Anchor Bay

Love the title and think that the mountains fit better now. Also the new gameplay is fairer when you consider region combinations. I have no idea how to make the sea flow with the land . I don't even think it's bad how it is.

I think this looks great gameplay and I have a tiny constructive comment. I think the Northern train line needs twisting a tiny bit anti clockwise.

I created a little image to show what I mean:


It looks like either the mountains are floating above the land (Fendi's suggestion) or the land is floating above the mountains (partially) (cbt's versions).
So why can't the land be like natural, be attached to the mountains...

Because I do love your (old) mountains.

Matty, you definitely should have done that with WolframAlpha

I actually tried that, but couldn't get it to draw two seperate functions in one plot :/

So wait - you guys basically want me to 4mygod the borders at both ends? Wow you have some high expectations of me. I guess that's a good thing? But this is a risk board, not a realistic 3d model. There is no smooth transition with a big black risk border in the way that I know of

Other than Africa by 4mygod, and I have no idea how he did that

@virtue - I think flipping the shallow water to light from dark solved the ocean side

@matty - look at the first anchor bay draft (first post). I used a more linear transition foothill to land, and it resulted in a huge gap of darkness. If I put in slopes on the land to increase slope to the mountain. I lose all room for a train track and tunnel, if I decrease slope on the mountain, I will run out of room to make it steep ever. I can increase the shadow just to show you what the more realistic look would be as is

I like the mountain shadow as they are now, they fit the ones below the bridges. But I have a thought. The shadows in the orange part seem a little weird, the light seems to come from NW for the northern mountains, and from SW for the southern ones. I don't know if you'll understand me. Maybe shadowing the middle zone, as if there were mountains out of the map, but their projected shadow is inside, could fix it.

Photoshop can't drop shadow from off the page. Corel Photopaint can, but I don't have that at home, just at work. I could hand draw it, but really don't want the map with big contrasting shadows like that. Gameplay is the most important thing, I just had way too much fun with the graphics like I tend to do. Had to have trains and mountains and hand drawn water and shore lines. What was I thinking?

For the record the shadows all come from the same angle (almost straight west to east, it just looks off because they don't render from off the map between north / south mountains.

Even the bridges have that same shadow angle - it's universal, when I change one angle, it changes them all.

(Also - obviously the entrance to the tunnels are hand drawn, so the shadow brings out that blue on the north tunnel. Just putting it out there before someone points it out )

@Matty, the only smooth transition I could think of is to delete the border entirely, then blend gray to color. I could hand shade it from there. The 2 or 3 pixel border will pretty much always but a sharp transition because it's just a big line I guess. It's just going to be problematic since the layers for the mountains will have to blend into the layers of the territories, and there's 3 or 4 layers each for the mountains and of each territory. Woooo. Need to either hand blend about 30 layers, or just flatten the image and hand draw it all. Unfortunately to keep a uniform texture and look, I have to do the former.

Eww gross go back to the old one! This looks cheap.

The mountains just look like grey neutral territory now, no definition, no shape. There's no reason they should cast shadows, they're just shapeless blobs of grey. Even adding the shadow it still looks unnatural the way there's a giant morass of black abyss. Did they have texture before? IDK if that makes it better or worse.

The glow around the coast doesn't look good either. You've brushed some of the territories with it? But not others? I'm not sure if the shading across the whole thing is off or it's just the coast tbh. You've got the dark texture scuff marks, and then along the borders everything just gets over faded. Except in the yellow region where the shading seems completely let off?

Like the title and the font for the connection lines.

Lol - can't please anyone with this one it seems. I was told to make it look more like the playable area because it didn't match the way it was! And now it's a big gray blob abyss somehow. 

I like the inner glow, gives the territories some depth instead of just flat with some thrown on texture. Also makes them almost slope down which helps with the ocean transitions. That effect is on all the territories, not just some. 

Ignore the last posted version, which was an exaggerated shadow - this is the latest:

I might just let this one die.

@Matty
Here is what your slope to slope merger looks like - I still like borders - I don't like jungle of despair for the sake of gameplay, though it kinda looks cool.


Only did three regions so you could compare and contrast. 

Ever hear of the 80/20 rule? 20% of the effort gets 80% of the results. And the remaining 20% of results needs the other 80% of effort.

Well on this map, you are 99.99% there. Please don't quit the map. If need be, quit the .01%

That's commonly considered a psychological phenomenon like a watched kettle never boils. It feels that way since you think you're almost done, which skews your perspective. So thanks, I'll change my perspective.

Right now I like the mountains of this version best, although the sea and land of that version are very dark. So for the rest I like this one best.

The mountains there look soo amazingly good, its just that they come abrubtly to an end and then there is a sheer drop into a flat terrain, whichs looks a bit sad.

I think you overdid the blending a bit with this one, but that's hard to say because I don't really like the cloth/mountains there.

I'm going on holiday tomorrow, no internet then, so can't comment much more.
A combination of the the old mountains and the new land and sea would look really good, defenitely good enough. But I do think you can do just a bit better. Not sure how though