What software does P-Dox use to create their maps? Just photoshop? Do you have anything in-house?
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Of course, good triggers need not make such events feel so predetermined.
Do you guys play a lot of boardgames? What are your favourites? Me, I like Railroad Tycoon/Railways of the world, or a nice game of Agricola or Puerto Rico.
That couldn't happen with the same Pope, it was an infinitesimal chance he would have caved even with large quantities of gold and silver.
The Medici like shinies. In any case, an interesting counter-factual by a historian who is not me, so I won't go too far to defend Elliott's what-if.
I am pretty good at sports, I love skiing and am a skiing instructor. I read pretty fast, maybe five books a week if they are around 300-400 pages each. I try to become a better writer, both for writing events and for maybe one day write a novel or two. The problem is, I have too many ideas and not enough free time for playing all the video games I want, see all the movies or read all the books to relax and start writing. I have started a few but only finished short stories.
Do you mean how we separate the provinces from each other, the textures for the different map modes or the small 3D-models? The province map, where every province has its own RGB color, is painted in Photoshop. For CKII I used Photoshop at the start, then I got a new computer and had to use Paint.NET to correct the map or change it. Then I got Photoshop Elements. It is cheaper and without many of the tools Photoshop CS has. The artists use Photoshop CS3 to paint the textures and interface, I think.
I like Hero Quest, Talisman and Dixit. Dixit is more of a story-telling board game, each player has a stack of cards with different pictures with lots of details painted on them. The first who comes up with a sentence, a word or a short description of one of his/her cards says it and then the rest have to choose one of their cards and give it to the first. S/he then places the cards, picture up. Then it is up to the rest to decide which one of these cards fit the sentence, word or short description best and vote for it. The story-teller must choose his/her words carefully, if everyone chooses his/her card then they may walk two steps forward on the board and s/he must stay in place. The best is if only one of the other players chooses the story-tellers card, then only the two of them may walk three steps forward. It is great fun!
Any of you guys ever willing to take a full game of World in Flames: Deluxe Edition?
Apologies for the double post:
This thread is called ask Paradox almost anything. And as you've probably noticed by now, I have mostly spent my time asking dumb question (none of them were funny).
However, I do actually have a serious question for once. I am working on a game, where I draw my map by hexagon tiles. I have already created a simple terrain generator that generates a some-what believeable terrain, but this is purely for testing purposes.
Now drawing coloured tiles next to one another is trivial, both hexagon and squares. And it would continue to be so even if the tiles had a pattern or image blitted onto them. But here is where it gets tricky. Unlike Civilization V, my tiles have different elevation. This means that a tile of elevation 1 can be next to a tile of elevation 3. And plenty of others, because there are no limit between the difference in elevation between two tiles.
The differences could easily be as much as 100, which would obviously represent a cliff, as each tile is about 50cm²; indeed each tile can only host a single tree or a single person. And buildings take many tiles. If you have ever played The Settlers 3 (or 4), you will know of what I speak.
Now here is my question; how do I draw this? I am using SDL, and I intend to use 2D graphics, because then I can maintain full control of the graphics and 3D graphics simply take too much effort and for very little gain, I feel. Just look at Caesar III versus Caesar IV, the former still looks a lot better!
Right now, I simply draw each tile to its height. This creates a column like feel, which of course is not what I want. I want there to be as smooth as possible transition between each tile.
So I have a few ideas, I am considering. Right now, I go all the way to the bottom of each tile's ground mix, and draw each level (one pixel) depending on its ground type. This currently creates a look like this:
Where yellow is sand, green is dirt, ugly is gravel and black is the rest. The number of each tile is its elevation. The bottom is limited to -20.
I want a general rule, rather than having to draw a separate image for each tile situation. And even if I focus on the different between just two tiles (and then plastering the six resulting images together), it will still be a lot of images to generate.
So I am thinking for differences lower than 20, there will be smooth transition, while above, it will be as it is now; a cliff. But I think below that, I will draw each tile with a larger and larger alpha section of the transitioning tile.
Now, that is my idea. But I was wondering if you have any ideas I might be able to use?
This thread is called ask Paradox almost anything. And as you've probably noticed by now, I have mostly spent my time asking dumb question (none of them were funny).
However, I do actually have a serious question for once. I am working on a game, where I draw my map by hexagon tiles. I have already created a simple terrain generator that generates a some-what believeable terrain, but this is purely for testing purposes.
Now drawing coloured tiles next to one another is trivial, both hexagon and squares. And it would continue to be so even if the tiles had a pattern or image blitted onto them. But here is where it gets tricky. Unlike Civilization V, my tiles have different elevation. This means that a tile of elevation 1 can be next to a tile of elevation 3. And plenty of others, because there are no limit between the difference in elevation between two tiles.
The differences could easily be as much as 100, which would obviously represent a cliff, as each tile is about 50cm²; indeed each tile can only host a single tree or a single person. And buildings take many tiles. If you have ever played The Settlers 3 (or 4), you will know of what I speak.
Now here is my question; how do I draw this? I am using SDL, and I intend to use 2D graphics, because then I can maintain full control of the graphics and 3D graphics simply take too much effort and for very little gain, I feel. Just look at Caesar III versus Caesar IV, the former still looks a lot better!
Right now, I simply draw each tile to its height. This creates a column like feel, which of course is not what I want. I want there to be as smooth as possible transition between each tile.
So I have a few ideas, I am considering. Right now, I go all the way to the bottom of each tile's ground mix, and draw each level (one pixel) depending on its ground type. This currently creates a look like this:
Where yellow is sand, green is dirt, ugly is gravel and black is the rest. The number of each tile is its elevation. The bottom is limited to -20.
I want a general rule, rather than having to draw a separate image for each tile situation. And even if I focus on the different between just two tiles (and then plastering the six resulting images together), it will still be a lot of images to generate.
So I am thinking for differences lower than 20, there will be smooth transition, while above, it will be as it is now; a cliff. But I think below that, I will draw each tile with a larger and larger alpha section of the transitioning tile.
Now, that is my idea. But I was wondering if you have any ideas I might be able to use?
are you planning on releasing this game to the good people of the PI forums Svip, for some reason this hexagonal map has got me very interested
Eventually, I hope so. But right now, I am just trying to get the basics of my engine working. But maybe I shouldn't worry so much about drawing the map just yet, and focus on some of the other stuff for now. I mean, we get what the map represents.
What sort of game are you trying to make though, like a city type builder of the settlers or something else?
Yeah, akin to The Settlers, but with more stuff. A long array of things to be harvested, produced, needed and sold. More actual trade. More realistic city developments and expansions. You can read more about these ideas and more at the development blog. But right now I am just focusing on getting the map working. My code seems to be running a runtime error when I redraw the map after altering a tile. Mmm...
That looks really cool Svip. Looks like a more complex Anno game to me. Good luck with it, I look forward to playing it in the future.
I've become a fan of your events in CK2. There is quality storytelling there that helps humanize these characters. Games like the ones you work on here are another way of exploring the human condition (without getting too philosophical
).
RE: CK2, can you tell us when we will start to see DEV activity in the forums again?
its been silent for over 2 months now.
its been silent for over 2 months now.
Has Johan ever meet Gaben? Because that would be the meeting of the two coolest people in the games industry (Johan is first of course)
He wouldn't, Gaben is smart enough to know that without Johan there would be a severe lack of awesome grand startegy games