Here's an idea, lets make a new resource, no wait a few resources and use almost the same image for each. Also put it only on plains and make it mostly white so visibility and contrast are really low. This will surely give everyone older than 30 a headache after a half hour of play.
Smirk's personal monthly complain about the resources thread
- Thread starter Smirk
- Start date
Stone Wolf
Chieftain
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2003
- Messages
- 93
Heh, I just right click on them so I don't have to look very hard.
What I want is to get that water resource renamed. I mean, "rocks?" What kind of name is that? How about Coral Reef or something?
What I want is to get that water resource renamed. I mean, "rocks?" What kind of name is that? How about Coral Reef or something?
cracker
Gil Favor's Sidekick
Here's an idea, lets take 10 people at random and wrap them all in plain brown paper wrappers and then let them post messages here in the forum and lets see if we can pick out who they are by just comparing how often and how obnoxious they can act at every opportunity.
Smirk,
A lot of effort goes into supporting your free entertainment each month. The least you can do is to make a minimal effort to be 1/2 nice on a regular basis.
A lot of effort when into trying to have the special resources provided some minimal contrast to every possible permutation of terrain graphics. The sizing and scale was also chosen to go with the existing Firaxis design scale.
If you can't say something nice, take this as one of those opportunities to show us you know when to say nothing at all.
cracker
Smirk,
A lot of effort goes into supporting your free entertainment each month. The least you can do is to make a minimal effort to be 1/2 nice on a regular basis.
A lot of effort when into trying to have the special resources provided some minimal contrast to every possible permutation of terrain graphics. The sizing and scale was also chosen to go with the existing Firaxis design scale.
If you can't say something nice, take this as one of those opportunities to show us you know when to say nothing at all.
cracker
Well my first inclination was to say they were ass, but I withheld that comment until I could see them in the game. If constructive criticism isn't wanted then this should be stated somewhere. I wasn't lying when I mentioned the headache.
I don't know why you feel the need to attempt to embarrass me, which you take many occasions to do, both rewording subjects, editing and rewording messages. There should be a personal setting for this forum like "Allow cracker to reword your posts" not selecting this would mean you could only delete them.
And this is hardly monthly, I see that there are many other instances where artists have made good art that is included, why couldn't that be the case with the "new official" resources? (Note: I'm talking about what cracker is referencing, last months resource "solution" and my comments) I don't know who made the official sets but they aren't good and I stopped using the edited ones for gotm.
Despite the fact that you personally came down hard on a certain artist about putting in the blips I find now you have all but forced the use of the blips by adding a bunch of new resources to the game and made them very difficult to tell apart.
For some reason my biggest complaints have stemmed from shoddy art, why is that? I am no artist myself so it can't be any political reason, perhaps its just our art tastes differ. I was also very annoyed to see the Azap unit, one because the artist didn't use the green replacement color properly and two because PTW already has art for that unit.
You're putting a peg in the wrong shaped hole. I play because of the other people playing not because of what cracker and friends have put in the game. I played back when there was no corrected scoring system and no modification. Perhaps if I go away for another year it will revert to the original. Although judging how you take everything so personally I hope/suspect you'll burn out long before than.
I think constructive is misconstrued a lot to mean nice, different people react differently and different people accept critism differently. I know that some, no matter how nicely put, will react defensive regardless. I think cracker is in this group. There are times when he reacted defensively when there was no cause for it, for instance the thread that spawned the whole resource issue.
The constructive comment was that they are white on predominately light yellow, this is a tough contrast. The human eye tries to "find shapes" and when they are difficult to see the eye's strain.
I attempted wry humor in my original post, which was no doubt tempered by a headache and an annoyance of said headache in addition to some other modifications that I can't even discuss yet since they are spoilers.
I don't know why you feel the need to attempt to embarrass me, which you take many occasions to do, both rewording subjects, editing and rewording messages. There should be a personal setting for this forum like "Allow cracker to reword your posts" not selecting this would mean you could only delete them.
And this is hardly monthly, I see that there are many other instances where artists have made good art that is included, why couldn't that be the case with the "new official" resources? (Note: I'm talking about what cracker is referencing, last months resource "solution" and my comments) I don't know who made the official sets but they aren't good and I stopped using the edited ones for gotm.
Despite the fact that you personally came down hard on a certain artist about putting in the blips I find now you have all but forced the use of the blips by adding a bunch of new resources to the game and made them very difficult to tell apart.
For some reason my biggest complaints have stemmed from shoddy art, why is that? I am no artist myself so it can't be any political reason, perhaps its just our art tastes differ. I was also very annoyed to see the Azap unit, one because the artist didn't use the green replacement color properly and two because PTW already has art for that unit.
You're putting a peg in the wrong shaped hole. I play because of the other people playing not because of what cracker and friends have put in the game. I played back when there was no corrected scoring system and no modification. Perhaps if I go away for another year it will revert to the original. Although judging how you take everything so personally I hope/suspect you'll burn out long before than.
