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Mapmaker’s Diary: December 2020

Jydsken-Østveg

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Mapmaker’s Diary: December 2020
Is Mapping an Art?

Here I am beginning a new segment that I hope other mapmakers will follow up with as well in the future. I want to start this up as a place to explain the work done and other musings from the mapmaker. Additionally, it will be ok to ask questions which I will try to get to depending on time constraints. So, let’s get started.

Since I was in the 6th Grade, I’ve always had some sort of eye for art. I never thought I was very good, but was heaped high praise from empowering teachers and staff at school. I do like to think that while I am not a good artist, I do have an eye for art. When watching two football teams (doesn’t matter which kind of football), and I have no reason to root for either team, much like your girlfriend which does not care for the sport I might very well root for the more fashionable team. That said, ugly is not always horrible. I dare you to look at the color reserve sweaters released for the Anaheim Ducks (Quack! Ducks Fly Together!) and not tell me that isn’t an ugly shirt. Yet, it’s a wonderful shirt all the same because of goes back to an era of ugly 90s fashion and empowers it. Perhaps not a good example in justifying my own case for having an eye for art.

I think art is everywhere. Ugly is also art. There is something to be said for ugly communist architecture too. Of course I will subscribe to NIMBYism in such a case. I will advocate that the ugly brutal architecture at my former alma mater in Vancouver (please tear down the ugly Buchanan Tower). Interesting side note, the ugly Buchanan Tower has been used in many movies for evil villain hide outs. When I was in attendance for university, X-Men Origins: Wolverine used this ugly tower as a prop! My Swedish lessons and professor were all in that tower! While I could write about ugly architecture and art for awhile more I think I want to get back to the nuts and bolts of the map.

When making any map I like to thinking about it first of all as an art. I think many other mapmakers in the past have taken a more utilitarian approach with an emphasis on their own efforts to improve aspects of well, utility. That means making prominent lines that try to help judge distances and give the perception that the map they are looking at could have been bought at a bookstore in 2010 or something. I admire those maps for a variety of reasons and was a real big fan of what the previous mapmaker Louie did in terms of making the map look exactly like that. It was a very practical map that looked like the people of Engellex might’ve even put up on their own walls.

So why didn’t I do the same? I think that comes back to the opening sentence of the previous paragraph. I think it is an art. My goal is not to copy Louie’s style, but to forge my own path. While my own path has its oddities, I think it is first of all supposed to be unique yet still hold some utility in its own ways. Yet I discovered in the November release the was some desire for at least some idea of where things are. I replied to this desire by reinserting the equatorial line. It is faintly visible and I hope that it not distracting. I also hope that it is helpful for players to figure out where things are. Why not more lines you ask? This is because as an artist I think that when the Google Globe project is used, the lines look horrible. This is of course a personal preference, but I find the lines get stretched and thick and thus don’t achieve the same desired effect on the globe project. I also am a big fan of the globe project and want to keep designing maps that can work easily with it.

This December edition of the map was also fraught with big decisions that we weren’t quite sure how to handle. There was of course the long running Touyou Ban, but also questions in how colonies should function. November was a rushed effort to get something available to the community while not all of the questions were answered. It left more questions, such as why a colony was placed here, but not there? Original map designs as early as September had a Touzenese Himyari Empire which clashed with many applications. On top of that, there was a worry on a pure individual player level of what is too much? When the globe is empty there is a natural desire to fill it up with something. I think the right call was made for November to simply not map anything that was clashing. While many may ask then why did French colonies exist in abundance, as several drawings had my own Empire clashing even with Touzen, but I had the benefit of being able to fix those issues on the fly, and leave in things that filled “the space.” I think leaving those in for November was a mistake. I think that mistake ultimately killed the concept of Petits-Pays as well. Mistakes seldomly go unpunished, and there was a worry at least in my own mind of abusing the map in the eyes of the player base. I apologize for that, and I think course corrected for the December release which I am far more proud of.

The end of the Touyou Ban has been something that has been worth months of discussion, but finally came to a close for the December release. There are a few reasons for this and perhaps the largest one is popular demand. Another big reason is maybe not considered, but had to do with Kadikistan in the prior editions of the map where old nations might be conquered and then oddly kept around. There was a bit of a philosophical disagreement between two minds on the forum.

• Long term continuity or world builders
• Short term or free form RP

For a long time the forum has operated with both of these practices applied at random. Of course this was efffective. Nobody was really unhappy, but many players could have their toes stepped on. Since I started mapping, the idea was that we would pick one or the other, not arbitrary practices on the whims of how senior or well liked a player’s RP might be. I found it to be unfair that one player could demand a certain bit of expired RP as integral to their existence, and then another could have the same claim and have that dismissed by the player base at large. Xen and I have spoken at length on long term building and what consequences that should have for the forum and the map. The Touyou Ban is rooted in this discussion, and was upholding integral RP for Xen that other players may not have found as integral due to its age. As we rebooted the map, the same logic continued. That said, this same logic does not make as much sense now as it did before. Compounding the fact was an indecision of the player base in making map applications. Applications were never made in Himyar or the new area between Himyar and Touyou. This left us sitting back wondering what to do and not taking action on changing the status quo. As player unhappiness with the lack of a map built, we finally sat down and make key decisions that would influence this December map. I also cannot emphasize more that Covid-19 and RL work have played a role as well. Sometime you want to have a good discussion on an issue, but there isn’t the mental or physical energy to do so. I want to say a lot of October days fell short of our own expectations just due to fatigue. Either way, the Touyou Ban is dead and there is no intension to have it return.

A big question for many has also been what on earth are those flight line things? They are precisely that. Those familiar with enough air travel will have likely opened the magazine in the front seat pocket and noticed that there is usually a route map at the back of the magazine. Originally this is a map feature that goes back to the days of Q, a Dutch player, was making the map back in 2006 I believe. It is something I’ve always admired, but never really knew what to do with. I’ve implemented these flight routes as seen in the November edition to indicate relationships. Currently only the Engellexic based Republics have such lines and that is because they are supposed to be seen as somewhat separate entities, but aligned. In the future I plan to make routes between major trade partners, organizations, and alliances. Flight paths will be labels, or potentially color coded. I have not decided yet.

Ultimately I think the map still is art. I have been employing a generous use of filters to try to give the sense of weathered paper, and fonts that indicate a typewriter may have been used. It has a certain 1940s appeal and I am certainly thinking about looking at maps from that era when displayed in video games, tv shows, or movies. It’s a look I think I will continue to try to use, but obviously will tire of at some point. I am very open to stylistic changes, and do welcome others to give tips and ideas for changes or additions to the look. I think the further in the future I go, the more difficult or rather time consuming it is to change. With the lengthy launch of this map, I will not consider changing styles any further for awhile for the sake of timely releases. That said, I am unhappy with the display logos of cities, and that might change sometime in early 2021. I make those in the style of Louie’s previous map from scratch, but also without much effort. I think new icons are perhaps a good idea but would appreciate thoughts on them.

I hope that this entire entry really highlights how the December map came to be and how we got there. I hope I spoke enough about art for you as well. Thanks for reading, I hope you found these random musings interesting and will try to write them up after each major map release. Feel free to ask questions, I’ll get back to them either in a direct response or a future diary entry.

P.S. Please excuse my many typos. It is not easy to type on a phone.
 
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