Learning Additional Techniques, Getting More Done, and checking in with a Panzer Campaigns Title ... in other words, Saturday.

As it happens, I worked on ... orchards, of all things. I did some work with the buildings, chateaux, village graphics.

Using screenshots, I worked on better alignment in hexes, and opted to go with a simplified orchard look. I also used colour fill -and that worked out pretty well.

I did some brief experimenting with drop shadows, to get some transparency layer work in. That worked, but I decided it was a little out of context, considering it was a top down map, and shadows shouldn't be a factor. However, from a technical standpoint, it worked - but it only worked using a specific process. Drop shadows are really only one way to use this feature- so I am thinking of opacity - probably on the river banks to start with, and see how that goes - not at the point where I am going to try it, but it is in the back of my mind; it might also be an answer for some really ugly mid level 2D wooden fence hexsides.

For the urban, buildings, and chateaux hexes, it will involve alignment within hexes, probably density adjustments, and trialing the most effective colour combinations.

However, since I had some draft map graphics for Panzer Campaigns sitting around, and a relatively new (new to me, at least) Poland '39 title, I decided to plug in the 2D graphics that I had done to have a look.

I wanted to do this for awhile, as I recalled the stock graphics always seemed a little too water-heavy for the look for swamp/marsh hexes, and wanted to see what the version I was using looked like. I never really was sold on this being a really good idea for a title on the entire campaign, only insofar as--- it is a LOT of units to manager in a battalion level title. I remember my first Panzer Campaigns title; it was early 2000's, maybe very late 1990's, and I'd gotten a title from a reseller (probably Chips n' Bits or something like that) ... I'd played the Campaign Series from Talonsoft, and it looked similar (ok lacking unit size markings on counters ended up giving the wrong impression of the look and feel; the map had nearly identical 8 bit graphics). And... I got totally overwhelmed - it wasn't even funny. It was, however, Kharkov '42. I only really 'got' the series, once I dove into Normandy '44 which was very similar to the Avalon Hill game, The Longest Day (which I had played a lot). 

I've got a couple of Poland games, but those are at the divisional scale, so I mean battalion level, still strikes me as ambitious; however it did get published... so felt like a reasonable fit.

 

On Representations of Human Habitation...

 ... and also on visibility with a gradient of background colours, that encapsulates the next challenge on this mapping project.

I took a break from it today, apart from brainstorming some looks, so nothing done with the woods/orchards where roads/trails go through those hexes.

I have some interesting options that look usable, in some material I had for mods in the Panzer Campaigns; particularly for smaller orchards. I haven't tried it yet, but am keen to give it a look.

I have 3 different types of 'human habitation' hexes; translation - chateaux (basically smaller fortified areas (such as a keep) - the point being it is a version of a hardened target. Then there are village/town hexes, then one off buildings.

I look at buildings (especially in the earlier periods covered) as more of an affectation to the map (and not really anything of any actual, proven, defensive value). And what I mean by that, is mainly I just don't think there are sources that these actually ever existed, let alone having any impact on anything. For anyone familiar with the film, "Office Space", essentially it's "Flair". Nice to have, but basically just for show.

Might give some of this a go tomorrow. 

Mains, Roads, Paths update

Status: Done

With regards to Fields, terrain type - here is a good example of what I mean, the entire image takes up the entire hex (usually), and that doesn't need to be like that, not to mention it is a little impractical. To be really fair, though, it feels like a lot of the maps as designed go a little overboard with the number of fields, or at least the sizes of them.

I plan on playing around with the fence graphics; that was only ever a draft, and in addition to that, it was a draft from a long long time ago now.

 

 

The To Do List (Map Graphics)

I want to remove the texture from my land hexes, so I will need to do some (old Adobe Fireworks terminology) magic wand and eyedropper work (then probably build a vertical spectrum chart.

I do have some shallow/deep water hex work done (in draft form).

On my list for tomorrow, are some pretty straight-forward material: get the Mains, Roads, & Paths put in all of the titles' folders... done.

Convert over:

• Woods
• Orchards
• Boulders/Rough
• Swamps
• Fields (less in a hex shape, and showing some empty space -probably in rows: and the reason you do this on a top down map is in order to be able to see the elevation colour coding. 

 Consideration given to establish distinct colour coding for:

• Single Buildings
• Chateaux
• Village/Town hexes

And the woods, orchards, village/town hexes have versions for where roadway/pathways run through them. 

