Some of the names are a bit off. shrug
Should be: French Madagascar, Solomon (no a) Islands, Anglo-Egypt Sudan, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Italian Africa, French Equa(a not i)torial Africa, Egypt, Afghanistan (stst), Gibraltar (a not e). Not sure how nit-picky you wanted…Oh, and you left out a name for Switzerland! Haven’t noticed any problems with sea zones, yet.
Nice, good eye man. Yeah I just put the names in earlier this afternoon, and was working mainly from memory when I punched them out, so spelling mistakes or a missed space would not surprise me. I will correct the ones you mentioned in the next draft.
I already reworked the baseline to include that Sahara fix. Hopefully this will feel a little better.
Thanks again for the input. :)
Don’t worry dude, I’m definitely down to nit-pick :)
How’s this one feel?
I should also mention that the colors and text will look a little nicer in the next version. I just went with Arial and web colors because it was quick and easy to read. At this point I’m more interested in just getting down the correct info, and double checking that all the connections correspond. Unit graphics will come next, probably about 50x50 pixels relative the current size of the map, maybe a little/larger or smaller depending. I think the zones should be large enough to handle this with minimal spill over. I also tried to preserve the detail when possible by grouping islands with each other, to an associated landmass (Iceland to UK, Sicily and Sardinia to Italy etc). I think it should do pretty well.
Let me know if other things need work too. I don’t have time to redraft it again tonight but I’ll polish it up some more tomorrow.
PS. I didn’t know Larry had his own development website. Thanks for the link man. I’ll have swing by there sometime and say hello. I’d love to work on something like this for real. I’ve been doing it my free time for a while now, (making maps and tinkering with A&A scenerios) but it would be a lot of fun to really step it up and take the board design to the next level. I helped to make those tripleA games, Pact of Steel and The Great War and did some other related work (on BW 1942 and some others), not sure if anyone has had a chance to play them, but that’s how I killed most of my time these past few years. Good times
I think I could maybe make a meaningful contribution to the map design if given a shot.
Always loved A&A, even going back to the elementary school days. :)
edit: I sent an email to the admin for that website. Guess I’ll just have to wait and see if anyone digs the idea.
Thanks for the heads up though man
Black Elk,
Great map. I had put up my AA50PlayerAid map a few days ago, under the AA50 fact sheet thread. I love what you have done with the projections and proportions. It shows in your territory shapes. This was my first map using a paint program and attempting to draw what I was seeing in those pictures. Again very nice map. 1942 Setup.
Thanks man
I was just informed of some additional spelling errors, so I will revisit the map key again tomorrow. Will add the sea zones in too, just for reference.
If you want I can post the materials I used to make these things, or I can email them to you if you like. I have a bunch of flag markers and such, for different nations that I made around the same time as the map. Just let me know if you want to check it out. :)
Jasonwclark AT gmail.com
where AT=@
Some of the names are a bit off. shrug
Should be: Afghanistan (stst)
Yup, that’s the correct spelling. But it is spelled ‘Afganistan’ on the board. Check it http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/362552?size=original
edit: I sent an email to the admin for that website. Guess I’ll just have to wait and see if anyone digs the idea.
Thanks for the heads up though man
The admin is just a guy Larry hired to run the website for him. Just go ahead and post in the “Talk to Larry” forum (the one I linked you to). Larry reads everything people post there, and responds to quite a bit of it. I’m not saying you’ll necessarily get results, but you’ll definitely get his attention.
Black Elk
Great Map, but excuse me
Hungary do not border with Ukraine
Dante Italia Pisa
Yup, that’s the correct spelling. But it is spelled ‘Afganistan’ on the board. Check it http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/362552?size=original
Yup, you’re right, making incorrect corrections is fun : /.
Also, the Egypt territory is just ‘Egypt’, no Anglo.
dante’s right about Czech Hungary not bordering Ukraine, and I think that the other Ukraine territory is ‘Eastern Ukraine’ not ‘Northern Ukraine’. Whatever it is it should border the Russia territory instead of being cut off by Belorussia.
Thanks Dante and 03321, I will correct those in the next one.
I have to say though, I wish a little more attention was paid to the Eastern Europe section of the board. Hungary Czechoslovakia is a comparatively small stretch of land, especially when viewed next to some of these other divisions. You can tell from the shape of the German space that it is meant to include Austria and the Sudetenland, which doesn’t leave room for much else. Poland is just huge, no matter you want look at it. Its definitely exaggerated.
I rather wish that that the Hungary Czechoslovakia space was a more general ‘Central Europe’ space, that included Bohemia and Austria. It would make more sense to me to have a detour space separating Germany from Italy, than the current solution of fuzzy borders along the Swiss Alps and the port of Trieste. Oh well
In any case I will redraw Poland this afternoon, so that the connections follow the board properly. :)
I will also redraft Eastern Ukraine, or whatever its supposed to be, when I do that. I think they should just call it the Don, or the Don river valley, or Kursk. I don’t know though, its hard to say. On my map the Ukraine is already drawn in its entirety and correctly, so to call the rest of it Eastern Ukraine or Northern Ukraine etc, is a little misleading. I hate to get rid of the accurate borders to replace them vague ones, but I think that’s what I might have to do in this area of the map. Belorussia is already pretty far out there, so I guess its not too big of a stretch.
