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designer_tutorials:creating_board_images

Creating Dual Layer Board Images

This tutorial will teach you how to create three images for your WarGear map - a Board Image, Fillmap Image, and a Fog Image. Making images like these requires an image editor that can handle layers. There are many ways to go about making images like these; this is but one.

(The image editor used in this tutorial is Acorn, a program for OSX.)

  • tip: Save all of your images as .png files. They are efficient and the 'Player' likes them.

Terminology Used In This Tutorial

  • When the word 'Designer' is capitalized, it refers to the WarGear board editor, where you load your images and create your board.
  • When the word 'Player' is capitalized, it refers to the Native Player User Interface.

  • The images you will learn to make in this tutorial will be layered (or stacked) upon one another in the Designer and eventually in the Player. (Here is a cross-section of the three images created in this tutorial). So when it's mentioned that the 'Board' image is 'on top of' the 'Fill' image, remember this picture.

Setup

In the Designer on the 'Settings' page..

  1. Select 'Dual Layers' from the 'Layers' menu.
  2. Select 'Custom' from the 'Fog Image' menu.

You should now see upload buttons for the three images. If they don't work (Mac), you will have to quit the Designer, go to the Design main page, and right-click on “Actions.”


Making Your Board And Fillmap Images

Transparency

For purposes of this tutorial, the following image is considered 100% transparent ..or having 0% opacity.

Board Image

Your board image is the top image on the map - If it has no transparency (i.e., it is 100% opaque), no player colors will be visible. (There is one exception. In 'Single Layer' mode, the 'Board Image' also serves as the 'fillmap')

The image on the right is NOT acceptable for use as a Board Image in “Dual Layer” mode. It will work, but in 'Single Layer' mode only.

In Dual Layer mode this is not an acceptable image because a separate image (the Fillmap, which lies underneath the Board Image) will fill with the player colors. If this map was used as a Board Image, its solid color territories would cover and hide the player colors that change in the Fillmap during a game.

Make Your territories Transparent

The image below is acceptable as a 'Board Image' in Dual Layer mode. Remember, this is the top part of the image that the Player will piece together during a game. The player colors will 'print' on the Fillmap image that sits below it, and those colors will be visible because the territories on the Board Image (below) are completely transparent.

* tip: use the magic wand tool in your editor to select fill areas you wish to delete - adjusting the tolerance as necessary to make sure you get every pixel)


Keep The Fillmap Simple


The Fillmap serves one purpose - to be filled with player colors when the territory is occupied (this includes neutral). It lies directly underneath the 'board image.' The only parts of the Fillmap that will be visible are the player colors. The black borders (they could be any color) are only necessary to break up the territories and contain the colors that will fill them.


Notice that the “fill” areas in the image above are filled with a single solid color. It doesn't matter what those colors are, but in order for it to fill, every pixel in each territorial area must be exactly the same color. Close is not good enough; the colors must be identical.

There's no need to include the ocean on the above Fillmap Image; it is not a territory, and it will only be covered by the ocean on the Board Image. Including the ocean will only make the Fillmap image file size bigger, potentially making it take longer to piece together and thus download, but it won't hurt the resulting image.

  • Tip: Even though they won't be seen during a game, use interesting or relevant colors for the territories in your Fillmap image, those colors will be seen on the board and view pages and all thumbnail images of your board.

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Give Your Board Image Texture



If you were to upload the last two images to the Designer, the board might look something like this in an actual game.

This image is fine; it will work, but it's kind of flat looking. The player colors lack texture. Technically, we didn't even have to use Dual Layer mode to achieve this result; We could have much more easily just used the first image in this tutorial in Single Layer mode.


Add Transparency/Opacity To Your Board Image

To overlay a texture over the territories, we could add the bricks in this image to our 'Board Image,“ but set at “full strength” the bricks will cover the player colors. Note that the Bricks Layer in the above image is selected and it's 'opacity' is set to 100% in the editor. By pulling down the 'opacity,' we can make the bricks semi-transparent..


We are now ready to add the brick layer to our board image.

Mix Solid & Semi-Transparency On Your Board Image

Three layers in our image editor are in play here - the Territory Borders, Ocean, and semi-transparent Bricks texture.




Here is the final product (with the Fillmap uploaded) in action. The opacity of the Bricks has been bumped up 50% in this image to demonstrate that making the semi-transparent overlay too thick will mute the player colors, and even though the unit count numbers are printed on top of the entire image, they can become harder to decipher.


Adding The Fog Image

When a board is played, the Player puts the Fog image at the bottom of the stack and the three images are merged. The manner in which the Fill Image is treated by the Player determines where the Fog Image becomes visible.

The Fog Image will become visible wherever the fill map is filled with “transparency.” Because of this, when a semi-opaque textural image (the bricks) is part of the 'Board Image,' the best choice for a Fog Image is usually the Board image (just not transparent - make it full-strength). Because the semi-tranparent part of the Board Image is identical to the Fog Image that it covers, it goes unnoticed.

There is no need to include any territorial borders in the fog image because the fog image lies below all other images and never gets “filled.”


In this cross-section picture of the three images created in this tutorial, the fog image at the bottom of the stack is the Brick layer by itself - set to 100% opacity.

The only way that it will be visible is if at least one of the territories in the Fillmap is rendered transparent.




This image shows what the board would look like if the large territory became fogged (filled with “transparency” by the Player in a game).


You can see these images loaded in the Designer using this link.

Understanding How The Fog Image Works

Many designers initially find it difficult to understand why the fog image is the bottom layer. For some it seems much more intuitive that fog should be on the top layer. If you find this to be the case, it may help to think of it this way. The engine doesn't erase - it can only paint, but one thing it can paint is that special color called transparency. By painting transparency - the bottom fog layer becomes visible. Fog is the absence of a a fill color - so when the engine calls for fog, it simply 'fills' the territory with 100% transparency, thereby exposing the fog image on the bottom layer.

If you made fog the top layer, you'd never see the fill layer. The fog layer should have no transparency.

designer_tutorials/creating_board_images.txt · Last modified: 2021/11/20 09:46 by M57