it looks pretty solid now imo. but ive never been overseas, so maybe others will critique there. youve included the pugent sound, i like it. this should be the official 'Risk' map-
it's looking a lot better...but i hate to burst your bubble - africa is as large as (if not bigger) than asia. your americas are looking real good though, as well as your australia
it's looking a lot better...but i hate to burst your bubble - africa is as large as (if not bigger) than asia. your americas are looking real good though, as well as your australia
Not to burst your bubble, Mokse...
...Africa IS large, but not nearly as large as Asia, your mom, or my little friend.
I screenshotted the Google Maps image I've been using. Africa is a little to the right, but it's not big. Infact, my Asia looks to be MUCH bigger than it should be, and in comparison would actually make Africa even LARGER than you think it is now. I love you Moxse, I'm doin' muh best, and me shrinking africa doesn't seem like a viable fix to make the world more realistic. ;)
I would like to make mention that my own Country seems to be the worst one of them all. XD
hah...didn't want to sound like a jackass, but i guess i came off as one...meh bad...
but anyway, maybe it's just the way asia kind of slopes southwest-northeast if you get what i'm saying. kind of throws my perspective off...maybe it's not the fact that africa is too small...just asia's too big - as well as the americas.
my advice (not that you have to take it or anything) would be to raise europe a little bit north, and have africa fill in the voided space. and perhaps lop off a little bit of the top of russia and bring the eastern part down south a bit.
like i said, you don't have to take my advice, just trying to contribute to a pretty ambitious project.
Edit: Just added this photo to put the continents into perspective a bit - sized the screenshot up a bit in paint but everything's scaled the same...hope you see where i was coming from
Lol, it was kind humor Mokse. I didn't take it offensively one bit, and I only took that screenshot of the map I've been using to prove you wrong I guess?
At the same time, me putting those two images that close to eachother kinda opened my eyes a lot. You might say "Damn, That's a sweet Earth!" But... not for this one. :P I'mma do some heavy modifications to it now, hopefully it works out for the best. Also... I could use help with my overall goal... I don't think it's possible... but I'll do the best I can.
i liked the humor about his mom. it made me chuckle. we should joke like this more often and weed out the cry babies so the rest of us can learn to make better maps, and laugh in the process. that was the first joke about someones mom on this site i believe. a true 'sc2mapster' landmark. you sir, are one of the leading pioneers of making this place humor friendly. (and not that talking about pokemon, while sneaking in your 'lulz' type.... i want crude humor!!! YOU HEAR ME??? CRUDE!!! HUMOR!!!!! :)
oh yeah, the map is coming along better n better!
edit; im not trying to be a jerk or start anything. i dont look to anger anyone, i just enjoy sarcasm-
Well the earth is not flat. It's a sphere so converting from a curve surface into a flat rectangle will result in skewed area (most modern map take this into consideration so there are variation of map with different method of converting. So w/e, just look like the earth is kind of good for me
seems to be a pretty big difference in area to me, but the map creator is entitled to whatever version he prefers. personally, i just feel like africa shouldn't look like a midget compared to eurasia because contemporary maps seem to show africa being at least as big as russia and china.
but enough about this africa nonsense. let the mapmaker recieve some critiquing for his excellent project.
Everything you need to know about map-projection. I'm going to go with a more realistic landmass, which makes Asia larger than Africa. But if you look at some of the most commonly accepted projections which leave all of your grid squares equally sized, it forces both anything below or above the equator to look compressed due to the curving of the planet. Unfortunately, I think this takes away from gameplay and realism, since our players will never actually be looking at the entire planet at once in a Google-Earth manner. They'll always be fairly zoomed in, with this in mind, if I make all the landmasses proportionate without taking into consideration the curvature of the Earth, I can make for a very real world to play on no matter how zoomed in the player is.
I have readjusted sea level to be exactly 0.0, and the base height of the terrain to be 1.0. This no longer causes bleed through from the oceans and leaves for better edging and detail. I have readjusted all of the continents once more to make room for the entire landmass of antarctica. Detail has been lost in the upper continents due to the change, but everything still looks absolutely excellent.
If any Risk or Diplo maps are to be created from this, I recommend reducing unit size to 20% or less. It makes for an ultra-realistic world and a great map to play on. I will continue to improve the terrain with some mountain sculpting and hopefully I can find some geographic maps to know where all the true deserts and jungles are.
