What should I work on next?

by **ericwdhs** on Mon May 07, 2007 4:05 am

I've already started on a map of the Star Wars Galaxy but while I'm working on it, I'd like to throw out a few ideas of mine. Please pick your favorite and whatever gets voted for most will likely become my next project (assuming my current one succeeds). (If you see something you'd like to work on, PM me. If someone else has already proposed any of these, I'm sorry if it looks like I stole your idea.)

World 3.0 - (200 - 250 territories) - What World 2.1 is to Classic, World 3.0 will be to World 2.1. You'd have to be insane to try it but it would be fun in some RT games. The only thing that will limit me will be the maximum density of the army numbers on the small version.

Time Travel - (50 - 100 territories) - Basically, you battle each other for control of Earth's regions across several different time periods.

Sol System 2200 - (50 - 100 territories) - Roughly a rearrangement of the Space map but only concentrating on this solar system. To make it interesting, you'll be fighting for human settlements in the future.

US Overload - (150 - 200 territories) - Similar to World 3.0 but focusing entirely on the United States.

American Revolution - (50 - 100 territories) - No explanation needed. Just your everyday historical war map.

Aqua - (50 - 100 territories) - The surface becomes uninhabitable so humanity moves underwater. Basically switches the playing/non-playing fields of the Classic map.

Ice Age - (about 50 territories) - Basically the Classic map with the top and bottom cut off and some territories rearranged.

Evaporization - (100 - 150 territories) - The oceans completely evaporate leaving a lot more bare ground for players to fight over in addition to the continents that had already been above water. Ocean ridges and trenches will become the major continental separators.

New York City - (50 - 100 territories) - You fight over NYC. Subways will be important to strategy.

by **Iliad** on Mon May 07, 2007 4:29 am

didn't read the things first. Please know that I want to change my vote for ice age to aqua. You nor I can do that but just know that. Aqua is cool however I think they are already doing that.

by **ericwdhs** on Mon May 07, 2007 4:34 am

Iliad wrote:didn't read the things first. Please know that I want to change my vote for ice age to aqua. You nor I can do that but just know that. Aqua is cool however I think they are already doing that.

Oh, High Seas, I must have missed that one. It looks cool but I would have done it a little differently. Oh well. If it doesn't make it then I'll take it back up.

by **RobinJ** on Mon May 07, 2007 4:56 am

Quite a lot of good ideas there but I can't decide which I would want to play most. Not too sure about World 3.0 - do we really need a bigger one?

by **ericwdhs** on Mon May 07, 2007 5:12 am

RobinJ wrote:Quite a lot of good ideas there but I can't decide which I would want to play most. Not too sure about World 3.0 - do we really need a bigger one?

haha... Probably not, but it'd be fun to play on every now and then, at least for me.

I really want to see how many different territories I can squeeze in. (I count at least 50 more.) The color scheme for 2.1 is also a little annoying to me and I want to see if I can do better.

by **mibi** on Mon May 07, 2007 8:42 am

I'd like to see what your capable of before deciding on any project.

by **Guiscard** on Mon May 07, 2007 8:45 am

Agreed. We really need some visuals on your current map before you crack o with anything else.

by **Coleman** on Mon May 07, 2007 12:13 pm

I said New York, but in reality I'd rather see WidowMakers tackle that one if I had my pick of anyone in the foundry.

by **ericwdhs** on Mon May 07, 2007 1:54 pm

Yeah, I understand. I'm not expecting you guys to think I'm any good yet. I haven't started on the Photoshop part of my current project, but I'll make sure to get all my maps up to WidowMakers' quality. However, please vote as if you were just picking which maps you'd like to see in live play without regard to who actually makes them, whether it be me or someone else. Right now I'm just throwing out proposals to think on while I am busy with school stuff for the next week. After that, it should take me a couple weeks to get a map close to finalization.

In other news, World 3.0 is in the lead with American Revolution in a close 2nd.

by **Guiscard** on Mon May 07, 2007 2:17 pm

ericwdhs wrote:Yeah, I understand. I'm not expecting you guys to think I'm any good yet. I haven't started on the Photoshop part of my current project, but I'll make sure to get all my maps up to WidowMakers' quality. However, please vote as if you were just picking which maps you'd like to see in live play without regard to who actually makes them, whether it be me or someone else. Right now I'm just throwing out proposals to think on while I am busy with school stuff for the next week. After that, it should take me a couple weeks to get a map close to finalization.

In other news, World 3.0 is in the lead with American Revolution in a close 2nd.

You're new here. Its great that your so enthusiastic about map making, but if you take a look at other maps that have been quenched and that are in development you'll see that it takes much more than a few to complete a map. It takes months, and maps are subject to the foundry process which involves constructive criticism from everyone in the foundry. I'd focus 100% on whatever current map your doing rather than speculating about future projects. Take a look around the Foundry to check out how things work and what kind of processes your map is gonna be subjected to before you crack on. Its not just a case of presenting a map, making a few changes then it goes live for play.

All of these suggestions should be posted in the ideas thread for the time being.

Good luck with your current project, though!

by **ericwdhs** on Mon May 07, 2007 2:45 pm

Guiscard wrote:
ericwdhs wrote:Yeah, I understand. I'm not expecting you guys to think I'm any good yet. I haven't started on the Photoshop part of my current project, but I'll make sure to get all my maps up to WidowMakers' quality. However, please vote as if you were just picking which maps you'd like to see in live play without regard to who actually makes them, whether it be me or someone else. Right now I'm just throwing out proposals to think on while I am busy with school stuff for the next week. After that, it should take me a couple weeks to get a map close to finalization.

