Conquer Club

AndyDufresne wrote:Much debate occurred about the arrows, and I think they are suitably understandable for game play. Other's thoughts?


--Andy

MrBenn wrote:This map has developed nicely, and is very clean and crisp. Getting a map to this stage is no mean feat, so you can be proud of your achievement over the past however-many-months :-p

Anyway, here's my take on the graphics - the intention here is to help you put some thought into making some tweaks to bring the map up to the next level... please take any criticism in the constructive manner in which I mean it

1. Territory Borders

For the most part, the borders are crisp and clear; but in some places there is pixellation/fuzziness (eg. Newton/Cloverdale).
In a couple of spots, the borders don't meet cleanly (eg. Boundary Bay/Burns Bog or Aldergrove/Campbell Valley/Glen Valley).
Where territory names overlap the borders, it might be worth moving some borders to make it more clear where the name blongs (eg you could redraw the bottom of UGC so it isn;t overlapped by the K of Kerrisdale; or in Edmonds, you could move the border to be above the text). There are countless examples of maps where the borders have been slightly distorted to assist legibility, and I think you may have to make some similar geographical sacrifices here

2. Territory Names

As mentioned before, there are a number of places where the text overlaps territory names. You could either resolve this by moving some borders slightly, reducing the font size a little, or possibly even finding a new font altogether?
Some of the text on pale areas of the map (Burnaby) is difficult to read. It might be worth playing around with an outer glow on the text instead of just a drop shadow.

3. Textures

The sea/rivers feels a bit fluffy - have a look at some other maps around (Charleston springs to mind) for some ideas of how to highlight the transition between land and water
In spite of the texture on the land, the map still feels very flat; the texture doesn't feel very 'landy'... it might be worth having a bit of a play around a bit...

4. Train Lines

The purple (pink?) line runs very close to the coast in the yellow area; if you can pull it away from the terrtory edge a little, it will be more obvious that the territry extends beneath it, and that the train line isn't a border. You could possibly add (or increase the distance) of the drop shadow, to make it feel more like the line is above the territory space.
The colouring you've used on Downtown is a little bit confusing, and really doesn;t help visibility of the army number. Consider extending the colour around parts of the circle edge (you could split it almost three ways) - check out the train lines on NYC to see how the double-line-stations are done on there; I'd suggest trying to emulate that style as much as possible as people should be familiar with that concept.

5. Title

A good title should feel like part of the map, and at the moment it feels like it doesn't really belong there and is just filling a convenient space. If you're happy with it, that's fine, but It would be nice to see if there's any way to make it come alive a little bit

6. Legend

The legend is broadly functional, although I'm not sure how easy it is to match up the coloured blobs with the region colours.
The train line symbols aren't clearly differentiated from the other blobs - at first I was looking for another railway line across the Coast Mountains
The order of regions on the legend doesn't seem to correspond with their positions on the map.
The ports symbol doesn;t do a great deal for me, and looks more like a snowflake - this is entirely subjective really I know (think?) you had an attack line over the sea in an earlier version, but it would be nice to see how a narrow dashed/dotted line works now - you could use the current border line colour instead of white?

7. The Small Map

The train lines (at least the stations) will have to be moved a little bit on the small map in order to keep the army numbers centered properly. At some point it would be helpful to see a small version (even if it's just a shrunken large one) to get an idea of any further adjustments that are going to be necessary

All in all, your doing well. Keep up the good work

danfrank wrote:
Why Does this map not have a critiqueing like this one ???????? The graphics on vancouver is 100 times better than land and sea.. The two big blue blobs in the center of the map Looks like the artic is growing Also people have legitimate claims about attack routes and there dismissed as if it does not matter

oaktown wrote:And since the part about Land and Sea do not connect is what folks are failing to read maybe that should be first, or somehow more prominent?

ender516 wrote:I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but "Arctic" is misspelled "Artic" on the map depicting the bonuses. Despite that, I do believe I will try this map soon. It looks sharp and well thought out.

BigFuzzyBunny wrote:I think the continents need a thicker stroke around them (Except for where the passages to the sea are). It is very difficult to tell where you can and cannot cross on this map. Just because regions are touching (which on most maps means you can go that way) doesn't mean you can on this one. There are no real indication that you can't - the arrows when you can cross are not enough.