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Argalius

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Posts posted by Argalius

  1. I always thought AoE3 ships were too large to really use them efficiently (without taking most of your screen...). This size, more representing AoM/AoK-scale, seems perfect to me. Still sad that fishing is left out, I find it a very important part of waterbased maps in RTS-games.

  2. Hey there, I'm once again in need of your help. I'm still trying to create fine maps, my vectorworld I was creating seemed to be rather useless now I found a program that has everything already. The program is GMT, which is some kind of DOS program, ie. without a UI. I sort of understand how the whole program works, but I need to fill in a single command every time, I can't paste 5 commands at the same time in Command Prompt. I saw on the internet a shell script, which I tried to use but it doesn't seem to recognize the commands in it, probably because it's written for Linux or something. Anyway, I found out that for Windows (I use Vista btw) batch files (.bat) can be used to achieve something similar. Being a total stranger to DOS programming, I have no idea how to create one myself. Basically I have these commands (every line is a new command that has to be singlely (SP?) entered):

    ...

    grdimage madagaskar_zee.grd -Cih_meer.cpt -Ja46/-19/1:2000000 -R37/60/-30/-5 -P -K --PAPER_MEDIA=A2>madagaskar.ps

    pscoast -Gc -Ja46/-19/1:2000000 -R37/60/-30/-5 -Dh -P -K -O --PAPER_MEDIA=A2 >>madagaskar.ps

    grdimage madagaskar_land.grd -Imadagaskar_licht.grd -Cih_land.cpt -Ja46/-19/1:2000000 -R37/60/-30/-5 -P -K -O --PAPER_MEDIA=A2 >>madagaskar.ps

    pscoast -Ja46/-19/1:2000000 -R37/60/-30/-5 -Q -K -O >>madagaskar.ps

    ...

    That I'd like to insert after each other automatically. So I run the batch file and it completes the whole process for me. Is it possible? If so, how?

  3. The past two weeks I've continued to work on Scandinavia, which is coming along pretty well, and have added s few details around the map. Some more cities have been added and I've started to work on the rivers. The map looks way more interesting with the rivers in it, I was afraid the map would be rather dull without any relief, but it looks pretty good without it. I've added the colours the final maps will use aswell, I followed the proposals from the Maps Wikiproject.

    europa2c_th.png

  4. Any chance of possibly portraying them Argalius, or are you just doing blank outline maps for now?

    Rivers will be added later. I'm not sure with mountains and all though. I found a Google Maps version which displays height, but if I want to add height lines I'll be done by 2050. And using the maps as a background looks odd because it's too detailed which takes away your attention from the rest of the map. I'm not sure what to do here.

    Thanks for that Argalius. I was not aware of Alexandria's continued existence.

    No problem. Nowadays it's called some like Al-Iskandaria, in Arabic that is. In Dutch and probably alot of other languages it's still just Alexandria or a small variance of it.

  5. Btw, haven't really thought about it, but now that you say it, Scandinavia is really different from the more southern parts of Europe. Looking at Google Maps, you hardly have any lakes or islands or anything, very flat and boring :P (Not to speak about forests :) Can't see any real forests south of Norway/Sweden/Finland/Russia/etc ;) ) Ah, well, I guess that's got its charm too :P

    Yes, Scandinavia is quite different from the rest of Europe, geographically speaking. I think Sweden en Finland are still around 70% covered with forests, which is really alot. There are other large forests in Central Europe though. I'm not sure what part of Europe you're calling flat. Because Scandanavia certainly isn't and neither is Southern Europe really. The only part that's flat is the Netherlands. ;)

    As far as the cities go... What era are you representing? Alexandria, for instance, has been under water for a Thousand years or more.

    Cities are mostly based on rough medieval times, it's chose to make it rather broad. For specific maps of an era they can be removed easily or more can be added. I'm not sure what you're talking about with Alexandria. Because to my knowledge the city was founded by Alexander the Great and still exists today. I do remember parts of the port were flooded and there have been some excavations, but I don't think the whole city ever vanished for a period of time.

  6. A "small" update for you guys. :)

    europa2b_th.png

    Note that the text is in Dutch and that it has been resized (was 7500x6500). Normally, at 100%, it's easily readable. As you can see I extended the map, which now includes the whole Arabian Peninsula aswell. Parts left to do for the coastline are Scandinavia, Western Africa, Aral Sea and Iceland. Scandinavia is going to be a pain because of all the fjords. :P

  7. Sounds very good, HistoryGuy! I saw some cartography software on the web, most notably GMT, which seems to be used on Wikipedia pretty often, but I really don't understand anything about it. It's more like programming stuff I think. Well I'll just stay on the art part of it which suits me fine. :P Can't wait to see some of your results, though.

