Test Map for future projects

Per Hoodlum's suggestion, posting here: [spoiler][img]https://i.imgur.com/x1kVFAn.png[/img][/spoiler] @aero Having real trouble figuring out how the hell to draw a curved dash line in PS. Any insight here? @all gameplay issues of course. That being the most important part. I colored my thoughts of regions.

first thing i spot is the island esk. it's far from it's mainland and with the minimap there, i can see it will start to get messy when adding a connection. you might be better off adding esk to the nearest mainland.

[quote]@aero Having real trouble figuring out how the hell to draw a curved dash line in PS. Any insight here?[/quote] Unfortunately this is the one thing that I noticed that PDN had over PhotoShop CS2 or earlier. I have made a tutorial to help you make curved dashed lines in Photoshop CS2 [url=https://dominating12.com/forums/3/map-creation/2002/map-tutorials-amp-guides/post/52336#post-52336]here[/url]

@aero - thank you. That will help for the coming evaluation of gameplay of course. Seems simple enough, just knowing how to do it is the challenge. I like all the options that PS has, but there are so many that simple things get very overlooked. @Hoodlum updated the color of Esk. I have included Region bonuses as they currently sit, without any oversea connections which may help further evaluate gameplay. Texture is there, it was before I just forgot to turn it off when uploading this version. Fun fact about the texture - it's an actual topographic texture of Mars current, I thought that would be a neat feature to include. I added a very subtle red hue to this texture as well. Also added some sea / ocean tags - also real geographical features of Mars current. Neither here nor there, gameplay more important to evaluate. [spoiler][img]https://i.imgur.com/heuRA9m.png[/img][/spoiler]

Seem as you are using this map to practice techniques and skills, let's start putting those skills to use. Tips: Make each Region a separate Layer. The reason is that you will need to recolour them on every map you make and it makes sense to just tick the Lock Transparency box on the layer and recolour the region in an instant with a big paintbrush. Make Layers just for Swatches of the colours that you used for a particular thing such as Regions, Sea etc. We need to get that Outline right down in thickness. There's no quick way to do this, it will have to be redrawn with a Size 2 Soft Round Brush (type in 2) or size 3 at the most (not pure Black... Very Dark Grey). The regions need to end behind the Outline & Borders with anti-alias and they can overlap each other by 1px, but must not show any colour bleeding through the other side of the lines. The anti-alias is so that you can use outer/inner effects without a jagged edge. To obtain anti-alias and avoid hard edges, do not use a Marquee and Fill bucket, either use a Paintbrush freehand (zoomed in) or a Marquee & Paintbrush (Airbrush Deselected) with the Brush Types "Soft Round". The current Red Hue (method) is not working, it's causing a clash with the map colours. I suggest you use 3 mono colours for all the land, Light Grey, Medium Grey & Dark Grey for tone separation with a Darker Grey for the sea and then this [size=16px][b][color=#df6232]Martian Red[/color][/b][/size] will show through (Red in RGB = 223,98,50). The minimap & legends can just be Place Holders at this stage. They pretty much get made last, due to them being copies of sections of the flattened finished map. To make the perfect minimap from the [b]finished map[/b]: Make invisible all territory lines, sea connections, labels & circles layers, Flatten the map, Select all, Copy, Delete the Flatten in the history tab (back to layers), make a new layer, Paste, zoom out to see all the map plus window space, click Edit/Transform/Scale, hold Shift & drag the bottom left corner until it's roughly sized (shift keeps dimensions), Apply. That's something to work on for now.

@aero Since this will be the most daunting part of the revamp, I wanted to do just a brief preview of the outline / region / territory borders per your request and get any feedback before undertaking the whole map. I'm not sure if it matters, but I did a screenshot and saved the screenshot as a new .png Thoughts on how this looks? I didn't get rid of texture or anything yet, just redid the outlines and colored the one region. In retrospect, I'll just do the outlines, then a separate layer for regions, then a separate layer for territories, and then finally a separate layer for each region with color as you suggest, to make life easy. Outline & Region are 3px, territories are 2px. Both a dark gray. [spoiler][img]https://i.imgur.com/h3BZbVr.png[/img][/spoiler]

