Sol System Map

Gulp! Cloth made planets! That was unexpected...
It looks a bit weird to me, really I was imagine you to use real pictures but I didn't consider the color problem!

I think nobody commented on gameplay because your pencil draft is not so easy to understand, also some lines had been deleted but they are still visible so one has to guess... But basically I can see a World Classic similar gameplay.

Compared to the pencil draft planets look much closer each other and the 'new version' doesn't give too much the idea of the perspective as I was imagine it. The Sun is not so beautiful...

The problem is... Probably I under-evaluated the difficulty on realizing this map... It looks to me not less weird than other Solar System maps that I saw in other sites... The others will say what they think but I think you should evaluated if you want to go on with this or try with something simpler.

The sun was really just to hold the mini map, and can go away pretty easily.

The colors were really a challenge, tried to differentiate with texture as well. There literally was no Earth with the layout I wanted, so I hand drew that piece by piece off of some similar earths.

Also, most earths are half clouds, so to get the continents, again had to hand draw. From there I realized realistic planets and Risk /D12 like gameplay were not going to enjoy each other's company. So I made it more artsy / gameboard like.

Here is another render, no sun, have space port graphic drawn now. I think the territory and "continent" lines will really help. Also added the white haze to give more depth, less rigid planet outline.

http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/4661838.jpeg

The bright tone can be curbed a bit if needed - each and every territory is its own layer so can be manipulated individually.

Also, Io will now be Ganymede. For some reason I thought Ganymede was the volcano moon, but that's Io, so no way there could be a port there.

Im not sure about the connectivity. I can't really see just right away which planets are connected and which aren't.
Maybe that's because the territories aren't all there yet, but maybe you should connect some with dotted lines.

I also don't know if the reddish rock ring (sorry, I don't know proper names) has territories or not.

Also I'm not fond of the cloth texture.


But overall I really like the look of the map.

That would be Earth's ocean / Luna texture? Inner planets is beehive, Mars is some swirl, Jupiter is water actually, Ringed are diamonds, and Outer are some rustic vertical lines. I can flatten any texture out with a precision select and a blur, then reapply the planet texture with a burn overlay. So be specific and I can work with it.

Thank you guys for the feedback!

EDIT:
http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/4663611.jpeg
The last one lost the outer planet texture.
The earth cloth texture was supposed to show a difference between land and ocean. Unfortunately I think it made the unplayable ocean stick out more than the land. Then I applied it to Luna instead of the crumple paper texture of the land, which I think was a big mistake now.

I think it would be better without any textures, just real pictures colored. You can use more similar colors to let people understand better what the bonus regions are, instead of adding weird textures.

Phobos and Deimos should be much smaller than this. I know that it is not possible to have the Solar System scale drawn, but those are too big for me! They actually are very smaller than many asteroids in the Asteroid Belt.

You should provide a version with the territories dividers traced. Just to check if this map is understandable to play or not. And also if it is nice to see or not.

Space-ports are too many for me. I mean in a map like this everybody can attack everybody and everywhere you build is always good. I don't think it should be so easy to travel the Solar System from one side to the other as you want. Ports should be 3 or 4 in my opinion.

How to reduce them but still allow a good connectivity between regions? Just a suggestion. As the map is now it looks Earth is the closest planet, then Venus, then Mercury, then Mars. Since Mercury and Mars seem to be close each other, and they actually are much more closer than, let me say, Saturn and Uranus. Since I suggest you can rotate a bit the 'Earth-Venus-Mercury block' to let Mercury to touch Mars. Also I would prefer Luna (the Moon) to have a connection 1 to 1 with the Asteroids Belt, otherwise who holds that region it would be forced to occupy the other territory in order to reduce his borders.

That way ports can be eventually reduced to 3: Juppiter's Moon, Saturn and Earth. Or find another solution but possible well spaced each other (that is a thing that gives a good taste to the map when ports are well spaced) and possibly not more than 4.

The Sun I think it could and must stay. How to represent the solar system without the Sun? It was well placed for me, just I didn't like that texture covering it, sort of Korea flag...

Well luckily I just turned the sun layer off, it's still there. Also the crazy sunburst graphic is its own layer and can stay off.

Originally there were 4 space ports, Mars, Earth, moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

I needed more access to the back end though (outer planets), hence the Uranus moon port, and again more connection to the inner planets.

I can take away the Titan space port, leave the one on Uranus to leave connection to the back end of the map.

Then get rid of Mars, as practical as it is in real life, it's just not good for gameplay with the one on Jupiter's moon.

So that would be Venus, Earth, Uranus Moon, Jupiter Moon.

That puts a lot of pressure to defend the inner planets, but you are getting 3 troops there instead of 2. Or I can axe that, do a connection line to Mars from there, drop it to 2, and it would be the equivalent of S. America in the World Classic Map.

