Changed the background so it is easier to see the road/stream network.
Primary, Secondary, Tertiary roads (Red, Orange, Yellow) mostly completed. I will need to do a comparison of some of them to remove border crossing (if I left any) and to take away new construction since the 1977-81 time period. I have maps from 77 or so and the present. They will get drug around later so as to minimize confusion about what hex they are in, and a bunch of rivers.
Unlike my usual method, I am probably not going to put in all the rivers, just the ones that block a hexside and are significant, since I am going to code each hex as Green (GO), Amber (Slow Go), and Red (Restricted) requiring different amounts of movement points to travers. Green-1, Amber-2, and Red-3. The rating will also depend on slope and forest cover, which can slow you down. After the forests are in, then I will look at adding light duty roads (minimally improved with light concrete base) to assist the movement through the trees.
I wanted to map out sort of an action plan, so in the area around my old stomping grounds (Setzelbach is at center in Hexes 0513/0613) I added in a few contours, a few light duty roads (they look like black lines, but are actually gray with a black border on each side), and the forest cover, shown over the 1:50000 map, then one as it might appear when finished. For comparison I have the Open Topo Map and Google Earth all close to the same scale.
There are two shades of green as can be seen as to how I colored them in Hex 0612. After examining my old map, the on line Open Topo Map, and Google Earth, I think the light one is just shaded ground for cultivation. The map key does not seem to differentiate between the two, so I am going to either delete it or make the whole background color that color green or even lighter or perhaps a very light brown.
I go back and forth between filling in the contours or just drawing them. Thus far, it looks like drawing them, but using different shades of brown (and maybe different thickness of lines) may be the ticket. I will probably finish everything else before I do the contour lines. When I do them, I draw the different ones in bold colors (ROYGBIV) so I can easily tell them apart and it makes it easier for me to skip around and work on different parts of the map, then I later trace them. It may make sense to fill in the hilltop contours and place a spot elevation in them. (besides, hollow contours use less ink.)
Mike, for the contour question, there are a number of options. I'd suggest drawing them as polygons but with a none-zero line width (so all you get is the edge line round the polygon). You can then copy the polygons to a separate Sheet (or Sheets), and change them to be filled with an appropriate colour. By hiding or showing either of the two sheets, you can get a better idea of how the map will look using each option.
I suggest "Sheets" for the filled polygons, because each height contour then can be on a different Sheet, so you can always be sure they're in the right "stacking order" for the map, should you need to make changes later. That works whether you're planning on using one colour for all the contours, or a separate colour for each contour height.
If you decide you need both colour filled contours AND a line round them, there are various ways to achieve that too, such as the Outline in Black tool on each polygon (you don't have to use black, as there's an option if you right click the tool button to use the current colour instead), or adding a suitably narrow coloured glow Effect on each Sheet.
Thanks Wyvern. I learned a long time ago (well five years at least) that multiple sheets is the way for contours, especially if you want them filled in. I have used the Outline in Black tool sometimes and learned about being able to use a different color only recently. Sometimes it helps, sometimes not.
The difficult thing about contours is if I use brown, then the green looks pretty garish in front of it for forests, plus you have to make the forest transparent, which then makes it hard to see. Doing hollow polygons lets you put the lines on top of the forest, but some people find it difficult to read just the contour lines.
I have also thought about filling the forest polygons with symbols, but that doesn't seem to work well either, though it can mimic the effect you see on the Google Earth shot.
And then I started thinking about having a background like you see on Google Earth instead of just a one color background, but that seems a lot of effort.
Still lots to do, though. So I better get cracking.
Well, here is an update. All the forest cover has been drawn in. Tedious. I could only stand to work on it about 30 minutes at a time, so it took me two or three days about 4 hours a day. I think I will change the color of the fill, it looks sort of like vomit. I'd like something that is a little more varicolored than just a darker green and the white fill may get replaced with a pale green, unless there is an easy way to sort of put in farm fields.
It will of course look more interesting when I put in cities/towns, complete the road network, and put in the contours, which will be even more tedious than the forest. That is probably the order I will do the work in.
In the long run, I will probably purge some rivers and smaller forested areas because what would matter a great deal if I was modeling the region with 250m hexes is vastly different than with the 3000 meter hexes. Also, the players will have to imagine that the unit is spread throughout the hex instead of where the counter is. As I remember an Armored Cavalry Troop would frequently get a very large position as compare to tank and mechanized infantry companies, although I tended to assign larger positions to units than my peers. A Soviet regiment making a main attack could occupy a frontage of 3 - 4 kilometers, where as in this scenario the 11th Cavalry Regiment is defending along the whole border. Players will also have to imagine the troop has deployed on the best ground available.
I expect at least a month, maybe two to complete the whole map. Each section below is 11 x 17 inches. For play it will be probably 34 x 66 inches in six sheets.
