Sired's Map project - Updated- 4/16 - files available see first post

@Young:

let’s not let this get buried.

Thanks! I had family in town till last night, so my free time was close to nil.

Im not 100% sold on this yet, its so different lol. LMK what you guys think, good and the bad, im going to go ahead and do all the pacific islands next. As I get farther, may have other ideas.

As I mentioned, I wanted something to make the capital stand out more, again feedback is welcomed, I may change it to a flag within a circle, gotta try it out. I messed with the water color a tad to go with the terrain, I imagine, the water will shift colors through the game here and there to better suit the adjacent terrain colors.

I couldn’t find the exact font for the IPC value, but its good enough I think.

As for the terrain borders, I went with a simple burn (may lighten it), not sure if it will stay like that, gotta get farther along to see how it works elsewhere, better then default though I think, hard to see there is even a border above Victoria.

I didn’t need to change the county outline at all, they original did a good job.

Sorry it took so long for an update, well get them pumped out a little faster :)

@LHoffman:

The ocean is so rich and saturated. I do kinda like it. Have you experimented with blending ocean colors based on latitude? Maybe not the overall open-ocean color, but definitely the colors surrounding continents and islands. Such that the equatorial/tropical islands have that electric blue-turquoise softening and the look gets colder or deeper blue as you move to more northern and southern latitudes? Not sure exactly how to describe what I am thinking.

The capital theme looks great! Really fits the style of the board. I am interested to see the other ones. You don’t think the transparency will be lost in printing do you? Or would you think it depends more on the quality of the print job?

Have you tried making the land borders similar thickness or style to the sea zone borders? I am thinking it may make the transition between sea to land more seamless and the land border more visible. I have no idea if that would actually make it better or not.

Once all the countries are done, ill be going over the water, blending the color variants, at that time, ill do more with warm/cold color transitions. Ya, the terrain borders are not done, im not sure the burn is going to work or not with other colors, gotta wait and see, but I agree, the thickness should be the same as the SZ.

Ive never printed a map, so if transparency is an issue, I hope someone will let us know.

Thanks for the feedback, ill have more options on the next pics for borders and such. Ill have more options for the Capitals as well, what I need to do is make a separate image to show how they will all look with one look or another, what may look great on one thing, not so much on another at times.

Maybe just the star? After the islands are done, probably Friday, ill move onto US. Im actually looking forward to painting Africa for some reason.

This weekend though ill post some pics of options, and a few progress pics as well.

@Trenacker:

This is incredible. I love the new approach to making capital territories stand out more.

Have you given any thought to adding new territories? I really do like the thought to add the Azores and Canaries, but I’d love to see other additions as well. Perhaps dividing Indochina into Cochinchina and Tonkin? Also dividing Thailand into Isan and Isthmus of Kra?

Thanks for the comment!

In this version, im sticking to OOB. I am interested however in a modded version for those interested. I don’t want one for myself, but with my file, it will be easy to edit. Once this is done, ill start a new thread, for a modded version. In addition, to this version, I have plans for 3 paint schemes.

As for the map progress, the islands are done, sorry for the lack of pics. Ive been trying to get the card deck done, which is finally is, and will be available tomorrow. Also, been working on getting the facilities tooled…which is underway. (the cad is underway, not the tooling yet)

Thanks DK!

Sorry the updates have been scarce, im having issues with the file being so big. Every so often, photoshop will freeze up, and the file being so large, it needs save as a large doc in photoshop (not the standard .psd) which takes like 10 min…. so saving often takes forever, and not saving is risky.

I have broken down the project into separate mini projects, but then I have other issues lol. Needless to say, project is not as easy as it should be.

@Trenacker:

Sired, you’re using Photoshop, I take it?

Is there any mapping tutorial you found useful, or was it all just trial and error?

Ya, photoshop…. I have 20 years with photoshop, 8 years of 3d game design, ive painted many 3d game terrains. It is different painting in a 3d program vs photoshop, but I was able to kinda set up painting in photoshop to mimic a 3d application. I have many plugins that are for 3d model texturing, which are helping out in this project as well.

going to do a test print, then do a quick setup, a side by side difference of Europe. Europe is still unpainted, but I want to make sure no more edits are needed before. Also, ill be able to see borders better, make sure I didn’t miss or goof up anything.

Finally got around to taping it together. Obviously I still need to paint terrain, but needed to make sure the new size worked well, which I think it does. I setup the units the same on both sides, same as in the same location in a country as well. There was no need for a full setup to see its way better in proportion.

I printed a few in color, just for fun.

Also with a full print, I can now sit with the game board and really look for errors in borders and such, will be way easier the looking on a screen, also I can just draw all over this where needed for notes.

Also, it looks like 2 images, but the paper map is actually over the OOB map, side by side. So to compare is “real time” I guess you can say.