Monochrome bitmap is WIN!

I experimented with several pictures, noticing the flaws and which color(s) and how dark/light the original photo can be to 'manipulate' whether it turns black or white.

White is land, black is water.
[uimg=1288280960-bnw3-0-640x480.jpg]

The original
[uimg=1288280977-kitty003-0-640x480.jpg]

I'm appealing to Johnny's love for the furry four-legged felines. Also, it's easily remediable to make wrap-friendly. I would LOVE to see this turned into a world.

i'm partial to jeepland :)

[uimg=1288288414-jeepland-0-640x320.gif]

or with not so much land, the space shuttle taking off.

[uimg=1288301295-shuttle-0-640x320.gif]

What about Marsh Johnny? Think we might play it someday? Or is it on your "maybe" list? You can be honest, I wont get butt-hurt. lol.
[uimg=1287470749-marshv1gholamaster-0-600x300.png]

Yes, it's definitely going to be used! I just need to figure out how I'm going to implement user maps (voting, user controlled, simply as standard, official maps, etc.).

The maps based on photos have a cool look, but I don't think they'd be very functional. Having to build a bridge every other sector to get land troops across probably would get old quickly. [/tng]

It would probably be a good idea to use some additional filters (e.g. cutout or stamp) to get "clumpier" masses.

Cool cool! Very much looking forward to it.

I can barely keep up with Iguano so I'm in no rush. lol. Just asking for closure on the submission. ;) Thanks for word!

Again, I like the way it is, but I'm totally open to reducing complexity (or making any changes for that matter) if the consensus is that it's too difficult or whatever.

You could edit it and make it wrap-friendly the way Johnny prefers it. less work for him to do.

I still like my cat picture, I think it came out nicely... lol.

I actually don't mind the maps not wrapping in this version at all.

As for the cat, it would just be far too tedious for players to have to work through all those chopped up sectors. It would also have to be the proper ratio (twice as wide as it is high). I grabbed your source and quickly did a cutout and resize in Photoshop and got to this, just as an example of something more usable:

[uimg=1288328168-cat-0-640x320.gif]

Amazing! I love it! The simple fact that you took the time and effort to clean it up says a lot. ;) This as a Pangaea world and Ghola's Marsh as the next world would be awesome.

I understand your points and will attempt to 'clean' it up regarding the chopped sectors with any future map suggestions.

Majunga!

WOOT!! Thanks Johnny!

No , thank <i>you</i> for the map!

Congrats to GholaMaster. Nice map, man.

Thanks man! [/grin]

my real submission for a map. i actually put some effort into it.

[uimg=1290547348-untitled2-0-640x320.gif]

Sweet. I would play that one. It's a hypnotizing pattern with some fish shapes in it. Nicely done!

This is like....Art! And our nations would server to color it. Cool!

Totally awesome, Jeepn. I vote for this as the next playable player-designed map.

Thank You

Looks like you took your avatar and ran it through a few algorithms.

on my first one yes. on the one with effort, no.

what avatar are you guys talking about?

my jeep

Well, it looks like there are headlights and jeepish grills in that map.

Well, I like the way Majunga is running so far. Thanks to everyone for the props and for playing it. I'm very much looing forwrd to see how it plays out.

I want to start thinking about a new map to make. What do you guys think of floating cities type map? Something with lots of straight lines, lots of canals, thin land bridge connections, and moted castle-like structures within? Something that can be besieged!

....think Atzec floating city, or Venice canals....


What do you guy think?

That would be pretty interesting. I would play it!

OK here are some initial visuals. I'd like to hear what you guys thnk about a them and a few others before I actually start spending time on anything:

1) Imagine a normal map,l probably with some small rivers and these mote fortress scattered around. It's essentailly a 50x50+ +corners. Adds up to about $5650 in income to possess if land is valued at about the same as in Majunga. This is to scale. Note the the colored dots are the size of spawn starts.
[uimg=1290928230-blda2-0-173x155.png]


2) Here's the same structure, but tiled with hallways in between. The smaller hallways are about 7 sectors apart on this one, but they can be anything. This would be just one bog map with this all over.
[uimg=1290928318-bldagridwwalls-0-427x440.png]


So how would you feel about fighting in those things? I thought about making them bigger, amking hallways bigger, mostes bigger and smaller...the possibilities are endless. What do you guys think?

So a bunch of replicas of that first picture could be scattered around a map? I think that would be interesting indeed.

Sometimes water tends to help the offence though... It depends on how you play I guess.

This looks really interesting and I like the idea of a map with scattered forts to occupy and defend. If there was someway to disable bridge building and/or sea bases around a fortress or on the entire map in general...it would make these a lot more difficult to occupy. Perhaps a substantial increase in sector resources within the fort as well. But really, all my suggestions are things that only Johnny could implement.

As far as a map goes, I think you should go for it Ghola, I would love it and I'm sure others would as well. Of course, everyone should also be aware that a fortress will not save you from the Horde.

