Map 11 of 26: Asgard!

Man, its August already!?! I need to start ramping up the design production or 26 maps by February 2011 will not be happening. This week, its Asgard time! Good old-fashioned, public-domain Asgard.

Recently one of my loyal supporters posted this comment about my maps...

"A lot of your other maps are very original but sometimes one starting area has a major advantage over the other (WWII, Amazon Island). I'm sure you planned it that way but I wouldn't want those nearly as bad as the two I mentioned."
The beauty of not working by assignment and having complete creative control means that I can create completely unbalanced maps and not need to worry about the promotion of the meta-game. Playing on painfully symmetrical maps becomes tedious for me. I've always felt gaming companies sacrificed scenario play in order to foster a tournament environment.

In a classic defend-the-keep scenario the defenders should have an advantage. When playing around with an Asgard map, the initial designs changed a few times. The first design had less open space and a tree-lined shore for hindering terrain. But that design bothered me. Why would the Asgardians give any quarter to the enemy on their shores? And quickly with that thought I eliminated any hints of hindering terrain.

Don't get me wrong, I love the official Asgard map. It's water heavy with a neat special rules twist. Variety is the spice of life. However, I yearned for that classic Asgard of my youth.




In the next few days, I'll be the biggest hypocrite and give you one of those boring symmetrical maps I was just lamenting.

Until then, thanks for checking out my site.

Printing Time...

Over the past months, I have recieved scores of private messages and emails from fans asking to buy my maps. I wanted to announce that I am very close to working out a deal with a local printer to print atleast two of these maps in a small run of a few hundred. Once I have maps 11 and 12 finished and posted on this blog, I will be adding a poll where everyone will be able to vote on which two maps will be printed. Currently I am hoping that when everything is said and done I can price these at around $20 for two maps.

I'll have more details in the next few weeks. In the meantime, feel free to give a shout out either here or on HCRealms to lobby for your favorite map (except for the Martian Balls April Fool's map which for the good of humanity will never be printed.)

Next map... we get mythical.

Map 10 of 26: The Dark Alley

Yup, I'm not on pace to hit 26 maps in 52 weeks. With tonight's submission, I'm about 2 maps behind where I should be. So while my goal is definitely farther away than it should be, it's not out of sight.

One of the playing fields I've wanted to see for a long time is your typical grungy and dark alley. All the good urban heroes tend to bust criminal tail in this environment. You can easily imagine Daredevil, Batman, Spawn or the Green Hornet chasing down some goons on this map.

With only 16 x 24 squares to work with, it's difficult to provide adequate spacing for all the urban nooks and crannies you want to depict. The unique thing about this map is that line of fire from elevated terrain to elevated terrain is unblocked by obstacles, but there isn't a lot of opportunity for unobstructed line of fire from grounded to grounded level.

The other thing I wanted to do was a bit of seediness to this map, so I figured a small adult entertainment center was in order.

The last unusual feature is the placement of the starting zones. I would have liked to drape the starting areas across the top and bottom of this map but the intersections between clear terrain, elevated terrain, and starting areas was difficult to depict.

Oh and one other thing, this map does line up from side to side.

Map 9 of 26: Deadly Cargo

Two maps in one evening!?! What the heck is happening?

So there has been some back log in my mapping. I've got maybe 30 half-started maps in the works. A lot of times I see map requests and I've already got some of the framework started.
A few days ago XFORCE1982 over at HCRealms posted that he was looking for a spaceship map with some alien eggs. I knew I had downloaded some eggs previously from the Dundjinni forums, so I thought this would be one I could knock out of the park.

Dundjinni is great for a lot of things, but seamless tiling is not one of them. Once I exported this as a bitmap out of Dundjinni and into Corel Paint Shop Pro there were hundreds of off kilter lines that had warp outside their respective grid. It took a few nights of work to get this looking tolerable.

Another big dilemma was how to transition the hatches from interior ship to open outer space. I think the way I handled this works and the more transparent lines at the entrances make sense.

So XFORCE1982, I hope this works and maybe if we're lucky XFORCE1982 will take a few pictures of the map in action for the blog!

I'll see you again in a few days!

Map 8 of 26: Mighty Pants

So I play a lot of games and these games force me into acquiring a lot of stuff. Scientific notation would need to be used to count the point cost of all my painted and unpainted Warhammer 40K figures. I'm currently painting both a 28mm Carthaginian army and a 28mm WWI German army. I have shelves of old D&D, Marvel Saga, & West End Star Wars rules. There are binders full of Overpower and the decipher Star Trek CCG.

