Conquer Club

Ok, I believe there are about 60 "countries," and ten "continents" which yeild bonuses. The only strange sort of feature, or maybe just implementation, is the function of the attack routes. They converge at various points, linking various "countries" together without too much clutter.
This is a map of Countries around the Northern Atlantic, specifically Western Europe and Eastern North America, as well as the top of North Africa.



I'm not sure how much time I can put into it at the present time, but I wanted to put it out there. I'm not even sure if it lends itself well to a map, considering the fact that its an ocean and that it creates a large distance between continents, wasting space and cramping things up. It does fit within the size restrictions, however its strained for space. Obviously, the graphics are a work in progress. But they looked a bit better before I converted it into jpg. Now its next to illegible, but i'm going to work on that. I'm likely going to have to merge countries(if anyone had any suggestions) to make things fit better, and i'm likely going to have to rearrange the composition of continents, to optomize playability.

Oh, and I forgot army circles for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. But i'd have to redo them all anyway, so it doesn't matter.

I'm putting this out there for the community, tear it apart if you must .
If there is no support, or for some strange reason animosity, i've got no problem letting go.

That is a really nice map already. I'm afraid theres nothing butminor changes I can think of ATM (though don't worry, i'm sure someone will want it redoing from start before long )

-I would keep the second row of bonuses in line with each other
-The names around the carrebian are hard to read, It may possbly be worth merging a few territs as well as its all a bit crowded round there.
-try to keep the army circles over the land mass at all times, in the carrebian i'mnot sure which is which.
-Any reason for the different colours for canada?

I do have a lot to say, but I don't have time at the moment. If no one posts after this I'll come back and edit this post.

One thing I did want to say is to try saving the file as a png because I think that keeps the quality. I'm not one to know about these things but I think I recall hearing that on a few occasions. It's worth a shot at the least.

Make your colours more Bold because they 're to faded right now....Other from that.. I LOVE IT!!!

You can't assume people know where these places are so your legend colours need to match the colours of the land.

In a couple places, there are many territories in quite a small area and it is quite difficult to distinguish what is where. The caribbean and mediteranean. Maybe even the UK.

The territory labels are not easy to read at the moment. Maybe make them slightly larger or try out different text types.

When you have shortened names, it might be a good idea to have an area on the map where you tell players what these stand for because presumably in the XML, these won't be shortened.

Instead of having labels cross over borders and being half on land and half on water, try to just put them only on one surface. eg: just put the IRL (or even just call it Ireland) label onto water and the circle on the land. You have the space in many of these situations.


You have a good map but clarity and spacing are you biggest problems at the moment. Solve these problems now and the rest of the way will be that much easier.

North-west USA would be New England.

I like it, but the water texture needs to change. It looks like Google Earth water (and I get the feeling it actually it is...)

Unit_2 wrote:North-west USA would be New England.

Actually, the New York area is included there, so its not quite New England.

InkL0sed wrote:I like it, but the water texture needs to change. It looks like Google Earth water (and I get the feeling it actually it is...)

Its not, really. Just some experiementation, kinda accidental.

edbeard wrote:You can't assume people know where these places are so your legend colours need to match the colours of the land.

I know, its the transparency of the land-colors, I wanted the underlying land to show, I guess it didn't go well. I can adjust it.

edbeard wrote:In a couple places, there are many territories in quite a small area and it is quite difficult to distinguish what is where. The caribbean and mediteranean. Maybe even the UK.

The territory labels are not easy to read at the moment. Maybe make them slightly larger or try out different text types.

When you have shortened names, it might be a good idea to have an area on the map where you tell players what these stand for because presumably in the XML, these won't be shortened.

Instead of having labels cross over borders and being half on land and half on water, try to just put them only on one surface. eg: just put the IRL (or even just call it Ireland) label onto water and the circle on the land. You have the space in many of these situations.

You have a good map but clarity and spacing are you biggest problems at the moment. Solve these problems now and the rest of the way will be that much easier.

Thanks, I foresaw those three areas being problematic, as well as the lower portion of africa, as well as Europe. I think I may have a little bit of room to enlage the map, potentially improving clarity.

MonkeyCrazy12321 wrote:Make your colours more Bold because they 're to faded right now....Other from that.. I LOVE IT!!!

Yeah, thats the transpareny. I'll make it a little bolder, it will probably match the legend a bit better as well.

edbeard wrote:I do have a lot to say, but I don't have time at the moment. If no one posts after this I'll come back and edit this post.

