WildCatNL
Posts: 513
Joined: 3/27/2009
From: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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quote:
ORIGINAL: mb4329
In terms of wish list having an editor in Southern Storm that can generate the prettier maps woth out shipping them to you guys would be great. I tend to take an iterative approach to design and it would make it easier to get a sense of where things stand.
I'm also favoring the iterative approach in map design and recognize the value of early feedback.
The Southern Storm map editor will support richer maps (more detail on the hex sides) and enable definition of your own terrain types. As in Red Storm, it will remain focused on "functionality", not "art": creating a good .fp10 data file so the game understands the terrain.
It won't lock you (or our us) into a specific art style, but, alas, also do little to help you create pretty maps.
quote:
Also, I downloaded some shapefiles from a source in Germany, was a long time ago but I think it was their USGS equivalent. The files have most of the roads, urban areas, water features, and vegetation plus associated meta data and attributes. If the next map maker has the ability to import the data from things like shapefiles it would be great. Alternately, the ability to use the map maker to read a series of independent files (say png like today, but multiple versus one) covering things like the road network, topography, urban areas and read them into the fp9 format would work great too.
I hear you when you ask for an easy way to create maps from real world map data. However, I don't see a way of supporting that without the map editor becoming a huge time sink for a small team, taking away time from creating an even better Cold War war game.
Also keep in mind that even without an "easy map creation" ability, Red Storm has received its share of good community created maps.
I am familiar with OSM vector/shape data: Geofabrik.de indeed has most of Germany (and also most of the world) in OpenStreetMap (OSM) vector format.
I deliberately did not describe in the "Map Making with QGis" manual how to import and use this OSM vector data in QGis to help with creating maps. The reason for leaving it out is mainly that the OSM vector data is a lot less helpful than you'd think when creating a map. (I do use it in QGis for picking areas).
First, the data does not line up with hex sides, and, second, the data is incomplete, even in Germany (which tends to be pretty accurate in recording data and favors open standards). I just started creating a map in the CENTAG sector where 40% of the forests are absent in the OSM data for this map area. Incompleteness will be worse for other countries, except perhaps, the USA.
Third, the mapping of real world terrain features to OSM info varies from area to area, and from country to country (despite OSM being a standard).
Fourth, the 500m scale, where we sometimes have to "blow up" a 30m river to a 500m hex and shift around its surroundings, requires a lot of abstraction and a lot of intelligence in an automatic interpretation of the OSM data.
If this were Bohemia Interactive's Arma series with a 1:1 scale, OSM data would be a lot easier to use. Our Steve Overton was also involved in Panzer Command: Ostfront, where use of real world map data worked well (IMO mostly due to the <50m scale, and also due to the relative bareness of the Ostfront terrain).
This has become a long answer since what you ask for does make sense. But it makes more sense for us to focus our limited man power on creating the "game" side of our war game, and leave map definition and map art to other tools (QGis, Photoshop / GIMP).
That said, if you like to get early feedback / rough renders, of a map that you are working on, don't hesitate to contact me, and I'll try to help.
William
_____________________________
William
On Target Simulations LLC
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