I was wondering if anyone out there would be willing to help me switch an old circle map I've  been working on to a fill map? And by help I mean getting me started on how to do a fill map and helping me figure out what ideas work and don't work with this format.  This is the circle map, I was going to clean up but decided why waste my time since it needs to be a fill to be posted publicly.  http://www.wargear.net/boards/designer/2051 It is based off of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books. I was striving for some original/complex game play by using river ports and sea ports as methods of attack. Conceptually, I thought of this map as having individual cities and villages within a country that need to attack via roads not just whatever territory they happen to touch, other wise the river thing doesn't work as well I think. Any thoughts?

What are using for an editor?

GIMP was reccommended to me by someone back on WF, unfortunately I can't pay for one of the cooler ones.

Most, or at least many of the designers here use Either Gimp or Paint.net.  Both are free and definitely up to the task.

I don't think you have to use a fill map for it to be "legal". All you need to do is provide the circles.  You could simply take those WF target icons off and replace them with a solid color and be done.  Is that what you had in mind, or did you want to do something more fancy?

Well that may work...How would I do that exactly? I liked the idea of roads and rivers being the method of attack so keeping that would be great. I also would like to make the map look more polished especially the boarders. One major complaint I got regarding the map is that it looked cluttered to some people but I'm hesitant to erase all of the original art work i.e. forests and mountains.

Gimp is a great program, but has a steep learning curve. Also, to do many specific tasks you need to find and download a separate plugin or script (or write your own, if you know how).

The map is a good idea, I like the concept of attacks proceeding up and down riverways -- have you thought about changing it up a bit such that each port attacks the adjacent ports with normal dice, ports one away at 5v6, two away at 4v6, etc? Could be a neat twist.

As for cleaning up the graphics, I have some thoughts on what I might try were it my board, but it's difficult to attempt to explain that sort of thing in text. In general, the background artwork needs to be sharpened (filters->enhance->sharpen or unsharp mask). The foreground gameplay-related graphics should be crisp and very clear, but not so as to interfere with the overall theme and style of your map. I suggest different icons for the cities and ports (play around with geometric shapes, filters->gfig). You can use things like drop shadow and xach effect (both in filters->lighting and shadow) to spruce it up a bit -- a drop shadow in white can provide a positive as opposed to negative relief profile. I'd also get rid of the dotted lines -- they're ugly and distract from the map. Attacks along rivers should be obvious by the river itself (make them more prominent if you need to, see the recent Civil War map for an example), and think about adding in roads or somesuch for territories connected by overland routes. Island territories can have unobtrusive dotted lines (think about how ferry lines are drawn on a contemporary road map). That's just a few thoughts off the top of my head, I can try to answer specific questions if you have them.

Lines all over the map can be confusing when they are different things, like borders and rivers.  It's just too messy.

Ok, Assuming that you're using layers and you can get rid of those dotted lines easily enough.

My solution would be to draw a fill map where all of the continental space is contiguous (like a standard non-circle map), creating territorial shapes as you see fit.  Then for my board image, I would take the original map and make a layer of all of the territorial space only, which I would make about 60% transparent, leaving the rest of the board hard.  Then because I want to highlight cdertain borders (for whatever reason, dice mods, etc), I might try cutting out little circle fills for each territory in the transparent part of the board and outlining them appropriately so that you have a nice hard circle-fill effect surrounded by a muted version of the color. Then from those circles you could put in a few dotted lines here and there to show special borders.

I'm not sure that I've seen this done before. I may have to try it out myself.

Thanks guys, I will fiddle with Gimp over the next few weeks and see what I can do. I think that the easiest thing to do, since I didn't do layers for each section i.e. roads is to start from scratch. If you don't mind I'll probably post every once in a while to ask how to do a certain thing.

I noticed a couple of non-graphics things that I would recommend minor changes to.

 'Capitals' in wargear denote a very specific gameplay mechanism.  And although the cities with stars are capitals on your map, they are not wargear capitals (hope that made sense).  It might be a bit confusing to players, so I would at least clarify this in the description, and maybe consider a different terminology.  Also the legend is a little bit tiny (hard to read), so I would probably duplicate it in the description.

