Three Kingdoms of Korea [Quenched]

by **DiM** on Wed Aug 24, 2011 5:23 am

why 94%? lack takes your pngs and saves them as 80% quality jpgs.

unless he changed his habit since i left but i highly doubt it since most of the maps look washed up and blurry once they're uploaded.

by **natty dread** on Wed Aug 24, 2011 5:56 am

DiM wrote:why 94%? lack takes your pngs and saves them as 80% quality jpgs.

unless he changed his habit since i left but i highly doubt it since most of the maps look washed up and blurry once they're uploaded.

Well some maps are compressed less - I think he does it on a case-by-case basis. For example, King's court's large image is almost 250kb, or around 88-90%.

I've sent communications upwards to find out the size limits for map images, so I can handle the compression myself and optimize the colours for that level of compression.

by **DiM** on Wed Aug 24, 2011 6:16 am

what? that's absurd. why would a map get better treatment than others?

btw the large korea was reduced at 80% i just checked

)

wow. i just realised my mogul map was reduced from a 831k PNG to a 174k GIF. a gif? wtf?

and we actually bother to scope every pixel and fix the smallest imperfections to get that perfect png only to get it reduced to a 256 colours gif. :evil:

by **natty dread** on Wed Aug 24, 2011 6:48 am

DiM wrote:what? that's absurd. why would a map get better treatment than others?

Beats me.

wow. i just realised my mogul map was reduced from a 831k PNG to a 174k GIF. a gif? wtf?

and we actually bother to scope every pixel and fix the smallest imperfections to get that perfect png only to get it reduced to a 256 colours gif.

Hey, you're preaching to the choir, man. I've long been wondering why we bother to have any graphics standards in the first place, or why we bother demanding mapmakers to spend any effort to the map graphics, since the maps get compressed to garbage anyway...

I've tried to campaign for increasing the size allowance for map images, since most people have faster connections now than they had in 2006, and map images are cached in the browser anyway... but so far the results have been lacking (no pun intended).

by **natty dread** on Wed Aug 24, 2011 9:25 am

Here's what the map looks like at 80%.

Original PNG for comparison:

One has to wonder... is the speed gained by a 100kb size difference (between a 95% and 80% jpg) really worth the loss of quality?

by **bfgray** on Thu Aug 25, 2011 7:43 am

I'm a bit late but I just want to say the colours in the new pictures you've put up are much easier to see. I still think putting green and brown next to each other (Silla/Baekje) was not an inspired choice from a visibility point of view, but I wouldn't expect you to change that at this late stage.

The junks are much less confusing now, thanks.

by **natty dread** on Thu Sep 01, 2011 12:47 pm

I've been wondering, if I could just set all capitals to 3 neutrals... Multiplayer games probably won't notice either way, if they have to take a 3 or 4... and for team games, it could just make them useful again.

Anyone have input for this...?

by **greenoaks** on Thu Sep 01, 2011 3:20 pm

i've not played any team or even multi-person games on this map. it's all 1v1 for me.

i just want you to know i am not ignoring you, i just have no experiences to share.

for the record i like the reduction to 4 from 8. those terits are now in play.

by **Industrial Helix** on Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:58 am

the gameplay changes look pretty good, imo.

Though I did discover something while in Japan... the term Wa is a racist term used by the Chinese against the Japanese... it means essentially "the midget barbarians" and was a large cause of the war between Japan and China in 1894-5 because China insisted on referring to the Japanese as Wa in diplomatic exchanges.

So in the name of avoiding war between Japan and conquer club and possibly myself or Natty_Dread I suggest changing the word Wa to Yamato

by **natty dread** on Sat Sep 03, 2011 12:31 pm

Well, far be it from me from wanting to support oriental racism... I'll get to work on updating the images and XML.

by **grunion** on Sun Sep 04, 2011 7:41 pm

I am a fan of Korean history so was excited to see this map pop up in the game finder. Sorry to come late to the party here but I must confess that I am surprised that this map has met all these approvals. I am not a newbie to CC (you're welcome to check my history here) - I enjoy challenging maps with quirky rules but they need to be understandable to someone willing to spend the time to understand it. This one's utterly incomprehensible. It is extremely hard to see the regions on this map, attack routes/borders are seemingly random and aren't adequately explained anywhere, and the bonuses are incomprehensible. I am currently mired in a game in which everyone appears to be milling about at random. And because of the bonus structure Bob is of little help. No offense to the designers but I think it needs some significant rework if it is going to be released.

by **natty dread** on Mon Sep 05, 2011 1:58 am

What's so hard to understand? Hold castles to get a bonus. Hold capitals to get the respective kingdom bonuses. Same colour junks connect. It's all spelled out on the map.

