I just thought of this, it's a good one.

Johnny: If you ever get bored of making maps, I bet if you created a map creator and posted it here, you would recieve a lot of nice maps to use from us. I would not be surprised if many players here are itching to make some maps. Then you could have us submit the maps to you and you could choose the best ones to use as worlds. That would be pretty cool. :)

Hell Yea! I second AND third that motion. hehe

Sounds like fun, I'll third that.

I already thirded it, so you'll have to settle for a "fourthing".

Fifthed then.

Sweet! hahahahaha!

I'll sixthed that! Hopefully he'll create it.

Thanks for the comments.

Another cool idea would be to have whoever wins the Lexovis map design the next one (aka largest country in winning alliance). That would be pretty awesome.

You have no chance...[/grin]

I'm curious. Were you thinking of a script that generates a map based on values the user selects, or some sort of graphical editor where you can paint a map?

(MS) paint us a map baby!
-IC

I was thinking graphic editor too.

The best players won't necessarily make the best creatives/developers.

I'd say put the tool in everyone's hand and let the maps be judged on their own merit. Then let the best map win.

I was thinking the ability to draw a map. Customized square per square.

If everyone's thinking graphical editor, then it actually makes more sense to just use a paint/draw application. Anything that's going to edit a 2048x1024 (or larger) image within a browser probably isn't going to run well anyway.

It would just be a matter of deciding on a selection process, then.

It would be ridiculously easy to set up a map with mspaint, each pixel is a sector. Bam! editor.

Just do a 2-color gif. :) We could submit all sorts of silliness.

Banded Islands
[uimg=1286756658-bandedislands-0-640x320.gif]

Madness
[uimg=1286756718-madness-0-640x320.gif]

The way maps work now countries end up expanding in a star shape until reaching other nations. This isn't natural and could be corrected by adding rivers and mountain tiles. CT's would need to build bridges over rivers to cross and mountains would only be passable by foot soldiers. Perhaps CT's could built roads across?

I've been working on one based on a lake for a couple of days. I thought I was almost done but then I realized I forgot to size it exactly 2048x1024. So... I'm filling the edges and will be sharing it with your guys soon. [/grin]

I've been doing the same thing. I've called the one I'm working on "Reef Madness." The idea is that construction trucks (as opposed to jeeps and infantry) take a much larger role in expansion. I just need to work a little more detail into some of the shorelines and I think it will be ready to share.

I've been amused the whole time that I've been spending so many hours working on a map that will, in all likelihood, never get played.

I keep telling myself that if I keep adding the finer details the chance of it's being played increases. lol.

If you guys design a map that I like, I'll definitely use it!

What are yall usin to create the maps?

myself: photoshop

I've been using Microsoft Paint, so whatever I come up with will no doubt be inferior to Gholamaster's efforts.

Not necessarily. It still comes down to 2-colors. One for water and one for land regardless of what tools you use to plot them down. If you make any other shades Johnny wont be able to use them....or he'll have to convert them bfore being able to. (which will likely alter it's initial design).

Why not?! Shallow water and deep water!

Not that we wouldn't want to, but that the GT system doesn't support it currently. Land is gray, and water is blue and that's it.

If you give Johnny something with more than one water color for example he's gonna have to convert it all to the same blue before he can make it playable: unless of course he modifies the game to enable more colors. My guess however is that he wants only two colors so that he can use other colors for countries n shit. he's had the same stance for multicolor pins.

Okay, first attempt, so don't be too harsh, but by the same token, I welcome criticism. This took about twelve hours over three days, though the actual time is pretty tough to estimate, since a lot of it was done during quick breaks at work, et cetera. Too, this is not the two-color version of the map. I have the bitmap on my computer, but this is the JPEG version.

I called this "Reef Madness," thinking that construction trucks would play a larger role than jeeps and infantry during the expansion phases in some portions of the map. Obviously, anyone spawning in the great wide open would have an early advantage, so this would change the strategy involved in playing this map. I also attempted to add "marshes" on a couple of coastlines. It was just an idea and I don't know how well it works.


[uimg=1287427205-reefmadness-0-640x320.jpg]

I like it. It will be a very micromanaged map with so much water involved. Very few straight lines. What size did you make it?
-IC

Thanks. It's 1024x512. Like I said, first attempt. I realized, as I was designing it, that it would be something of a pain in the balls to play, but that for those who are detail oriented, it might provide sort of a unique challenge. At the same time that I was thinking those things, I was also of the mind that no one would ever actually end up playing it at all, which is most likely the case.

I like how the central island at the bottom look awfully a lot like a shark eating a school of fish (or throwing it up?)

Ha ha! Now that you mention it... and it's pooping them out the back side.

Impressive, i especially like how in the large eastern continent, that lake in about the middle has a rather good amount of land, a very strategic point.[/nod]

OK, here's my map. It's 2048 x 1024 but has been reduced here for posting purposes.