Had to look up importing bmp fills and find one I like. deleted an old one and substituted a larger shot. I'll probably have to adjust the other colors, particularly rivers, so they are more blue.
It's really quite difficult to see so small, but I agree on a more general level that fills are usually more attractive than plain colours. When a map has so much detail in it, though, you sometimes have to be careful you aren't adding too much with a fill.
So, once again something that I think should be simple turns out to be relatively hard for me.
I want to draw orchards (and perhaps similar features like graveyards) on the map. Not because I need them for the game, but because they give visual interest to the map. as seen below in the first picture.
So, using the tools in the 2nd picture, if I use the tool Terrain Orchard, it does not look like anything happens, or if it does the trees are represented by pixel size dots without any background. If I use the tool Terrain Mixed Woods, I get the polygone, but again, the dots are pixel sized.
I guess the work around is to make a row of small circles like so < o o o o o > in dark green, then group them and then copy them to multiple locations where I would like them.
The workaround you suggest is not a great idea, since it will add tremendously to the node count and cripple your speed if you add too many.
I'm still having difficulty 'seeing' this map in my mind as being a certain size when printed, so I can't really make any solid suggestions yet. Maybe, if you don't mind, you could print a very small section the size it's intended to be, and show us a photo of it with a reference object in shot - something like a pencil or pen? Or print what is meant to end up being 1 square inch of the map?
There are many ways of representing orchards, and most of them depend on the scale of the map - the size it will be seen. That's why its so important to really get a grasp of the resulting view.
Well, I'm not sure this is going to help. The shot below is pretty close to the actual size of the map. It is a 1:50000 map. Each grid square is about 2cm x 2cm for a real distance of 1000m grid squares. The Hex grid represents 3km hexes from side to side (in this case top to bottom) and is about 6cm tall. The picture is about 6 km wide x 4 km tall. The particular spot for the orchard here is 1.5 cm tall x 2 cm wide.
I didn't see anyway to do that. Nor does it appear it can be scaled like a symbol. Having said that, if I feel like placing them individually (brute force and ignorance has a quality all its own) I can use this symbol set and size the thing to the appropriate shape and size, even when it is shrunk down to actual size. And for that matter, the symbol set Modern/Overland/Overland.fsc has a hedge that works.
I suppose I could do it with Symbols in Area, (edit) but I find it gives unpredictable spacing and arrangements when I try and use it.
Whereabouts is the drawing tool for the orchards you shoed several posts back. I would like to give it a go, just for my own arcane, secret, nefarious and utterly mischievous purposes
The problem turns out to be simple to solve. The fill is a symbol fill. Go into that via Fll Style at the top right of your screen, choose Symbol Fills, and on the Fill Style Name bar, choose Orchards. If you want to double the size of the symbols (without enlarging the polygon) just double the value for X spacing, Y spacing, X Scale and Y scale. Click OK and you will see the symbols double in size. You can increase or reduce the symbols to any size you wish, but keep the proportions the same.
Thanks Quenton. I tried that but must have done something in the wrong sequence because it didn't work. It took me about an hour to figure it out. I'm a tanker, not an aviator. I get there faster than infantry, but not as fast as attack helicopters.
Well, that didn't work how I thought it would, but I eventually mostly got the effect I wanted. To do this I had to draw a light green polygon, the manually trace the outline with the Orchard Symbol Fill. I tried to use the "Trace" command, but I obviously need to review that more better. When I do the Symbol Fill without the underlying polygon, the symbols go in but there is no background. Looking at the symbol catalog, I keep thinking there should be a way to get a light green fill with a dark green symbol, but maybe not?
A small update. Most all the roads are in: Autobahn, Heavy Duty, Medium Duty, Light Duty, Improved so a unit can move through many, perhaps most, of the hexes on roads. Not all of them however. I've determined where I am going to place the Orchards. There's some more work to be done on the upper left which has a somewhat different map style (since it is from the 70's vs the 2020's). I'm not using the cool fill style I talked about above. Will evaluate when I am finished.
I'm trying to prepare myself to do contour lines. 50m intervals ranging from from 50 - 1000m. It will be tedious, slow, and boring, but necessary. I am thinking about not shading them, but making each one a different color and maybe change width at some elevations.
Then will come purging of roads and cities that aren't going to be significant in the game as well as adjusting the paths of rivers and roads to avoid question about what hex a road is in. Oh, and I need to add the railroad network.
Comments
Primary, Secondary, Tertiary roads (Red, Orange, Yellow) mostly completed. I will need to do a comparison of some of them to remove border crossing (if I left any) and to take away new construction since the 1977-81 time period. I have maps from 77 or so and the present. They will get drug around later so as to minimize confusion about what hex they are in, and a bunch of rivers.
