Clandemonium [GP,GX,XML,BETA]

[jefjef]

How about redrawing no mans land to where you have to go through 2 neutrals from the portal to get to Pinnacle instead of just 1. Still like the idea of em being killer also.

[Blitzaholic]

How about redrawing no mans land to where you have to go through 2 neutrals from the portal to get to Pinnacle instead of just 1. Still like the idea of em being killer also.

how does the idea of killer work exactly?

[natty dread]

Killer neutrals turn to neutral at the beginning of the turn when held by a player. Thus they can never be held 2 turns in a row, if one wants to hold it he needs to conquer it again every turn.

[grifftron]

How about redrawing no mans land to where you have to go through 2 neutrals from the portal to get to Pinnacle instead of just 1. Still like the idea of em being killer also.

Well you already have to go through your land, to your homeland portal, pass 2 No man lands (NM) to get to pinnacle.. plus the fact that if played on by lots of players you will have 7 other players doing the same thing which will make it hard to hold these things when everyone is attacking eachother from portals and having to watch both their sides of incoming attack from neighbors...

But i did get a PM back from cairnswk and he suggested i maybe redraw the map with the inset of pinnacle actually in the middle. Thus not having an inset at all, but more of having an island that is attacked thru portals like we have already... I fear that make the map circular again which is what we tried to get around after many not liking this idea... i do not have time to do this today but i just want to hear what others think about this or possibly other ideas... i do respect cairnswk input and will do this IF others do not have any other ideas that would be better then this.

-griff

[fumandomuerte]

I like the pinnacle as it is, but let the crowd decide

[Snowgun]

I think with the organic way you have the terts and realms set up you could put the pinnicle ROUGHLY in the center and it wouldn't look so circular.

Another thing to think about would be to make the pinnicle up in the top center of the map and have the lands around below it in a hemi-circle, again roughly. Just thinking about of the box.

I would be careful about making it TOO chaotic for the sake of destroying any trace of geometrical symmetry, dont' want the pendulum to swing too far the other way...

[grifftron]

I think with the organic way you have the terts and realms set up you could put the pinnicle ROUGHLY in the center and it wouldn't look so circular.

Another thing to think about would be to make the pinnicle up in the top center of the map and have the lands around below it in a hemi-circle, again roughly. Just thinking about of the box.

I would be careful about making it TOO chaotic for the sake of destroying any trace of geometrical symmetry, dont' want the pendulum to swing too far the other way...

Yea I will re draw the map like what was suggested. I will see what i can come up with, i just want to make it so that first time viewers of the map know exactly how to play the map... that would be the goal of what was suggested...

-griff

[grifftron]

So just to make sure I am following everyone else on the idea of putting Pinnacle in the middle of the map.. it would look like this...

Click image to enlarge.

I fear that this would force me to go back to the circular look that we had before if i put this in the middle and keep the same game play with each Clan territory connecting to 2 other clan territories (1 on each side)... which would give it that look... what do others think? or should i just keep the other layout and make better labels ?

-griff

[Blitzaholic]

So just to make sure I am following everyone else on the idea of putting Pinnacle in the middle of the map.. it would look like this...

Click image to enlarge.

I fear that this would force me to go back to the circular look that we had before if i put this in the middle and keep the same game play with each Clan territory connecting to 2 other clan territories (1 on each side)... which would give it that look... what do others think? or should i just keep the other layout and make better labels ?

-griff

I think that is what they were suggesting, but perhaps make it so no mans land and pinnacle are a little smaller then what you have above there.

Click image to enlarge.

keep this layout and make pinnacle and no mans land bigger in the center of map for this example and perhaps get rid on no mans land and pinnacle on the side. I hope I am understanding this correctly. I think you could make it fit, you just may need to make a few other lands a little smaller and pinnacle and no lands lands a little bigger in this layout here. Am I interpreting this correct cairnswk? or anyone?

[grifftron]

Click image to enlarge.

comments anyone?

[jiminski]

Click image to enlarge.

comments anyone?

it's hard to tell at this point.. my initial opinion was 'hmm i hope not!'

it grew on me with a little more viewing... to be able to truly gain an insight i may need to see it with the same detail as the previous. (sorry)

edit.. the image grows on me with each viewing. .. i think it is better already

edit edit.. just a thought but maybe the pinnacle could be a true island i.e. the jungle could be lake. (i think the depth of the water works well!) then you could mix the normal territory terrain with some jungle too?

[Chariot of Fire]

edit edit.. just a thought but maybe the pinnacle could be a true island i.e. the jungle could be lake. (i think the depth of the water works well!) then you could mix the normal territory terrain with some jungle too?

I rather liked that it was out of the norm and instead of the usual island in water it was instead surrounded by forest - looks good. That said, given it's a tricorn effect (the three boundaries that extend from NML) you could - if you had the time and inclination - make a mountain range, a forest, and a lake, combining the three in the area around NML. Now that would look neat.

[grifftron]

Maybe a bit of what both of you said... i am not the best at mountains tho... i have tried a few times and haven't gotten it to look nice at all...

Click image to enlarge.

If everyone is happy with this look of the land and Pinnacle I will start putting up boarders and labels and all that, i want to make the castles look better too then the other version... see what i can do.

