User talk:Jorres

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Hello Jorres! Welcome to StrategyWiki. Thank you for your contributions. If you have any questions, just contact a sysop through their talk page or post on the staff lounge, and they'd be happy to help. If you need help editing, check the StrategyWiki Guide or visit the IRC channel to chat, we're usually around. On the other hand, if you have ideas for StrategyWiki, bring them up on the forums. To keep up-to-date with the goings on of the wiki, consider adding the noticeboard to your watchlist.

Please remember to sign your name when leaving comments on talk pages by clicking or using four tildes (    ); this will automatically produce your name and the date. Feel free to delete this message from your talk page if you like, or keep it for reference. Happy editing! —  Pro cyon  20:26, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Furiat
Furiat hasn't been active since May 1, 2011, so it's not too likely that you'll hear back from him anytime soon.  Pro cyon  20:26, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Do not assume I don't check my e-mail, Procyon. :P Furiat 00:18, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

HL Maps
Hi Jorres,

There is quite a multitude of HL maps missing actually - the whole German campaign for example. The way I create the maps is actually quite time consuming and requires quite a bit of rigor. One map takes anything between 16 and 70 screenshots. I scroll the map with arrow keys making a screen every 2-3 ticks (remember - one tick jumps two fields), remembering not to have a piece that is only on one screenshot and contains a cursor. Then I take the pieces and align them pixel-sharp in Gimp (a slow and painful process, but you quickly get used to it).

The submarines are a pain in the ass though, as they don't appear on your map. The way I get their exact positioning is I drop the CPU cycles in DosBox to an extremely low rate. When the enemy moves the sub I get a few screenshots of that move and one (or more) of them will have something I can determine the sub's position with. Having the rest of the map already assembled, I then take a generic sub and place it correctly (again: pixel-sharp).

Maps with large water sections might also be a pain, but I have yet to see a map that is unalignable (a ship piece or something else lets me get the map size right).

And then there's the tactical maps, which are a whole other species. I use selection gradients, transparency and pasting over the finished map with altered unit positions. Haven't made much of these though, cause the strategy sections take at least three times the effort against creating the stub with unit counts (you have to play through the map after all, deciding to pause at certain moments to make a bunch of screenshots).

When the map is made I count the units, check the depots for resource values and unit containment, compare against the unit counts given by the game, eradicate errors (half of the counts have errors usually), build tables and move to the next one.

All in all it takes so much time, that I haven't done that in months, but if you're willing to fill the gaps for Germany - be my guest. I have a few French maps still not contained in an article and quite a few yet to be played (I first play through the map before I create it to get the feel of the mission and make less mistakes). Furiat 21:54, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

PS: If you're willing to make a collaborative effort to make the HL articles better, I'm all in. I've neglected these since they seemed more of a hobby of mine than anything helpful to anyone, but after the year has passed, I see there was some movement (even a frustrated user who didn't find the help he needed), so there might be a future for this after all. Furiat 00:24, 28 December 2011 (UTC)