[Vacation valid till Nov. 2013] -Alamo map

[generalhead]

Yes sir Tk. Thanks for your input. I was thinking about moving the cannon to the west wall and then going with your idea about the one way attack for the ladders. If there are three cannons on that side that might make the one way ladder attack possible for game play. The saloon along with other issues will be addressed this weekend. I don't even know if there was a saloon at the real Alamo. I just get caught up in movies, especially if they are John Wayne movies. Doom Yoshi had a good point about movies not always being accurate though.

[tkr4lf]

Sure, happy to help. Here is some more food for thought.


As far as there being a saloon in the alamo, and the layout in general...here are a few pictures that could be of some use.


This one is kind of hard to see, but has a nice perspective.

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This one is especially nice, as it seems to have everything labelled and is nice and clear, as well as having Mexican army locations and directions of their advances, although some of this seems to conflict with the information gained from the wiki article (Romero, Morales, etc.).

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If there are three cannons on that side that might make the one way ladder attack possible for game play.

This is a good idea, I think.

You could have the Alamo cannons be able to bombard the ladder positions. You already have Bo3 able to bombard Sa6, so making Cr1 able to bombard Co1 would make sense.

It might even be worth it to make the cannons able to bomb more than just 1 terit. It would make them more valuable, which they truly were in the battle. It might be too much for the gameplay, I'm not sure on that. But it would be cool. Perhaps 2 or 3 different terits that each cannon can bombard. Just a thought.



One additional thought on the Saloon issue...if you're looking to change the name of it, you could make it the hospital, and make it a +1 like the Chapel and the Convent Yard. As you can see in the second picture I posted, the hospital is sort of in between those 2, so it could work to fill that area.





Also, a thought about Bowie's location...I personally think that he shouldn't be located right at the front. By this I mean two different things.

The first, the actual commander shouldn't be right at the entrance to the Alamo, especially since it's an objective and an auto-deploy. I would think that would make it too easy to block off that area of the alamo, or too easy to gain a foothold in the Alamo by taking the commander and just stacking there, using the auto-deploy to boost your stack.

The second is that I think Bowie should be switched with Travis. Travis was at the front of the lines, fighting the Mexicans. He was one of the first to die, actually. Bowie was bed-ridden during the entire fight. So having him near the center of the Alamo would make more sense than on the front lines.


The first is, in my opinion, a pretty important thing. But I would wait and see if anybody else agrees, or if they think it's fine to have that autodeploy right at the entrance/exit to the alamo before changing it.

The second point is far less important, more thematic than anything. So it's not that big of a deal, it would just help to make the map slightly more historically accurate.


This should keep you busy for a bit at least...

[DoomYoshi]

You are 100% right on the first point.

[Seamus76]

It might even be worth it to make the cannons able to bomb more than just 1 terit. It would make them more valuable, which they truly were in the battle. It might be too much for the gameplay, I'm not sure on that. But it would be cool. Perhaps 2 or 3 different terits that each cannon can bombard. Just a thought.

One additional thought on the Saloon issue...if you're looking to change the name of it, you could make it the hospital, and make it a +1 like the Chapel and the Convent Yard. As you can see in the second picture I posted, the hospital is sort of in between those 2, so it could work to fill that area.

I really like both of these. The multiple bombardment locations adds a nice wrinkle, and as stated makes them more valuable. I also think you should lose the Saloon and definitely change it to Hospital. It's more historically accurate, and enhances the theme with the +1 bonus.

[generalhead]

Thank you guys all so much. I will get too work on all of this tonight.

[generalhead]

Are the highlights on the names too much or does the opacity need changed?
Do the legends look better?
I wanted to know what tk thought about the game play on this?
Would it be too much to have the cannons attack more than one territory?

Click image to enlarge.

I need to fix the bridges, I lowered the opacity to see what it would look like, but they are see through now
The big Alamo needs to move to the right a bit
Thank you Seamus for the targets, these look great

[koontz1973]

I am starting to really like how this is going along GH. Next list of things to do then.

Bridges, bring up their opacity. Just joking.

Legend. Top right. All officers Move the +1 auto deploy to a separate line under. Copy the officers one at a time, shrink down and place along side or under or on top. Which ever looks best to you. As long as they are lined up and look nice. The rest of the legend looks nice and everything is clear. Just a matter of spacing it all out nicely. Changing the size of font etc so the legend looks full and does not have dead space.

River, this is a nice size now. I like it as is but the water could do with some love. See what you can do apart from GIMP patterns.

You are right, the glows help, but you have a lot of them. Names, cannon and targets. It might be an idea to reduce the number of cannon but that can be left to the GP mods to discuss with you.

Morales and Travis are the best looking offices, it might help game play if you got rid of the others (do not delete them) and used these two only for all officers. But I will leave that to you to decide now.