And then there are shelves of hero miniature games. The closet is full of colossal, never-biodegrading gaming goodness: two Galacti, one big Spectre, a Starro, a Sinestro, three Sentinels, one Advanced Sentinel, two Anti-Monitors and one Foom.

That's right one... one, big, buck naked Foom. Sure, I'd like me an Orange Foom. I'd like me the purple-panted Foom as well. But I need to make room for Dr. Manhattan and I still have yet to find room for the Great Cthulhu.

But the panted Foom calls me. He adds no different game play. But he's a dragon that wears short shorts. That's silver-aged awesome. I want him so, but the house, garage, attic and basement are stuffed with useless gaming crap.

What I like more about Foom owning pants is that it means there are times when he chooses to wear or not wear pants. Owning pants means you may own a dresser or a closet. They need to be cleaned, hemmed and maintained. I'd venture to say most of us own the commando, unabashed Foom. Many like me may want the more modest Foom as well. Many of you might have questioned where the pants go when he's not wearing them.

So for all you inquisitive and greedy collectors out there, I give you Mighty Pants, a hidden place behind the Great Wall where the Foom can let dangle his great balls.

Map 7 of 26: The Mystic Tower

I've stated in the past that one of my missions has been to create maps that represented certain places from the comic mythos. One such locale I wanted to tackle was the arcane tower of our friendly, neighborhood, gold-helmed mystic. I love the idea of places with vast misleading inner space and while I couldn't exactly create a room whose interior was bigger than its exterior, I could create a unique interior that mimicked that effect.

Originally this map was started years ago when I first purchased Dundjinni and various renditions of this map are saved haphazardly across my hard drive. The map was always intended to be a 36"x36" map and on that big of a map, the tower looks more centered. Tournament play evolving towards the use of narrower maps and the high print costs at my local print shop drove me to make this map the newer narrower width. The Tower sides are narrow but I think that will create some interesting strategic positioning for opposing players.




I also was itching to make an outer space map and this helped sate that urge. Again, I had designed this map long before I had purchased the software I use for post-production; especially adding the colored lines. Had I known adding the terrain lines would be so damn tideous I may not have designed the internal walkway the way I did.



Anyway, thank you for checking out my maps and in a few days I'll be posting a map that will solve one of comic bookdom's greatest mysteries.

Excuses...

One particular man was a huge part of my youth growing up. He was a Marianist brother who taught algebra, physics and computer science where I went to high school. He was full of odd mannerisms and odd sayings. Just to give you a glimpse into his madness, I'll tell you this... he used to cover the classroom windows in aluminum foil to keep the commies from spying on him. One of his better lines will always stick with me.

Excuses, your friends don't need them and your enemies don't believe them.

So I've gone two months without putting up a map. To play catch up, three should be going up in the next week or so. And over the course of the summer you'll see some of the map madness that has been keeping me off board lately including a massive three part connecting map that will knock your eye patch off.

Keep your good eye posted.

Map 6 of 26: Mission Abort!

Originally I planned to post a map that would showcase a bit of gaming nostalgia from years past. Unfortunately, this map is taking a ton of time to clean up and finish. So hopefully that "classic" map I promised will be up for viewing in the next few weeks. In the meantime I give you a map designed by a "psychotic moron".

Back on 04/03/2010, I was discussing my personal opinions of the character selection (or the lack thereof) from Brave & the Bold on a thread title "**SPOILER ALERT** Brave and the Bold" over at HCRealms. I broke the set figures down on a rating scale from 1 thru 5 where generally 3 thru 5 are positive categories and only one category is overtly negative. Here's a quote from that thread.

"1- Characters or concepts I dislike so much that if I had a time machine I'd go back in time and kill the creator's parents (Remakes or New ****)

020 – Damian Wayne

042 – Robin

045 - The Wizard Shazam (I won't forgive DC for messing up the Marvel Family)"

http://www.hcrealms.com/forum/showthread.php?p=4630333&highlight=inertia#post4630333

In a 04/11/2010 thread titled "Disgusted" created by HCRealms member mjts , mjts ranted:

"Some moron actually said that there were three characters in this set he disliked so much that if he had a time machine he would go back and kill the parents of the creators. I am not sure if he was talking about the creators of the sculpts, the dials or the comic book characters, but what was more surprising to me was that this psychotic was not immediately banned." http://www.hcrealms.com/forum/showthread.php?t=273843

Now OK, I'll give you that my category label is a little extreme but I intensely hate the concept of Damien Wayne. For the people out there that like this character. I'm glad they got two versions of him.