In other news, World 3.0 is in the lead with American Revolution in a close 2nd.

You're new here. Its great that your so enthusiastic about map making, but if you take a look at other maps that have been quenched and that are in development you'll see that it takes much more than a few to complete a map. It takes months, and maps are subject to the foundry process which involves constructive criticism from everyone in the foundry. I'd focus 100% on whatever current map your doing rather than speculating about future projects. Take a look around the Foundry to check out how things work and what kind of processes your map is gonna be subjected to before you crack on. Its not just a case of presenting a map, making a few changes then it goes live for play.

All of these suggestions should be posted in the ideas thread for the time being.

Good luck with your current project, though!

Thanks. I know it takes longer to make a map than a few weeks. I'm just saying that I can make the bulk of a map (including the aesthetics) within a couple weeks. I know the revision process takes longer because I have to wait for suggestions to come in but if you save your maps in organized layers, the actual physical revision takes very little time. It wouldn't be too hard to start on a new project every three weeks or so. That's basically what I was going for, though I didn't really say that directly...

And if you're curious, I loved playing Risk for a long time but couldn't play it that often for lack of opponents. (When I did play, it was only one on one which got pretty boring.) I only found this site several days ago and I regret not knowing about it sooner. I already like this site a lot and want Premium Membership, but I have no way to pay for it. I heard about map makers getting free Premium and I like art/graphic design so I thought I'd give map making for this site a shot.

by **Qwert** on Mon May 07, 2007 3:03 pm

i will tell only these, dont start new before you finish 1.

by **Risktaker17** on Mon May 07, 2007 3:06 pm

I really like world 2.1 and I'm looking forward to World 3.1.

by **wcaclimbing** on Mon May 07, 2007 3:31 pm

definately world 3.0

200+ countries would be AWESOME!!!

by **ericwdhs** on Mon May 07, 2007 4:02 pm

qwert wrote:i will tell only these, dont start new before you finish 1.

Why not? I'd get bored waiting for suggestions, no matter how quickly they come in. It would be inefficient to wait around for a map's completion to start on something else when the bulk of the work on the current map is complete.

by **unriggable** on Mon May 07, 2007 4:05 pm

What evaporazation would look like:

by **ericwdhs** on Mon May 07, 2007 4:21 pm

unriggable wrote:What evaporazation would look like...

Actually, I was going to bring the water level down a lot more than that. That map is still too close to Classic/World 2.1.

by **Guiscard** on Mon May 07, 2007 4:23 pm

ericwdhs wrote:I already like this site a lot and want Premium Membership, but I have no way to pay for it. I heard about map makers getting free Premium and I like art/graphic design so I thought I'd give map making for this site a shot.

I'm afraid that's only happened once in the early days of this site, to my knowledge, and it really isn't the reason you should be making maps in the first place. I strongly doubt that even if you get your map quenched you'll receive a free premium, but please continue work. If I'm right in thinking you're doing a star wars map then that'd be great.

by **ericwdhs** on Mon May 07, 2007 5:16 pm

Guiscard wrote:
ericwdhs wrote:I already like this site a lot and want Premium Membership, but I have no way to pay for it. I heard about map makers getting free Premium and I like art/graphic design so I thought I'd give map making for this site a shot.

I'm afraid that's only happened once in the early days of this site, to my knowledge, and it really isn't the reason you should be making maps in the first place. I strongly doubt that even if you get your map quenched you'll receive a free premium, but please continue work. If I'm right in thinking you're doing a star wars map then that'd be great.

Yeah, even if I get nothing out of it, it's fun and it passes the time between my turns. So I don't really care... If I turned out 3 or 4 good maps though, it'd be cool if someone was nice enough to upgrade me.

As for the Star Wars map, I was able to devote half an hour to it today and it's coming out very nicely.

The only drawback is that I have to paint all the planets and the galaxy itself by hand to avoid any claims of copyright infringement. What I have done so far still looks very realistic though.

by **unriggable** on Mon May 07, 2007 7:47 pm

How can you do a starwars map? Its almost entirely empty space.

by **mibi** on Mon May 07, 2007 8:14 pm

if you quench 3 maps i'll buy you a premium.

and that goes for anyone.

by **Enigma** on Mon May 07, 2007 8:17 pm

dude if the oceans evaporated we would be dead.

by **ericwdhs** on Mon May 07, 2007 9:12 pm

unriggable wrote:How can you do a starwars map? Its almost entirely empty space.

You'll see.

by **ericwdhs** on Mon May 07, 2007 9:24 pm

Enigma wrote:dude if the oceans evaporated we would be dead.

That's part of the idea. Humanity can never really be killed completely off by any natural disasters (unless Earth itself gets destroyed). There will always be some survivors. These survivors would have to fight each other for the limited resources and last pools of water to survive. There would obviously be bonuses for controlling these resources. That's the basic idea of the map. Technologies would also be bonuses (moisture vaporators for all the water in the air... the oceans had to go somewhere). If any XML improvements occur soon I could also add other cool stuff like storms that travel westward across the planet wreaking havoc on armies, but that depends on what improvements are added... I hope they add a lot. We've pretty much reached the limit of all the unique stuff we can do now...

by **ericwdhs** on Mon May 07, 2007 11:33 pm

mibi wrote:if you quench 3 maps i'll buy you a premium.

and that goes for anyone.

That would be so awesome.