This is not a map you can play without reading the legend.

by **Woodruff** on Mon Sep 05, 2011 7:41 pm

I have to say, this may well be the most unreadable map on the site. I'm really quite surprised that the Foundry has released this one. The color schemes are VERY difficult for someone with shade blindness issues like me. Just really awful. Sorry not to be more positive about it.

by **dowian2** on Mon Sep 05, 2011 11:47 pm

Just wanted to stop back and say that the gameplay is greatly improved for 1v1 games. Thanks for the work!

by **natty dread** on Tue Sep 06, 2011 4:18 am

Woodruff wrote:I have to say, this may well be the most unreadable map on the site. I'm really quite surprised that the Foundry has released this one. The color schemes are VERY difficult for someone with shade blindness issues like me. Just really awful. Sorry not to be more positive about it.

Lackattack compresses the map images into 80% JPEG:s, and due to the way JPEG:s are compressed, the compression causes a certain amount of loss of colour saturation. Meaning that the colours will look more washed out than originally. I've tried to ask lackattack to let mapmakers handle the compression themselves, so they could at least compensate for the loss of colour on map images, which would be tremendously useful for this map. I think you can guess the reply I received.

Anyhow, I will try to improve the colours in the next update, but since lackattack uses a different software to perform the compression than what I have, I can't see how exactly it will turn out... so it's not an exact science.

by **natty dread** on Tue Sep 06, 2011 5:07 am

Updates

korea8.xml: the xml; (40.9 KiB) Downloaded 683 times

Click image to enlarge.

Click image to enlarge.

by **Woodruff** on Tue Sep 06, 2011 5:55 pm

natty_dread wrote:
Woodruff wrote:I have to say, this may well be the most unreadable map on the site. I'm really quite surprised that the Foundry has released this one. The color schemes are VERY difficult for someone with shade blindness issues like me. Just really awful. Sorry not to be more positive about it.

Lackattack compresses the map images into 80% JPEG:s, and due to the way JPEG:s are compressed, the compression causes a certain amount of loss of colour saturation. Meaning that the colours will look more washed out than originally. I've tried to ask lackattack to let mapmakers handle the compression themselves, so they could at least compensate for the loss of colour on map images, which would be tremendously useful for this map. I think you can guess the reply I received.

Anyhow, I will try to improve the colours in the next update, but since lackattack uses a different software to perform the compression than what I have, I can't see how exactly it will turn out... so it's not an exact science.

Even just making them less pastel would help.

by **HighlanderAttack** on Thu Sep 08, 2011 5:49 am

I am not sure what changes so much from the imbalance that you said but I have been in some fantastic 1v1 games of late. I don't know all the bonuses or too much of the map yet but the competitive balance has been super fantastic so kudos to you

by **thenobodies80** on Thu Sep 08, 2011 1:52 pm

The map was updated.

by **natty dread** on Thu Sep 08, 2011 2:17 pm

Well, the colours turned out pretty ok I think. Let's hope everyone else is satisfied with them as well.

by **thenobodies80** on Wed Sep 28, 2011 7:40 am

Last Call

If anyone has any other comments on tweaking the gameplay/graphics, now is the time to speak up! If there are no other concerns within the next couple of days, this map will be quenched.

thenobodies80

by **EagleByRob** on Thu Sep 29, 2011 12:48 pm

I like it as is!

by **1stSplatter** on Thu Sep 29, 2011 8:42 pm

It looks very sexy. Korea's been waiting a long time for a map.

by **natty dread** on Sat Oct 01, 2011 2:59 am

It has been pointed out to me that Donghuyeo should be spelled Dongbuyeo... I'll get that corrected when I have the chance.

Meanwhile, if anyone who knows Korean can see any other glaring spelling errors, please post now, I don't want to make multiple updates just for spelling...

by **perchorin** on Sat Oct 01, 2011 3:02 am

natty_dread wrote:It has been pointed out to me that Donghuyeo should be spelled Dongbuyeo... I'll get that corrected when I have the chance.

Meanwhile, if anyone who knows Korean can see any other glaring spelling errors, please post now, I don't want to make multiple updates just for spelling...

I'll have another look right now. Dongbuyeo is unfamiliar to me.
edit: it all looks good to me!