Foundry Death?

[RjBeals]

Wouldn't be a difficult skills test by any means. It would be rather basic. Like understanding the use of layers, tracing objects in order to see borders, and use of colors or something. It would save the mods countless hours of sorting through useless threads.

those are basic skills but basic skills won't guarantee you a map. they'll guarantee you a sketch worthy of the ideas forum.

as i said if you have skills your map will show it. to get out of the ideas you need at least 2 graphic updates. those updates will show if you have skill or not.

Hmm.. I see your point, but I still think that what makes or breaks a map is graphics. And as subjective as you say they are, there's still a basic consensus as to what makes good visuals as to what does not. Personal taste is a different story.

[rebelman]

Making the process more transparent and the expectation clear

if you manage to make the expectations clear you'll have my eternal gratitude. unfortunately i don't think it's possible because of the subjectiveness of graphics. i love middle east or berlin but others hate them and odd enough we're all telling the truth. you simply can't put a label on graphics. or at least i can't see a way.

The best wayto label graphics is be vage, the best ive came up with so far is:

"The graphical standard the foundry expects are that a map image is consistant in its appearence, the athestics should are reasonably accepted by the foundry (including color blindness) and also user friendleness for a player when in live play."

and most of all must have perfect spelling

[DiM]

Wouldn't be a difficult skills test by any means. It would be rather basic. Like understanding the use of layers, tracing objects in order to see borders, and use of colors or something. It would save the mods countless hours of sorting through useless threads.

those are basic skills but basic skills won't guarantee you a map. they'll guarantee you a sketch worthy of the ideas forum.

as i said if you have skills your map will show it. to get out of the ideas you need at least 2 graphic updates. those updates will show if you have skill or not.

Hmm.. I see your point, but I still think that what makes or breaks a map is graphics. And as subjective as you say they are, there's still a basic consensus as to what makes good visuals as to what does not. Personal taste is a different story.

true. graphics are very important. just look at the hundreds of crappy video games with stunning graphics that are block buster hits.

a stunning map with decent gameplay will be played far more than a crappy map with excellent gameplay.
but graphics are very hard to quantify.

as i said before i love the gfx on middle east or berlin. but look on the forums and see the hundreds of complaints about the graphics. some people simply hate them.

or take conquerman and canada revamp. 2 totally different graphic styles and yet i don't like any of them (sorry wm) they simply don't attract me but they are loved by others.

[lanyards]

Wow, there has been a lot of discussion and great ideas in this thread, 16 pages in 2 days.

I think keeping links to the large map, small map, and the XML on the first page and last update would help get people to comment on the maps. Like the way WidowMakers did it for Dungeon of Draknor:

XML:
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/6/15/ ... L1_v02.xml

Large:
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/3631/dodl114lut7.jpg

Small:
http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/3448/dodl114slr3.jpg

Mabye even having the Map Information on the first page of the thread:

Map Information Page

Dungeon of Draknor - The Halls of Testing Concept by Jota / Design & XML by WidowMakers
Map Creation Thread: http://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29184
Number of Territories: 37
Number of Continents: 5
Gameplay Features: One Way Borders

Accompanying Story:

Your sword has had quite a workout today, mowing down the undead minions summoned by the evil sorcerer Draknor to guard his fortress. According to Belegruin, your closest friend and an expert spellcaster, this is the last room before you reach Draknor's lair. While little Garrick -- hired against your better judgement for his quick reflexes and nimble fingers -- checks the final door for traps, you sit back to rest and let the party's healer tend to your wounds.

"Hold it!" shouts Garrick, "It's a trap!"

"Then disable it and pick the lock," you answer wearily. "That's what you're here for."

"No, it's not on the door. It's the whole room. Look at the floor!"

All of you look down. The floor tiles are covered with strange sigils. They mean nothing to you, but Belegruin clearly recognizes them.

"The munchkin is right," he says. "This is a teleportation circle with glyphs of warding around the edges... we're trapped here. This enchantment is too powerful for me to break."

Just then, a deep, maniacal laughter echoes through the chamber. "You thought you might defeat me, adventurers? I am Draknor, the greatest wizard who ever lived! Now you will go where all the others who sought to infiltrate my fortress were sent: into my dungeon maze, a labyrinth of 1-way doors from which there is no escape!

Can you prove yourself worthy by conquering the entire dungeon and making it safely to the next level alive?

Recommended Gameplay Settings:

Any

Gameplay Feature Associations:

1) One Way Borders-All territories are connected with one way doors.

Map Description:

The Dungeon of Draknor-The Halls of Testing is the first level of three, for this map series. Due to the fact that every door is a one way border, the way a player defends and attacks neighboring bonus areas is much trickier than on a standard two way border map.

Figuring out how best to move about in this environment will be key to your survival and may take some extra thought.

I just think these should be a recuirement of every map to help everybody out.


--lanyards

[Coleman]

That will be a quench requirement soon. We are hoping to provide an easy way for everyone to access that information from the game pages.

[wcaclimbing]

a stunning map with decent gameplay will be played far more than a crappy map with excellent gameplay.

To go against that statement, take the Feudal Wars map for an example (this opinion is my own, not necessarily anyone else's. dont be mad)

no offense to the mapmakers, but the graphics on Feudal are pretty dull, quite a bit less awesomeness than most others that I have seen on this site (in my opinion, of course).
Green text on (mostly) solid green countries. solid blue water. Grey text on a black box. Through a small bit of texture into the mix and you have the graphics for that map.
Very few eye-catching features in there, just a solid green map with a few buildings and some water added in.
My first thought when i saw the map in a game was "wow. how did that get through the foundry? its such a dull image...."

I don't want any "you should have commented if you dont like it". I understand that I chose not to help. Its a great map for gameplay, just doens't look that great. I have 8 games active on the map, and 2 waiting, I like the map a lot.

In my opinion, that map has pretty dull graphics, but so far i have seen that it is one of the more popular maps around here. Compared to 8 Thoughts, one of the best graphics maps on the site, which has less than 1 page of active games on it, Feudal has 4 pages, even though it doesn't look as as great, but it will also continue to be more popular because of the unique gameplay aspect of the map.


Even if a map doesn't have ":shock: OMG THAT IS AWESOME " graphics, It will still be played if it has good gameplay features. Without gameplay, even if the map looks great, no one will play on it because the gameplay element just isn't there.

[Coleman]

I think Feudal Wars looks swell, but that's me. We did have some golf jokes about it during development, but it is grass shade green, not sure what else you could use to represent grass better.

My only concern for graphics is that we don't have any more maps as ugly as the ones we already revamped. Brazil in my opinion is the ugliest map that still hasn't had a completed revamp.

[AndyDufresne]

On a side note...I see we all have some time to come in here and speak...perhaps we should turn some of our efforts toward providing some feedback for the maps.

I think that thread served its initial purpose. Again, you can always take pieces out of this thread to create a new topic of discussion.


--Andy