Ok, so after hearing Tom explain the new designer options I decided to attempt to bring over my Myths and Legends map from Warfish.

For the record I am using Firefox 3.5.5, Windows 7 Ultimate X64, and Adobe Flash 10.0.32.18

Below are my thoughts during the design process:

- Flash interface is nice, but sometimes lags a little bit.

- Ok, so why no GIF compatability? Although I used the PNG format for most of my maps and cards, sometimes I used GIF because of filesize issues. Also, without GIF format we cannot have motion cards...

- Adding territories is beautifully done, but if adding under fill style the territory should show some type of filling after selection.

- Creating continents is difficult, the small yellow highlight around that TINY circle for the territory is very hard to see. Also, sometimes I cannot seem to select the territor until after a few mouse clicks in the general vicinity finally manages to highlight.

- Adding borders COMPLETELY blows. No offense, but WHY only one border at a time? Oh, and that hard time selecting the territory I mentioned in the previous, well for some reason it is WAY worse for borders. I seriously had to click a few dozen times for each border addition before I finally managed to create a border. This was extremely frustrating... Makes me very afraid to attempt the border Modifiers...

- I have found it IMPOSSIBLE to add a 5th border to any territory. I tried this on 12 different territories, but only up to 4 borders could be added. When attempting to add more than 4 borders the territory simply cannot be selected. I spent over an hour trying to finish my borders before giving up. Big flaw, requires immediate attention. UPDATE: So I decided to log out and clear my cache and then log back in and try adding more borders. And now I can add the rest of my borders. Hopefully this information is helpful when looking into this issue.

- Really? I have to submit my map for review before it's accepted? While I understand the reasons behind that, I can't help but MUCH prefer the Warfish system. I don't like the idea of spending all this time making a map only to potentially have it shot down by some arbitrary individual. Who is this anyway? Is it you Tom or a group of people or someone else? Is it put to a vote? Can someone be added to be a map approver? Need more information please.

And these are my thoughts while map making. Over all, the total tiem spent within the WarGear engine making my map suitable for play was about 1 hour. This is a vast improvement in terms of time spent compared to Warfish. Thanks Tom.

hi Doom

Thanks for the feedback, I'll take a look at fixing these problems - I think most of the problems you mention are related to the clickable area being too small when the designer is set to fill mode which means when you are clicking on the territory the border which sits on top of the territory blocks the clicks.

I'll update the Designer to fix this, in the meantime you'll probably find it much easier to change to Circle mode while you add all the borders, modifiers etc then you can switch back afterwards. This way the clickable area is much larger.

re: the review system - I think this is a necessary step to improve the standards of the boards on the site. Without it anyone can publish any image to the boards page, it could be totally unplayable / offensive / pornographic and we've certainly seen this in the past on WF. Right now it would be me doing the reviews but I am (clearly!) not a designer so I would like the board reviewers to be a community group of experienced designers who can provide pointers on how to improve the board so it's ready for Live release (any volunteers?!?)

Also anyone who demonstrates that they're a half-decent designer can be set to be able to promote their boards straight to Live - I've set it so you and the other WF designers who've registered so far can now do this as clearly I trust you guys :)

cheers

tom

I personally do like a Review process (sign me up for a volunteer if needed!), although I would say it may be possible to have 2 sets of maps. The Council Approved list and the Unapproved list (which could be used for Testing and people that are just trying stuff out).

Thanks for the offer Yertle that would be great.

I still need to do a little work on the review pages so that this works properly and automatically notifies the submitter of the rejection / acceptance reason but once that's in place I will be in touch.

I don't know if there should be a vote needed to pass a board from a reviewer group or whether an individual reviewer could review it alone, what do you think?

OK I made a few changes:

1. GIFs are now enabled for board images and cards

2. In fill-mode the territory circle is now the same size as in circle-mode except the circle background fill is transparent to make it easier to locate the territories. This should also fix the problem adding borders and continents.

3. I increased the clickable area of the borders so they are easier to select when in the Borders or Modifiers view.

4. There is now a 'Test Fill' button that should appear when adding / editing territories to make it easier to check that fills are working correctly.

5. I updated the territory select graphics so it should now be a lot more obvious when territories are selected or continents are being viewed.

