East vs West Developer diary 2 - Our vision for the map

yk199505

East vs West Developer diary 2 - Our vision for the map
Hi and welcome to the second developer diary for East vs. West: A Hearts of Iron game!
Your country’s fate during the tumultuous years of the Cold War is all decided here, in your war room. In front of you, you have the large map of the entire world. This is where you can ponder your next move, where to build factories, move troops, where to seek allies or places to send under-cover operatives to.
If I had to summarize our goal for the map in East vs. West in one word it would be “authentic”. We strove to create a world map that looks like a map from an atlas, so that you will instantly recognize countries, regions, and provinces by their shape as well as their name.
Why is the quality of the map important? The map is where we make the Cold War come to life for you. And to be frank, to make a historical game, we must be pretty sure we have the basics straight, especially since you can lead any nation in the Post-World War II Era. We suspect that most players will, of course, like to start off as the big boys like the USA or USSR, but we also know that as a gamer, there isn’t anything more exciting than being the underdog and creating your own destiny.
We started with the blank contours of the continent, like the ones you will find here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_...cal_projection).
This is a common way of “projecting” the surface of our planet to a rectangle. Those familiar with Victoria II will recognize this, as well. This blank map had to be populated with the three administrative levels our game uses: countries, regions and provinces.
Country borders are well defined, so we populated our map with countries to start.


African nations after the end of colonial era

Nations in turn are further divided into regions. Regions, as in real life, are administrative divisions that serve as the basis for the economic and the diplomatic system of the game. We based this division on real life administrative divisions that were in effect around 1990 and on contested areas during the periods. As regions (states, counties, cantons, etc.) have very different sizes (just compare the states Maryland (USA) to Texas (USA), or the Moscow Oblast (USSR) to Yamal-Nenets Oblast (USSR)), we had to merge or split some real life administrative regions to give some sense of consistency to how regions look. Still, we hope people will immediately recognize their country when looking at it on map.


South American regions

Finally the lowest level of detail is the a province level, the level where most of you will engage with East vs West. Troops move on the province level, attacking, defending and outmaneuvering your opponents, using the terrain to their advantage. So with that primary purpose in mind, we decided that provinces would be roughly equal in size across the globe. For those of your that are curious about numbers, there are about 15,000 land provinces and 3k sea provinces. Provinces are not only battlegrounds, of course: your people live there, cultivating the fields, tending orchards or toiling in various mines. As such, provinces are equally important in the densely populated Indian coast, the resource rich Peruvian mountains or in the contested areas of the Middle East. All corners of the world have advantages and disadvantages, whether the fringes of the Sahara, the jungles of Central America or the rice fields of the Far East.
This beautiful map is more than an abstract projection of the surface of Earth on which we can place counters, buildings or targets for launching nuclear Armageddon. It is a testament to a timeline of events, from the recent past, many of which that bear the mark of history stretching back several hundred years.
Starting a grand campaign at the beginning of 1946 will bring you into a world just at the end of one of the greatest conflicts in human history, World War II. You will quickly notice the gains and losses of that war are still deeply ingrained in the minds of the people and are clearly visible on the map, as a testimony of the times. Nations are liberated and under occupation but there are also seeds of new nations ready to burst out of the ground ready to grow as independent, sovereign entities. These seeds were planted hundreds of years before, foreshadowing the decades of decolonization struggles that were to come. The struggle of ideas through this time left some nations divided, some reborn while others successfully unified. The basis for all of this and more is the map of East vs. West which faithfully serves both the past and the myriad of possibilities that the future would hold during the Cold War.