One thing I did want to say is to try saving the file as a png because I think that keeps the quality. I'm not one to know about these things but I think I recall hearing that on a few occasions. It's worth a shot at the least.

Thanks, i'll give it a shot.

Balsiefen wrote:That is a really nice map already. I'm afraid theres nothing butminor changes I can think of ATM (though don't worry, i'm sure someone will want it redoing from start before long )

-I would keep the second row of bonuses in line with each other
-The names around the carrebian are hard to read, It may possbly be worth merging a few territs as well as its all a bit crowded round there.
-try to keep the army circles over the land mass at all times, in the carrebian i'mnot sure which is which.
-Any reason for the different colours for canada?

I'll try to fix the legend, its more or less a work in progress at this point. A last minute thing I threw together to give a general direction or where its placed, as well as territories.
Yes, i've got to find a solution to the carribean. I'm unsure about placing the circles over the islands, because I fear eclipsing them entirely. But, regardless, it has to be rethrought out, or rearrange, entirely.
The different colors for canada, as well as some other places, was because of the underlying artwork I made, which I initially intended to show a bit more, however, I couldn't think of a better solution for marking where territory belonged without obscuring it with translucent color.

Thanks for all of the comments and criticism, I appreciate it.

Ok, revision #1. Better quality than the last, thanks to edbeard's suggestion to use png.

I attempted a different, bigger font(not completely added). Is it more legible? I brightened things up, specifically the ocean. The change in ocean is by no means permanent, simply a test to see if the font is more easily read on the lighter backround. The territory colors are brighter, bolder. I think, overall, it makes it easier to relate to the legend. And, moving onto the legend, I have not altered it. However, I intend to make things fit better, to incorporate an explaination for abbreviated country names.

As for fitting things in, I may merge the Dominican Repubic and Haiti, make it Hispaniola. Probably the more obvious move from the start.

As for the Mediterranean, I think that a merge of corsica and sardinia would most likely resolve a good part of the problems. The Balkans is a tough one, however. Difficult to fit, I may have to extend the map to incorporate a large portion, but this may be good for austria, poland, and such.

I plan, a little futher into development, if it makes it that far, to do a complete graphical overhaul, so don't worry about minor blemishes, like poor transition between water and land in the Hudson Bay, or the green of the underlying map protruding in texas and florida.

Thanks, and I look forward to anymore comments .

Oh, and forgive army shadows overlapping names, I forgot to fix them all, apparently.

Thats alot better, though Capital the first letter of the names.

Unit_2 wrote:Thats alot better, though Capital the first letter of the names.

Ya, you forgot "ontario" and "manitoba".

I think the gameplay of the map could work, but I don't think I like the way the graphics are turning out. And also, the legend needs alot of attention. But all in all, I say keep going with it, but try again with a different style.

One more thing, in the legend, "Carribbean" should be spelled "Caribbean".

--lanyards

The boarder between scotland and england needs to be lower, I know its just a minor thing but i can see it being repeated in future maps.

Balsiefen wrote:The boarder between scotland and england needs to be lower, I know its just a minor thing but i can see it being repeated in future maps.

Will do. The map I based the borders on was a bit unclear, so it was more or less arbitrary for the time being. I'll fix it by the next update though. If you notice any other errors, slight mistakes, as far as borders are concerned, feel free to point them out, i'll try to fix them.

lanyards wrote:

Unit_2 wrote:Thats alot better, though Capital the first letter of the names.

Ya, you forgot "ontario" and "manitoba".

I think the gameplay of the map could work, but I don't think I like the way the graphics are turning out. And also, the legend needs alot of attention. But all in all, I say keep going with it, but try again with a different style.

One more thing, in the legend, "Carribbean" should be spelled "Caribbean".

--lanyards

Oops, missed those two names, somehow. Easy fix. And, yes, I always mess Caribbean up. I blame wordperfect, because it never said it was wrong with two r's. At least I remembered there were two b's, I used to spell it Carribean, and neither spell-check nor my History teacher ever alerted me of my terrible misspelling. Also screwed up 'portugese.' Of course the legend needs to go, i plan on scrapping the current one entirely. I just don't have an intended direction for it yet. And yes, graphically its rough. It should go through some graphical overhauls throughout the course of development, and style will likely shift a bit. But I don't want to stray from the current style immediately, i'm keen on sticking with it, at least in early development, where things may need to be altered frequently, and this version is relatively easy to work with.

Again, thanks for the comments. Hope to get more.

Also the wrighting really needs to be bigger, I can BEARLY read it.