I’m not aware of such a blank outline map existing. Your best option might be to cover the game map with several taped-together sheets of clear acetate (the kind used for purposes like overheard projection) and trace the borders with a felt pen to produce a blank outline. You’d then have various options for transfering this outline to the wood surface. A low-tech method would be to cover the wood surface with sheets of carbon paper (if you can still find any, since it’s gone out of style), place your acetate outline over the carbon paper, then trace over the borders with a hard pencil. Alternately, you could scan or digitally photograph your acetate outline and use that as the printing file you mentioned.
MAPS - real or fake?
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Curious, what you prefer in a map “look” … real, or fake?
Me, real… not painting all these units to roll on a red Russia and a Blue France
. Also, what are your ideas for borders? Color glow per territory, like it is now, or something more universal like the sea zones?I come from a gaming background, texturing thousands of 3d models, and creating/texturing 3d terrains, however, ive never had to do a terrain with borders to represent spaces, not sure what I plan to do.
Any feedback is welcomed, thanks.
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I definitely like a “real” look. Since it is a game, though, that requires such things as boundaries and territory values in order to play on it, you have to make compromises. You have to paint the pieces that way, too - if they were painted completely historical you couldn’t tell which nation some of them belonged to.
I think a satellite photo look would be cool (with small round flags marking what country each territory belongs to) without coloring the ground different.
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I quite like the current A&A map style. It rather cleverly uses a system of territory colours that are patterned on the kinds of earthy or sandy or vegetation-like tones that one would see from orbit, so that it superficially looks semi-realistic (even though the actual colours used in a particular part of the world aren’t necessarily the ones that actually exist there). This is a good compromise between a map style that genuinely shows a satellite view of the world (in which border recognition becomes a problem) and the early-style A&A maps, which to me look too abstracted (or even cartoonish).
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@CWO:
I quite like the current A&A map style. It rather cleverly uses a system of territory colours that are patterned on the kinds of earthy or sandy or vegetation-like tones that one would see from orbit, so that it superficially looks semi-realistic (even though the actual colours used in a particular part of the world aren’t necessarily the ones that actually exist there). This is a good compromise between a map style that genuinely shows a satellite view of the world (in which border recognition becomes a problem) and the early-style A&A maps, which to me look too abstracted (or even cartoonish).
I agree… using colour to identify German territories from Italian for example is fine, but use more natural shades like greens, browns, and yellows. What would also look nice is if the colours blended over the borders naturally instead of the borders sharply dividing the colours unnaturally.
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Thanks for the feedback guys, I hope by this weekend ill have some pics of the progress. Ill set up a few different border styles, all of which will be towards natural. I actually like the sea zones, so ill just keep that look… since ive also already recreated that look/layer anyway haha.
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