Unlike my usual method, I am probably not going to put in all the rivers, just the ones that block a hexside and are significant, since I am going to code each hex as Green (GO), Amber (Slow Go), and Red (Restricted) requiring different amounts of movement points to travers. Green-1, Amber-2, and Red-3. The rating will also depend on slope and forest cover, which can slow you down. After the forests are in, then I will look at adding light duty roads (minimally improved with light concrete base) to assist the movement through the trees.
There are two shades of green as can be seen as to how I colored them in Hex 0612. After examining my old map, the on line Open Topo Map, and Google Earth, I think the light one is just shaded ground for cultivation. The map key does not seem to differentiate between the two, so I am going to either delete it or make the whole background color that color green or even lighter or perhaps a very light brown.
I go back and forth between filling in the contours or just drawing them. Thus far, it looks like drawing them, but using different shades of brown (and maybe different thickness of lines) may be the ticket. I will probably finish everything else before I do the contour lines. When I do them, I draw the different ones in bold colors (ROYGBIV) so I can easily tell them apart and it makes it easier for me to skip around and work on different parts of the map, then I later trace them. It may make sense to fill in the hilltop contours and place a spot elevation in them. (besides, hollow contours use less ink.)
Any comments or suggestions?
Thanks for looking.
I suggest "Sheets" for the filled polygons, because each height contour then can be on a different Sheet, so you can always be sure they're in the right "stacking order" for the map, should you need to make changes later. That works whether you're planning on using one colour for all the contours, or a separate colour for each contour height.
If you decide you need both colour filled contours AND a line round them, there are various ways to achieve that too, such as the Outline in Black tool on each polygon (you don't have to use black, as there's an option if you right click the tool button to use the current colour instead), or adding a suitably narrow coloured glow Effect on each Sheet.
The difficult thing about contours is if I use brown, then the green looks pretty garish in front of it for forests, plus you have to make the forest transparent, which then makes it hard to see. Doing hollow polygons lets you put the lines on top of the forest, but some people find it difficult to read just the contour lines.
I have also thought about filling the forest polygons with symbols, but that doesn't seem to work well either, though it can mimic the effect you see on the Google Earth shot.
And then I started thinking about having a background like you see on Google Earth instead of just a one color background, but that seems a lot of effort.
Still lots to do, though. So I better get cracking.
It will of course look more interesting when I put in cities/towns, complete the road network, and put in the contours, which will be even more tedious than the forest. That is probably the order I will do the work in.
In the long run, I will probably purge some rivers and smaller forested areas because what would matter a great deal if I was modeling the region with 250m hexes is vastly different than with the 3000 meter hexes. Also, the players will have to imagine that the unit is spread throughout the hex instead of where the counter is. As I remember an Armored Cavalry Troop would frequently get a very large position as compare to tank and mechanized infantry companies, although I tended to assign larger positions to units than my peers. A Soviet regiment making a main attack could occupy a frontage of 3 - 4 kilometers, where as in this scenario the 11th Cavalry Regiment is defending along the whole border. Players will also have to imagine the troop has deployed on the best ground available.
I expect at least a month, maybe two to complete the whole map. Each section below is 11 x 17 inches. For play it will be probably 34 x 66 inches in six sheets.
However, there are probably some people who prefer flat shades like the top one.
I want to draw orchards (and perhaps similar features like graveyards) on the map. Not because I need them for the game, but because they give visual interest to the map. as seen below in the first picture.
So, using the tools in the 2nd picture, if I use the tool Terrain Orchard, it does not look like anything happens, or if it does the trees are represented by pixel size dots without any background. If I use the tool Terrain Mixed Woods, I get the polygone, but again, the dots are pixel sized.
I guess the work around is to make a row of small circles like so < o o o o o > in dark green, then group them and then copy them to multiple locations where I would like them.
But I'd like to use the tool.
Hints?
I'm still having difficulty 'seeing' this map in my mind as being a certain size when printed, so I can't really make any solid suggestions yet. Maybe, if you don't mind, you could print a very small section the size it's intended to be, and show us a photo of it with a reference object in shot - something like a pencil or pen? Or print what is meant to end up being 1 square inch of the map?
There are many ways of representing orchards, and most of them depend on the scale of the map - the size it will be seen. That's why its so important to really get a grasp of the resulting view.
I suppose I could do it with Symbols in Area, (edit) but I find it gives unpredictable spacing and arrangements when I try and use it.
I'm trying to prepare myself to do contour lines. 50m intervals ranging from from 50 - 1000m. It will be tedious, slow, and boring, but necessary. I am thinking about not shading them, but making each one a different color and maybe change width at some elevations.
Then will come purging of roads and cities that aren't going to be significant in the game as well as adjusting the paths of rivers and roads to avoid question about what hex a road is in. Oh, and I need to add the railroad network.