Redoing Battle of Britain map

[friarbarb]

Hi all,

I'm trying to help a friend redo a map from an old Battle of Britain game. Here is a link to the map and an image:

http://boardgamegeek.com/image/75898/battle-britain




So, the idea is to retrieve a Google Earth view of the same area, ie Britian and northern France, resize the image and over lay the offset square grid over this Google Image.

The original game map is 20" x 26" and he would like to resize the map to about 4' x 6'.

I do have GIMP down loaded to my system, but don't have a lot of experience.

So, any help with this would be appreciated.

Robert

[Freodin]

I'm not sure that using a GoogleEarth map would be really a good fit. Regardless of what style you use (abstract or satelite view), you would get a modern view of the area. Not quite suited for a 1940 setting.

Just what kind of informations do you want to show on your new map? Something beyond the game-relevant stuff?

If you kept it on what info is already there, you could do a nice contemporary war map or something similar.

So, what image do you have in your mind?

[friarbarb]

Hi Freodin,

Thanks for the reply.

I do agree that using modern imagery from Google Earth/Sat would not look that great and I have recommended that to the guy I'm trying to help out.

Actually, I thought something akin to this map, from Over the Reich, would be better...



or something akin to these:

http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/li...ject-205012849

In regards to information that would be needed on the map, it should conform to what is on the original map. (airbases, towns, etc.)

My friend will also be using 1/285th scale miniatures for the aircraft.

I actually thought about hand drawing the thing, but wanted to see if I could use GIMP, or something else, to create the map.

Any thoughts?
Thanks again,

Robert

[Freodin]

Not really sure.

You said that new board is to be about 4' x 6'... about 122cm x 183cm for us non-imperials. That's huge. How are you planing to do that... use a table or something similar? Several connectable pieces?

If you were to print that (which of course would be necessary if you did it on a PC) you would have to do it in parts. An image in a decent printable resolution at that size... let's say we keep it small at 150 dpi... would still measure 7200 x 10800 pixel. Unwieldy and unnecessary.

Better to do it in a vector based program than a pixel based like GIMP. Inkscape is the current free way to go in this regard. You could keep it simple, with basic linework, labels and icons.

But you would still have to print it out in pieces, and then find a decent way to apply it to the playing board.


So in this case, I'd say you really would be better off doing it by hand. As you already have a grid on the original board, it should be easy to copy it to your new one.
Start with the grid and draw in the important parts by copying it tile by tile.