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Unit designs for Explore! variant

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Douglas E Fresh
Dignitary

Wed Jan 13, 2010 8:10 am

I am hoping to run a game of Toms' Explore! variant fairly soon, but decided that I wanted to try updating the visual elements of the design a little. There should be an image displayed below including my initial effort; I'd really appreciate it if any experienced players could offer up any reservations or suggestions they may have.

The main goal is to display the fact that units in this variant can spend time upgrading their offense and defence. I decided to use the concept of a spear and shield count to represent the relative strengths of armies and fleets. 2 spears and 1 shield represents an army/fleet with an offensive power of 2 and defensive of 1. Fairly straightforward.

There are also a couple of new units - barbarians and kings

Each player will begin the game with a city and a King. The King unit is identical to a regular army unit in every way - save that he does not require a city to support him - so long as the player owns at least one city. This means that the first thing a player will do in my game is choose a province, adjacent to their first city, in which to send forth their first army or fleet.

As well as specific provinces on the map in which a player may spend 4 turns attempting to found new cities, there are also provinces containing barbarian settlements. These contain rather uncivilised folk who do not have the vision and aspiration of the rather more regal players. Barbarians Settlements are simply neutral SCs which do nothing but hold. They may be supported by a player of course Smile

, but a player with two adjacent units, or a unit with more than 1 offense, may attack the province containing the barbarian settlement, causing the barbarian unit to disband. The player may then assume control of the settlement, but must sped two turns (a game year) 'assimilating' the settlement in order to gain the associated build.

Players who have played in an Explore! variant game before, may recall that the current set of icons also include information about what the unit has done, or attempted to do that turn. I am working on ways to include this, I think the solution at the moment will include a small bar below the icon to display whether they have moved / supported or attempted to increase their stats - and the bar will be coloured red if that order failed. I think I am going to represent city builds or improvements as a number on the icon of the structure itself.

After discussing with Tom, I have also decided to reduce the time it will take to improve units and cities from 4 turns to 2. I think the time it takes to found a new city will still be 4 turns though.

After posting a thread the other day about drumming up support for a game, I haven't received an email from anyone at all!

PLEASE DO NOT POST INTEREST IN PLAYING IN THIS THREAD! - simply email me at douglasefresh AT googlemail DOT com. This thread is purely for discussing the unit design and any other aspects of the Explore! variant.

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posts: 454 | location: Kingdom of Loathing (GMT) | joined: 25 Jan 2007

GMTom
Administrator

Wed Jan 13, 2010 10:16 am

As usual, very nice stuff!

I would have two concerns only
Fist is while VERY nice looking and visually appealing, these units do take up a lot of real estate and seeing the name of the province underneath them might be hard unless an extra large map were used. A large map looks great but it is a larger file and requires a lot of scrolling to view it all?

Second, and far more important
You already touched on this, players should be able to see what that unit is doing
right now they can see an M if he moved, an S if he supported, a I2 if on the second turn of improving a city and so on. These clues are very important and need to be known, not just a turn was spent doing something, but what? (so that development can be killed if need be)
Not sure how you can designate it, the bar is cool, but that tells the time frame only not the actual action. Maybe a letter in the bar showing the action taking place?

posts: 8593 | location: Rochester, NY, North Coast USA | joined: 14 Feb 2000

GMTom
Administrator

Wed Jan 13, 2010 10:18 am

Oh, and very minor and hardly worth mentioning...
The barbarian probably should have no spear?
Just to keep things uniform, he defends only show a shield only would be in order?
or maybe give him a club if his hand looks lonely?

posts: 8593 | location: Rochester, NY, North Coast USA | joined: 14 Feb 2000

Douglas E Fresh
Dignitary

Thu Jan 14, 2010 2:10 am

Thanks for those comments TOm - Very helpful. To respond to your first two points in reverse order:

We are on the same page regarding the unit actions being displayed - by using a bar I meant exactly the same method as we have all used up to now. We may as well show Build action in the unit bar as well (instead of on the structure icon as I'd proposed above) as it is the unit doing the building

AS far as unit size is concerned, I am aware that they take up a fair amount of space. If I reduce them (without unit action info) they look like this (see image below) in comparison to current unit size.

I think they are still legible - what is your opinion?

While we are on the subject of map size, I don't think file size is an issue for me and the png files I send out to players will not be huge, but scrolling was my only concern too: Roadkills final map for abracadabra measured 1760 x 1500 pixels.

What do you think is an acceptable maximum size for an entire map?

It would be really useful to hear form others who have played the game if possible, as this last questions is very much dependent on subjective screen sizes etc.

- Oh yeah - and the Barbarian unit is really defunct anyway, we may as well just have the symbol of the settlement and have it understood that it has a defence of 1. When the settlement is assimilated (Unit orders: Improve1 & Improve2, ) it is upgraded to a level 1 city icon in the colour of that player and they gain the build.

