Think about it - Maps & Design

[nik mond]

I love maps and I love travel. I love to see scenarios where you really buy the scenery.

I am not the world greatest expert on land use, or the pre-1940's but I thought I would mention that if you desire to make great scenary you have to move your mind to a critical level.

Ali-Baba has done a really nice map - Acropolis- and it has some truly inspired touches - the soccer pitch, the worked out quarry used as an ampitheatre. That is beautiful stuff.

We have exchanged e-mails on a couple of points which are not big but are valid for discussion by my critical eye motto. The rail line has a very nice bridge but being built 100-200 metres inland would have made more sense as no bridge would be required. To the railbuilders the bridge is an expensive option to build and maintain. Its not a biggy and for most people perhaps would go unnoticed. But Ali-Baba wanted a bridge : ) And I say why not - a designer should be free to do what they want.

However if you are going to try for realism as your ultimate goal then looking at each item and say does this make sense is a good practice.

I know you can have multi-storey buildings, up to 8 levels. Think carefully as to how common were tall buildings pre-1940. Pictures of bombed cities do show taller buildings but 8 stories would be extremely rare outside a major city centre. Four stories would be fine for most tall buildings in a biggish town. Why do you get taller buildings in towns? Because land is expensive, where there is lots of land people would build a town outwards at lower level as it is cheaper.

Another thought harking back to CM*1 days is that try to think of scale - I remember an old map where apparently the natives felt substantial bridges a 100 metres apart was a likely thing to happen in the midst of the countryside over a smallish river. It may have been done for play balance but it was also jarringly unlikely.

Anyway that is my little piece on realistic terrain. If you are curious if your finalised map rouses any thoughts in me feel free to contact me through clicking on my name and sending a message for my e-mail address.

Of course you have an absolute right to design what you want, and you may know physical features I do not, so I am not at all dogmatic as to what is right and wrong. I only suggest : )

Guess we should start the map briefing with " on a battlefield somewhere in fantasia." Some maps are designed as a scrimage field where footballs are traded for bullets. When such is implied I think its pretty obvious. Add to that the artistic license of the creator. There are no bad maps, just maps that are liked or not liked.

[RockinHarry]

CTRL+SHIFT+click (I think ... or it be ALT+SHIFT+click?) changes all floors of a building to the same door/window configuration. That way, at least, you only have to scroll through the sequence once for each wall of multi-story buildings.

Thanks, another good time saver. Figured it´s "ALT + CTRL + CLICK", to unify whole side window/wall configurations, for multistory modular buildings. This way, building city blocks with all adjoining houses and inner walls beeing correct (blank wall, no windows & doors), goes way faster.

[RockinHarry]

Cherbourg?

Yep, another good option. So far I have most research materials aqquired about Brest and Aachen, but at last it doesn´t matter much, as it´s out question to build a multi square km city map and fight through it with Btl size units. The ruined cities all look almost the same, so I´ll likely focus on a more generic embattled city part, with rather Cpy sized forces, with a loose tie to the Brest or Aachen events. We´ll see.

[JonS]

ALT + CTRL + CLICK

There you go!

Sorry for being vague. I didn't have access to the editor at the time, and tend to rely on muscle memory for stuff like that, and so don't really consciously know what I'm pressing - it's more a case of 'two of those buttons over there and a click'

Glad you found it

Jon

EDIT: FWIW, IIRC each of the various combinations of S+A+click, S+C+click, C+A+click, & S+A+C+click - in addition to S+click, A+click, & C+click - do something different, and useful, when messing about with buildings

[dieseltaylor]

Jon and Rockin - for longer visablity do you want use the WIKI for modding smart tips?

It is virgin area at the moment : )

[dieseltaylor]

Guess we should start the map briefing with " on a battlefield somewhere in fantasia." Some maps are designed as a scrimage field where footballs are traded for bullets. When such is implied I think its pretty obvious. Add to that the artistic license of the creator. There are no bad maps, just maps that are liked or not liked.

Rik Mond

I think anyone who has played the CM series for any length of time will know there are "bad" maps - or rather bad designers, or good designers having an off day.

Realistic scenery is only part of the mix. As you say there can be fantasy maps also. However bad maps can be realistically excellent or imaginary excellent and that comes in the next stage of design.

If it is designed as a scenario arranging for reinforcement hexes to be in line of sight of existing or probable enemy units is a definite bad map.

If it is simply a map then loading all the good terrain one side of a river and throwing in a nice flat open flood plain the other could be highly realistic but whether for gaming purposes it is a good map would be moot.

In any event designers can do want they want but there have been some poor maps and scenarios made. I have played many hundreds of games and the vast majority on medium or larger maps and in all honesty that is relatively rare. If I look at WEBoB club I think I am one of the top three players in total games played and I only joined that when I was slowing down in 2004. Prior to that my record was eleven CMBB PBEMs at a time.

I am not saying this because me playing lots of maps/scenarios makes my view better it is simply that if we do not know each others experience levels of CM we could be talking past each other. You may be highly familiar with CMSF and its maps of which I know nothing.

[nik mond]

Rik Mond

I think anyone who has played the CM series for any length of time will know there are "bad" maps - or rather bad designers, or good designers having an off day.

Realistic scenery is only part of the mix. As you say there can be fantasy maps also. However bad maps can be realistically excellent or imaginary excellent and that comes in the next stage of design.

If it is designed as a scenario arranging for reinforcement hexes to be in line of sight of existing or probable enemy units is a definite bad map.

If it is simply a map then loading all the good terrain one side of a river and throwing in a nice flat open flood plain the other could be highly realistic but whether for gaming purposes it is a good map would be moot.

