Map designing contest

[danstudentvcc]

Hello Pyros. Hope you read my other message about how I was not posting about you me and viking2 at SZO; just about being confused.

Glad you mentioned topographic maps. I had been working on my Operational Theatres Map of Sicily here at the library. It is from the topographic maps that I am making the SPOpT maps. I am using the editors for WinMBT and SPWAW from Chlanda and Ectizen to make the maps correct by distance [in kilometers] and by elevation [sea-level to, in the 1000's of metres]. By making small adjustments I am able to change the road grades and to introduce line of sight obstructions that are below level 1 elevation changes.

I have also obtained some photos of the various regions of Sicily for the coming Operational Theatres battles.
We begin play much like the Coalition armies of today do. A series of aerial bombardments by B-17's and other allied air to soften up suspected concentrations of Axis units. Followed by an amphibious landing against Italian Coastal units. hehhehehehehehehe...[We hope the guns are pointed in the right direction or is that their upstretched hands/arms as opposed to rifle arms!!].
The aliases control everything from: choosing how to spend their command unit's points; what force compositions to use; they even assign their own air/naval/arty bombardments and have special forces to run recon or assassination attempts on Axis Generals.

Play will move from one SP map to the other [by the hour in real time]. During daylight hours if you are brave you can be like Patton 'Reconnoiteuring by force' deep into Sicily. Or not. There will be civilians as well, so the Allies have to be careful not to kill too many since they will be under both flags.

It should be fun and within game limits the maps will be close to the actual thing.

Gus

[Pyros]

danstudentvcc said:

It should be fun and within game limits the maps will be close to the actual thing.

Gus

Hi Gus,
The trick with the conversion of real topographic maps into SP maps might be the method of assigning/convert relative heights to the map.
As you know a height of 1, 2, ...12 is a relative height.
So the issue is to adapt this scale using absolute topographic heights.
For example the height of 0 should be the minimum height in the topographic map, but still you should determine the step of elevation according to the real landscape.

Taking as point of reference that a hex represents 50 meters, what should the step of 1 height represent on a SP map?
IMO, this is relative and may change according to the absolute heights of the real topographic map (for example in a plain map the step represents less elevation and in a mountain map the step should represent more elevation; not from a gaming/coding point of view but from an artistic/map appearance point of view.

cheers,
Pyros