I am aware that none of this really takes much advantage of using the transparency layer on the files, but I want to get something workable first before experimenting with shadows, etc...

What I suspect I will find, is that there are distinct boundaries inherent with the files, meaning that when this portion of the file is reached, then that's it - the image will be cut off, and the remainder of it all will be shown elsewhere.

I expect to get the roads changed over, and tested, but not sure how much farther I will go all in one sitting. 

---

I have been having a think about leader graphics, and I am not at all sure I like the look of the pike. For the Middle Ages, I might go for a sword. Might keep doing a sash look for some of the Musket and Pike. I'll have to do some research around the colours since it is shown by unit type in the OOB. That wasn't available to me when I initially tried this out (engine progression, you could call it).

Finally,  before I close this off for today, I am not a fan of the tiny font -so that will get changed around in various places. Notably with Skirmishers, Routed, and Ships off the top of my head.

I am leaning to, hopefully, not actually needing lettering on the units, but rather accomplishing the same thing with colour combinations.

Anyways, that's all for tonight!! :) 

 

 

On Maps and Things...

Series Work: Let me start by stating I haven't really ever entirely approached work with a series all at once; partly due to when I began working with the graphics, there was not a lot of titles in some of these series, but that is no longer the case.

In this instance I want to be working on titles that are using PNG files, mainly in order to keep things in more of a "working rhythm".  This is basically a personal preference, plus I was used to working with BMP files in the past (which made editing a little easier - like when wanting to apply maybe a bit of a colour filter - you could just do it all to the entire file - which you can't really do, when using a 32bit PNG file. 

Both Sword & Siege, and Musket & Pike engines, are largely the same - so what I have to work with are the titles-

Sword & Siege:  

• Demo
• Crusades I 
• Crusades II
• Longbow I 

 Musket & Pike:

• American Revolutionary War  
• Great Northern War
• The Renaissance
• Seven Years' War
• Thirty Years' War
• Vienna 1683 (series demo)
• War of the Austrian Succession 

First objective is to get an elevation colour scheme model that works; I sort of already have one, so I will use that to start off, however just changing the hexes has a big effect but it is only a start.

One note here, the publisher's user guides speak of best practice, however I have found that when modifying files (and make no mistake this is all about modifying files), my own best practice is to copy the entire game folder and relabel it, like LW_game_title_here  (where LW is my own 'code' for Longespee's Workshop. That way you have a set of the stock standard files, and there should be almost no way possible of getting changed files inadvertently mixed up with those that you don't want to change). With graphics, the usual area that might need a reversion would be with alignment. And sometimes I end up having multiple copies of a title to work on, as sometimes you want to compare a draft to something that you had of your own, that was working, and now it might not. 

And with these, a lot of what is going to be going on initially, is getting my drafts into working game folders, so that means BMP to PNG conversions (and clean ups). I might swing back later on and do a hex install where I have no textures. Plus I never did versions for the various folders  under the Map folder (such as: Autumn, Frozen, Snow - there might be more in other folders).

Eventually my idea is to get a little regional variation to the schemes, and maybe divide up eras into having a distinct look and feel, but that is for another day. I still have a little more work to do with this today. The big challenges will be with armies' colour schemes, and I want to see what I can do with the unit symbols.

I rather like the 'Block" look being used, but think there is a little room for improvement; it is pretty good though, so I will be playing around with those files to see what I can come up with (especially the artillery units --- I think those can probably be a little and not lose any of the original look and feel that was provided). 

At any rate, back to work - I have some hexsides to get into place. 

 

 

  

LW's Scenario Design Groundrules: my parameters -not yours...

AI Coding: As in absence of it; I don't bother messing around with this; I'm designing material that I would play in hotseat mode, which is another way of saying I'd be playing both sides.

I guess if I feel like it later, it can be done later - but my initial take is that because I used to play hex and counter, boardgames this way - before there was a computer, nevermind the internet, then if you design something that's valid, it's immaterial if the computer can be a competent opponent.

And to be fair, and really honest about it, that's pretty much the mindset of some of JTS' actual designers back in the day, and they were working on material to be published. I won't be held to a different standard than that.

At this point, I only really anticipate talking about the design process, and not necessarily (read that as: I don't expect) to be about sharing. 

 

Dissecting a User Manual: Scenario Editor (Musket & Pike or Sword and Siege)

Its more accurate to term this as a general scenario editing document, maybe, than to focus on the workings of the mpedit.exe file only. 

