep

I think it was mentioned before about adding an additional mountain to each mountain range that overlaps the border of Germany itself, to reinforce the fact that you can't sneak round the edges of them

As far as XML work goes, I cannot stress how important it is going to be to keep the territories in the same order as in the original XML file. To this end, it would be helpful if you could put together a single master list that shows all the territory names and how the new ones map onto the old ones.

by **mibi** on Sun May 03, 2009 11:49 pm

Sorry I am a little late to the party. I am not really a fan of the texture here. What is that? Canvas?

Ditch the texture, through some parchment in there and it will be 100% better. Though you may not be able to remove the texture at this point, but it really doesn't befit germany.

by **alexandrois** on Mon May 04, 2009 1:46 am

it's great just one thing, you've two yellows next to each other and two grey/blacks next to each other, couldn't you change this

by **gho** on Mon May 04, 2009 3:41 am

alexandrois wrote:it's great just one thing, you've two yellows next to each other and two grey/blacks next to each other, couldn't you change this

its the german flag. I like the 'canvas' just finish this map already.

by **yeti_c** on Wed May 06, 2009 5:42 am

pepperonibread wrote:
oaktown wrote:
pepperonibread wrote:Also, to anyone knowledgeable with XML's (yeti?): I need some help with adding umlauts to my code. I think it has something to do with Unicode, but I can't exactly remember. Any suggestions?

I had the same problem with the Berlin map. here's a good list of character entity references...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_XM ... references

Thanks oaktown.

Apologies Pep - only just read this...

Yeah - Oaks got it spot on - for an example then check out both the berlin.xml and the dasschloss.xml files...

C.

by **pepperonibread** on Tue Jun 30, 2009 4:14 pm

New update, not much has changed but I'm hoping to push this along after my hiatus or whatever:

Large:

Click image to enlarge.

Small:

Large 88's XML Test:

Click image to enlarge.

Small 88's XML Test:

Large 888's XML Test:

Click image to enlarge.

Small 888's XML Test:

XML Link: http://h1.ripway.com/pepperonibread/Germany.xml

Changes:
-Added all necessary umlauts to the XML file - thank you oaktown and yeti.

MrBenn wrote:Nice work pep

I think it was mentioned before about adding an additional mountain to each mountain range that overlaps the border of Germany itself, to reinforce the fact that you can't sneak round the edges of them

As far as XML work goes, I cannot stress how important it is going to be to keep the territories in the same order as in the original XML file. To this end, it would be helpful if you could put together a single master list that shows all the territory names and how the new ones map onto the old ones.

-Sorry I never responded to this one. I did push the mountains around a bit more in this update I think, but this is as far as I'd like to move them. The aesthetics are sort of screwed up if the mountains go over the outer black line, as the layering of the map works better if the line lies "over" other parts of the map. And it with no excess space between the mountains and the border, it's honestly unlikely that anyone would mistake these areas to be something besides impassable.
-mibi mentioned the overall texture of the map, and I tried out a couple of other options prior to posting this update. Stuff like parchment is really too rough for this map, so I decided to stick with the canvas pattern. I'd venture to say that there isn't really a distinctly "German" texture anyway, and the current texture fits well for what I have been going for graphics-wise.
-I nudged around some army numbers as per killing's request. Some triple digits (especially on the small map) still clip the names, but to fix the problem entirely I'd need to push the more important double digits pretty far off center. All these changes are in the updated XML I posted above.

To do:
-Fix 88's, if any are off-center or misplaced.
-Comments?

by **mibi** on Tue Jun 30, 2009 5:35 pm

You should take a grunge brush and use the burn tool on this map. Give it some sinisterness.

by **pepperonibread** on Tue Jun 30, 2009 10:39 pm

mibi wrote:You should take a grunge brush and use the burn tool on this map. Give it some sinisterness.

Workin on it right now. I've been trying out some hi-res brushes lately, and some pretty cool stuff is coming of it so far.

by **mibi** on Wed Jul 01, 2009 6:32 pm

pepperonibread wrote:
mibi wrote:You should take a grunge brush and use the burn tool on this map. Give it some sinisterness.

Workin on it right now. I've been trying out some hi-res brushes lately, and some pretty cool stuff is coming of it so far.

cool. you really don't need high res brushes for 72dpi work. espeically with the burn tool where you should be able to see the brush work at all. leep the opacity low on those brushes, sub 5%, ya heard.

by **pepperonibread** on Thu Jul 16, 2009 11:24 pm

New update:

Large:

Click image to enlarge.

Small:

Large 88's XML Test:

Click image to enlarge.

Small 88's XML Test:

Large 888's XML Test:

Click image to enlarge.

Small 888's XML Test:

XML Link: http://h1.ripway.com/pepperonibread/Germany.xml

Changes:
-Just one: Added some significant grunge effects to the image. I think it turned out really well, though I suppose it is often personal preference when considering how "clean" a map should be. Comments are encouraged as always, actually more than usual because I wanna get this going despite my slowness in updating.

To do:
-Fix 88's, if any are off-center or misplaced.
-Comments?

by **MrBenn** on Fri Jul 17, 2009 6:58 pm

This looks truly wonderful... the grunge adds some feeling to the map, and gives it a certain je ne c'est quoi!

My final nit-pick, is a request to switch the dark/light red, so that the darker red is on the bigger region, which will reflect the colours of the flag a bit more accurately. Having said that, it really isn't important at this stage - I can almost smell the quench stamp :lol:

by **the.killing.44** on Fri Jul 17, 2009 7:04 pm

MrBenn wrote:I can almost smell the quench stamp

He needs the XML stamp, silly!

This looks awesome.
.44

by **pepperonibread** on Fri Jul 17, 2009 9:59 pm

the.killing.44 wrote:
MrBenn wrote:I can almost smell the quench stamp

He needs the XML stamp, silly!

This looks awesome.
.44

Wow, I haven't been to the foundry in a while... you have that authority!? I'll take it in any case.

MrBenn wrote:This looks truly wonderful... the grunge adds some feeling to the map, and gives it a certain je ne c'est quoi!

My final nit-pick, is a request to switch the dark/light red, so that the darker red is on the bigger region, which will reflect the colours of the flag a bit more accurately. Having said that, it really isn't important at this stage - I can almost smell the quench stamp

Okey doke here are your two options then. Note that I didn't update the minimap on the edited version yet:

Dark on Left
Dark on Right

My opinion here: The image feels slightly more balanced with all darks on one side. In fact I think the balance issue was the reason why this ordering was decided on in the first place.