[Abandoned] - Vietnam

[kengyin]

redo the outlines sure, i hope you dont mean redo the whole thing

[kengyin]

I think the new colours are an improvement as well. The Mekong River Delta and Central Highlands are identical in colour, but I guess it's no bigge with that legend and while they don't border each other.

in fact i have since changed the colours again slightly while retaining the essence of the reds and orange and blue and green but much browner and greyer, so darker duller. so central highlands and mrd dont look the same (in fact mrd is darker i think).

The land area would be good with those.

The title: you have under the title this light yellow with red stripes, and a red with yellow star. Bright red + yellow is an awful combination, it reminds me of condiments. Remove the title background for now. We can think of something to put there later.

The non-playable land area: this is light orange. Change it to like grey or something.

Then you have these red and yellow things on the left and right edges of the map...

I also have to wonder, are you using layers for everything?

what?????? you want me to ditch the flags? i know they are yellow and red, thats because the flags were in fact those colours, if i remove that as well then what symbolism do we have left of the struggle between north and south? it will end up being just a war that takes place in vietnam as opposed to a war that takes place in vietnam BECAUSE the north and south had very conflicting ideologies mainly political and on a greater scale the conflict between communism and anti-communism with both sides being backed by bigger sides fighting for similar ideologies.

[kengyin]

The land area would be good with those.

The title: you have under the title this light yellow with red stripes, and a red with yellow star. Bright red + yellow is an awful combination, it reminds me of condiments. Remove the title background for now. We can think of something to put there later.

The non-playable land area: this is light orange. Change it to like grey or something.

Then you have these red and yellow things on the left and right edges of the map...

I also have to wonder, are you using layers for everything?

by the way was that just compared to the previous colour or do you think the colours itself are good?

[natty dread]

Yes the new land area colours are good for now. We may have to modify them at some point to accommodate colourblindness and such... but for now they're good.

Although, this is exactly why you need to have everything on their own layers. If you need to make a change to one thing you can easily do it when it's on it's own layer.

what?????? you want me to ditch the flags? i know they are yellow and red, thats because the flags were in fact those colours

No matter. The flags were those, ok, but they do not work as background elements. Lets first work on getting the basic graphics of this map in check and then worry about thematic elements like flags and such.

redo the outlines sure, i hope you dont mean redo the whole thing

Well it depends... how your image file is composed, are you able to make changes to everything when required...

[kengyin]

well what i had before was the outlines had a layer and the background had a layer, i didnt need to have each region have its own layer but it is quite bad to be merged to the outlines. i'll just trace the outlines on a new layer and thus the old outlines can be painted over by the colours. there was one time when i was thinking of putting some silhouettes of army and soldiers and stuff in the top or bottom but ultimately i never even bothered since there wasnt enough room and it didnt really fit in with the then style of the map
well here are the current colours, once i finish redoing my outlines it will be easy to change colours whenever

[natty dread]

Yeah you should have each bonus area on it's own layer, that way it's easy to change colours.

[Gillipig]

Regarding the poll you made on a or b colour scheme, I think b was better!

[kengyin]

im assuming by the lack of gameplay suggestions that everyone likes the gameplay?

[Riskismy]

I think the Northwest and Sounth Central Coast could both be upped to a +2 bonus (at least). Other than that, It seems fine to me.

[kengyin]

i just realised that the border on the left is 3 pixels wider than the one on the right....oops

[kengyin]

wow looking at it now, i do see a vast improvement of this over the previous version, having worked with this for a few days the brightness of the last version kind of annoys my eyes. i've finished v7 but i'll post it only if i have time, i have some french to do

[kengyin]

Current Version

v7.0
-ditched the top background flags
-got rid of bushes
-changed the colours of the territories, the computer displays, the non playable areas, the ho chi minh trail and the side flags
-rearranged the impassables display due to bushes not being an impassable anymore (it never was come to think of it)
-changed the ho chi minh trail to dotted trail lines rather than continuous flowing line
-changed the arrows and lines of connection for linebacker 2
-made the copied stuff sharper


i think that the colours within north and south vietnam are very coherent while contrasting with each other. i got rid of the flags as symbols but i wanted to retain the kind of blue vs red symbolism and thus essentially most of the colours are derived from the previous colours with but with the red brownified and the blue greyified and darker and duller. the blue and red on the sides dont really mean anything except for enhance the overall contrast, i couldnt think of anything else to put there anyway

[natty dread]

Very nice! Those colours work like 700 times better than the previous ones.

