Hey everyone, I'm giving board designing a first try and have run into an issue with play testing.

For some reason, new games won't ever actually begin on the board now.

http://www.wargear.net/boards/designer/7339

I'm not sure if this is some setting I've messed up or a common error y'all have run into.

I'm also open to any input on the board. I love earthbound and wargear so I decided to combine them.

Thanks for any help!

Hi eb4evr,

Your board won't work because you have not created legitimate 'territories,' which need to be a single solid color.  I highly recommend checking out the Wiki by clicking on the help tab at the top of this page.  If you want to go right to a more detailed explanation of how the designer interprets images and to better understand why territories need to be solid, check out this page.  You don't need to make a dual layer map, but if you understand how dual-layer works, then making a single layer board should be a snap.

Nice looking map!

M57 wrote:

Hi eb4evr,

Your board won't work because you have not created legitimate 'territories,' which need to be a single solid color.  I highly recommend checking out the Wiki by clicking on the help tab at the top of this page.  If you want to go right to a more detailed explanation of how the designer interprets images and to better understand why territories need to be solid, check out this page.  You don't need to make a dual layer map, but if you understand how dual-layer works, then making a single layer board should be a snap.

Nice looking map!

Don't you say in the wiki that single-layer maps are not allowed to go live, or is it Circle Mode, or both?

I've written an algorithm to find all the pixels in the same region as the territory pixel. I did it based on the alpha component, so it interprets a fully opaque pixel as not part of the region, therefore if the region is delimited by fully opaque pixels, the algorithm works as intended. Tom's algorithm is probably similar to mine but maybe it's based on the RGB channels and considers contour when it finds a colour that is sufficiently different. I'm guessing he uses the fillmap? Is that it?

@OP

Anyway, yeah, I think you need to study the wiki and imo, you should start with dual-layer right away. Paint.NET is a great option unless you already work with a more complex image editor.

From my experience, each territory needs to be in a region/area surrounded by a contour with a sufficiently different colour. You need to make sure no two territories are inside the same region.

Thanks for the advice guys. Adding in the proper layers/borders is a whole different battle as I'm not too visual, but I'll try!

Here is the error when trying to make a game:

Found it - I accidentally had one player start out with a territory but nobody else did. Noob mistake, but maybe someone else will learn from this.

No.

Your problem there is this setting

Set that to Random.

I like 'Dice complainers will be thrown in the sewer'.  It gaurantees I won't be playing the map, but I appreciate the humour.  

Actually, since you have it on Circle Mode, the map image should not matter at all. I believe that in this mode the engine simply draws a circle around your territories and considers that circle the region of that territory. But as it says in the Designer, Circle Mode boards won't be allowed to be played on Live Public games, so if you want that you have to change to Fill Mode.

Amidon37 wrote:

No.

 

Your problem there is this setting

 

 

 

 

 

 

Set that to Random.

Can you explain why?

From what eb4evr reports, it seems we either have to give at least one territory to each player from the start or none at all, is that it? But that doesn't mean he has to change to Random in the Rules tab.

Btw, just to be clear to eb4evr, the territories you leave blank in the Setup of the Design tab will be allocated randomly.

I may have been wrong - its been awhile since I was actively designing boards -

Yep Redshift, you are spot on.

To be clear, the issue was that I had accidentally assigned one single territory to player 1 (misclick in the Setup tab). So when the game would try to begin, it would have the error since only one of the players were allocated any territories 

eb4evr wrote:

Yep Redshift, you are spot on.

To be clear, the issue was that I had accidentally assigned one single territory to player 1 (misclick in the Setup tab). So when the game would try to begin, it would have the error since only one of the players were allocated any territories 

Did you have everything else set to Neutral or very few blank territories?

If there were at least as many blank territories as players, the game should start. I'm not so sure of what I 've said before. I know one can give more territories in the setup to one or more seats compared to others. This makes sense since the board mechanics the designer has made can balance the game. Just not sure about the specific example of giving Setup territories to one player and none to the others but that should be allowed as well, so I'm betting more on you not leaving enough blank territories for all players to start the game with at least 1.

You still haven't made territories big enough to be functional.  I suppose the game would "start" with 1 pixel territories but they would be next to impossible to click on and it's unlikely that you could even see what color they are.  If you want to keep things simple and just use the one image, you're going to have to erase all of the spaces where you want territories and then refill them with a single color. Each territory can have its own color but EVERY pixel in the territory must be EXACTLY the same color.  Let us know if you need help.

M57 wrote:

You still haven't made territories big enough to be functional.  I suppose the game would "start" with 1 pixel territories but they would be next to impossible to click on and it's unlikely that you could even see what color they are.  If you want to keep things simple and just use the one image, you're going to have to erase all of the spaces where you want territories and then refill them with a single color. Each territory can have its own color but EVERY pixel in the territory must be EXACTLY the same color.  Let us know if you need help.

He's using Circle Mode atm. Each territory region is a circle centered on the territory - the board image is irrelevant in this mode.

In Fill Mode what might happen is for more than one territory to share the same region which will cause bugs. It'll hardly ever happen to be just one pixel since the engine grabs all contiguous pixels with same or similar color to the territory position.