Sol System Map

So I talked about this in the request thread. Here is the thread on its own. This is kind of what I had in mind (obviously rough draft) Hand drawn on a plane: http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/4656541.1.jpeg Hard to keep the hand steady with the plane bouncing around. Most territories are not named yet. Figured I would get feedback from the very beginning. There are space ports to break up the linear progression of planet to planet. Ports are on Europe (Earth system), Equatorial Venus (inner planets), Io (Moon of Jupitur), and Titan and Oberon (mooons of ringed planets), and one on an unnamed territory on Mars. There are 42 territories right now, divisible by 2, 3, 6, 7. Neutrals on 4, and 5 person games as is. EDIT: Space port is on Europa not Io to give it distance from Mars and Titan ports. The splits are inner planets which are Venus and Mercury, Earth system which is earth and moon. Mars system which includes two moons and asteroid belts. Jupiter is it's own "continent". Ringed Planted consists of Saturn and Uranus, and has two ports in one continent to drive up the troop value to 6 and make it novel vs. a repeat of Jupiter in terms of gameplay. The final "continent" is Outer planets, which is the planet Neptune, and whatever Pluto is classified as now. Chunk of ice?

Nice idea! Gameplay sounds good, there aren't many good maps of the Solar System, but I haven't checked it perfectly yet. I appreciate that you have also checked the divisibility in order to reduce the amount of neutrals, there aren't many doing that. 40 or 42 territories are good sizes for me. The use of ports should be not encouraged in my opinion, in order to have not all the maps with ports, but those are [u]spaceports[/u]! That's nice for me. This map doesn't look so hard to do in my opinion. Because there are on the Net amazing pictures of Solar System objects, all with perfectly black background (just because space is perfectly black) so you can easy cut them out. cbt711, are you able to do that and provide a better image of it on a file?

Absolutely. I can make it as detailed as anything found here: http://bluemelon.com/cbt711 or here: http://s213.photobucket.com/user/cbt711 I didn't want to use ports, but attack lines, but since the solar system is linear by nature, it was not avoidable. At least I got to call them space ports. The defensive points are similar to world classic map. 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 3 and added space ports to make up for the linear nature of the map.

Please note some of the pictures in the last two links are part of inside jokes and have nothing to do with graphic design.

(The second link dosen't work for me giving an error) Just because I'm an astronomy lover, Pluto is classified since 2006 as Dwarf Planet but also Chunk of Ice is not bad as definition. The 2 greatest moons of Jupiter are Ganymede and Callisto, maybe you can use them rather than Io and Europa.

I actually knew that, but went with what were considered the more habitable moons in science fiction, for the sake of making the space port more believable. Considering this decision is based solely on movies, I have no issue changing it to the larger moons. Which I was aware of and love that someone else knew!

Ah okay! No no there's no need to change, I was just curious to understand why Io and Europa.

I love this map and judging by your Graphic Design examples, you should make this map look awesome and very inviting! I can't wait to see the first draught (draft).

Nice idea

How do the good map makers make their borders? Any particular pixel width, or tool they use? Also I notice most maps here have the exact same color for "continents"... is it frowned upon to mix up the tone a bit between territories on a "continent?" I have a lot of options: Solidworks (great for lines borders dashed attach lines, etc. in 2D, unreal 3D which I don't intend to use) Photoshop CS3 Corel Draw X6 Corel PhotoPaint X6 I'm also a fan of the lighter area around islands - I might steal that style around the planets.

They have roughly the same colour because in that way it's clear which territory belongs to which region (also comes in handy for the minimap), and because it generally looks good. If you give them different colours and still can make it really clear which belongs to what, and make it look good, than you should do that ;) You won't make it easy for yourself though.

Thanks Matt. Yeah I seem to keep making things hard on myself. Hopefully the community gets a killer map out of it.

For borders, I use Photoshop and the "Stroke" tool, it puts whatever width & colour border you want on anything in perfect symmetry.

http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/4661736.jpeg Did most of this on a road trip, so was stuck with Gimp. I like it so far. Each colored territory is layered on it's own so colors can change. Haven't segmented most planets into small territories yet, but will eventually all look like Earth and Mars. Now I have to get this into photoshop to use the Stroke tool, like Aeronautic suggested. Thanks for that by the way, should help a lot. I haven't heard many suggestions on the gameplay itself. It's about as balanced as Classic World Map, with slightly tougher defense in "port countries", but overall I think it should play very true to the original. Here's the territories and point values from the draft again. http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/4656541.1.jpeg So first picture, split up like second picture, and hopefully some decent outlines and gotta track down a good font. http://abstractfont.com for anyone who hasn't been there. It's amazing.

And I will duplicate each layer, white them out and blur them so when I do get the outlines in, they should up along the space edges. I think that is what the really good maps do, I can see some white blurred coast lines. Also adds depth. Any other tricks for really nice finish polished look? I might redo the texture on Saturn / Uranus. I wanted each colored group to have it's own texture to reinforce the separation. It's kinda cool looking, except the diamond texture on the ringed planets didn't translate well.