Until then, please check over the changes and critique as necessary. I used regions to better measure distances between quadrants. They are still visible in the SS.
it looks really good. antarctica looks freaking huge. its going to either be an extyrememly pivotal land mass (the new asia) or be a barren and barely used clump of landmass. i think it would play better if atarctica were 1/2 the height it currently is. but it does look pretty darn good overall!
what if you used a picture from a map (google map, britanica, w/e), imported it as a decal then stretched it to the 256x256 to 'tattoo' the ground like that one guys tutorial. it would be like tracing to raise the terrain. just a thought....
edit: even better, heres an app some1 made using a heightmap it creates the file that you can then open in sc2 editor and use. so a 'perfect' map is easily done this way as well;
So... have I been doing a lot of unnecessary work? It sounds like there are half a billion maps that have... literally been traced, therefore being far superior to my etch-a-sketch artwork.
Eh... even if I wasted a lot of time, atleast I'm working my way to being a fairly pro terrain artist.
I just want to say that you are probably putting more effort into making this map realistic than many game makers would such as the makers of risk.
Don't get to down if you can't get the map perfect. As someone said; the fact the earth is a curve makes it nearly impossible to get a accurate representation of 2d flat.
Most 2d maps actually end up squeezing and scrunching in asia while the southern parts of the world end up appearing larger then they may actually be. Its a weird effect that has to deal with the fact that the source is a curve.
When people say that their particular area is much larger than what you have, keep in mind that not all maps are built alike. Their map may have the country or area has being shown bigger, but other maps may not. Also when you change the map from its source image you are using(google maps), it may end up messing it up since you are using someone else s source map to change your map.
Its a complicated process for perfection, if not impossible. Don't strain yourself for perfection.
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it looks pretty solid now imo. but ive never been overseas, so maybe others will critique there. youve included the pugent sound, i like it. this should be the official 'Risk' map-
it's looking a lot better...but i hate to burst your bubble - africa is as large as (if not bigger) than asia. your americas are looking real good though, as well as your australia
Not to burst your bubble, Mokse... ...Africa IS large, but not nearly as large as Asia, your mom, or my little friend.
I screenshotted the Google Maps image I've been using. Africa is a little to the right, but it's not big. Infact, my Asia looks to be MUCH bigger than it should be, and in comparison would actually make Africa even LARGER than you think it is now. I love you Moxse, I'm doin' muh best, and me shrinking africa doesn't seem like a viable fix to make the world more realistic. ;)
I would like to make mention that my own Country seems to be the worst one of them all. XD
hah...didn't want to sound like a jackass, but i guess i came off as one...meh bad...
but anyway, maybe it's just the way asia kind of slopes southwest-northeast if you get what i'm saying. kind of throws my perspective off...maybe it's not the fact that africa is too small...just asia's too big - as well as the americas.
my advice (not that you have to take it or anything) would be to raise europe a little bit north, and have africa fill in the voided space. and perhaps lop off a little bit of the top of russia and bring the eastern part down south a bit.
like i said, you don't have to take my advice, just trying to contribute to a pretty ambitious project.
Edit: Just added this photo to put the continents into perspective a bit - sized the screenshot up a bit in paint but everything's scaled the same...hope you see where i was coming from
Lol, it was kind humor Mokse. I didn't take it offensively one bit, and I only took that screenshot of the map I've been using to prove you wrong I guess?
At the same time, me putting those two images that close to eachother kinda opened my eyes a lot. You might say "Damn, That's a sweet Earth!" But... not for this one. :P I'mma do some heavy modifications to it now, hopefully it works out for the best. Also... I could use help with my overall goal... I don't think it's possible... but I'll do the best I can.
i liked the humor about his mom. it made me chuckle. we should joke like this more often and weed out the cry babies so the rest of us can learn to make better maps, and laugh in the process. that was the first joke about someones mom on this site i believe. a true 'sc2mapster' landmark. you sir, are one of the leading pioneers of making this place humor friendly. (and not that talking about pokemon, while sneaking in your 'lulz' type.... i want crude humor!!! YOU HEAR ME??? CRUDE!!! HUMOR!!!!! :)
oh yeah, the map is coming along better n better!
edit; im not trying to be a jerk or start anything. i dont look to anger anyone, i just enjoy sarcasm-
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/World_map (topical maps to)
http://maps.google.com/ <(no brainer)
heres some invaluable sources for anyone who needs em.
those wikimedia maps show africa to be bigger than asia........................................
yet google seems to say otherwise....
