I have to say the map graphics are starting to look much, much better than they were previously. Great work Isaiah! Here's a few thoughts on the current version of the map:
- I like how the Standing/Mobilized Army and Conscription researches looked in the previous version compared to the current version. The current version's colours don't match the rest of the graphics well at all. The orange and dark cyan colours seem to match much better
- The new borders and territory names on the map look better. Good work
- I can't think of a way to fix this, but the names for Oliver, Tacktix, and yourself are pretty small and hard to read. If there's some way to make them a bit bigger, I think it would be nice to have your guys' names be a bit more legible.
- Standing Army looks like it's touching the screws. The font size might need to get knocked down .25 or .5 in size or the kerning (or whatever the space between letters is called) getting knocked down a fraction may work as well. The Standing Army in the previous version seems like it was a good size, if that helps.
- Mining also has the same problem with "Mining" and the mine icon touching the screws.
- Deep Mining - Do you guys think the explanation needs to expressly state "Doubles mining bonus" or is the current description good enough? I think that it's pretty obvious what it's saying right now, but I fear I'm too close to the development of this map to be unbiased.
- It would be nice if the mine icons could make it back onto the map sometime in the next few revisions so we can make sure they look good and are positioned well on the map.
- Not sure about this one, so getting some feedback from someone else would be nice, but the bottom mountains, particularly the one on the right, may be able to use some extra shading to make it clear that it's a mountain.
- On the same note, do impassables have to be listed in the legend or are mountains and rivers such a given around the site that they don't need to be expressly stated?
And just as a side note in case I manage to forget later on, there's a few glitches in the code that I brought up forever ago that should get resolved once we get back to the XML part of map design. If someone wants to make a note that there's existing issues, then I'll go hunting for the original post when we get to that point.
I think that about covers everything I can think of. I have to say it's nice to see the progress on the map start picking up. With the free speed games, once this map gets released it may just get me back to Conquer Club