I could also ditch space ports entirely and use connection lines instead, but it's just a style thing, I'll make it both ways I guess. 
I like the textures, and really want to keep them, it looks novel vs. any other map imo. Really need the borders to see the final "look" I guess. Will keep borders and planets separate obviously. Kinda screwed on the asteroid belt - because that texture got flattened and taking it out will take away the detail of the asteroids themselves - I can make it work though.

The moon to the eastern asteroid belt is a 1 to 1 border already, so at least that is not an issue.

Ok I also just realized, the more primary the color, the least likely a color of a player would show up in the circles. So I have to offset each color to less primary, or more dull colors. That also kind of sucks. I'm giving up on the alternating colors of each "continent" like Earth and Mars and will wash these out and make them uniform like the other planets. Then darken each, or tint in some way to get them away from the colors of the player markers. And we will see where it goes from there.

Basic gameplay plan:

Inner planets; 1 space port, 1 natural border with Earth, 5 territories, 3 troops / turn if controlled

Earth System: 1 space port, 2 natural borders (1 inner planets, 1 mars system), 7 territories, 4 troops / turn if controlled

Mars System: no space ports, 3 natural borders (2 Jupiter, 1 Earth), 7 territories, 3 troops / turn in (could go 3)

Jupiter System: 1 Space port, 3 natural borders (2 Mars, 1 Saturn), 9 territories, 5 troops / turn in

Ringed Planets: 1 space port (possibly 2 for the sake of being different than Jupiter), 3 natural borders (2 outer planets, 1 Jupiter), 10 territories, 5 troop / turn in (or 6 with 2 space ports)

Outer planets: no space ports, 1 natural border (ringed planets, two attack points), 4 territories, 2 troop / turn in

Well you shouldnt have a full red colour anyways, that won't look good, but if you take a look at South America from the classic world map (especially Argentina), it's very much reddish, and still looks awesome, also if you play with red

Bishop had a great idea about rotating the inner planets or mars to touch. It was such a good idea, that I did it with the Ringed planets and the asteroid belt too. So now Mars is like Europe on classic world, and I'll up it to 5 troops from 4 for the added attack points. Defensive borders are now 4 territories for Mars. And the best part? No more space ports. That's also good because I wanted some separation of gameplay between Mars and Earth.

It will be a while before I get a version with borders up. Later this weekend most likely, pretty busy weekend though. I'm using color / magic select, converting mask / select to path, then stroking the path. Seems like a decent way to make a border. It's a pain switching to a blank layer before stroking though to keep the border off the background layers. Really enjoying the process, makes me appreciate the h*** out of these maps.

And Matty, I love SA on the world classic map. 

I fear to completely eliminate the spaceport because I can't see how you can provide a connection between Inner Planets and Outer planets without passing the Mars system (region, continent... as you prefer to call it). But okay we will see. Just said not to go too far with ports, remember this:
2 ports = 1 connection
3 ports = 3 connections
4 ports = 6 connections
5 ports = 10 connections
6 ports = 15 connections
You see: 4 ports give twice the connections of 3, and 5 give almost twice than 4... Also you have not to copy the Classic map in every feature. That is a map that we all play just because is the classic but many consider it unfair for several reasons.

This is a mid step obviously, just getting used to the path - stroke technique. It's getting there. Should have a much clearer view of the gameplay at least.

http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/4670469.jpg

Yeah everything goes through Mars without space ports in this version. Ports are still in there on a hidden layer. It's all debatable. I want this to be great gameplay over anything else. 

On the looks side, I am slowly dirtying the colors so to speak, to get away from primary colors of the player circles. Also as I work through the sections by color, I am toning down the textures. I still want some in there so there is some sense of novelty, personal preference I guess.

And yes I shrunk Phobos and Diemos.

The borders can be lightened, grayed, textured, or left alone. This is the territory border, the continent borders will be drawn in thicker, so these might end up being lightened a bit.
(obviously minimap will be redone with the rotation of some of the planets)

http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/4670600.jpg
Troops:
Yellow 2
Green 3
Red 5 (middle of map, lot's of defending like Europe on classic)
Orange 5
Blue 6
Purple 2

And now I need a break.

Very last thought of the night, I can throw in a dotted line from Luna (Earth's moon) to the purple territory for more connectivity to the back end planets. Or even go through Hailey's comet or something, but then would have to eliminate another territory because I want to stick with 42 territories total.

Appreciate you guys sticking with me through this, it's been a lot harder than I anticipated, but so much fun.

It looks pretty for sure, very well done.

The darker blue planet doesn't look round to me (sticks out where its glued to the lighter blue planet in the bottom left).

But mostly what I would like is a small change in colours for the territories. On earth all territories have a different colour, but on all the other planets everything is the same. Just some slight differences in darkening or lightening it might make it soo much clearer.



I don't think purple should connect to the moon.
It would be nice if the purple planet borders with two territories to the blue one (and the other way around as well!!!), so that it's not a region defended by 1 territory.

So I take it people don't like Australia in Classic?

How about this?

Might have to take the time to run the 4 pixel border around the outside of each colored region. Just don't have the time right now. I like the gameplay and looks of it. But I should since I made it I guess? What do you guys think?