Alleg Wars Map rough draft
Well, I'm against the wall here timewise. My map has been in rough draft form for a few weeks. I've asked alot of my Alleg Wars development team, especially the graphics guys so I feel like I can't ask any more of them. So I'm opening it up to the general public that has graphics talent.
The canvas could be enlarged and the sectors spaced out a little more to give you more room to work with, but I need the sector connectors to remain where they are so that we don't lose the strategical value of the map. You could 'enhance' the connectors so they look cooler, but overall they need to retain their functionality.
I also could use a nice font to name the sectors with. You could type in a sample sector name (maybe use "Velantia) in one of the sectors.
In the center you see the colored dots. Each dot is supposed to represent each of the tech rocks (U top center, Si bottom left, and C bottom right). For the center I was thinking a black hole or a spiral galaxy (where the black dot is now). I couldn't even find any pictures of the tech rocks, even if I did I'm not sure I could have made something nice since my knowledge of graphics stops with the MS-Paint pencil click and drag tool. Ignore the yellow and blue dot at the top and bottom, essentially those are just regular sectors, but they just show the starting points for each team.
So that's my challenge. Make that thing I did in powerpoint look like something other than like something that was built with Legos.
edit - forgot one very important thing.... The sectors need to be octagons (so they need to be divided into 8 slices).
If anyone is up to it let me know.
Challenge to an graphics person
I'm not much of an arty guy, and I wasn't clear on how fancy you wanted it. Here's something simple, is that along the lines you were thinking?
You want a map to be fairly functional, but there are some options for sprucing things up. For example, I could replace the black background with a starfield, galaxy, or nebula, but that might make things look a bit busy. Might be alright if make it dimmer than map lines. The plain blue aleph lines could be made glowy or given some sort of texture, but I think they look alright as is. The font is functional, I don't seem to have anything more interesting on hand, but I suppose I could download something.
Exactly how big did you want each sector? Is there supposed to be anything inside each slice?
You want a map to be fairly functional, but there are some options for sprucing things up. For example, I could replace the black background with a starfield, galaxy, or nebula, but that might make things look a bit busy. Might be alright if make it dimmer than map lines. The plain blue aleph lines could be made glowy or given some sort of texture, but I think they look alright as is. The font is functional, I don't seem to have anything more interesting on hand, but I suppose I could download something.
Exactly how big did you want each sector? Is there supposed to be anything inside each slice?
Any job worth doing with a laser is worth doing with many, many lasers. -Khrima
Beyond a shadow of a doubt if you don't watch them like a hawk they will stack their collective balls off - MrChaos on Alleg players
Beyond a shadow of a doubt if you don't watch them like a hawk they will stack their collective balls off - MrChaos on Alleg players
@Compellor
use a vector based gfx tool so you can scale the map to several screen sizes with ease.
And rotate the Cake so you have a vertical/horisontal split, and i guess he want stuff inside.
@mcwareen
What kind of information do you want to display on the map Pictograps, text, team icons...
Z
use a vector based gfx tool so you can scale the map to several screen sizes with ease.
And rotate the Cake so you have a vertical/horisontal split, and i guess he want stuff inside.
@mcwareen
What kind of information do you want to display on the map Pictograps, text, team icons...
Z
Life suck's and then u play Alleg.
-.. ..- -.- . -. ..- -.- . .----. . -- .. ... - .... . --. .-. . .- - . ... -
-.. ..- -.- . -. ..- -.- . .----. . -- .. ... - .... . --. .-. . .- - . ... -
@ Compellor - The octagon needs to be rotated counterclockwise 1/16 so that a horizontal line divides a top half and bottom half. The octagons only need to be large enough so that each 'pie slice' can hold a numeral or letter, and be color coded (the pie slice not the numeral or letter).
@Zep - we actually have a full icon set done, but we are experiencing difficulty right now with our mapping program (yes, fwiffo wrote me a nice peice of programming that actually fills in everything for me). It might be fixed tomorrow, but it might not ever work the way we intended it. Either way, this needs to be done in the next few days so that Alleg Wars can get underway. So, for this purpose I only need octagons to display a single number or letter in a pie slice.
And as you can see from the rough draft, there needs to be appx 45-50 of them on the map, so too big and you wind up with an enormous canvas. Too small and you can't read them.
@Zep - we actually have a full icon set done, but we are experiencing difficulty right now with our mapping program (yes, fwiffo wrote me a nice peice of programming that actually fills in everything for me). It might be fixed tomorrow, but it might not ever work the way we intended it. Either way, this needs to be done in the next few days so that Alleg Wars can get underway. So, for this purpose I only need octagons to display a single number or letter in a pie slice.
And as you can see from the rough draft, there needs to be appx 45-50 of them on the map, so too big and you wind up with an enormous canvas. Too small and you can't read them.
Last edited by mcwarren4 on Wed Jul 30, 2008 2:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
What Allegiance needs is a little more cowbell. 
To get by the image scaling problem. If your using this online via a webpage, then why not use the overview thumbnail function?
Basically, when you highlight your mouse over a sector on the map it gives you the "enlarged view" of the sector? Allowing you to keep the map at a decent size while giving an overview of the sector.
No I dont know how to do it personally, but im pretty sure someone could quite easily if they have some HTML editing knowledge or some such.
Basically, when you highlight your mouse over a sector on the map it gives you the "enlarged view" of the sector? Allowing you to keep the map at a decent size while giving an overview of the sector.
No I dont know how to do it personally, but im pretty sure someone could quite easily if they have some HTML editing knowledge or some such.
That idea has been shown to us and would work in a pinch. There is also a 'maginfiying glass' application that you can just move over a section of the map and it blows up that one section. You can even change the size of your magnifying glass. These are useful suggestions but not really what I need right now. I need someone to help me put together a decent version of that rough draft map. I would rather deal with how we will view the map after I have something tangible to test ideas on.
What Allegiance needs is a little more cowbell. 
Its only rought, I didnt want to get ahead of myself incase it was worse than I even I thought it was /rolleyes.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":roll:" border="0" alt="rolleyes.gif" />
AWMap
AWMap
While it wouldn't be too difficult to take screens of the tech rocks, Mesial already has. In that same vein, instead of using just any galaxy for the center, we could use his, or the original Alleg background galaxy. For a background image, or for anything really, there's the NASA Image Exchange. Lots of 2k x 2k TIFFs available.
Sp4wn: I liked my blue aleph lines better, and now that I'm seeing the plain white octagons all in a row like that, I can't help but think they need something more. Can't quite figure out what to do though.
We should probably decide on a particular person to do it, don't want to duplicate effort.
Sp4wn: I liked my blue aleph lines better, and now that I'm seeing the plain white octagons all in a row like that, I can't help but think they need something more. Can't quite figure out what to do though.
We should probably decide on a particular person to do it, don't want to duplicate effort.
Any job worth doing with a laser is worth doing with many, many lasers. -Khrima
Beyond a shadow of a doubt if you don't watch them like a hawk they will stack their collective balls off - MrChaos on Alleg players
Beyond a shadow of a doubt if you don't watch them like a hawk they will stack their collective balls off - MrChaos on Alleg players