I've named it <b>"Marsh v1"</b>.
[uimg=1287470749-marshv1gholamaster-0-600x300.png]



It's main lake area is based on a real lake map (posted below) upon which I then added marshes, lakes, streams, and deltas by hand. I tried to add these features fairly evenly but with some variety to keep any one area from expanding too much faster than others.
[uimg=1287470890-marchv1gholamasterbase-0-400x263.png]




It's purpose, much like General Zod's, is to slow down snowball expansion, and economically depreciate the value of areas in between the more open spaces to increase the strategic value of flanks and open paths. No doubt some areas are so choked they might remain completely unclaimed for the duration of the map, but I felt OK with that in designing it. My feeling is if you have enough time to spare OR are desperate enough to reach for it...you deserve it baby.

IF this map seems to much of a "pain in the balls" as General Zod put it (lol), it can always be further opened it up. A couple of things can also be done to compensate for complexity such as...
1) Increase, perhaps even double, the average sector income (to encourage active movement despite the micro required)
2) Reduce the map size (to keep it from dragging on too long)

I suppose we can come up with more compensations, but I'm thinking this map can be tried as-is as an experiment if nothing else. it's everyone game though so I'm open to suggestions by anyone, including Johnny.


So there it is! Hope you guys like it. [/smile]

A good, free alternative to Photoshop is the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Project). It is quite powerful and has most of the features that Photoshop has.



@ GholaMaster: The "marsh" map is interesting; very nice! My B&W craziness was simply to spur people with the idea that we can submit things from Paint and GIMP just fine without a fancy web interface or expensive software.

Just took a look at the authors website and was impressed enough to download it to try it for myself.

Looks pretty good! It supports layers, masks, clipping paths, has a full and tweakable tool & brush set AND opens native photoshop (PSD) files. As an app, it's free and the installer is only 20MB. How cool is that? Compare that to the Photoshop installer which costs over $800 and installs with 900 MB (expands to more afterward).

I'm pretty impressed! Good find man!

I think both maps (and I could add crazyness too) are pretty sweet. Well done! It would be fun to play them.

I really like both of the maps!

One thing that I noticed is that the edges don't wrap, so it technically can't be an actual world map. I really don't think it's an issue at all, though, so I definitely wouldn't worry about making adjustments.

If you'd like to share them with me so that I can use them in the future, please feel free to e-mail me the full size images through the <a href="http://www.toomuchstupid.com/contact/">contact form</a> (there's a link at the bottom of the site, too)! I appreciate the work that went into them!

Why would they need to wrap if GT is flat? Or is it that you're considering these maps for GT2 which <i>does</i> wrap?

The only reason I keep all of my maps wrapping is so that they're conceptually accurate. Like I said, it's not really an issue in this version.

If the worlds are converted into GT2, then they'd definitely have to wrap. GT2 is probably going to be quite a while, so I'm sure these maps will be played before then. I'm not even sure if I'm going to convert existing worlds into GT2 or keep them going as separate products.

Mine wraps, actually. It's tough to see at this size, but it's only the bottom continent that touches the outer edges of the map. I'll send you the original...

This map is lovely to look at, GholaMaster. Very nicely done.

And... primarily for my own amusement... I give you... The Batmap! (Sadly, though, it does not wrap.) [/tng]





[uimg=1287677131-batmap-0-640x320.jpg]


Yes, I spent way too much time on this one.

This is my favorite by far. :)

For reference purposes, this was the original pic.



[uimg=1287680422-batman2byseangordonmurphyd30qssve1287127842867-0-421x640.jpg]

Very nicely done. At first, I wasn't amazed, then you showed the original, and now i have to agree with PChu.

[uimg=1287892193-arboleda2-0-486x581.jpg]

This one took me about 20 minutes to make using GIMP. I call it Arboleda. I hope you enjoy it. I think it would be very tedious grabbing all that land though. :)

I love Rick's tree the best so far, so pretty! However, on a playing level, I hate it. It would be impossible to use perpetual attacks.

Anyway, I think it would be really cool (and a good way to make profit) if map makers offered Johnny a set amount ($5?) per map to put it up for play. $ could be based on the size. Could be a really great way to introduce the concept of weekly worlds (where each world last a month at most?)

I don't know how to run with the idea, I'll love to create some maps myself when I have time. What maps those guys have thrown out so far are really interesting! Keep it up.

Final thought for the night: What if instead map creators paid Johnny $1 to make their maps 'eligible' and a set of 5 maps are put up to a poll, most popular (or top two?) are used for the next world(s)? That would be interesting and would force map creators to take input from fellow players in order to maximize their chances of having their world chosen when it comes to the poll.

I found this thread searching for a way to create maps, funny enough.

I saw people making images into maps and used the idea to create this:
[uimg=1288266998-undergearpostable-0-635x317.jpg]
Note: The white is land.

This took all of 2 seconds to open the image in paint, save as a monochrome bitmap, then open it in microsoft picture manager to crop/resize it. I got it to exactly 2048x1024, but had to resize it for the post. I think monochrome pictures may be the future of GT maps that do not require wrapping! [/smile]

For those who want to see the original:
Picture by VampirePrincess007 on deviantart.com
[uimg=1288267565-undergearpostable-0-640x384.jpg]