Limes

[natty dread]

All the text is pixelated now. That's not good.

[Permafrost]

Pixilated is clear and not that bad. It helps to differ between text and the rest of the picture. That's quite good, isn't it?

[natty dread]

No, it's not. Pixelation is not good. It looks crappy and is not clear at all.

Just turn the anti-aliasing back on. There are like a million better ways to increase readability of text. Contrast is key here: You need to add contrast between the text and the background.

Before that, you should still do something to the clutteredness of the map. Let me say this again... Remove the extraneous mountains and rivers that serve no gameplay purpose. Like, what is that thing in Germania, a ghost mountain? And the striped rivers look like twisted candy canes. Really, they have no purpose on the map, they don't look good, so just get rid of them.

As for the rest of the rivers... There has got to be a better way to represent them. How about fading them out, making them a bit thinner maybe, and most importantly, putting them under the territory borders.

[MrBenn]

I've been waiting for an update to this map for a little while, as I think there's some good potential here.

I'd agree with natty in that the new font does not look all that great.

I would strongly encourage - if not actually insisting - that you use the title "Limes Germanicus" for the map. There are several 'Roman 'Limes' across Europe, and it would be better for your map to denote which specific area you are referencing:


That aside, I'm looking forward to seeing your next update

[Permafrost]

natti_dread,
The rivers and espacially the Schwarzwald mountains in Rome are not positioned in the cluttered regions. So, this has nothing to to with it. And please compare the large and small map versions with previous ones. At leat, my eyes cannot deny that there must be an enhanced readability due to these pixelated font.

And the name will most likly be changed into a clearer one but please start making agreements. There are enough maps out there with each it's personal touch and not everything benefits the readability for example.

[natty dread]

Sigh... I'm probably going to sound like a total asshole again here, but I can't help it, things need to be said.

I'm getting a bit tired of repeating myself over and over when nothing seems to sink in. If you want your map to stay in the drafting room for all eternity, by all means, don't listen when people are trying to give you advice on how to get your map up to standards.

I agree with MrBenn, this map has potential, but that potential is never going to be realized unless you're going to learn to listen when people are telling you how to improve your map.

No one in the foundry is impervious to criticism. Every one of us has to deal with sacrificing our personal vision when other people find flaws in it. It's the way the foundry works. If you are unable to work in an atmosphere like this.... well, that would be a shame.

[Permafrost]

Yeah, what a shame to cooparete in most points but not say "Amen" to everything until the bitter end. We keep focussing on the really interesting part: Will this map work in a 600x600 px small Version. The last update was meant to be going one step further to accomplish this. We've tested out (for this map) possible unit numbers. It worked in terms of space. Your team asked us to to so to get further into workshops. The rivers and mountains at the Roman side which only have an optical meaning aren't important for the moment. They don't make this look cluttered. The German territories doing this and there the rivers are part of the gameplay.

It's actually not true that the last update made more regress than progress in helping to read our map. You do not like the more "computed" look of the text. So what's the big thing about it? It helps to increase the contrast to the background. I remember you mentioned this point as kind of crucial. We already made new ideas how to increase this contrast even further but with enhancing something you have to make compromises. If we make (for example) the territory names look white or at least grayish to help distinguishing them from army numbers, we also erase another effect: Later you won't be able to see the terriotory names resemble their typical continental color. So we have to pay and delete one good thing to get a new advantage

Your mentioned ideas have downsides too but we have the chance to see directly how it influences the overall map. That's why we think, the rivers and mountains give atmosphere and, meanwhile, don't look exactly like the gamplay versions of them. We admit that there had been the high possibility to misunderstand those features during gameplay and we recoulered them, dahed them, made them less visible, added needed bourders and the forth. We are not just repeating ourselves but adopt things and, at least, it seems to me you not even recognized it a bit. Working togehter is the way not bumping doublefaced "standards" into a map when there still exist other maps without using them. There are more ways than deleting the rivers or the Schwarzwald mountains. They are part of the historical background. Your guides mentioned the importance of this background and the clearness and readability is another one. And we tried to enchance the latter while maintaining the former to a certain degree. But as I said you most likly have downsides while enhancing.