In any event designers can do want they want but there have been some poor maps and scenarios made. I have played many hundreds of games and the vast majority on medium or larger maps and in all honesty that is relatively rare. If I look at WEBoB club I think I am one of the top three players in total games played and I only joined that when I was slowing down in 2004. Prior to that my record was eleven CMBB PBEMs at a time.

I am not saying this because me playing lots of maps/scenarios makes my view better it is simply that if we do not know each others experience levels of CM we could be talking past each other. You may be highly familiar with CMSF and its maps of which I know nothing.

If you are capable of thinking outside of the box as well then fine. There could be some daring concepts that should also be given a chance. The most fun I have had so far on a 4X4km map playing with one leg platoon+FOOs,MGs and a supply truck against an entire battallion (-) for a two hour single player scenario. This probably would not be your cup of tea and I'm thinking based on your comments you would class this as a bad map (too large), and a bad scenario (asymetrical).

But I find it a blast. The enemy battallion, all leg, are split into various smaller groups. Some with many way points, pause points, patrolling around the 4X4 KM map. Others with attack unit objectives. The only way to win is to send out sections to ambush the smaller units. Over time they are whittled away. At synchronized times multiple groups will attack your base camp, the only land objective. Where hopefully you have a rear gaurd. Thats where you have to call in your unlimited air support and Artie. It gets interesting when one of your patrols bump into an enemy patrol and you either reinforce or dee dee mow out of there. I am still adjusting the AI because it takes 2 hours to play test and synchronize but everything is starting to mesh.

[womble]

If you are capable of thinking outside of the box as well then fine. There could be some daring concepts that should also be given a chance. The most fun I have had so far on a 4X4km map playing with one leg platoon+FOOs,MGs and a supply truck against an entire battallion (-) for a two hour single player scenario. This probably would not be your cup of tea and I'm thinking based on your comments you would class this as a bad map (too large), and a bad scenario (asymetrical).

I think you're putting words in most peoples' mouths if you assume there's general despite for asymmetry or lots of space to play in. However, both those things make it potentially more difficult to achieve a fun game.

But I find it a blast. The enemy battallion, all leg, are split into various smaller groups. Some with many way points, pause points, patrolling around the 4X4 KM map. Others with attack unit objectives. The only way to win is to send out sections to ambush the smaller units. Over time they are whittled away. At synchronized times multiple groups will attack your base camp, the only land objective. Where hopefully you have a rear gaurd. Thats where you have to call in your unlimited air support and Artie. It gets interesting when one of your patrols bump into an enemy patrol and you either reinforce or dee dee mow out of there. I am still adjusting the AI because it takes 2 hours to play test and synchronize but everything is starting to mesh.

I suspect you only find it amusing because you know where the enemy are going to be on their patrol paths. Sending out ambush parties from your defensive position is all well and good when you have the time to nail down patrol routes and timings but how many times can you actually do that, blind in the space of 2 hours, when so heavily outnumbered (9:1 or thereabouts?) and when they have so much space to be wandering about in?

DO upload it to the repository when it's ready though; it sounds to me like it might be the kernel for something.

[dieseltaylor]

I always like large maps and bigger as it means terrain - or the use of terrain becomes important. Size is especially important where the bizarre glass wall around the battlefield means units bounce back into play even when routing or minimal intelligence would have them flee.

As for asymmetrical battles I am in favour of those very strongly. It is no accident then the Rumblings of War tournament was/is so popular is because it allowed people to play true FoW with potentially asymmetric battles. It is something I have been banging on at WeBoB for years. : )

Cranky has recently turned out some beautiful CMAK asymmetric scenarios recently. I think there is very definitely a big curve in exploring what is possible /not possible with a game system. That does mean fighting effects and terrain effects. It was noticeable in CMAK that some designers did beautiful maps but were poor on forces for the scenario.

And early senarios can be iffy if BF actually change the capabilities of the actual weapons. Richie who did the landmark Tiger Valley had a scenario on the CD of CMAk which sucked mightily, IMO, because it was historically based and BF decided the US 37mm was infinitely superior in the game than it was in RL. Scenario made stupid.

So early scenario design can be tricky! : )

[RockinHarry]

Jon and Rockin - for longer visablity do you want use the WIKI for modding smart tips?

It is virgin area at the moment : )

..if things have settled after the patch 1.01 release, will do some.

[Tom1949]

Greetings

I have been reading the post and want to bring this source of aerial recon photo of France & other countries. The photos can be compared with Google earth, so map makers can now know without doubt what the combat sector looked like during June 1944. I think this will help all of us to understand the complex and varied relief.

Tom1949

http://aerial.rcahms.gov.uk/

Worldwide Photography (TARA)

NCAP holds millions of aerial reconnaissance photographs of locations throughout the world declassified by the UK Ministry of Defence. The archives range from Second World War Allied and German Luftwaffe reconnaissance photographs to Cold War imagery.*

[sburke]

Was playing around with the Bois de Baugin scenario the other day and quite by accident noticed the structure in the villa actually has supplies inside. Jon Sowden you are one crazy guy for detail. I had played a full battle on the map and though I really like it never appreciated the full extent of the detail that went into it. My hats off to you.

[RockinHarry]

Yes, that´s what I figured lately. Thanks for the tip re not needing any units onmap for the cam position stick and work. Seems the 3D map preview is as good as useless.

Ok, the 3D map preview is NOT useless, if there´s already lots of units deployed, particularly in buildings. With units in buildings, making them transparent, editing wall/window configurations is hard to almost impossible.