@Mokse: Go
Well the earth is not flat. It's a sphere so converting from a curve surface into a flat rectangle will result in skewed area (most modern map take this into consideration so there are variation of map with different method of converting. So w/e, just look like the earth is kind of good for me
@progammer: Go
Well this is news to me....shiiit...
seems to be a pretty big difference in area to me, but the map creator is entitled to whatever version he prefers. personally, i just feel like africa shouldn't look like a midget compared to eurasia because contemporary maps seem to show africa being at least as big as russia and china.
but enough about this africa nonsense. let the mapmaker recieve some critiquing for his excellent project.
Everything you need to know about map-projection. I'm going to go with a more realistic landmass, which makes Asia larger than Africa. But if you look at some of the most commonly accepted projections which leave all of your grid squares equally sized, it forces both anything below or above the equator to look compressed due to the curving of the planet. Unfortunately, I think this takes away from gameplay and realism, since our players will never actually be looking at the entire planet at once in a Google-Earth manner. They'll always be fairly zoomed in, with this in mind, if I make all the landmasses proportionate without taking into consideration the curvature of the Earth, I can make for a very real world to play on no matter how zoomed in the player is.
http://earth.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=148111 - Feel free to look at the concepts behind map-projection.
I also extended the boundaries of my map, didn't realize I had it rectangle shaped. That will make it a lot easier to scale everything properly.
Here is the Alpha v.3
I have readjusted sea level to be exactly 0.0, and the base height of the terrain to be 1.0. This no longer causes bleed through from the oceans and leaves for better edging and detail. I have readjusted all of the continents once more to make room for the entire landmass of antarctica. Detail has been lost in the upper continents due to the change, but everything still looks absolutely excellent.
If any Risk or Diplo maps are to be created from this, I recommend reducing unit size to 20% or less. It makes for an ultra-realistic world and a great map to play on. I will continue to improve the terrain with some mountain sculpting and hopefully I can find some geographic maps to know where all the true deserts and jungles are.
Until then, please check over the changes and critique as necessary. I used regions to better measure distances between quadrants. They are still visible in the SS.
it looks really good. antarctica looks freaking huge. its going to either be an extyrememly pivotal land mass (the new asia) or be a barren and barely used clump of landmass. i think it would play better if atarctica were 1/2 the height it currently is. but it does look pretty darn good overall!
Alpha 0.4
Mountains have been added from a height map I found online. Hopefully I can find a good set of textures to makes for a sexy planet!
Alpha .03 is still a separate save file in-case anyone would like the land without any sort of deformities.
how about the google satellite images with a little bit of post processing to pretteh dem up?
@XYZMuffin: Go
just had a thought....
what if you used a picture from a map (google map, britanica, w/e), imported it as a decal then stretched it to the 256x256 to 'tattoo' the ground like that one guys tutorial. it would be like tracing to raise the terrain. just a thought....
edit: even better, heres an app some1 made using a heightmap it creates the file that you can then open in sc2 editor and use. so a 'perfect' map is easily done this way as well;
nice work guy :) at first i thought: it is a map from a final fantasy game :) but yeah :) nice^^
@ezbeats
So... have I been doing a lot of unnecessary work? It sounds like there are half a billion maps that have... literally been traced, therefore being far superior to my etch-a-sketch artwork.
Eh... even if I wasted a lot of time, atleast I'm working my way to being a fairly pro terrain artist.
@Quartaroy: Go
I just want to say that you are probably putting more effort into making this map realistic than many game makers would such as the makers of risk.
Don't get to down if you can't get the map perfect. As someone said; the fact the earth is a curve makes it nearly impossible to get a accurate representation of 2d flat.
Most 2d maps actually end up squeezing and scrunching in asia while the southern parts of the world end up appearing larger then they may actually be. Its a weird effect that has to deal with the fact that the source is a curve.
When people say that their particular area is much larger than what you have, keep in mind that not all maps are built alike. Their map may have the country or area has being shown bigger, but other maps may not. Also when you change the map from its source image you are using(google maps), it may end up messing it up since you are using someone else s source map to change your map.
Its a complicated process for perfection, if not impossible. Don't strain yourself for perfection.