Next thing to pay attention to would be the territory borders. They look sort of pixelated and messy.

A good way to draw borders is the calligraphy (ink) tool. I usually do mine freehand, but some like to use the path tool - it takes more time but gives smoother, straighter lines.

[Riskismy]

I think the Northwest and Sounth Central Coast could both be upped to a +2 bonus (at least). Other than that, It seems fine to me.

Please respond to this.

I like the new colours too.

[kengyin]

that would be overpowered, because you only need to hold 5 territories only 3 and 4 are needed to defend northwest and south central coast respectively, while northeast has 7 territories and 4 are needed to defend and central highlands has 6 territories and 5 needed to defend, both of which have bonus of 5, so northeast and south central coast should be lower i think.

i definitely need to put something where the flags were, the non playable areas look really barren, i was going to put some bushes there but im not good at making bushes (my mountains arent that great either come to think of it)

do people like the new ho chi minh trail and linebacker 2 styles? (2 separate questions)

[kengyin]

Current Version

v7.1
-made the borders clearer
-got rid of 3 pixel column to make the left and right symmetrical


i didnt so much in this update, just made the lines clearer really. let me know if theres anything major i need to change

[kengyin]

any other gameplay suggestions? do people agree with the killer neutral and auto-decay placements and values for example?

[00iCon]

this map has changed positively since i last saw it!

ack! i remember there was a thread with instructions on how to soften borders, but it's not in my bookmarks!

[kengyin]

i will be overhauling this thing, i will make a new image with suggestions from natty's tutorial. there havent been too many comments since i redid the borders so my new image will largely be set out the same, while that may seem like a waste of time, i will be making the layers more organised and colours and stuff not so messed up and borders better and adding gradients and textures and stuff. it will make future changes much easier to make for me, eg. currently i have impassables merged with background and in fact i took ages to redo the borders as you may know

[whitestazn88]

the colors could be a bit more differentiated in my opinion. as for gameplay, i think it's all good, although it's not something i really looked at closely.

[Riskismy]

that would be overpowered, because you only need to hold 5 territories only 3 and 4 are needed to defend northwest and south central coast respectively, while northeast has 7 territories and 4 are needed to defend and central highlands has 6 territories and 5 needed to defend, both of which have bonus of 5, so northeast and south central coast should be lower i think.

hm. Perhaps a case study is in place here. Let's take Northeast and Northwest.

Northwest / Northeast
Territories: 5 / 7
Attacked by territories: 6 / 6
Defend territories to hold bonus: 3 / 4
Bonus for holding: 1 / 5

Does this really seem fair to you?

[kengyin]

that would be overpowered, because you only need to hold 5 territories only 3 and 4 are needed to defend northwest and south central coast respectively, while northeast has 7 territories and 4 are needed to defend and central highlands has 6 territories and 5 needed to defend, both of which have bonus of 5, so northeast and south central coast should be lower i think.

hm. Perhaps a case study is in place here. Let's take Northeast and Northwest.

Northwest / Northeast
Territories: 5 / 7
Attacked by territories: 6 / 6
Defend territories to hold bonus: 3 / 4
Bonus for holding: 4 / 5

Does this really seem fair to you?

corrected your typo for you yes that does seem fair to me

[natty dread]

They seem fair to me too...

The biggest problem I see is there are no small bonuses, something that would be easy to grab in the beginning...

[kengyin]

well if you get 4 of the ho chi minh trail territories say 1-4 then thats almost the same as holding south america for 2 troops

[kengyin]

heres just a sample of the new graphics, i havent put on the text yet.


so basically i improved the territory background, not so noticeable is that they are all on different layers. some time i will try and make better mountains and eventually make the legends more realistic