Modules for ABattlemap

I’ve updated the toolpieces to be even more to my liking.  Among the changes I’ve made:

• Cleaned up several of the flags.  Some nations just don’t lend themselves well to tiny little circular tokens so a few just use full replica flags.

• Put in more differentiation/details in the ships.  Destroyers are smaller, Cruisers face right and are medium sized, BBs face left and are much larger.

• Removed unnecessary chinese units

• Put in a special “damaged IC” in place of the Chinese IC.  In our game, Funcioneta and I decided the best choice for damage would be chinese ICs - so this just makes it look more like damage.

Feel free to use these.  Just rename them to just toolpieces.bmp and put them in the AA50.GIM ('41) and AA51.GIM ('42) folders.

Whether you decide to use them or not, please let me know what you think of them.

Mediafire folder
http://www.mediafire.com/file/0zqh1qnymzu/ToolPieces_41.bmp
http://www.mediafire.com/file/odm3gngyodq/ToolPieces_42.bmp

I like the damaged factory vs using flags

The bombers and a few other pcs look to modern and not WWII
I also like the pcs of nations to be different when possible

@jeffdestroyer:

I like the damaged factory vs using flags

The bombers and a few other pcs look to modern and not WWII
I also like the pcs of nations to be different when possible

The problem is trying to make any real differentiation in such a tiny space.  the pieces themselves are only 10 x 15 pixels, and 2 rows and 2 columns are used up putting in the shading to make them look beveled/raised. (Actually I cheated and use a little of this border space for the ends of the BB and CV so they can be a little longer.) That leaves a space of only 8 x13 pixels to work with.

The driving force behind these images was that many of the default pieces that came with battlemap when I started playing AAR were completely indistinguishable.  I could never tell a bomber from a fighter or a destroyer from a battleship and in general the pieces were very hard to identify.  Therefore I played around with them until I developed images that were at least a little more life-like, distinguishable from each other, and would be immediately recognizable to me.  It appears HolKann used those as the basis for AAR and I’ve just put a little more of my personal flavor into these files.

Historical accuracy was definitely secondary to “usability” of the image, although I did try to get some general ideas for the shapes of the respective boats and planes.  the fighter is roughly shaped like an overhead view of a Zero or even some of the other figs of the time.  It’s pretty generic.  You could definitely look at the bomber design and think it implies a more modern design (the wings are too angled), although you could say it’s got touches of a B29, but the most important factor in the way I drew it was that it had to look completely different from the fighter so I could tell them apart.

For me, I am not that “in to” the hardware of the war, and playability was my biggest concern, so making all units look the same across nations is actually a plus.  As far as the game mechanics are concerned, a fig is a fig and the easier they are to spot both on my side and the other side, the easier it is for me to play.

If someone else can design better pieces that are more realistic, but still recognizable, then more power to you.  I’d be interested in seeing them and potentially using them.  In the mean time, I just find them to be a slight improvement over what was provided and thought I’d share with others around here.

@HolKann:

Two great ideas + a little better unit pics = I’ll look into it when I have the time -> january exams are comin’ up.

BTW, the Chi IC is indeed the best one, had already made some kind of burned down building for it, but it was quite ugly, so tnx for posting yours…

Edit: simply added your unit pics to the file for now 8)

@Jeffdestroyer: try bigpieces, those have got some different units pics, or feel free to draw some yourself, it’s not that hard and it never hurts having some extra nice figurines :)

The Chinese IC really seemed like the logical choice for the damage token,  Any other unit from an unaltered toolpieces file might be confused for a live unit - expecially AAs (although I briefly considered using chinese boats, too).

And frankly, I found some mean-spirited humor in the implication that the more and more your factories became Chinese factories, the worse they became.  :-D

@TimTheEnchanter:

The Chinese IC really seemed like the logical choice for the damage token,

And frankly, I found some mean-spirited humor in the implication that the more and more your factories became Chinese factories, the worse they became.  :-D

He, good one  :lol: karma +1

Yea, the China IC is a good token for damage, but we really need the map edited like in AARe so that there is an area below to represent all the technologies, maybe even a Victory City counter.

