Cloth map?

they say that they intend for everything that could be done on the regular 3D map to be accessable from the cloth map.   Building things and directing troops is on the list of things that can be done for sure.  

I'm not really sure what wouldn't be possible from the map.  Perhaps entering dungeons?

Well, in the finished game, if you zoom out far enough, the map turns from the watercolor-like realistic image to something that looks more like an actual map, with lines for roads, dots for cities and towns, and so on. (It's shown in some of the screenshots:

At the start of the betas, the cloth map will be what you play on, period: no matter how far you zoom in, you will never see tyhe watercolor world. Around beta-1 or beta-2, the zoom function will start to work.

Everything.

Take in mind that this is Alpha and early beta. Far from all functions will be.. functional. But for all intents and purposes, it's been said that absolutely everything that you can do in the watercolor world will be doable in the cloth-map world.

So don't worry about that. They just want to see that everything works as it should in the cloth-world, so that people don't get distracted by all the fancy colors.

:p

I for one really like the look of the cloth map. Very Lord of Rings!

Is the cloth map gonna be there in the betas when you fully zoom out?

I'm sure there will be scrolling or minor zoom to account for screen size.  you just won't be able to zoom 'in' for 3D.  In theory, a crappy PC could turn of 3D graphics all together and still be able to play the game, and if they have a locked zoom for map-mode that would be a little annoying.

Since it is playable on merely the cloth map, there's no need to put out the (unfinished) main graphics engine for what will be a basic playability alpha/beta.

Still I think it adds an awesome immersion factor to the game. Did Frogboy say in one of the journels your would be able to rename the landmarks on the map?

Yeah, and it actually sparked a bit of contention with the MP crowd...

The cloth map is so that elemental gets the correct "game" feeling with out dedicated hard core art work.  Keep in mind more work has gone into elemental so far then the earler game Master of Magic had total.  That said the game needs to have the "fun" element figured out at the macro level before working on the micro level.

Its really a great idea to build the game and then add detail.

It will be fun to see what the Ai comes up with as names. As long as they made this also moddable we can expect Lord of the Rings, Startrek, Babylon 5 etc related names. I've even an Elite planet name generator somewere

Bear Ridge. Meadow of the Ursaris. Shrine of the Bear-King.

LOL

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Besides all the functional stuff that they will test with the alpha/beta, they will be able to see if the game runs smooth (or runs at all) in many kinds of computers setups. Blizzard has a software that runs a diagnostic of your hardware, this can be useful to gather information from beta testers. The devs might think on something similar to help them.

Cheers,

Kata

Stardock has this as well.

See in the top left corner, there are some minimal details for this (FPS etc). Those in the Alpha Beta nd more will be most likely submitting machine info and log files for errors etc.

Lots of fun! Looking forward to the cloth map as well.

I'm not sattisfied with the way rivers are represented on the map as they were shown in the devlog on economy models (see below).

They are too black (should be the sepia colour of the coasts/waves, perhaps blueish) and they do not line up with the coasts.

I'm confident this cosmetic issue will be resolved by beta3.

also...the edited map in AP: it has a forest and a blue mission location in the middle of the sea?

This is odd.

Sail away to enchanted shores,

Areyar

I don't think those black thingies are rivers. Maybe they're roads of some kind.

The cloth map will be a very nice first test. Noting fancy but all the tools available. I think it's the best way to start testing something that is so complicated. Start with something simple and then add to it.

We have to admit the cloth map is beautiful. It should not be to hard for us to use it

In Dominions all you have is the cloth map. If the gameplay is good its indeed all you need. Still I'm glad Stardock plans on doing a whole lot more later on!

But the idea that: "If the gameplay is fun on the cloth map, we're on the right track." is something I fully agree with.

@ scoutdog: Naw, I think the roads were really straightish. You can see them in the second image in reply#2.

I'd rather have roads meander more, but that is just cosmetics again, possibly having abstracted straight roads will help in differentiating them from the rivers. Esp. if both will be pitch black. :p

edit: yeah, cool graphics are overrated. they do add to the value though, as does a great soundtrack.

Well, while meandering roads look good, they are NOT wery efficient. I don't know enough about the game's math to tell if they could ruin you, but they would definately make things a LOT harder.

Roads rarely take a perfectly straight course. Anything from a large boulder to a steep grade could cause a road to change directions. Especially in ye olde dayes. They're still faster though as you know exactly where to go and don't have to deal with many obstacles.

True, but those are more or less insignificant on these map scales: any road that meanders outside of its tile and into another is a disadvantage with no puropse. Now, if they twist a little bit within their tile just to look good, that's fine, but anything more would begin to effect gameplay.

heh, tell that to anybody around here (I live in Arizona)  where all the roads are straight (and evenly spaced.  Major roads are almost always exactly 1 mile or 1/2 a mile apart)  

They should be curvy lines until you reseacrh dynamite or earth-moving-wands or something that would let you move things that would make roads not-straight  (I'm joking, that would be too much effort for very little actual aesthetic value)