Thanks! Here's that 1st on on a sample map the size of Majunga...just for perspective. At this size I'm wondering how many I would place on it. Obviously if they're bigger they'd be less.

[uimg=1290929462-bldaperspective-0-640x320.png]

"be aware that a fortress will not save you from the Horde." LOL

If you notice on the single fortress, I even put little barriers at the gates...just to slow down mass advances. I had even thought about adding1-lane interior motes to make it like rooms you have to control when raiding an occupied one, but I figured people would think it too much a pain in the ass. lol.

As far as disabling bridges...maybe the next best thing is to make something like a 2-laner permanent bridge (instead of the current 6-laner). And if you want to make one side more accessible you have to use con trucks to widen it. <shrugs>

The 4x4 fort map is interesting but I would change one thing;

make so the water zones are all connected. At each corner, make one-cell width route connecting the four forts' waterways. Thus, that narrow waterway can be considered a choking point, if one wants to attack by naval, one would need to control the corner to allow access for naval units.
In the flip side, if you want to prevent naval units entering your waterways, make bridges and put land troops on them to cut off access.

Yes, good suggestion. Would be a shame to trap boats.

As far as the implementation. Did you mean like this?
[uimg=1290930828-blda4x4connectedwater-0-184x193.png]

yes that's close to what I was thinking. :)

If that is what you mean, then ships would still be stuck in the quadrant of the fortress they were made. To connect them to the entire mote, breaks would need to be made to the main bridges..which would mean you'd always need a CT to cross over to another fortress. Here's a couple options

1A - Example of assumed implementation of your water connectors
1B - Example of the same connector types added to the door-to-door bridges
1C- Same as example B but smaller middle area.

[uimg=1290931798-newmapstuff4x4options-0-184x193.png]

btw, thanks for throwing the ideas around! :)

Oh, I didn't notice that. Yes, waterways across the central bridges would have to be done as well.

I like 1B. You could do 1B without the need to make waterways at the corner (the 1 without a letter). It'll take a while for navy to get across, but that's part of the game.

World Islands, Dubai


[uimg=1290981284-untitledrfa-0-640x390.jpg]
Black = Land

Interesting, first thing I thought when I saw that was 'water world'.

This is a rough draft of an island map. I'm sure there's a few of us out there that would like a strategic naval and island hopping battle. Based largely on Franz Josef Land, Russia with some editing/customization.

Any ideas/comments/opinions/criticism/suggestions are greatly welcomed.

My thinking behind a broken up island map is to create less focus on land grabbing and more on strategic maneuvering of units and strategic control of land. I recognize that grabbing a bunch of islands will be labor intensive (especially for the smaller bunches) and I don't want it to require an insane amount of micromanagement, but at the same time, I want to prevent a huge wall of units on perpetual attack grabbing land for a week or two with no management.

As I stated in an earlier thread, maybe boost the $ of some smaller islands to 1) give the players starting on them (who will not have a large amount of land to expand on initially) a decent income, and 2) I think it will make those boosted islands strategic control points if the boost of income is significant enough.

So, a small nation holding a valuable island won't be so far behind as far as income goes, and might have a fighting chance against medium or large nations. But, anyone on those islands becomes a target as the added income makes them desirable to all but the largest nations.

Also, no map funding, as that would defeat the purpose of the resource rich islands.

[uimg=1291000987-franzjoseflandmaped-0-640x320.jpg]

A smiley face? And what looks like a side profile of a koopa troopa head.

Lol, the little one in the middle or the larger one to the west of the Japan like island in the lower right?

And there are a few other hidden images. Can you spot them all?

Haha, as I said, it is a rough draft and I was getting tired of painting a bunch of small islands, so I decided to have some fun with it.

How do you assign the economic values to each sector on the maps? Do you use 2 maps? a Monochrome map for land sectors and a color value map for economic values of each sector?

Johnny is handling that part. And if you notice Majunga is the first world where there's no variance in land values. They're all the same.

So we're just making the physical maps.

I didn't notice that!

With a world like that, I'll like to see a world where the variance are totally skewed so there would be certain parts of the map that everyone really want to control for that reason.

Here is my map. Its a start. Very rough. Need to work on the technique.
[uimg=1291172449-testmapnyc-0-640x320.png]

Yea I brought it up months ago but no one really responded to it. The differences on all the maps are so minimal it's of no consequence. I'd love to see something out there worth fighting for. Some king of the hill shit!

Indeed sir!

And I really like this map concept. If only it was from straight above and not off to the side like that it'd be great!

Does cycling each map take a huge amount of server resources? Because I was wondering if people could simply "host" a game with their own map and have people join it. Ie private/public player-made games.

You could still have your main larger games, but I think it'd be cool to let players control the options.


This is probably good for a different thread, but I just thought of it from reading this. (I apologize if I missed a thread that's already talked about this.)



And are you opposed to having a real Earth map?