-griff

[natty dread]

i am not the best at mountains tho... i have tried a few times and haven't gotten it to look nice at all...

Hey, don't let it discourage you from putting mountains on your map. Mountains are hard for everyone, they're probably the (graphically) hardest part of any map. I don't know a single mapmaker that hasn't struggled with mountains.

The only way to learn mountains is practice. Explore different ways of drawing mountains, until you come up with something that works for you.

If you like I can show how I made the mountains on the Nordic countries map.

[Blitzaholic]

i am not the best at mountains tho... i have tried a few times and haven't gotten it to look nice at all...

Hey, don't let it discourage you from putting mountains on your map. Mountains are hard for everyone, they're probably the (graphically) hardest part of any map. I don't know a single mapmaker that hasn't struggled with mountains.

The only way to learn mountains is practice. Explore different ways of drawing mountains, until you come up with something that works for you.

If you like I can show how I made the mountains on the Nordic countries map.

thx natty for the help on mountains if griff needs it

[natty dread]

OK on request of grifftronic I'm posting the method I used to make the mountains on Nordic countries.

First I'll draw a mountain. This is simple, I used maybe 4 colours, did it with free paintbrush and fill tool. Note that you'll need to decide which side the light comes from, and make that side lighter than the other. You don't have to put snow on the mountain, if it doesn't fit the style of the map, but if you do, notice that the snow is also a bit darker on the non-light side.



Now I'll just copypaste that mountain into a neat line - from top to bottom, this is important - following the border I'm putting the mountains on. Note that the size of the mountain can be variated - making the 1-2 mountains on each end a bit smaller than the ones in middle gives a nice effect.



Then I'll create a new layer. (the mountains have a total of 3 layers). The first layer has the base image, as in the previous image. This second layer I'll use to draw some lines on the mountains. Note that these aren't the original lines from the map, I made them just to demonstrate...

For the lines I used a black paintbrush with antialias on (I think it's called a "soft" brush in PS but I'm not sure) and 1px thickness.



(Note that I'm drawing much more lines on the shadow side. This accentuates the brightness of the light side even more. Also note the way I draw the lines to follow from mountain peak to mountain peak, to give an impression of a continuous mountain chain)

When the lines are done, I just apply a slight blur (I'm not sure what to use in PS, but I think a gaussian blur will do, the blur I used is similar to gaussian blur but preserves a bit more sharpness/detail... I use it on a radius of 1px, anyway... experiment for best results):



Next, I create the 3rd layer. For this layer, I'll reduce opacity (in my map the opacity was 62/255, not sure what that is in percentages) and set the blend mode as Additive.

Then I just take the paintbrush with white colour and put some strokes on the light side of the mountains to make it just a bit brighter, also this can be used to touch up the black lines I did before, if there are still places that look too dark or smudgy. The result, and finished mountain chain:



Hope this helps!

[grifftron]

Yah. Thanks Natty for taking some time to do that. It helps a lot and helps give me ideas for making them myself.

-griff

[natty dread]

I might have forgotten a step... When I first drew that original single mountain I may have applied a slight blur on it... It kinda looks like I did, I'm not sure... Hard to say as I only drew it once then used it for all the mountains

But either way experimentation gives the best results

[Chariot of Fire]

wow Natty, nice demo. They look great!

Sorry griff, making suggestions that boost your workload, but you want it to look the best don't you

[grifftron]

wow Natty, nice demo. They look great!

Sorry griff, making suggestions that boost your workload, but you want it to look the best don't you

Yep! Bring on the suggestions... that's what this part of the foundry is all about anyways... more work the better... just gotta find the time to work!

Thanks guys for all the ideas. I am loving it.

-griff

[grifftron]

First go at Natty's mountains... not the best but ok.. kinda dark?

Click image to enlarge.

-griff

[chipv]

First go at Natty's mountains... not the best but ok.. kinda dark?

Click image to enlarge.

-griff

Yeah needs to lighten up a little, grey armies don't show up great on it , other colours look ok.

Looks good with the pinnacle more or less full size in the centre.

[Bruceswar]

Need help with Mountains.. Tisha has the best mountains on CC

[grifftron]

Need help with Mountains.. Tisha has the best mountains on CC

Well... can we get Tishas mountains on this map?

[waseemalim]

My comments may be too late in the process for this, but this is the first time I took a look at this map properly.

I get the sense that we are building a map purely for the sake of building one with Clan names in it. This map just looks like another feudal map with the interconnectedness of 8 thoughts. It hardly has an iota of original thought. The theme and the gameplay could be much improved -- for example you could get it to be a map of the poison rome sort which adapts to the clan ladder rather than just spreading around names randomly. I would strongly suggest that we revise the theme, there are opportunities for special territories which subtly hints to the relative strength/character of the clan -- thota region could be in one corner with lots of one way territories, IA and KORT can have a secret connection/bombard through bruceswar, monkey territories could automatically turn to neutrals unless you hold clapper, you could set an objective win to unite low and tofu, there could be JP in AoD who can bombard all clan leaders. Anyway, you get the drift.

The map does not need to be balanced. Also, I think the conquest idea is a very bad way to go for this map.

I feel bad about criticizing without adding anything of value, but this map is want of creativity.