Yugoslavian provinces


The Middle-East


The Baltic States

I will see you on the battlefield!
ádám (kunadam) Kastytis (Legolas)
Head of Map Team


吾 我看到中東 我看到南斯了

tcelvis

东西对抗开发者日志2 - 我们的视野：地图

欢迎来到东西对抗的第二篇开发者日记。你的国家在那段狂躁年代里的命运将在这里决定，在你的作战室里。在你面前，你有整个世界的广大地图。这里是你沉思下一步行动，决定在哪里建造工厂，调动军队，在哪里寻找盟友和向哪里派遣间谍的地方。

如果我必须总结东西对抗地图部分的目标的话，它将是“真实的”。我们努力创造国家地图册水准的世界地图，让你能立刻从形状辨认出国家、地区和省份就像你看到了它们的名字一样。

为何地图的质量重要？因为我们通过地图把冷战时代带给你。而且坦率的说，制作一个历史游戏的时候。我们必须非常确定我们有把基础打牢。特别是考虑到你可能会领导后二战时代的任何一个国家。我们估计大多数玩家会理所当然地选择美帝和苏修这样得重磅级选手来作为开始。但是我们同样知道，作为一个资深玩家，没有什么比率领土狗逆袭高富帅掌握命运更爽的了。

我们从类似下面链接里空白的大陆版块开始。
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_cylindrical_projection

这是一种常用地将地球表面投影到一个长方形上的方法，熟悉VIC2的人也会认出它。这个白板地图必须被填入我们游戏使用的三级行政区域：国家、地区和省份。

国家边界是明确设置了的，所以我们首先搞定国家。

（缺图？）
殖民时代结束后的非洲国家

国家然后要被分为多个区域。区域，就像在真实中一样，是游戏中作为经济和外交基础的行政划分。我们的划分基于1990年左右实际生效和存在争议的情况。正如区域（州，郡，道）有大有小（拿马里兰（美）和德克萨斯（美），或者莫斯科州和涅涅茨州比比就知道了）我们不得不合并或者分割真实的行政区来保证区域的大小看起来永远不会太离谱。不过我们仍然希望人们看地图时总能立刻认出他们的国家。

（缺图）
南美洲的区域（们？）
最后是最底层的细节——省份。这一层将是你接触最多的一层。东西对抗中军队在这一层移动、进攻、防守，这是运筹帷幄、利用地形的一层。因此，我们决定让全球的省份都具有差不多相同的大小。如果有人对数字比较好奇的话。我们有15000个陆地省份和3000个海洋省份。省份不仅是战场，你的人民生活在那里，耕作、种植、挖矿。这样，无论是在人口密集的印度海岸，资源富饶的秘鲁山区或者是硝烟不断的中东，那里的省份都同样重要。世界所有的角落都有各自的强项和弱势，无论是撒哈拉的边缘、中美洲的雨林还是远东的农田。这张漂亮的地图远远不只是用来放置国家、建筑或是指定末日核袭击目标的一个抽象的地球投影。它是一份近代史时间线的明证，囊括了许多根源可以上溯数百年的历史事件。

从1946年开始一场全局战役将会把你带入一个刚刚结束人类历史上最大冲突——二战——的世界。你将很快注意到战争的输赢依然深刻的影响着人们的思想并且清楚地反映在地图上，如同一份时代的证言。有的国家得到了解放，有的仍然被占领，但同样有新国家地种子正要破土而出成长为独立主权国家。这些种子数百年前就已种下，为殖民地独立斗争浪潮的数十年做下铺垫。意识形态的斗争让一些国家分裂，让一些重生，而另一些则得到统一。而这一切的基础，就是东西对抗这张忠实地提供了冷战期间关于过往和未来无数可能性的地图。

（缺图）
南斯拉夫省份（们？）


（缺图）
中东

（缺图）
波罗的海各国

我们战场见！
ádám (kunadam) Kastytis (Legolas)
（签名）
地图组组长

gdj1942

苏军推进不到柏林绝不停止！我们从莫斯科到柏林！

tcelvis

10000PB

我翻了！

yk199505

來啊

tcelvis

你给的那个原文里的链接坑人，我还不得不自己跑英文维基里去找对的链接

zarathushtra

不是说要在18号上市么？

yk199505

介紹一下 推廣一下也好啊