Correcting Afghanistan to the misspelled name does seem a little ridiculous, but we can do that too. It’s gotta be a little embarrassing that it slipped through though, especially since Americans are much more likely to notice, now that we have so many troops on the ground over there. Maybe we should throw them a bone and just fix the error. Up to you guys if we want to include the ‘h’.
As for Larry’s website, I wasn’t able to register or post on those boards, so I just sent an email to the admin. Guess I’ll have to wait see if anything comes of it. Cool link though man, thanks for that.
edit: I will also fix the names in China to agree with the stuff posted in the other thread. It makes me happy to hear that the other Russian space is called ‘Ural’ instead of Omsk, as originally speculated. It makes much more sense this way. I might end up redrawing Novosibirsk in a few spots now. Thanks Krieghund :)
Unit graphics will come next, probably about 50x50 pixels relative the current size of the map, maybe a little/larger or smaller depending. I think the zones should be large enough to handle this with minimal spill over.
These maps really are an excellent cartographic projection. But this is the one thing I’m not sure about. The VC graphic I did is 35x36 and it looks kinda big in places. The actual gameboards have the territories hideously out of proportion. But there’s a reason for it. Territories will have up to 7 different units occupying the space. And that’s before any attacking units are added. ~ZP
p.s. Please don’t misspell Afghanistan to match Larry’s map. :-D
I’m sure what he was showing at GenCon was a one-off proof of the board. If a typo like that makes in into the production piece many heads should roll. ~ZP
These maps really are an excellent cartographic projection. But this is the one thing I’m not sure about. The VC graphic I did is 35x36 and it looks kinda big in places. The actual gameboards have the territories hideously out of proportion. But there’s a reason for it. Territories will have up to 7 different units occupying the space. And that’s before any attacking units are added. ~ZP
Which territories do you think are too small? Perhaps I can beef them up a bit, since this map is already departing from the original design concept in many areas. I could for example blow out Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and the Coastline of Northwestern Europe to fit more units. I could also tweak Mongolia north and shift lake Baikal, if you think the China spaces are going to be an issue. Let me know what you think, and I can retouch the baseline a bit later tonight.
If I was designing a real game board, I would likely expand some of the territories and sea zones to accommodate the much larger plastic units. For now I’m focusing mainly on tripleA, which I’m sure this map will be able to handle, but I do see what you mean. When it comes down to it though, on the game board, all you really need is for the Sea Zones to be large enough to accommodate all the naval units. They are by far the largest, probably even larger than they need to be, but if you can cover them, everything else is pretty simple. The priorities are a little different though depending on the format. On the game board you want big units with all the glorious details (playing army men basically), but on the computer you want a reasonably sized map that can be viewed at a glance, with the size of the units being less critical.
For the current map I’ve privileged the computer format, both because its my preferred method of play, and because I think its the real future of the franchise. I really do believe that a computer/console translation of A&A is the only way we’re ever going to attract a sizable number of young blood players. For the real deal in cardboard though, I would definitely explore some more abstractions, to ensure that all the units fit comfortably, for sure. :)
I also agree about the Afghans. Better to correct the mistake, even if it did make it through the first round of printing.
I’ll hit up your thread on the dev site… ~ZP
OK all how does this feel? I forgot to switch the Northern Ukraine to Eastern Ukraine, but extend it up to Russia. Also switched out the names in China and added some SZ numbers for reference.
I didn’t really tweak out the other territories yet, except to fix the situation with Poland, but I’ll try to see if I can squeeze some more space out of the smaller ones. I will correct the baseline tomorrow, if anyone has some suggestions.
Thanks again for helping me out all. I really appreciate it :)
Burma, Kwangtung, East Indies, Borneo, and New Guinae, I think, should be brown. Philippines should be green. A lot of grey territories in Russia should be red. I think there’s a few more as well.
The colors on the map right now reflect a 1942 set up. When I rework the baseline I’ll recolor everything for 41. Basically I was just lazy on the map key the other night and didn’t want to re-enter all the territory names onto a new 41 map.
Also, I just heard from Dave that Poland is off (the way it borders Hungary Czech). I couldn’t quite make it out from the screenshot, and all the political maps seemed to suggest that Eastern Poland would be the more appropriate choice. The board has Western Poland though, so I’ll fix it to expand the border lines in the appropriate directions. This is one of the rough models I was trying to follow in the original set up. The gameboard is rather different though
And here are some shots of the divisions according to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
Ok here’s the tweaked Baseline. I added some meat to Hungary and the Dutch coastline. Fixed the Poland issue, the Sahara, and the territory divisions in the Soviet east. I tried to catch any hanging pixels or breaks in the lines, but another day to double check it never hurts I guess. :)
Also I love the new Players Aid and BattleMaps for AA50. The tiny labels are awesome, nice work guys!
Those are going to be a huge help. If anyone else wants to use this projection when I’m finished for projects like that, feel free to have at it. Here’s a link to the AA50 players aid for those who haven’t seen it yet. Not done by me, though I’d love to get together with the madman behind all that glorious detailing work. :)
Will be back for more tomorrow. Take care all
good. a new picture was posted to help you confirm the sea zones and such at BGG
Black_Elk and Bluestroke:
You each have been awarded the Iron Cross with Oak leaves for your efforts. Its exactly the right type of leadership that somebody can spend all this time to carefully look up information and provide the community such a fascinating player aid. It will now be possible to really make some strategy for the 1941 set ups.
I will start bugging the powers that be to provide set ups for 1942 so we can complete the work you have both begun.