[natty dread]

Yeah, what a shame to cooparete in most points but not say "Amen" to everything until the bitter end.

You are not co-operating on the most important points. You co-operate on some points but hold back on the most important ones. You're too afraid to make changes and try new things. Relax! You can always change things back if something doesn't work out. You can save your map file to another filename.

You do not like the more "computed" look of the text.

NO ONE likes it. Ask anyone. Anyone at all.

And "computed" my ass, computing has nothing to do with this. It's called pixelation. It's what happens when you turn off anti-aliasing. It's not good, it doesn't improve the text readability, it makes it worse. It looks crappy and unprofessional, and professional graphic designers do everything they can to get rid of pixelation. I don't know how I can make this any clearer.

See, if you were making a map of an 80:s video game, then yeah, using pixelation might be an acceptable way to add flavor to your map. (See Conquer Man.) But this is not the case here. Your aim is to make a real geographical map. In which case, pixelation is unacceptable.

If we make (for example) the territory names look white or at least grayish to help distinguishing them from army numbers, we also erase another effect: Later you won't be able to see the terriotory names resemble their typical continental color. So we have to pay and delete one good thing to get a new advantage

No. What you have to do is delete all the horrible crappy things, and replace them with good things.

Like the ghost mountain and the candy cane rivers. Seriously. They serve no purpose on the map whatsoever and they look ugly.

Also, since the bonus areas are now in different colours, there's no need to have different colour territory names. In fact, I think it would help with clarity if you made them all white. And removed the damn pixelation, of course.

[Permafrost]

Then we do as we mentioned. And don't use geographical issues and deleting whole rivers and mountain sides at the same time. These things contradict each other. See also:

They serve no purpose on the map whatsoever and they look ugly.

They are geographical features and, additionally, filling up the whole spaces at the Roman side. I don't know how I can make this any clearer.

[natty dread]

Suit yourself then. I'm not going to debate you on this.

All I can say is enjoy your stay in the drafting room...

[Permafrost]

Stay out of this thread natty_dread if possible and let others handle this. And no, it doesn't matter if they have almost the same opinion as you. This will make it easier for everyone.

Click image to enlarge.

---|Small version|---
---|Small version with army numbers|---

[natty dread]

Ok, that's a step in the right direction.

The text is still pixelated though.
I can understand what you are trying to accomplish by making the text pixelated, but trust me, it does not work. The labels in Germania are damn near illegible. The same with the bonus area names. The rest, well, they just look ugly.

Look... there are better ways to do what you are trying, and this is not a subjective opinion, I mean universally, absolutely, objectively better. Here's a quick course:

To improve text clarity, turning anti-aliasing off is exactly the opposite of what you should be doing. Anti-aliasing for text is implemented exactly to make the text clearer and more readable. If you have problems with anti-aliasing, the right decision is not to disable it, but to look for the problems elsewhere.

I can't remember what software you use, but first thing to do (after turning anti-aliasing back on) is to check if you have text hinting enabled. In GIMP this can be done by checking the "force auto-hinter" option on in the text menu. Not sure about PS. What hinting does, is that it aligns the vectors of the letters so that they match the pixel grid of the bitmap. In layman's terms, this improves the rendering of the text so that it is more readable. You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_hinting

Next, contrast. If the background is light, use dark text. If the background is dark, use light text. If you are unable to do so, there are ways around this. For a light text, adding a subtle black glow with low opacity around the text and blurring it improves the contrast. The trick is making the glow so subtle that it is hardly noticeable in itself, but it will still help with the contrast and readability of the text. Similarly, for dark text, you can use a white glow. Playing with the blend modes for the glows can also achieve good results.

Next, get rid of the thick black strokes around the white text. Replace them with thin drop shadows and dark glows. When you have text that is small in size, like the labels in Germania (GS5, GS3 etc) you don't want to use a stroke that bold. It will make the text unclear, since it's hard to make the stroke thinner than the text at that scale. Instead, applying a combination of a thin but high-opacity dropshadow with small distance, and a low-opacity but wide and blurred black outer glow will do wonders.

This should be enough to get you started.