    I discovered that my previous map wasn't really what I had been searching for. So I started all over again, but on a much larger scale. I combined images from Google Maps which I use as a base, aswell as some historical maps to get the Netherlands correct from around the 1600s. The real size of the map at the moment is 7500x5500 pixels, but I shrunk it down because it's useless to show such an image here. My idea behind all this is that you can use this map for the whole of Europe, but also for smaller parts of it since it's so detailed. I also expanded the area a bit to the south and east so the map can be used for lets say the Ottoman Empire aswell. I'm actually thinking of including the whole of the Arabian Penisula, which shouldn't be too much extra work.

    europa2_th.png

  8. Well actually just Europe for now. Not really sure why I'm doing this, I had planned to (re)do some history maps for Wikipedia ages ago, I just love history and atlasses :), but good (read: large) blank maps are hard to come by. So I decided to do it myself and teach myself some new stuff along the way. I've already made quite some good use of my Photoshop skill although they're just basic, so now it's Illustrator's turn. I wanted to do it with vectors so the image can easily be scaled without any quality loss, also they're way easier to edit without any real problems.

    I just started this yesterday but I'm already as good as done with the coastlines, way faster than I anticipated. I've rivers planned for the near future and some fixing of errors and things I forgot. Maybe I'll detail the map even further in the future with satellite images, which I already used now, but only to get to know the basic outline. Perhaps I could even do some hight lines/colours if I find good sources. And when all of this is finished I'll be able to create my first history maps! Well we see where this brings me, I'm enjoying it at the moment but maybe I'll get bored and leave this behind some day. Anyway, now it's time to show you the map:

    europa_th.jpg

    It's quite a bummer that the map I used as a base didn't include the whole of Scandinavia, but I can easily add the rest later when I find other pictures or use maps from Google Maps. Anyway, I'm pretty satisfied with this so far and I wanted to show it to you guys. :P

  9. Plenty of 3D forums to go around, and graphic art forums are a popular topic, but ours is a delicate industry, being able to think of how to convert a 3D model into a 2D image.

    Actually about any 3D forum I know also has a 2D section, which basically is the same as texturing since it uses the same techniques etc. Some even have a special forum for texturing. Not that I don't like your initiative, though. :)

  10. I think having the possibility to change teams is useless in 0AD. The point of this game is to eliminate your enemies where in other games, like EU2 (I don't really have another good example :)), you fight your enemies for land or gold, which hardly is the case in 0AD. So depending on what land you're trying to conquer you switch alliance. In EU2 it even has quite some negative effects when you annex your enemies, which obviously isn't the case in 0AD either. The only use such an option could have is that the game continues even when your original enemies are off the battlefield. Which of course brings the problem with it that the cities of you and your allies are situated closely to another and probably one of the two (or more) will already have the upperhand because it came out better earlier in the game, or perhaps hardly partook in the conquering of your old enemies.

  11. The fact that diplomacy is hardly present in RTS games like Age of Empires and 0AD isn't very strange. There are only a limited amount of players on the map and getting stabbed in the back by your ally is far from enjoyable. In M2TW I hated it when I had just started a war against one of my foes and my (ex)ally would attack me aswell. Also sue for peace in M2TW is something I never understood and never got around it. Meaning I was constantly at war with everyone until I conquered them all. :)

    Anyway, games like 0AD are too "small" to really include real life diplomacy. When there are 15 players on a map it'd be nice to create your own alliances etc. but with 4 (I think the standard game is 2v2) there's hardly any use. Not to mention that 3v1 would be very unfair where 4v3 is already more balanced. Games like Europa Universalis really offer good diplomacy (although probably still rather limited for the 'size' of the game) which is fun aswell. The advantage that a game like EU offers compared to 0AD is that it can also be fun to not do so much, playing with a small country can be very enjoyable too eventhough you cannot conquer your (larger) neighbours. Where 0AD is only fun when you conquer and not doing anything military is very boring in my opinion (although some surely disagree).

  12. I played Savage 1, which was pretty funny. The RTS part however is far from interesting if you ask me. As the RTS commander you can build only a few buildings and research just a very small amount of techs. You can promote FPS players and can give them orders but obviously they can ignore you if they want which can be quite a pain when you've lots of noobs running around. The FPS part is lots of fun though if you ask me.

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