EDIT: I've just tried adding the unit action info and, at the same size as the units in this post it is really not legible enough. I guess the only solution if we are to use that method would be to keep the units large (as in top post) and work on a slightly larger scale map - possibly with abbreviations for very long territory names? - so my question regarding acceptable map size is really key.

Is it worth making units prettier but by compromising on the amount of scrolling a player must do and potential forced shortening of territory names?

posts: 454 | location: Kingdom of Loathing (GMT) | joined: 25 Jan 2007

GMTom
Administrator

Fri Jan 15, 2010 10:40 am

My eyes are nearly 50 years old and not what they used to be. But I can make each out with some squinting (not good?)
What if you simply shaded each shield a bit differently and made the spears darker?
Shading each shield would make it easier to count (for me anyways) how many there are and the spears are a BIT fuzzy to me, darker would be easier to see and count.

You COULD add a letter code in each players shield designating order action?
But why not simply have a horizontal bar just a touch larger than the current font shown (where you label them) then have up to 4 steps per horizontal bar under the units. The letter on the far left of the bar shows the action, the bar fills up each of the sectors in say green for successful turns or red for a broken improvement/build.
It would give all you need while remaining fairly small and still pretty cool looking?

posts: 8593 | location: Rochester, NY, North Coast USA | joined: 14 Feb 2000

Douglas E Fresh
Dignitary

Fri Jan 15, 2010 12:39 pm

Thanks Tom - I think the units need some work. I've used a blur to make them stand out form the map and I'm thinking its not so good. More importantly though - what about the maximum map size? I'm not sure if you have a library of the maps already played (I couldn't find my old one - escapade - and I no longer have my original files ((don;t ask :/))

An idea of how large I can go without pissing anyone off too much would be really useful Smile

I know I said I'd GM 1897 while I worked on some Explore map ideas and the units, but it seems pretty quiet around here... do you think there is support enough from the playing community to run a game right now?

posts: 454 | location: Kingdom of Loathing (GMT) | joined: 25 Jan 2007

GMTom
Administrator

Sun Jan 17, 2010 7:42 pm

Size is hardly a big issue, as long as you try to keep it to a minimum, that's all you should worry about in my opinion.

here's an example of what I was talking about
I added black to the spears so you can count them easier and added a bar graph at the bottom showing turns and action taken:

posts: 8593 | location: Rochester, NY, North Coast USA | joined: 14 Feb 2000

Douglas E Fresh
Dignitary

Mon Jan 18, 2010 1:42 am

Thanks Tom, I'll keep working on the unit design - as i said - I need to find a way of making the units themselves smaller yet still legible. I guess as far as map size is concerned I'll just make the damn thing Very Happy

I've had very little interest still. Do you have a list of previous Explore! players I could contact individually?

posts: 454 | location: Kingdom of Loathing (GMT) | joined: 25 Jan 2007

GMTom
Administrator

Mon Jan 18, 2010 8:14 am

Is the picture missing for others as well?
It was there yesterday when I posted this.
I will try to re-do it later

posts: 8593 | location: Rochester, NY, North Coast USA | joined: 14 Feb 2000

King of Swords
Dignitary

Tue Jan 19, 2010 12:12 am

Douglas - The icons are cool. But are they intended to replace the little flags that have been used in previous Explore! games, as the upper half of unit icons? And will these new icons also indicate nationality somehow, such as by the color of the icons themselves, or maybe their background color? I have to say, I'd miss the little flags. But it's probably a good idea to try something different every now and again, to shake up any complacency that's been building up.

The 'progress percentage bar' is a clever alternative to just a numeral following the command letter.

I definitely see the issue with size. The more details each icon needs to convey, the larger it needs to be.

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Douglas E Fresh
Dignitary

Tue Jan 19, 2010 12:53 am

@Tom - images are all there I think Smile

@KoS - thanks for the comments - yeah icon colour would denote nationality and I take your point about the flags - they are certainly one of the things that I enjoyed about playing. I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board anyway. Right now, I haven't seen an obvious solution to replacing the units, but it is just that little rectangles - while completely functional and really well designed for purpose - grate on me a little. That said I cannot make the maps in the manner I'd intended either (loads of issues with FoW etc. and pretty coastlines Very Happy

) so this one is on the back burner until I get some design done that I'm happy with. Will post it up here as soon as I have any new options.

There is so much info that needs to be on permanent display that even the idea of making the map in flash, and each unit a clickable button which displays unit stats etc. is not really as good as what we have as far as the player usability is concerned. Kudos to Tom!

That said, I DO want to GM another Explore! game, but I only really want to attempt it - if I can do something new visually.

posts: 454 | location: Kingdom of Loathing (GMT) | joined: 25 Jan 2007

GMTom
Administrator

Tue Jan 19, 2010 5:14 am

cool idea...
add the flag to each nations shield!

posts: 8593 | location: Rochester, NY, North Coast USA | joined: 14 Feb 2000

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