I really like the Big Pieces, so I think that I will start using the Chinese flags as damage token or the Chinese factory itself.
If somone edits the Big Pieces an adds  a damaged Factory, it would be the best choice.

I like the standard ToolPieces.bmp better than the BigPieces. On my large 1920x1200 screen the big pieces do not improve.
What makes ABattlemap with ToolPieces.bmp really comfortable to me ist the Windows tool magnify.exe.

Just take a look at

http://i43.tinypic.com/2ns6xxt.jpg

to view a screenshot of my settings. Please note that I had to reduce the size of the picture to 1600x1000 due to tinypic restrictions.

With the help of this tool I have a complete overview and gain a brilliant view to the place where the action is or where I want the action to be ;-)

Oh, I went back to standard pieces a long time ago.  Doesn’t change the fact we need someone to paste a segment on the bottom of the map (or top, but bottom is less annoying) with charts you can place flags on to represent which of the 12 technologies you have and possibly a tracker chart for victory cities as well.

Reference the AARe map for an idea what I am talking about. (If I had a clue what image file needed to be altered, I’D do it myself!  It’s just a matter of copy/pasting it from AARe to AA50 and altering the text!)

Here is my Big Pieces edit with a damaged factroy in the place of the Chinese Factory.  Maybe someone will like it.

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=d15029b5f55b2eddd2db6fb9a8902bda

Already done, Master Holkann!

I’ll link it here, it’s in JPG so you’ll have to save it as a BMP. (My old Paint Shop Pro from JASC does this, so I’m sure whatever you are using can too, considering my JASC software was released in 1994!)

I also emailed you the bmp, but the jpg is there too (in case anyone wants to look at critique it before it’s finalized.)

BTW, the idea is to use flag icons in the little boxes to mark technologies and stuff.  I’m sure you knew that, but I wanted to clarify.

Anyway, it’s about as fancy as I think it needs to be to function the way we want, it just needs to be made into usable space so the flags don’t stack on each other and the entire program does not crash when you try to use the new area under the map. :)

Nice Map, hopefully we can get it working.

I think adding turn and IPC counters would be unnecessary clutter added. As it is right now the system of adding a flag in the Sahara after each countries turn and using Saudi as a the bank is a simple and elegant solution.

@a44bigdog:

I think adding turn and IPC counters would be unnecessary clutter added. As it is right now the system of adding a flag in the Sahara after each countries turn and using Saudi as a the bank is a simple and elegant solution.

Agreed.  Everyone’s pretty much used to Saudi Arabia being the “Bank” and Sahara being the turn counter.  Though, to be honest, why do we need a turn counter?  Everyone names their maps with the country and turn anyway!

If you did use an expanded map with the counters like that, you’d probably want to use an additional counter for active research teams as well.  Funcioneta and I have been putting flags in spain, but if you’re going to put that much in to track techs, you should also track the researchers as well.

I like the concept (and have played around with various ways to alter the map to accommodate something similar).  However that particular layout seems to waste an incredible amount of space and makes the image - which doesn’t fit on my screen as it is - even bigger and more cumbersome.

I was also thinking we could add a row to the toolpieces and make custom icons for the various techs (a paratrooper, a rocket, a radar array, etc), and just line up the research tokens and acquired techs next to each country’s flag in spain, mongolia, or argentina or something like that - similar to how flags are used in saudi, etc.  But for that to work, everyone would have to use a version of toolpieces with the 8th row for techs, or they dissappear when you open the map.

The spain thing works fine.  The problem with the map as it currently is, is that there is no functionable way to tell who has what technology.

For instance, Radar and Rockets could both be realistically represented by AA Guns.  Likewise, Paratroopers and Mechanized Infantry could realistically be represented by an Infantry unit.  Researchers and War Bonds by flags.  How do you represent Jet Fighters and Long Range Aircraft?

Just about anything you would think to use as a token to remind you of what technology you have could be mistaken later for a different technology (with some obvious exceptions, like Super Submarines or Improved Factories, but even those could be Improved Shipyards (either of them))