New Panzer Campaign Graphics

[Strela]

David, that you are not happy with some of the reaction to the first draft of your proposed changes is clear for all to see. I can fully understand your annoyance and you have my sympathy.

But at the risk of adding to your anger, I think there is something that is even more important. That is that the forum should allow for the free flow of ideas without people being concerned that their comments will result in them being insulted in any way (even sarcastically, by insinuation or as a 'joke') by someone in your position. Also I think the comment above by 'CountryBoy', misses an important point. The vocal minority bothers to provide feedback while the silent majority does not. We cannot know what people think if they are silent. Surely more should be encouraged to have their say if we are to improve these games. From personal experience, as someone that tends to invariably hold minority views, after a while it is tiring to go against the grain. Sometimes it is easier not to bother. Luckily not everyone follows this approach.

Btw, as an old ASL player, I think the blue used for the Germans is great. Does that help?

John

All,

I'm not angry (maybe a little annoyed!), but definitely not angry. 

I'm replying on the back of John's note to highlight my agreement that the free flow of ideas is key. We want to hear them. The last thing I intended with my follow-up post was to shut down the conversation, but rather highlight that some of the more extreme thoughts were off the mark. Things such as 'old' Nato counters with thicker lines will still be there in the legacy graphics and its just as easy for a player to mix and match. Want the grey primary roads and railways from the gold release, copy the applicable file across etc.

The primary reason I posted the blog post was to highlight what is a big deal - the inclusion of another level of graphics. This finally gives a decent level of fidelity to what can be done. As I mentioned in the blog post, we are going from 900 pixels to 3,600 per hex. Same with the counters - we now have 2,400 pixels up from 600. That's a lot more real estate and allows us to do a lot more. This inclusion was desperately needed at a time when higher resolution, larger monitors were highlighting the flaws of what was 'prior generation' graphics. The other thing is that I am not a graphic designer. I'm an accountant/general manager by trade and everything you see has been learned because I got frustrated first with the unit graphics and then the terrain. All I have done is self taught and I spend a lot of time trying to understand how others make their art work. That's why there has been a constant evolution of my work over time. That said its now getting pretty much at the point that we will stop that process as its clear that we're confusing people.

I also want to comment on the 'unification' of the Panzer Battles and Panzer Campaigns graphics. What we're trying to do is not have them identical - at least for terrain. Unit cards are definitely interchangeable (shoot me if I have to do two different sets!), but the aim was always to have Panzer Battles look more 'natural' due to its scale and have Panzer Campaigns more map like. We made this call when we went across to the Gold Updates as at some point JTS had migrated a very early version of Panzer Battles terrain across to Panzer Campaigns and I think that was a wrong direction. My expectation is that you will see a different set of terrain graphics for each from this point. The Gold versions were the last to have some similar properties. The good news for modders is that most files will now be interchangeable between both systems so there is nothing stopping them moving between the two series. I'm planning to show you some new winter graphics for Panzer Battles that I'm really happy with in the next blog post or so as the next title(s) will be in cold weather and we hadn't to date done much with snow/frozen.

The other discussed point with the cross over of the two systems was Peter mentioned his concern with the 'Panzer Battles like' buildings coming across. The only thing that changed was that we moved these from 'flat' to raised. This is probably one of the points that I will show you an image as it illustrates why I think this works, but I can understand why people may disagree 

Here is a city in the Gold graphics and the new. I know which I think looks better.


I may ultimately add some streets etc to the town and city hexes, but I still believe these look map like. Again, the original Gold graphics will be available for those that disagree.

Finally, I'm also playing with the 'star burst' in each hex. The hexes look very flat without it, but I will probably pull back the impact by 50% which seems to work. I may show that soon.

As is evident, everyone has their ideal look. I won't satisfy everyone. I will try and come up with a solid base that will be usable for the foreseeable future. I hope the modders among you will have a field day as there really is a lot more to work with.

Please feel free to continue to post, but understand there are some limits to what can and cannot be done when working with the system we have of hex based graphics with six variants randomly chosen.

David