Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: trees trees
I mentioned in the Hawaii thread about placing the port symbols on the sea boundaries when possible. True if you play WiF a lot you finally get used to the rule about which ports connect to which zones, Batavia being one of the most confusing examples. But the above graphic of Liverpool is a good illustration of why the sea zone should be drawn to bi-sect the port symbol. Many new players would look at that and think Liverpool is connected to the Bay of Biscay zone but not directly to the Faeroes Gap zone. The computer would do the movement right of course, but it's not as clearly intuitive the way it is drawn now. This game is already going to frustrate a lot of newcomers and anything to make things clearer will help.

Maybe where the icons look too small to me is at higher zoom levels...maybe the icons could be a little bigger, porportionate to the total hex area, at zoom 8 than at zoom 1?

quote:

ORIGINAL: trees trees
ahhh. http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/micons/m8.gif it is sometimes hard to remember what you have declared finished and what is still being decided.

on the sea zone boundaries I can think of good programming reasons to make the boundaries follow the hex lines. following the Liverpool example, the boundary follows the hex-sides of the all-sea hex NW of Liverpool. on the paper map the boundary neatly bi-sects that hex, making Liverpool accessible to both sea zones at the very first glance. perhaps if this part of the map code is still to be worked on, the 'data' map could keep that hex in the Bay of Biscay zone, but the line could be drawn on the screen like on the paper map. in this case though with no weather boundary near-by it never makes any difference what sea zone that particular hex-dot is in.

note that as it is drawn now, although Liverpool is just barely a port on the Faeroes Gap due to the sliver of ocean to the NE, it also no longer appears to be an invadable coastal hex from the Faeroes zone. This is a change from the paper maps which would cut into one of my favorite Sea Lion tactics, once ashore in force in England, of taking Scapa Flow and then further Royal Navy bases, such as Liverpool, from behind by using the Marines and Paratroopers. Capturing ships is kinda fun.

it appears Plymouth coud benefit from a small extension of the zone boundary as well.

on paper, the boundaries only sometimes use the hex-sides. in data, I could see where all the special cases not using the hex-sides would create would be a lot more work.

quote:

ORIGINAL: trees trees
actually, that's where the dots come in to play. the boundary we are talking about is to the north of the hex-dot, so even from Liverpool it takes a lot more than 2 mp (iirc) for an aircraft to enter the 0 box of the Faerores Gap. airplanes fly to the first all sea hex-dot they can reach. as long as the lines are drawn carefully around the dots it works out pretty simply.

i thought you might have dropped some of the non hex-side lines so there was no question which sea zone a sea hex belonged too. but I guess you would always need a bit of data to identify which hexes are considered 'coastal' (i.e. legally invadable) to which zones anyway.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets



Several forum members were on my case a few months back, wanting more graphics in the coastal hexes to differentiate which ones could be invaded. Since placing a cursor over a hex gives you that information (along with terrain type, weather, etc.), it seemed overkill to me. I understand that it is a problem when playing over the board because there is no recourse other than digging out the rulebook or some facsimile thereof. But with the computer, it is available instantly by browsing with the cursor. Modifying the map terrain to communicate these subtle (but nonetheless important) hex distinctions is still unjustified to my mind.

quote:

ORIGINAL: wfzimmerman

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
Several forum members were on my case a few months back, wanting more graphics in the coastal hexes to differentiate which ones could be invaded. Since placing a cursor over a hex gives you that information (along with terrain type, weather, etc.), it seemed overkill to me. I understand that it is a problem when playing over the board because there is no recourse other than digging out the rulebook or some facsimile thereof. But with the computer, it is available instantly by browsing with the cursor. Modifying the map terrain to communicate these subtle (but nonetheless important) hex distinctions is still unjustified to my mind.

Browsing with the cursor is not as satisfactory a way of getting the big picture as simply looking at the screen once.

quote:

note that as it is drawn now, although Liverpool is just barely a port on the Faeroes Gap due to the sliver of ocean to the NE, it also no longer appears to be an invadable coastal hex from the Faeroes zone. This is a change from the paper maps

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For example, with a fighter based in Holyhead, does it take 1 or 2 movement points to reach Faroes Gap? I know it is 2, but the way it is drawn in WIF FE leaves that open to argument. Less confusion with the sea boundary running along the hexside.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

quote:

ORIGINAL: wfzimmerman

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
Several forum members were on my case a few months back, wanting more graphics in the coastal hexes to differentiate which ones could be invaded. Since placing a cursor over a hex gives you that information (along with terrain type, weather, etc.), it seemed overkill to me. I understand that it is a problem when playing over the board because there is no recourse other than digging out the rulebook or some facsimile thereof. But with the computer, it is available instantly by browsing with the cursor. Modifying the map terrain to communicate these subtle (but nonetheless important) hex distinctions is still unjustified to my mind.