I haven't yet added a way to add multiple borders at once - how would you like this to work, would you want to just keep clicking from territory to territory to add all the borders and then set the border type (i.e. one-way, two-way etc) for all the borders at the end? Or would you set the border type at the start and then each subsequent border inherits that type? Either is workable from my perspective.

Also as per my earlier post you are now an 'Approved' designer so if you go to your boards page and Cancel Submit you should now be able to promote the board directly to Live status :)


ps there appears to be a bug setting up the starting scenario in fill-mode which I need to fix.

The Test Fill button did not appear to do anything when I clicked it. I clicked it while adding a territory, but before clicking Apply.

Also, is there a fill mode color we need to use? As in, does the territory on the map image have to be a certain color in order for the fill to work?

Thank you very much for the fixes and updates Tom, I checked out the new options and the design process is much better. Thank you especially for the larger territory circles.

Also, add me up there too for a reviewer.

Quick question, I haven't tested this yet but what are the max dimensions and file size for maps? Warfish has a max dimension of 1200 by 1200 pixels, and a max filesize of 500kb. WarGear should at least have this also...?

And if everything works out, what would be your opinion on my bringing over all my fill maps from Warfish? I never wanted to do this for Conquer Club or Landgrab, but I figure if WarGear is the future then why not. Especially if there is eventually a sales option and my maps can make me some more coffee money. (Coffee is a necessity in Seattle, I cannot live without it)

hi EM - that's odd - the fill should work on any uniform colour area, transparent or not. It will just fill until it reaches a pixel of a non-identical color. It only fills the territory under the pixel you are editing, not any of the other territories.

Glad you like the updates Doom. There's no limit to the image dimensions at present, I didn't want to put in a hard limit in case someone comes up with a grand concept, I guess this would be something that the board reviewers would pick up on. The current file size limit is 1MB (1048576 bytes) - I could increase this but I don't want to slow down load times too much.

I'd be delighted of course if you brought over your board designs at some point. I'll open up a thread to discuss how you designers think the board payment system should work so I can incorporate any suggestions you might have.

Also will add you to the list of reviewers thanks :)

PEBKAC - I thought I would just click it and then it would fill, I didn't realize I would have to hold it down. :P

This does however bring up a different problem. I cannot scroll while having the button depressed, so if the map runs down off the page at all, which many do, I can't use this test feature. Can it be made a click to check, second click to unfill?

Ah, that is a good point... I'll make it toggleable (if that's a word).

Also, on Doom's thoughts on adding borders. I haven't had any problems selecting territories, which I believe you said you tried to fix, but I do find it knid of annoying to only be able to add one at a time.

A suggestion: could you make it so that either clicking on one territory and then clicking on another automatically places the border? Or, using the current method, pressing Enter would be the same as clicking Apply? Either of these changes would definitely speed up the process, and may not be as difficult as recoding for multiple borders.

Other thoughts:

Can we customize the card names?

When uploading something, instead of sitting and waiting for us to hit 'x' to close, just automatically close and show the results, i.e. show the cards with change made, show map design, etc.

Yes can do - however you need to set the border type (e.g. one-way / artillery) so would you want to place a series of borders then set the type at the end?

You should be able to rename cards already - there is a rename button on the Cards tab.

Good point re uploading images - I'll update that.

Well, I noticed that whatever border type you select seems to stay static, so I thought that if you were adding a bunch of 2 way borders, it would go: click, click, Enter, click, click, Enter, etc. If you switch to One-way, it would go click, click, select One-way, Enter, click, click, Enter, etc, and still be adding one way. So I don't know that setting the type at the end is necessary.

I guess I just missed the card rename ::blush::

What am I missing here?  I created a New Board and it is in the Dev tab, but when I click on the board name I go to an empty page ( http://www.wargear.net/boards/designer/207 ), nothing loads.
According to the Help (To start editing your board design, click on the name of the board in the Board Design list and the board designer should load up.) something should load correct?

There's a problem at the moment with the board loader - in the meantime running with IE should fix (sorry!)

I read this somewhere before but I don't recall if there was an answer but.....Seriously, only 5 borders per territory? A map that I have tried on another site several times is finally gonna see the light of day due to WarGear being awesome except that I need more than 5 borders.

We need more than 5....please help a Risky out, would you?

Not a problem, Risky.