Historical European Board Game (Project)

[Raptori]

You're still spot on about the battles being mostly fought from Germany westward. East of Germany Lutheranism took root fairly safely without causing too much political turmoil (from what I've read). I think the finished project will not include northern Africa or the Iberian and Italian peninsulas, but will focus on central Europe and Britain. What is this you mean by projection?

I know literally *nothing* about this time period so I'll let these other knowledgeable people talk about that

"Projection" means: "the representation on a plane surface of part of the surface of the earth or a celestial sphere", i.e. how you distort and adjust the surface of the planet in order to transpose the three dimensions onto a two-dimensional map. In this case, it's also a matter of deciding which areas should be on the map, and which should be cropped off, which as the others have said is probably best decided based on which areas were involved in the conflict

[Micah Doulos]

So here's a map I meticulously made using google maps. This shows the more updated areas I wish to include into the game.



Maraxus, as you can see. I've included all of Denmark and a part of Poland. Thoughts?

Azelor, thanks for the historical reference. I had to look up the thirty years war. It does fit somewhat into the game. But the amount of content which will be squeezed on to the board (especially the number of towns) would make it less practical to make the map extend that far north. Expanding would reduce my ability to really zoom in on the key areas of France and Germany.

Thanks Raptori, I'll have to look into how to mess with the projection of maps I possess and see if it would work. I'm not sure how to cause a new projection other than top down, but I'll look into it. Any suggestions?

To compare:

Is it possible to make a "spoiler" in this forum so I can hide this map until clicked on?

[Micah Doulos]

Is it possible to edit this google's map by changing all the colors to a brownish scheme to reflect a more historical flavor?

[Raptori]

No problem! Someone on here mentioned a program called G.Projector, which I've downloaded and found to be really good and dead simple to use - but that seems to be more for taking an entire world map and then projecting it onto a globe for example, rather than regional maps like this. I'd be inclined to just adjust the shape of the layer in Photoshop for this kind of map, but there might be other programs made to do that much better too.

Edit: if you mean just change the colours of an image, I'd use Photoshop or GIMP. I think Google now do allow you to customise the colours for their maps, but not on satellite view since that's just a bunch of images.

[Micah Doulos]

I've got no skill when it comes to photoshop, so I'll mess around a bit with G Projector.

I'm also going to mess around with the color manipulation in GIMP. I'll see what I can come up with! Thanks Raptori.

[Azélor]

I think Lambert Conformal Conic would be a good projection of Europe but others could be great too.

[Micah Doulos]

Hi Azelor, I downloaded the G.Projector and set the map to Lambert Conformal Conic. My map disappeared (it was already tiny beforehand. Do you have any experience with G.Projector?

[Raptori]

When you loaded the image, it asks for the image boundaries; what numbers did you choose?

[Micah Doulos]

I chose the actual degrees of Europe by looking at a European map. The map was on the screen, but was small because it was a part of an invisible globe. So it plotted Europe where it would be on a globe, but wouldn't let me work on just that location.

[Raptori]

Okay cool. Try the same settings, using Lambert Conformal Conic, and fill in the following numbers where it says "Centered on Lon...": 15, 50, 60, 30, 20. That should roughly center the projection on the area of Europe you're looking for, just adjust those numbers to move the map around.