show troops and basic info in realms regions on dynamic map with mouseover

[Nosferatus]

The dynamic map is a great source of inspiration for general, rulers, dukes, lords any ambitious nobles.
While looking, wouldin't it be nice to glance at regions troop presence and some basic info (like gold, food, pop, region lord) in your realm?
Showing this basic information while going with your mouse over a specific region will give a better overview and comfort.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Oh man, that would totally clutter up the map and probably make it take some unholy time to load on a mobile device. (Not to mention...how would you check that out on a mobile device anyway?)

But at least a pop-up delay and some sort of low resource method, so a slight jerk of the mouse wouldn't mean I see a flash of several regions' stats.

[Nosferatus]

Oh man, that would totally clutter up the map and probably make it take some unholy time to load on a mobile device. (Not to mention...how would you check that out on a mobile device anyway?)

But at least a pop-up delay and some sort of low resource method, so a slight jerk of the mouse wouldn't mean I see a flash of several regions' stats.

details artemesia, details
indeed, it should take atleast a second or two for it to show and perhaps be disabled for mobile devices.

[Indirik]

The fact that something does not work on a mobile display should not be a reason to avoid implementing it. Otherwise we would be limiting ourselves to the limited capability of mobile devices. That wouldn't be fun.

There have been some attempts to ... enhance ... the dynamic map in the past few months. Some implementation problems got in the way, though, and they never quite made it live. I really would like to see more happen with the dynamic map, using the more modern features that are available for maps these days.

[Nosferatus]

The fact that something does not work on a mobile display should not be a reason to avoid implementing it. Otherwise we would be limiting ourselves to the limited capability of mobile devices. That wouldn't be fun.

There have been some attempts to ... enhance ... the dynamic map in the past few months. Some implementation problems got in the way, though, and they never quite made it live. I really would like to see more happen with the dynamic map, using the more modern features that are available for maps these days.

As i understand BM lacks these kind of coders?
Perhaps from the donation and advertisement income, we can hire some coders in india?
Or is this to radical?
I'd be willing to make the contacts.

[Anaris]

No, we're not going to hire coders in India.  Remember, the only money that gets spent on BM is the money for the server.  All of us work volunteer.

Anyway, that's not the problem.  The problem is that the framework we were working with seems to have some bugs in it.

[Shizzle]

If the map gets updating, you might want to consider expanding the layers with Guilds and Religions... Or red and green for low versus highly populated areas. It would be kind of cool to see how guilds gain or lose influence, also for non-members.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

As far as I can tell by the current dynamic map, it's a static graphic (The image made through Age of Wonders 2 map editor), with various layers of doodads showing stuff like the realm that owns the region, presence of militia, starvation, battles, and your location. It doesn't seem like it would appreciate having many more things over it, and I'd expect that if we wanted an even more dynamic map, we might have to look at some alternative presentation styles.

One thing that could work is splitting the dynamic map into sections that can have variable zoom, and are centered either according to proximity to your character's location, or according to a radius around a designated area.

[Indirik]

Or, you know, switch over to a more modern mapping technology? :p

[Shizzle]

AoW was released in 2002, almost a decade ago :p

that 'polygon' discussion on the previous community site was interesting

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Yeah, switch over, sounds good. Er...When will that happen?

[Chenier]

Not sure what you had in mind, but as I told Tom, I'm finally making shapefiles for BT with GIS software as I said I would 4 months ago.

The time it takes and the amount of available data depends on how much I must fetch myself and how much I'm granted by those with access to those databases (hopefully in spreadsheets).

[songqu88@gmail.com]

I'm thinking (excuse the following lack of technical terminology) that the map system will need to be updated to support multiple layers that can be selected under some options on the side. It would be highly cluttered to show all the information on a single map (unless the user really insisted on it), so it might be good to render multiple map layers, possibly even with different borders, or region fill colors, to indicate different boundaries, such as political regions, duchies, religious influence, weather area.

Another function might be zoom, as well as focus on a certain area. That would allow more information to be presented in a more relevant scope.

[Foundation]

I'm thinking (excuse the following lack of technical terminology) that the map system will need to be updated to support multiple layers that can be selected under some options on the side. It would be highly cluttered to show all the information on a single map (unless the user really insisted on it), so it might be good to render multiple map layers, possibly even with different borders, or region fill colors, to indicate different boundaries, such as political regions, duchies, religious influence, weather area.

Another function might be zoom, as well as focus on a certain area. That would allow more information to be presented in a more relevant scope.

These are features that we are working on, but as previously mentioned, the software we were working with had bugs that need to be fixed before we can continue.  (And no, it's unlikely that we can or will fix those bugs in the tool used)