aero will be busy till the 31st, so he might not have time to reply. The lines are something you've got to get right, from the start and i think it's best to have a system. I've experimented a bit with sizes, and here's my current process using PDN, but it'll work with photoshop I guess using aero's brush size recommendations. I do a resize trick, which makes the lines come out cleaner. I use any colour, to trace..i can always recolour the lines using the colour match tool. tip* save as you go. nothing worse than doing this process, and paint program crashes, or if you have a faulty computer battery like mine lol which requires it to always be plugged in. 1: find your reference, fit the map to 1024 width and ratio it for height. 2. enlarged it to 600% - This makes for easier tracing, and when resized back down again, it sorts out that pixel thing. (anti alias)' Start tracing. use the line tool if there are straight lines needed. Layer 1. used size 14 brush (PDN) for Outline. Layer 2. used size 12 brush for Regions. *make sure lines are connecting to the outline Layer 3. used size 8 for Territories. *make sure lines are connecting to outline or region or other territory lines. 3. resize the image down to 1024 width ratio. 4. duplicate the Outline layer and Region layer, and merge those two layers together. This is a layer you use for region colour fill by using the magic colour wand 5. add a background, colour fill or whatever. ---- [spoiler=example 1][img]http://oi63.tinypic.com/2q39ox2.jpg[/img][/spoiler] [i]Soviet union reference. Although some territories are too small to add circles, I'll just draw all the territory lines anyway. i can delete some lines to make a suitable sized territory for gameplay later.[/i] [spoiler=example 2][img]http://oi66.tinypic.com/246q1xs.jpg[/img] [/spoiler] same process

Ok, I think I've got the region / territory / outline borders done the way you wanted. I tried the color overlay the way you suggested Aero, unfortunately that just ends up looking more like present day Mars than a terraformed Mars.. so not quite the effect I am going for. Instead I chose to mute the colors some and add texture of present day Mars to I think illustrate the obvious difference in the planet post-terraform, while still holding onto obvious geographical features and meteor impacts. Your suggestions will work perfectly though for a present day Mars map, which I think is a good idea also, for the future. All regions / colors / territory lines / outline / textures / etc have their own layer, and so are easily editable. Gameplay thoughts? [spoiler][img]https://i.imgur.com/8cX7zT1.png[/img][/spoiler]

How can there possibly be gameplay thoughts if it's unknown which territories are connected?

[quote=Matty]How can there possibly be gameplay thoughts if it's unknown which territories are connected?[/quote] That's kind of what I'm hoping to resolve there.. My mind has the "island nation" (top left dark brown) extremely connected to many continents, but I'm not sure if that would be overkill or not. I get your point Matty.. I'll upload a new map with what my thoughts are for connections and critiques can follow I suppose.

Ok, here we go. My thoughts for connections at this juncture. I also included continent bonus calculations for reference using the formula from forums. Only thing I wasn't sure on with that calculation was if a territory was bordered by two territories if you would count that as another connection for the divide by 2.5, if that's the case these calculations are wrong. Not sure what I think of the bonuses, I really was wanting "island nation" to be a very connected, difficult region to keep with the highest bonus so that it was a target.. but at the same time more connections don't necessarily make sense. Anyway, I defer to more experienced judgements. Let me know thoughts on everything of course, but I am interested in the gameplay side especially, to better "pre-think" these theories in the future also. [spoiler][img]https://i.imgur.com/uH2sRrl.png[/img][/spoiler]

Interesting. You added most of the connections I expected, but also left some out, and usually that made for very good choices. I added some comments on the map image itself: [spoiler][img]https://i.imgur.com/NpcG6Nc.jpg[/img][/spoiler] I am not a gameplay expert, so maybe take my comments with a grain of salt. In general, I feel the northern content feels disconnected from the rest of the map. Most other contents have major routes going straight through them, but while there is a path along the south coast of the content, all the other territories feel like they don't really belong to the main gameplay. You will almost always have some bits like that, but not quite this big I feel. In general, I think you did a great job with figuring out the connection and region bonuses. There is a good variety of regions as well, which makes the map more interesting. I still feel there is something missing in the exact territory layout. Especially on the bigger landmasses there is just something missing and I can't quite put my finger on what it is. Great job! Hope the feedback was helpful :)

Well, I'd like to stay at 72 territories for the neutrals consideration.. so. Hm. I wonder if adding an island between Thyle and Romulus would appease your visual concern there? By adding an island, I'd have to take away a territory.. so maybe scrap Serenum, Turning Cimmeria into a larger territory, and adding more exposure to the bottom left continent. From there, to add a territory at Enness, again I'd have to take one away.. my thought would be Fo in the brown top center Continent. After that, the disconnection issue might be better solved by making the center mass Urmander / Keln regions into one continent. Having a center path from large continent to large continent, with the wildcard "island nation" top left.. I think in doing that I'd also change the large green continent at the top to 2 or 3 smaller continents. Thoughts?

Update for some of your imagining. 72 territories, 11 regions, 3 large regions, one "super" region, the rest moderate or small. Something like this Cireon: [spoiler][img]https://i.imgur.com/35qs4qU.png[/img][/spoiler]

Looks better already!