However, Batman has been known for his willpower for years. Knock him unconscious and try to take off the cowl... blam!... you're electrocuted. The man carries anti-shark repellant in his utility belt. That's prepared. This guy even carries around a piece of kryptonite just in case his buddy goes loco. That's even more prepared. He's slept with a billion women for seventy years and never conceived a child. Cripes, Hugh Hefner couldn't even do that.

Yet somehow Talia got a hold of some Bat-seed. Are you telling me there isn't some Bat-defertilization spray in that tool belt? You've got to be kidding me.

So it got me thinking, in the vast tapestry of comics, how could Batman stop this? Clearly he'd use the Atom to shrink down and stop the conception or maybe since he's a billionaire pay someone to shrink down and permanently set up shop in his sack who leaps into action in the event of an unexpected release. I like the idea of Batman joining forces with Rip Hunter and the Atom to go back in time to get inside Talia and stop Damien Wayne from being conceived. Once there, they're surprised to find hordes of League Elite and Man-Bat Assassins guarding her eggs. So with that fight in mind, a new map was born.


Now of course this map isn't exclusively Talia, so we can use it to stop any of the ridiculous offspring comicbookdom has forced on us over the years. From Connor Hawke to Hulkling no contrived legacy character is safe.

Before anyone asks... yes, this is an indoor map. This map was difficult for me as it was the first time I had to hand design all the shading effects. No one on the various RPG map sites had ever designed the necessary uterine shadows needed to create the internal area of this map. This map also has a ton of blocking terrain to help define where the "cavern" walls would be.

The debate has also finally been won; giant sperm flow is hindering terrain. Late last night, a fellow judge and I were discussing the merits of making sperm flow water terrain but in the end I felt at that scale the sperm would be too large to be wet. Also before any microbiologists reading this jump down my throat, I understand that the sperm, eggs and background are way out of scale to each other. However I needed to get all three elements in the map and feel the scale offense is nowhere near as bad as some of the scale liberties mainstream companies have taken on their maps such as the giant computers on that bank map.

Anyway, thanks for reading this moron's psychotic ramblings and I'll see you in a few weeks.

Map 5 of 26: Warrior Island

One of the major reasons I wanted to get into map-making was that I felt dramatically limited by the types of maps that mainstream companies were producing. I've also been an avid comic book reader and my personal collection stretches back now well into the Golden Age of comics. The fun part about comic books is that the locales can be fantastic: Atlantis with Namor or Aquaman, fiery Apokolips, underground caverns or ancient Greek islands. The dull part of current gaming for me is that the vast majority of the maps produced have been in Anytown, USA.

I also wanted to toy around with map dynamics not yet explored by mainstream companies. Sometimes I'll start working on a map and think "Why does elevated terrain always needs a way to it?" This is seen in the Martian Clock Map. Conceptually, that clockwork structure is floating. So why should a non-flier be able to get up there automatically? Mainstream companies have the obligation to create a balanced playing field as the makers of the game and shepherds of the gaming experience. I don't have that hindrance. I have the luxury of designing playing fields that are not shackled with the burden of being balanced for both players.

And that brings me to my next map, Warrior Island. With Brave & the Bold having so many island-hailing warriors in it, I felt this next map was appropriate to complete. It's been sitting half-finished on my hard drive for easily two years and I felt it was time to finally clean this one up.



With this map, I wanted a map that gave a stronger advantage to one side (the island defenders) than the other (the offshore attackers). Here the defenders have quickest access to the elevated and blocking terrain. The attackers are saddled with nothing to obstruct any line of fire to them and start off with a movement penalty for being in the water. There is only one measly square of hindering terrain, the idea behind this is that it gives the defenders home field advantage as the attackers have no place to hide from the island natives.

Of course, I have to now shell out the cash to get to Kinkos and print this baby up. Hopefully by the weekend I will have my 600 point Amazon army taking on Darkseid and his parademons.

Next week, we'll revisit an old classic.

Martian Balls!

Many of you may have seen this blog and my thread dedicated to my personal custom map challenge over in the Custom Maps forums.

 

I want to thank everyone who has supported me here, at HCRealms, and on the Dundjinni web site.