World Reduced

post #110, any response at all?
Anyway, good luck with this map, I really hope it becomes a D12 map.

@aeronautic: I didn't do the screen overlay as you suggested but later when final touches are being done I'm sure I will add them separately for each continent. At the moment I'm still finishing on textures rather than colours.

@cbt711: I'll edit the contrast with the textures and hopefully all of the continents will end up like purple region (in my opinion the best one).
I noticed the white pixels also. They came when I sharpened the texture... I will try and get rid of them. They are also at the north-west of Middle East and Kazakhstan.
I did motion blur the clouds - I think blurring the cloth texture will make it unnoticeable. Maybe I'll un-sharpen it and see if that helps.

OK, I think the textures of the separate continents have been improved (to be more like Asia), and the rogue white pixels have been eradicated. I also lowered the opacity of the cloth texture yet further to make it less noticeable. Finally, a most irritating smear projecting in a North-West direction from North Africa had been removed.




Is the new ocean texture good? I think the texture looks kind-of like waves. It may need some saturation taken out.

Just a couple quick notes, more later.

The ocean on the last picture you posted looks very nice, I love the "brushed" surface. I also like the purple, green, and orange textures but they don't look consistent enough. The orange region's texture looks completely different than the other regions's textures. If you decide to go with the purple regions texture,(and greens) I would intensify the texture and lower the saturation on the light blue region. For the red region I think you need to amp up the texture and increase the saturation because it looks very dark and un-textured as of now. Also, you need to scrap the Australia's yellow color because its very hard on the eyes and appears to be glowing when compared to the rest of the map. All said, I love the concept and think this will turn out to be a great new map.

Thanks, Votazap!

I'm glad you like the sea.
I will attempt to address the issues you raised I due course - nothing will be done until at least Saturday as I am away until then as of tomorrow morning (BST).

Nonetheless, other opinions are welcome in the meantime!

I'm a fan - might need a little finishing touches depending on what Fendi / Vexer think. It will be a crazy popular map I think given the premise. Gotta make the graphics quality match that premise.

Thanks cbt711! I'm leaving in 15mins so don't expect any updates until Saturday.

I've tried to execute Votazap's suggestions here:





Here is the link for more easy comparison:
http://www.bluemelon.com/madone/wreducedtextures#page-0/photo-5165638

All improvements I think, but australia looks a bit ugly now on the colour. It's nice that it's not overly bright though.

Make sure your borders are on their OWN layer, and that layer is on top. You don't want any pixelation / effects to eat the crispness of the borders.

All borders/outlines were above the colours and textures. I think my colour masks for each continent appeared to be about 1 pixel too small on the borders, and the jagged look was the edge of the colours layers showing through the semi-transparent anti-aliasing on the outlines. I Gaussian blurred the colours layers by 1 pixel, which cleaned up the borders pretty well.



A side effect was that the borders became slightly more prominent, but that is not a bad thing.

Is there anything else left to do apart from capital positions?

I don't think that the colour scheme is finished yet. I still think that the map has happier colours on the right, and the "red" doesn't fit very well. I think it's too dark in comparison.

The new ocean is very nice looking, but I don't know what others will think about it. And the sharpness of the title contrasts with the blur of the ocean.

Also, could you please move the minimap numbers of Africa and South America? They seem out of place.

But all that's left is graphical. We can start coming up with capitals I guess.

PsymonStark is right about North America being too dark and even South America could be slightly lighter.

I will try to improve these aspects tomorrow (BST).