I've done some technical writing that I'd been paid for (meaning at my day job); one thing I tried to be aware of was my intended audience, so that you can refine the language accordingly. 

In this instance I was focused on pages 42 - 56. I entirely blew off the information about Sounds, because I never use them. 

42 - 56 refer to 2 types of files: OOB files, and PDT (Parameter Data Table) files. 

OOB: When writing, I always made a point to include relevant examples, that made sense and did not have contradictory information. I can't really say the same is true with this manual - and while a few things stood out, such as using outdated unit and leader lines (They'd changed around some of their coding earlier in the year- as was helpfully pointed out in the documentation itself, however the examples, knowingly, referred to unit coding from previous versions, and some of this coding had been changed around - most notably that which pertains to weapons and how the engine references this data.

Annoying, and a bit sloppy, not to mention the Musket and Pike's manual's cavalry example was copied and pasted from the comparable document for the Napoleonic Battles series- and you know this because the unit name is not the unit name from their example- but some obviously French name. Considering it amounts to copying and pasting the unit name from the example line- it isn't terribly difficult to correct, nevermind it should never have happened.

The actual thing I have is more about Morale -there is a nice list of numbers and their corresponding morale letters. The first list shows up as 0-7, unfortunately all throughout the units it shows as 0-9 as being available, so clearly it (probably) had to be one or the other (spoiler alert: it wasn't). And in order to determine this, I decided I needed to through together a custom OOB file -and just label enough units to cover the range of 0 - 9, but it being me, I decided to add in a 10, and eventually an 11 to see if anything got broken by doing this. In a lot of areas the engine will allow for negative integers, but not here- as '-' is a flag that adds in a Fanatic bonus -however you can keep going up and up (although I am not sure there is much point to doing so). 

Going higher than 9 adds in another '+' to the morale, so I am not sure if there actually is that much practical value in having a unit with A +++++ morale, but it is possible to code it if you so wanted it.

 

Naturally I edited my leader's name to William Longespee (King Richard's and John's - and if you want to split hairs- Henry the Young King's half brother). The actual reason being- I did it for no other reason, other than I could -and why not?

I'm sure I will come back this a little later, when I am actually engaged in this, as opposed to conducting a quick experiment like this. There is a lot of advice in the manual, a lot of it is good solid advice, although sometimes it does come off as it being 'the only way of doing something'; that usually not being the case. 

PDT: I'm going to leave this alone for right now, but as I mentioned above, much of this was sorting out the differing Weapons' impact coding, and where it was now found. A lot of this has to do with any designer being capable of defining and working out their own scale; you are definitely not limited to the broad categories referenced in the manual. You should be able to code whatever time interval that you want, and then it follows that you are going to be responsible for how far your coded units can cover (or do) within whatever time period that you go with, the terrain impacts (movement-wise, and defensive adjustments) - and I will add an example of what I was considering doing (and why) ... in the Crusades titles (probably others, but these for sure), I am at a loss for how individual buildings were coded on these maps, neverminding that they do have some defensive benefits (although some require a certain specific type of formation to make use of it), I am not at all certain there is any sort of documentation that ever so much as showed any of this, so was thinking that it might be worthwhile just removing the defensive modifier and treat it as if those buildings are simply part of the surrounding terrain. I cannot come up with any argument as to why this isn't a logical idea -well, not yet, anyhow. 

The engine can actually handle quite a lot,and is pretty resilient; it can be pretty rewarding to work with. I suppose, ironically, working on one of their projects, despite my decision to give it back, has provided me with another and deeper, more meaningful hobby - building these. 

Graphics shown are from WDS: Crusades: Book I. 

 

On Projects

You get a pile of stuff- look at it for awhile, and either dive in at some point, or just keep looking at it. There really isn't many different approaches, especially if you have some with multiple competing priorities that are the same weight.

In my case I tend to pick them up, and set them aside, in a sort of cycle. And in specific, in this instance, I last worked in this area several years ago. 

Blog Title Change - and what's going on....

 As it turns out - there is an "About" area here- so I might drop in a mission statement when I think of an organised one. 

Previously this are had its most recent function as a supplement for my being part of ACWGC. While I'm no longer part of that (or any club), that's all about my not having much time for playing wargames with others.

I guess, it would be accurate to say it is more about building, and re-imagining things.   

I'll get more content up here shortly.