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Phoenix100 -> RE: Maps: Art versus Functionality (9/9/2014 8:14:47 PM)
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The Plodder's maps are super-clear as far as contours go, I think. Superb achievement. You can look at them and see the heights involved without the need to do anything else at all (like hover over a hex to get the elevation, or switch on the height layers numbers). I assume that style is just what zakblood needs, since you can't provide any more useful contours in a game which only provides such gross gradations as effects for the engine to use (there's a 500m hex and it has one height within the hex, basically, which is not how it is in real life, clearly). But I personally use Wiliam's and prefer them because they look more like real maps and less like a board game, and in real life with real maps it's not always obvious how the contours lie. The basic reason Williams look better and are more immersive (for me, and imho) is the same reason they are less clear - they try to mitigate the game-board look provided by a hex grid, by blurring the hex grid. The Plodder has decided it's a hex game and you can't get past this, so there they are and he has provided a stirling way of rendering height clear. Which you use depends how much you hate hexes, I suspect. And I guess if you're nostalgic about hex based board games you might actually want to take a trip down memory lane and play on the vanilla maps too.
For me, for the future, developments in the maps would mean a smaller scale hex grid, perhaps, which would then allow more natural, normal-looking, real-life-accurate maps to be drawn and used. Difficult to do this, I think if the basic unit is 500m.
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