Discussion on graphic tiles and unit size

[japinard]

I came across an article in CGW where the author was criticizing Pox Nora, and realized he had written something I felt also kind of applied to SC2... and why some people liked SC1's graphics better than SC2.

Here's the comment Bruce Geryk makes towards the PoxNora designers:

Guy's, when you design a map, don't make the pieces as big as the spaces. That's Elementary Rule 1 in board-game design, and since this plays out like a board game... et al

So to this end, I think I might like to try and make many of the units and resources smaller. So my questions are:

1. Is it possible? The slow way would be to copy unit (ex. paratrooper), re-size it smaller, post it in the proper place in the blank grid provided by Paintman, repeat a thousand times...

2. Is there a faster way to do that? Doing it one by one is going to take a long time.

3. Is this a good idea? Does anyone else feel the units are too big for the squares they're occupying, hence making the map feel too cramped?

4. A better solution would be to have larger map squares. That way the units wouldn't lose detail through the resizing step. But I'm guessing this could only be done through a lot of extra programming by Hubert?

5. Has someone already done this mod and I somehow missed it?

Thanks for the feedback!

[ January 04, 2007, 10:18 PM: Message edited by: japinard ]

[ChrisND]

Personally I think the unit-to-map ratio is just right.

If you wish to reduce the bitmap sizes en-masse, by the exact same % for each sprite, I would suggest doing a "select-all" and then drag the diagonal corner to reduce the size. It'll be trial and error getting the size you want, and of course you will have to re-center and re-place them, which would be easy, but time consuming, with the grid.

[japinard]

Originally posted by Normal Dude:

Personally I think the unit-to-map ratio is just right.

If you wish to reduce the bitmap sizes en-masse, by the exact same % for each sprite, I would suggest doing a "select-all" and then drag the diagonal corner to reduce the size. It'll be trial and error getting the size you want, and of course you will have to re-center and re-place them, which would be easy, but time consuming, with the grid.

Oh yea... Don't know why I didn't think of doing it that way. I don['t know why, but I feel like if the units/resources (like mountains) were a bit smaller like in SC1 it'd look a bit better. But then again, in another tbs game series I loved (Age of Wonders)... once again I preferred the smaller units and smaller resources of the original vs. the fuller/tighter units of the latter series.