-NoXoN-

noxon has made a couple maps for another similar site. If you want to check them out go here: http://www.artofwar.cc/ The site was recently relaunched as version 2. I haven't checked it out myself but it looks pretty good. If anyone does check it out I am interested to hear about anything unique or different.

Wait He betrayed us? What's wrong with D12?

ooops double typed lol

he didn't betray us, he got paid to do maps for them. If I needed money I would do it too.

Oh (Hey Vexer can you delete post 3 and 4? Thnx)

Interesting site.

NoXoN is soo good. But the game loads slow, I mean, d12 is not that fast, but that is really annoying. Probably flash or something.

Do you know how much he was paid? Maybe we could make a fund.

I don't know how much he was paid but I doubt he was paid what he is worth since that would be a lot. Best way to raise funds to pay a map maker is to buy premium for other players, assuming you already have bought it for yourself. Might as well give premium to good players that you like instead of just handing your money over. Easiest way is to just buy premium again and then message Fendi asking her transfer it to the player you choose.

I'm the owner of Art of War, so I can answer your questions. I'll try not to derail this thread into an ad for my site, I have too much respect for the original creator of D12 to do that (we met on CC years ago). Without knowing who -NoXoN- is, I'm guessing he is lol_killer on my site. He has made three maps for me as well as some other art. His work is of excellent quality, and I found him via Cartographer's Guild I believe (http://www.cartographersguild.com/). He was one of 4 artists I hired at the time, and one of 6 I have hired all time. I have sacked one artist and retained the other 5 as I prefer a small crew of loyal contractors rather than bouncing around. He didn't betray D12 - I hired him without even knowing he was mapmaking here. In his contracts there is a clause stating that maps he makes for me are used for Art of War alone, to avoid any copyright issues. When he starts a new map, he asks if I would like to use it on Art of War, as if I don't, he would like to use it elsewhere, presumably here. In terms of payment, I will not disclose how much I pay him, but I will say this. I pay the industry standard, and by that I mean the price you would pay an atlas making company to make a roughly 2500x1500 map. How do I know? I paid an atlas making company to make the world map on Art of War. NoXoN is also entitled to be part of a profit share arrangement once I monetise Art of War. Maps of exceptional quality or size are paid above the industry standard. The most I have paid thus far is double, even though the artist agreed to single -I reward those who do excellent or dedicated work for me. If my site is slow it might be the initial download of the map files, as the server is fine right now. Maps on my site are minimum about 1.5Mb, which can take a little while. Also the initial load of a game has to bootstrap the Interface, which can take 4-5 seconds. After that, the game screen incrementally updates, which should be fast. It is all HTML5, there is no Flash whatsoever. Like this site, it is coded in PHP, but Art of War has much more complex inner workings as it is designed not to be a Risk site, but to be a complete board game creation suite. The unique and different aspects of Art of War are potentially huge, but currently only number a few. I will not go into detail, that is something for the Art of War forums, and for players to discover. If you have any other questions I'd be happy to answer, but I think I may have covered it pretty we'll :)

Wow! How cool was that? The owner of Art of War plays here too... D12 is such a magnet! Sorry, derailing, come back -NoXoN- your skills are dearly missed and if I had the money to pay twice, I would just to get your maps here.

How do we tell which maps he made? I scrolled through a few games, and the maps are all incredibly detailed, but very large and do they all have kind of a sigil background like this one? [spoiler][img]http://www.artofwar.cc/projects/Map/28/Attachment264.jpg[/img][/spoiler] Yeah those are massive, and probably are the reason it lags some. Could fit 5 of these in that map by square pixels or file size. [spoiler][img]http://dominating12.com/image/map/48.large.jpg[/img][/spoiler]

I'm happy to say that I for one don't miss -NoXoN-. If he was still here then I probably would never have got to learn to make maps and even though I am still learning because I don't specialise in maps and have no desire to be part of the Map Makers Guild, I am sure that my map making skills are always improving with every year. The reason is, we have skilled, open minded, helpful people on the map staff and throughout the site and other map makers such as PsymonStark & Vexer have always been willing to share their acquired knowledge and assist rather than deter new maps and ideas. The reasons I think that maps should be developed by site volunteers only are: (1) Developing a map that is best suited and virtually intuitive-perfect for the site can only be achieved with feedback from the site during development and when contracting a map it would be too expensive to constantly edit it until it reaches its almost perfect suitability, resulting in a lot of acceptance of maps that have to be endured and learned rather than enjoyed. (2) The hours that are put into creating & developing a map would be far too expensive to pay for and would result in a trade-off between programming & server and maps to play, possibly resulting in a slow growth rate and low site popularity. (right now, Art of War - 6 players online, Dominating12 - 68 players online)... get it? (3) Heck, if you enjoy testing your skills, what better way than making something that you can be proud of (maybe not the initial map), that people get enjoyment from seeing & using and which becomes an important part of the biggest growing Online Risk site. If there are any graphics people out there that fancy turning their hand to Risk maps, please make yourselves known to me or another staff member and we can work with you to apply your graphic skills to making an online game map, which you can be proud of and which will give other players many hours of enjoyment.