So am I correct in assuming this doesn't work in Flash Wargear, but is intended to work in Beta Player upon it's release?

And anyone figure out how it works? I put an image in with some splotched of color, and I got white... am I stuck with one color?

Yep I should have explained this a bit better. Firstly, this is a Beta player only feature and will not be back-ported to the Flash player.

The Neutral image works differently to the Board or Fog images. Board and Fog images are both the full size of the board. The Fog image sits at the bottom layer and is visible to the player through transparencies in the Board image / territories.

The Neutral image is used to fill the territory with a texture. For exampe, this is the default Neutral image. It is tiled automatically if it is smaller than the territory being filled (yes, it is a tiny 4x4 pixel image!):

http://www.wargear.net/images/player/neutral.png

Because the Neutral image is used as a fill texture it should generally be a small image that tiles (otherwise you will get discontinuities at the edges of the image. For this reason it's size is limited to 10kB although it should be as small as possible ideally.

One concern is around Player performance - if a large image is tiled into a large number of territories this could bring player's web browsers to their knees. This hasn't been tested much to date.

However I'm sure you designers will come up with some crazy reason why it has to be larger 

This sounds great! It sounds like the neutral image fills the fill map with a separate "color/image".  So it exists at fill map level.

So let's say the neutral image is 50% transparent.  Will the fog image show through?

also just curious how it tiles.  Does it tile out from the territory center (the point that the territory is defined)?

I don't actually know how it tiles... at a guess it will go from top left to bottom right so the top left hand corner will align with the top left hand pixel of your territory fill area.

With transparency - yes, the fog image will show through. Again this is in theory, it's not been tested.

OK so i tried to do this with my Arm Wrestle board.

Made a copy and set a 4x4 flesh tone colored neutral image.

This is what we got:

http://www.wargear.net/games/view/145566

The thumbnail is broken.

The Flash player (I know should not work) is showing all spaces in player 1 color and the Beta player is showing all spaces in player 2 color.

Can't take any actions.

Does the default neutral texture need to create the diagonal lines?

Couldn't it just be 4x4 solid grey?

This is what happens when it shows through a detailed board layer:

In the flash player the neutral grey looks much better:

This is a DEV game so that may be an issue. 

http://www.wargear.net/games/view/142800

If the lines are an issue then you could just use a custom flat image.

The textured Neutral color helps differentiate from other similar colors which has been reported as a problem before. If most designers think this is a bad idea then it's not something we have to do - it could be the same as the Flash player.

tom wrote:

If the lines are an issue then you could just use a custom flat image.

The textured Neutral color helps differentiate from other similar colors which has been reported as a problem before. If most designers think this is a bad idea then it's not something we have to do - it could be the same as the Flash player.

Fair enough.  I can add neutral images to my boards.  I also think that many boards will be fine with the texture but I know that others will need to be updated.

Can you tell me what I did wrong with the custom neutral on my Arm Wrestle copy.

Raptor wrote:

tom wrote:

If the lines are an issue then you could just use a custom flat image.

The textured Neutral color helps differentiate from other similar colors which has been reported as a problem before. If most designers think this is a bad idea then it's not something we have to do - it could be the same as the Flash player.

Fair enough.  I can add neutral images to my boards.  I also think that many boards will be fine with the texture but I know that others will need to be updated.

Can you tell me what I did wrong with the custom neutral on my Arm Wrestle copy.

Sorry still working through a bunch of bugs with the new player. I'll get back to you.

I think I may like the default being the simple Grey-Neutral rather than the one with the lines.  The lines remind me too much of a Fogged territory (probably because I've used the lines as fogged, ie Colossal Crusade)...I guess I could go back and change them all...but that sounds un-fun :P

I'll counter that - I like the lines better.

I've been in too many games where I make a mistake on a neutral gray vs. a player gray.

Aesthetically the plain gray is probably better, but play-wise I think the lines are an improvement.