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Vincenzo_Beretta -> RE: New patch and manual is growing (1/20/2009 11:45:39 AM)
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ORIGINAL: geozero
The analogies of boardgaming to PC gaming crack me up...
...Which is a deep pity, since the scraps of wisdom that one could keep from board wargaming are, thus, being lost [:)]
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In a board game, if you are lucky enough to have people to play or play it at a gaming convention, it lays out FLAT on a table. It doesn't hang from a wall.
You get to see THE ENTIRE MAP not just a small area, and so you get a better sense and perspective of overall strategy and immersion into the gaming experience. You can, and will, walk around the table, and view the map from several angles.
True (but not always), and see also my perplexity at WitP: AE still being limited at 1024x768 rez. However, the point is not this one.
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In a PC game you don't see the entire map layed out in front of you... even if you zoom all the way out or have a jump map area, the "map" is limited by the size of your monitor. BIG DIFFERENCE than having several square feet of map area layed out on a table.
I agree how this is, traditionally, an added problem in grasping the overall strategic situation. However, this is true even with maps where North is upwards.
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IN a PC map there is no GOOD reason to lay the map out in any other way other than North being at the top. Name one GOOD reason? Right. There isn't one.
Stop right there.
Yes, there is one good reason: the layout of the frontline.
Have you ever wondered why, in military speak, you have a "right flank, a cernter, a left flank, a rear area" etc.?
People, when facing an adversary, do look towards him (or they). This is not only true in battle, but in activities ranging to many sposrts (Football, Soccer, Rugby, Tennis...) to Chess and other games. In such a situation, no one is bothered to know where "north" is: only were a certain enemy is in relation to his spatial perception: on the left, in the centre, on the right, in rearguard/reserve, or wreaking havoc to your own rearguard.
And, in a field of battle, if you are not in a melee or in an ambush-type situation, the two groups start facing each other. This is true across human military history, from the ancient battles to the modern frontlines.
So, it actually makes a lot of sense to orient a map so that all the main frontlines run from left to right. I played AH: Stalingrad to death always sitting in front of my adversary, with the map turned 90°, because it was this way that the Germans and the Russians faced each other on the Eastern Front.
I can accept if someone says "I'm unable to play with a rotated map because I'm unable to orient myself if North is not up". As I wrote, I do not find this a problem, as I can orient myself perfectly even with an upside-down map (like, for example, in an hypotetical invasion of South America by North America with me playing N. America). I can accept that people may see the thing differently. However, that "there is no reason to rotate a map" is, simply, not true.
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I'd like to hear the Dev's response as to why North is not up...
It is explicitly stated on page 9 of the just published revised manual:
"2.2 The Map
The game map is a 2D representation of Europe. (NB: the map was
rotated in order to show both the Western and Eastern fronts on a
horizontal plane, and areas outside the main combat zones have been
excluded)."
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