Ozyman wrote:

I noticed a couple of non-graphics things that I would recommend minor changes to.

 'Capitals' in wargear denote a very specific gameplay mechanism.  And although the cities with stars are capitals on your map, they are not wargear capitals (hope that made sense).  It might be a bit confusing to players, so I would at least clarify this in the description, and maybe consider a different terminology.  Also the legend is a little bit tiny (hard to read), so I would probably duplicate it in the description.

+1 to Ozy's remarks.  "Capitals" has a very specific meaning.  Call them Citadels or Cities or something else.  Good luck with your work.  Let us know if you have any other problems.

Someone mentioned my map!  yay!

Anyway you could also start fresh and just outline the source material as has been mentioned and maybe incorporate the source material using transparency later.  That's where I would start I think. 

A lot of people on here like Paint.Net for editing and it seems to work well.  Of course if you can get Photoshop you'd be even better off but it is pricey.

Maybe something to get you started also.  Look at other designers designs.  Look at how they use dual layer maps and how they are put together.  you can now go to any map in the board list and go to it's designer page using the blue arrow icon.

Ozyman wrote:

I noticed a couple of non-graphics things that I would recommend minor changes to.

 'Capitals' in wargear denote a very specific gameplay mechanism.  And although the cities with stars are capitals on your map, they are not wargear capitals (hope that made sense).  It might be a bit confusing to players, so I would at least clarify this in the description, and maybe consider a different terminology.  Also the legend is a little bit tiny (hard to read), so I would probably duplicate it in the description.

thanks Ozyman, I didn't think of that. I think I'll change them to City Fortresses. The legend always has bugged me but I noticed on WF there are so many people who refuse to check the about section I tried to cram onto the legend. I'll still re-post it on about section though, for those who do look at it.

Viper wrote:

Someone mentioned my map!  yay!

Anyway you could also start fresh and just outline the source material as has been mentioned and maybe incorporate the source material using transparency later.  That's where I would start I think. 

A lot of people on here like Paint.Net for editing and it seems to work well.  Of course if you can get Photoshop you'd be even better off but it is pricey.

Maybe something to get you started also.  Look at other designers designs.  Look at how they use dual layer maps and how they are put together.  you can now go to any map in the board list and go to it's designer page using the blue arrow icon.

I'll look at Pain.net and see if it is a little more user friendly than Gimp. Thanks for the tips on other people's maps, I didn't know I can do that. Seems like every day I learn something about this site that is far superior to WF.

I found the above typo amusing .."pain.net"

FWIW, I found the paint.net learning curve to be less steep than GIMP's.  I don't know which one is "better", but if they are equal in terms of features and you already have a comfort level with GIMP, then maybe you should stick with what you know.

I've switched to the dark side (Mac) so I don't use paint.net anymore.  Does anyone know if it has a posturize feature?  That would be important.

AP0CALYP5E wrote:

Thanks for the tips on other people's maps, I didn't know I can do that. Seems like every day I learn something about this site that is far superior to WF.

There is definitely some non-obvious stuff on wargear, that you kind of figure out once you've been here long enough.  My favorite improvement from WF to WG is the ability of DEV games.  Having to get everyone to vote to terminate a game @ WF just because there is a missing border, etc. was ridiculously painful and I can't believe how much better WG is for designers.

Ozyman wrote:

AP0CALYP5E wrote:

Thanks for the tips on other people's maps, I didn't know I can do that. Seems like every day I learn something about this site that is far superior to WF.

There is definitely some non-obvious stuff on wargear, that you kind of figure out once you've been here long enough.  My favorite improvement from WF to WG is the ability of DEV games.  Having to get everyone to vote to terminate a game @ WF just because there is a missing border, etc. was ridiculously painful and I can't believe how much better WG is for designers.

So much better, with the map I made there were several border issues that I was able to fix live in game as opposed to the 10 different versions I had to make of the same game on WF.

M57 wrote:

I've switched to the dark side (Mac) so I don't use paint.net anymore.  Does anyone know if it has a posturize feature?  That would be important.

Didn't see anyone answer so, yes, Paint.net does have posturize.