[natty dread]

Look at this.



1. Text without anti-aliasing, with a black stroke (essentially, what you have now)

2. Text with anti-aliasing, no hinting, with the same stroke

3. Text with anti-aliasing + auto-hinting on, wiht stroke

See the difference there already?

4. Text with anti-aliasing, hinting, and instead of stroke, a drop shadow, and a very very slight blurred dark glow.

Now tell me you seriously think #1 is the best of these options...

[Permafrost]

I will try this out again. Thank you. I'm using an totally outdated Version of Photoshop CS1. For the pixalated stuff I'm downsizing the whole psd-File with its layers. That's why the text is so sharp. When I'm downsizing a picture of my 2000*2000px versions, the text wil be blurred because of interpolation. This looks even worse than the pixalated stuff. I used the bold boundaries of the text to minimize this downsizing effect but it only works to a certain degree. We also tired out in many different ways dto unterly the text with smooth white or black but there are too many details in background. It ends up with using bigger textsize to compansate the above mentioned effect but with worse results.

[natty dread]

You're welcome. I use GIMP so I have no idea of the details of PS text tools, but there are lots of PS users here who can help you on how to achieve the same in PS.

[Permafrost]

That's not necessary. I know the function. You can choose between making it stron, sharp, sharper or rounded. The latter is the one to go for.

[natty dread]

When I'm downsizing a picture of my 2000*2000px versions

Using oversize is a good strategy when you need to draw elements in small size, that require detail that are hard to draw in that size. Like city icons or something.

But generally, using oversize for the whole map is not that good an idea.

Work in the actual size of the map. This way you will see all the graphical elements as they will be on the final product and you won't suffer from artifacts and blurry edges that can be caused by resizing. Even though downsizing usually is pretty safe, when you do it to a layered image the layers do not always align the same way as they did in the original, due to interpolation. Also, sharp edges, like those on text, do also suffer from resizing.

So my advice is, shrink your image file to the large map size (800x800 or so) and work on that.

[MrBenn]

When you downsize your image in photoshop, it'll be worth double-checking what size it has changed your text to. For the best visual effect, you'll want to make sure it is an exact size (ie 10pt / 11pt / 12pt instead of 9.87pt / 10.44pt / 11.98pt etc). Even if you resize 24pt text by 50%, for some reason it often changes to 11.99 instead of 12...

[Riskismy]

I like it, should be an interesting play.
I have just one suggestion: Lose the 'rivers attack upstream' rule. The only place I can find where it applies is from C5 to Ma4 (where it skips an impassable). In every other case it seems to me that the normal rules of attack would suffice. Just make the C5 -> Ma4 attack a one-way, and lose a rule that applies to only one place on the map.
Or maybe I'm missing something here?

[Riskismy]

jeez. Is this the drafting room or what? Give the graphics a rest already.

[Permafrost]

The special rivers rules apply also in middle and in northern German territories. You may attack downstream 2 territories but updstream you are limited by normal rules. So the player downstream holds an advantage.

[Permafrost]

I've tested it out and the smooth-text-thing is not going to work (for the territory names). Why? Because it thins letters out and for our small version does that mean: You can hardly read it. There was no working fancy adjustment by erasing the "bold" black contours and replacing them with black or colored shadows in background. So, pixalated stays the best solution at the moment. The smoothed text only works in the legend where no detailed graphics underly it.



Here you can see the difference:

[natty dread]

Sorry, but that's not going to cut it.

If your letters are too thin, change the font. Also, did you find the text hinting option? Since Photoshop is so much more expensive than GIMP, surely it should have all the same options at least...

[Permafrost]

Photoshop != GIMP to say it in PHP. As I mentioned before, I'm using a totally outdated version of Photoshop CS 1. Nowadays we have something like CS 4 or 5. There are huge differences even between CS 1 and CS 2 but unfortunately I don't have the latter. The make short: It doesn't have a hinting option.

Edit:
Changing fonts make only sense if I would choose a really bold one. That's as ugly as the already readable pixalated try.

[Permafrost]

There actually is a font which makes everythign a it fancier but doesn't do wonders in terms of the territory names.