Browsing with the cursor is not as satisfactory a way of getting the big picture as simply looking at the screen once.

Perhaps a toggle switch to show 'invadable' hexes?

quote:

ORIGINAL: wfzimmerman

Is there an "air coverable" view? i.e. show all hexes within reach of any plane currently on the map?

quote:

ORIGINAL: wodin

Liverpool should be juts North of the peninsula.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

quote:

ORIGINAL: wfzimmerman

Is there an "air coverable" view? i.e. show all hexes within reach of any plane currently on the map?

I hadn't thought about it.

quote:

ORIGINAL: trees trees

hmmm. new question: is Barrow now a port and coastal hex on the Bay of Biscay?

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ORIGINAL: Froonp

quote:

For example, with a fighter based in Holyhead, does it take 1 or 2 movement points to reach Faroes Gap? I know it is 2, but the way it is drawn in WIF FE leaves that open to argument. Less confusion with the sea boundary running along the hexside.

Steve you're wrong.
A plane must fly to the nearest hexdot that is in the Sea Area where he wants to perform a mission.
Here it needs 5 MP to reach the Faeroes Gap Sea Area.

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So, I would rather rely on communicating the invadable (adjacent to sea area) hexes some way other than relying on the subtle placement of port symbols or sea area boundary lines. Click on a toggle and - for a given sea area - all the adjacent coastal hexes are indicated/highlighted, or something. I prefer this to be a heavy handed solution, not a margnially visible line.

quote:

So, I would rather rely on communicating the invadable (adjacent to sea area) hexes some way other than relying on the subtle placement of port symbols or sea area boundary lines. Click on a toggle and - for a given sea area - all the adjacent coastal hexes are indicated/highlighted, or something. I prefer this to be a heavy handed solution, not a margnially visible line.

quote:

ORIGINAL: c92nichj
An example could be to highlight all invadable hexes with an Orange outline when a toggle is switched on. When moving the cursor over a searea the highlight would change to yellow for the hexes invadable from that sea area.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

quote:

ORIGINAL: c92nichj
An example could be to highlight all invadable hexes with an Orange outline when a toggle is switched on. When moving the cursor over a searea the highlight would change to yellow for the hexes invadable from that sea area.

I like it.

quote:

ORIGINAL: c92nichj

quote:

So, I would rather rely on communicating the invadable (adjacent to sea area) hexes some way other than relying on the subtle placement of port symbols or sea area boundary lines. Click on a toggle and - for a given sea area - all the adjacent coastal hexes are indicated/highlighted, or something. I prefer this to be a heavy handed solution, not a margnially visible line.

I think this should be a good solution, making it obvious how you can invade.
An example could be to highlight all invadable hexes with an Orange outline when a toggle is switched on. When moving the cursor over a searea the highlight would change to yellow for the hexes invadable from that sea area.

quote:

ORIGINAL: c92nichj

quote:

So, I would rather rely on communicating the invadable (adjacent to sea area) hexes some way other than relying on the subtle placement of port symbols or sea area boundary lines. Click on a toggle and - for a given sea area - all the adjacent coastal hexes are indicated/highlighted, or something. I prefer this to be a heavy handed solution, not a margnially visible line.

I think this should be a good solution, making it obvious how you can invade.
An example could be to highlight all invadable hexes with an Orange outline when a toggle is switched on. When moving the cursor over a searea the highlight would change to yellow for the hexes invadable from that sea area.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Incy
More toggles and functions to learn means the game will take longer to learn, and longer to program.

There is an elegant solution that takes almost nothing to implement.
invadable hexides = blue
non-invadable hexides = black

blue and black hexides are actually implmentd allready, but the algorithm for drawing hexes blue or black need to change slightly for the hexides to indicate invadability. Incidentally, this will also make the game prettier, right now some blue hexides appear a bit inland, which is not pretty.
Incy

quote:

ORIGINAL: GJK
Apologies in advance if this has been asked before, and I'm sure that it has, but will the maps/units be hard-coded into the .exe of the program or will they be accessible graphic files that could be modified? And the screenshots of what I've seen so far look great, I just get a kick out of map making and I'm sure that at some point I'd get an itch to see what I would come up with.