It's not hard. Just right-click and save a preview of a current map. Go to Campaigns or battles and choose a game. You'll find the map GIF to the right. That is the same picture used as background in the game. Make a new map, make sure you use the correct colours, save as GIF. - Ask Req to add it. Though I can't remember that he ever has added any map but ones he made himself, so I don't know if he likes it that way or if all suggestions so far weren't good enough.

TR> Isn't it possible to put more images on that same page? Or just too much work figuring out how to do it? Looks like the image needs a lot of cleaning up as it's compressed with JPG and stuff. Shouldn't take too long tho, I can probably to it in a couple of days when things settle down a bit over here.

"dby"
I was anxious to get right back to you with this and saw that I could get one at a time to you without much difficulty. I am a novice at "html" and I have been reading into it to try to improve but it took less than an hour for the map and unless I displayed them one at a time, I would still be unable to show them to you.
Again this "#4map" in my opinion is the best effort although if you trim the west edge right to the tip of Normandy and the south edge to the center of Corsica, you can see what "#5map" looks like (i.e. with the sea area to maximum reduction).

PS:
You can grab the entire map with the "paint select tool" and then select "images" and set the "horizontal and the vertical" to 150% which will cause the map to expand to 1 and 1/2 the present size so that you can see all the fine detail;
and yes you will see all the "cleaning up" that needs to be done.

Your the artist "dby".
I just grabbed pieces of the map and moved them around like "puzzle parts" and fitted them together the best I could. I guess if I put more effort I could have made it easier for you to fix but that might have been next year sometime.
I know how I did what I did but I'm surprized myself that it looks as good as it does.

TR

wow! I sure started a big avalance with just one Yodel! LOL. I love the map

Wow, nice map. Looks awesome.

However, the new system doesnt work like this.

It uses flat 5-hex-radius "Zones" all joined together as 'tiles'. Each zone/tile may be a different terrain, but I'm looking at using flash objects as 2nd-level terrain, instead of the current system.

Maybe zones could include some "sea hexes" and we could do a little "fishing for food".

TR

so a zone is going to be 10 hexes from side to side... I feel like this will make the maps look even more like an artificial "puzzle piece" jumble than they already are.

Did I mention I founf the map to be the hardest thing to figure out when I started?

its just breaking the map into even areas.

the current terrain isnt very realistic either, but then it never is in these sorts games. infact, in most RTS games, terrain is mostly just a visual enhancement, with very little impact on the game.

what was so hard to figure out about the map?
did it have anything to do with the terrain? as thats what the zones will effect (other than making the gameplay mechanics 100x simpler).

I tried zooming the size of the Europe map to about twice as large and then superimposing a hex zone pattern in transparent and also in just a 2 tone earth pattern. It didn't look very impressive so I stopped trying because I can't do it anyway. A transparent pattern would do the trick I think if it could be done that way but a finished map is beyond my ability to do.

Anyway I think we will get used to the random maps. It sure would be great if we could have continents and medieval navies.

TR

Last Edited : Sunday, 9 January 2005 - 05:10