Nadir
Panzer God

Posts: 27
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Post by Nadir on Jul 15, 2016 0:05:36 GMT 1
Having been a long-time ASL player, I'm a big fan of that series' historical modules, where play occurs on an accurate map rather than geomorphic ones. As such, once I was hooked on Panzer/MBT my thoughts drifted to trying to figure out how to bring that style of map to this series. One of the great aspects here is the larger hex scale (100m / hex rather than 40m/hex). It enables players to engage in battles covering a much larger portion of the battlefield. The battle I chose to adapt is a portion of the Lorraine campaign where Patton's 3rd Army (primarily its 4th Armored Division) encountered Germany's independent Panzer Brigades as well as the 15th PzG division and the veteran 11th Pz Division. I haven't finalized the map yet and may even pick a different area altogether, but for the purposes of discussion and gauging interest, I present a couple of working maps I've created. Each uses two 22" x 34" map-sheets. Comments welcome. -N Attachments:
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Post by Tony37 on Jul 15, 2016 0:11:43 GMT 1
Excellent Nadir! I was thinking of working on Lorraine maps but you are well ahead.
What did you use to create the maps?
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Nadir
Panzer God

Posts: 27
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Post by Nadir on Jul 15, 2016 0:18:12 GMT 1
Excellent Nadir! I was thinking of working on Lorraine maps but you are well ahead. What did you use to create the maps? Thanks, Tony. I primarily use Adobe Illustrator for artwork. Every now and then I need to use Photoshop, but for these play-test maps it's all Illustrator. -N
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Post by Tony37 on Jul 15, 2016 0:26:58 GMT 1
Ok, great, I'm using Illustrator too but couldn't figure out how to create some of the terrain elements like ditches, rough, shrub.
What are you using for source maps? I ended up using the brute force method of taking hundreds of screenshots of the France Geoportail map website and stitching them together. Not very elegant but I end up with folders full of clear high-resolution topographic maps to use.
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Nadir
Panzer God

Posts: 27
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Post by Nadir on Jul 15, 2016 2:27:50 GMT 1
Ok, great, I'm using Illustrator too but couldn't figure out how to create some of the terrain elements like ditches, rough, shrub. What are you using for source maps? I ended up using the brute force method of taking hundreds of screenshots of the France Geoportail map website and stitching them together. Not very elegant but I end up with folders full of clear high-resolution topographic maps to use. I have used the IGN portal as well, including stitching together screen shots as you mention. The IGN site is a godsend in many ways (particularly the historical aerial photos which are often, but not always available). I also use scans of the period topographic maps I obtained when visiting the National Archives specifically to research this project. Worst case, the "terrain" feature on Google Maps isn't bad. Regarding the terrain artwork, I'm not saying I have that fully dialed in - I'm only interested in play-test-able maps, rather than a stand-in for Charlie Kibler's work, so legible is all I'm after. -N
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Post by Gustav6 on Jul 15, 2016 7:36:55 GMT 1
Nadir, the maps look awesome.
If you're interested in creating a CG, I have one draft and I hope I can finish one following the steps of that draft for the France 40 Expansion (if not for the boxed game, at least as a free official download). But my CG is a bit different from the ASL CGs, where the entire campaign is played on a fixed map. My Panzer CGs are played on a large area and scenarios generate depening on the results of the previous scenarios. Each player is given a core force and assets can be attached and detached as campaign progresses. Some scenarios can be fixed and they can use historical maps, but due to the fluid nature of CGs, use of geo maps are necessary.
In the end, one force must achieve one offensive objective, while the other must avoid that, but it is not a matter of one force always attacking and the other always defending. There are counterattacks, delaying actions... That's whay the situation must be chosen carefully.
If you're interested I can send you what I have so far. Just tell me.
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Post by petemaidhof on Jul 15, 2016 17:20:24 GMT 1
Very interesting Nadir
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Post by petemaidhof on Jul 15, 2016 17:31:47 GMT 1
Is there a steep learning curve to creating MBT-like maps in Adobe Illustrator?
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Post by Tony37 on Jul 17, 2016 15:00:51 GMT 1
Pete, not really. Illustrator is pretty easy to use especially for straight forward art like maps once you understand the basics. Unless... you are really experienced with Photoshop or other software, in that case you might have to unlearn some Photoshop work flow and learn how it's done in Illustrator.
There are tons of Illustrator video tutorials online, the Lynda series is great.
For Panzer/MBT maps you could get by with very basic stuff like: hills, roads, basic streams (and lakes), basic ditches, hedges, walls, basic building shapes, orchards, basic woods patterns.
The more advanced stuff that's still difficult for me : rough, scrub, intricate woods, detailed buildings, the hand drawn look of streams and ditches
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Post by petemaidhof on Jul 17, 2016 16:03:31 GMT 1
Thanks for the tip. Is there one version or subtype better for this purpose? I seem to see "CC" versions.
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Post by Tony37 on Jul 17, 2016 23:39:02 GMT 1
No, I'm still using CS4 which is almost ten years old and still going strong. It comes down to whatever you can acquire, CS4 - CS6 and now CC will all work fine. Pete, start a new thread about mapmaking software....we derailed this one.
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Nadir
Panzer God

Posts: 27
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Post by Nadir on Jul 26, 2016 5:29:24 GMT 1
Nadir, the maps look awesome. If you're interested in creating a CG, I have one draft and I hope I can finish one following the steps of that draft for the France 40 Expansion (if not for the boxed game, at least as a free official download). But my CG is a bit different from the ASL CGs, where the entire campaign is played on a fixed map. My Panzer CGs are played on a large area and scenarios generate depening on the results of the previous scenarios. Each player is given a core force and assets can be attached and detached as campaign progresses. Some scenarios can be fixed and they can use historical maps, but due to the fluid nature of CGs, use of geo maps are necessary. In the end, one force must achieve one offensive objective, while the other must avoid that, but it is not a matter of one force always attacking and the other always defending. There are counterattacks, delaying actions... That's whay the situation must be chosen carefully. If you're interested I can send you what I have so far. Just tell me. Thanks, Fernando, I would enjoy the collaboration on the CG. Because of my ASL experience I tend to think in those terms (having points and buying units, etc.) but am open to other methods. My goal is that the players have an experience similar to that of battalion commanders in determining what units to send (and which units to request from higher headquarters, etc.). Because of the (relatively) small area of the maps and the goal to keep it manageable in terms of units, these CGs will be on the short side - reflecting 24-36 hours is what I'm guessing, but it's too early to say for sure. I need to make the time to get my projects back underway - at the moment they're on hold due to excessive responsibilities at work and at home. I'm hopeful that will change in by the Fall at which time I can devote more time to this. -N
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Nadir
Panzer God

Posts: 27
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Post by Nadir on Jul 26, 2016 5:33:56 GMT 1
Regarding Illustrator, anything after CS6 (e.g. Creative Cloud aka CC) is a subscription - you pay (a hefty amount) annually to keep the ability to use the program and open your files. Let the subscription lapse and (I believe) you lose access to the ability to open/print the files on your computer in their native file format. Presumably you could take the file to a place that has a current subscription and they'd print it for you. Since you can also save Illustrator files as PDF, if you wanted to maintain the ability to print (only) the files later, that would be a way to do it.
I'm not a fan of subscription software (even though that's where the market is going), so I bought CS6.
-N
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Post by Tony37 on Jul 26, 2016 18:30:02 GMT 1
Nadir, how do you translate source map elevation to game map elevation? If you look at my Chaumont map thread as an example, maybe I was to literal when building the elevations and contour lines? Maybe I should use a more abstract representation of elevation?
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