[Seamus76]

All the foundry can ask for is to keep getting better, and you are certainly doing that. Couple of quick things:

- The targets look much better, nice work. They do look a little squished though, at the bottom and top. Other wise why not fill the whole target with the color to help bring it out more.
- Speaking of, in my opinion it would look better to have the color of the cannon be the same color as the territories they are in. So, ex., Ro2 would be the same color cannon as Tr3, etc.
- If possible try to have the cannons pointing at their respective targets, unless you go with multiple target locations per cannon, which I like, and then just have them pointed in the middle area of the two, etc.
- The glow on the names are not bad, but try lowering the opacity just a bit, and look at a different color to help distinguish the Ho's from the Sa's. (yeah I said Ho's).
- The legends are looking better, but I think you can lose the ladder part, and just have a cool one-way arrow on the ladders themselves. Like it has been mentioned you'll need to add a little story to the legend, and removing that part will give you more room. If you shrink all of those legend text down you can prob get most of into one section.
- I like the shadows you added to the people, but maybe not have them on the people in the building, which would technically have been covered by a roof.

That's all if have at the moment. Nice work, as usual. Keep it up.

[koontz1973]

Just wanted to post this for you. This is roughly where I was in my first map is where you are now. And this was no where near my final version.

Click image to enlarge.

And here is where Seamus was at just before his stamp. Again, no where near his final map.

Click image to enlarge.

Enjoy our humiliation.

[Seamus76]

Enjoy our humiliation.

So true. lol.

[generalhead]

Enjoy our humiliation.

You shouldn't have humiliation, You guys worked hard to create two awesome maps.
For me this is encouragement, that I can take my map the way it is and hopefully make it as cool as Rorke's Drift, or Tribal War-Florida.

[tkr4lf]

Looking good, generalhead!

Since Koontz and Seamus have commented on the other stuff, I will comment on the gameplay issues.


First off...the cannons. You have too many in the Alamo, I think. Two or three of them in the west area should suffice. Possibly adding one to the Chapel as well would be good.

Can the cannons attack, or only bombard? I ask because if they can only bombard, then you're going to need to move some of them. Right now you have a cannon at the north entrance to the Alamo and you have cannons in both terits that the ladders lead to. If they can only bombard, then nobody can ever get into or out of the Alamo in the north, and the Mexican army's advance over the walls will stop dead in its tracks at those cannons.

My suggestion is to make the cannons only able to bombard, and just reduce the number of them on the west wall and move them around. I also think that you should have one cannon pointing towards Duque, one towards Santa Anna and one towards Cos. It's up to you whether to use that idea or not, you can take it or leave it. If you take it, then my thoughts on positions are to get rid of the 4 cannons you have now except for the cannon at Cr2 (that one can stay), place one cannon at Tr1 facing Duque's area, place one cannon at Tr5 (if you look at those pictures I posted earlier, you will see that there were some cannons positioned in the middle of the fort) facing Santa Anna's area, and have the cannon at Cr2 facing Cos' area.

Then I would also suggest placing a cannon at Ch2 and having it face Morales' area, but then you would have to move Mo2's bombard target to Ch1, which should be fine. If you're going to go with the cannons having multiple bombard targets (which I still think is a good idea), then you could face the Ch2 cannon towards the middle of Morales' and Romero's areas, and give it bombard locations in both areas. That would make it to where the Alamo is capable of bombing at least 1 terit in each of the Mexican Army's areas, which I think is a good idea.


Another issue is one similar to the previous Travis/Bowie issue. You have Morales right at the entrance to the Alamo, making it too easy to secure that chokepoint. I would suggest swapping him with Mo1.


Those are the main issues I see for now. As for the locations of the targets if you're going to have multiple targets for each cannon (I would think 2 would be a nice number), I'll leave that up to you. Place them where you think they should go, and then we can provide feedback on that.

Keep up the good work!

[generalhead]

Ty tk, I like those adeas. Some one also suggested making the cannon colors that same color as the regions they are in and if I move them I will be able to do that.

[generalhead]

Morales and Travis are the best looking offices, it might help game play if you got rid of the others (do not delete them) and used these two only for all officers. But I will leave that to you to decide now.

It won't look funny if my guys look the same?
On the next draft I might try it, because some of my officers are sized a little different.
Plus I know you did that on Rorke's and it looks good.

Click image to enlarge.

My target do looked squished and some of them are missing the bottoms
legend borders still need work

[kennys777]

I like the way it looks. Looking forward to the gameplay.

As for IMO, well the colors for the targets (corresponding to the cannons that can attack them) seem to be very similar, for example SA4 and SA6 are very similar to CR1 and CR5, and HO2 and CH1 seem to be a little lighter in color from their respective cannon. I think that is because the cannon is on a brown background giving it more a highlight versus its targets being on lighter backgrounds taking away from its color.

Anyway, with BOB it really won't make a difference to me personally, but not everyone uses BOB.

Since you are using very light colors, maybe think about using a red, or some other dark color in 1 or 2 of the cannons to offset the similarity. Again IMO, and I like the way it is coming along, it will be a useful map in future clan wars.