I think constructive is misconstrued a lot to mean nice, different people react differently and different people accept critism differently. I know that some, no matter how nicely put, will react defensive regardless. I think cracker is in this group. There are times when he reacted defensively when there was no cause for it, for instance the thread that spawned the whole resource issue.
The constructive comment was that they are white on predominately light yellow, this is a tough contrast. The human eye tries to "find shapes" and when they are difficult to see the eye's strain.
I attempted wry humor in my original post, which was no doubt tempered by a headache and an annoyance of said headache in addition to some other modifications that I can't even discuss yet since they are spoilers.
No offend, but you may want to work on your constructive criticism a little bit. Your orginal post doesn't sound "constructive". May be your heart was in the right place, but your words didn't come out right. Too much Civing and not enough of sleep could do that to you. Just have a good night of sleep, regroup, and try again.
Svar
King
I'm 58 years old and haven't had any trouble with the new resources but then I'm new to Gotm and right click on them anyway just to see what they really are.
I for one really appreciate all the effort that the entire Gotm staff puts into this project every month and if I had something constructive to say I would find a way to be more humble in saying it. After all I can't really ask for my money back if I'm not satisfied with the product.
I for one really appreciate all the effort that the entire Gotm staff puts into this project every month and if I had something constructive to say I would find a way to be more humble in saying it. After all I can't really ask for my money back if I'm not satisfied with the product.
Me too. I click on them, then look at the Civlopedia to work out how many food/shields the tile should have, then work out if the tile is worth irrigating/mining in despotism. Slows me down quite a bit, but that's no bad thing! I tend to rush anyway.
One of the things I like about GOTM is the "fair" surprises. You get surprises in random maps, but they can be extreme enough to completely mess up your game. cracker's surprises add enough of a twist to make it interesting without making the game too difficult to be fun
.
Well said, Svar. As a fellow oldie I too manage to deal with the civ world as it comes. I have no real problems seeing things on the screen, it's all the thinking that's making my brain hurt.
Keep up the good work, Cracker and Co.
RufRydyr
QSC Map Maker
I like the spiders, but the low grade and high grade diamonds are a little hard to tell apart. Maybe in the future they could have a letter on them like the 'h' on the horses and the 'i' on incense. I like those a lot.
@Smirk,
Although we may share the same opinion on this, I think it's your biting sarcasm that may not have gone over well.
@Smirk,
Although we may share the same opinion on this, I think it's your biting sarcasm that may not have gone over well.
Naboo
Wonder Dog
Absolutely. I can only imagine the amount of work this takes, including the screams for help that would inevitably come on the first few days of the month (mine included, as it turns out). My 40+ eyes don't have a problem telling the resources apart (well, maybe goats and menudo are a little too close) but if it's really bugging you it could mean you have a monitor calibration issue.
One suggestion would be to check your monitor's brightness, contrast and especially gamma. You'd be surprised at what's hard or impossible to see with a maladjusted monitor. Try this link http://td.rutgers.edu/~thayes/crt/.
Txurce
Deity
Smirk, there is not one constructive statement in your original post, and "nice" has nothing to do with it. Look up the definition before you try hiding behind it.
DaviddesJ
Deity
Your *****ing isn't the least bit constructive. It's just obnoxious.
If you want to post "Here are some suggestions for how to make the resource graphics more attractive", without all the *****ing and whining about something that people are putting a lot of work into and giving you for free, that might be constructive. But what you did is nothing like that.
I agree with cracker: there seem to be some posters who are consistently obnoxious, offensive, and annoying. They make the forums less pleasant for everyone else.
If I were the moderator, I'd be a lot more ready to just ban those people, than he seems to be.
It is a phrase so has no set definition that you could look up. Its best described by comparison, saying the art sux is not constructive. Saying the white on yellow contrast is non-existant and pains the eye to see, is constructive by pointing out the flaws. But further it doesn't matter how I said it, or what I said, if you want references let me know I can send you a number of threads where cracker personally took an offended attitude to any and all criticism. He simply can't deal with it. The defense I see most often here is this sort of indebted attitude towards "all their hard work" but I look at this differently, I spend from 10-50 hours playing the game, as do many other people, I doubt highly cracker spends 50 hours a month himself building the map. All the staff together have a large input of time, but there are 100s of players so the players are spending much more time playing it than the staff making it. So with that logic who is investing more time into the gotm?
This entire debate stemmed from the resource problems from two months ago. If you go and read the Dr Alimendo resource thread you can see how offended the poor cracker was by some mod that was totally separate from "his world". The change last month to "official resources" and then this months change to add new resources was no doubt forced upon cracker to recapture the ego-lose he suffered at the hands of some random guy making a nice high contrast resource. You as gotm players are now forever stuck using the "official set" where previously you had a little but more freedom to choose the presentation of *your* gameplay. (Note the original artist offered to create an improved set that would satisfy cracker's fear of cheats which was not taken.)
Personally I don't like the slippery slope we appear to be on, add to that the recent borg assimulation of the tourney, my choice and our choice as a community has gotten even smaller.
But this thread only cements what I thought last month, this is no longer any fun for me and I will leave this to you. Besides RoTK8 for the PS2 will be out soon, that will easily take the place of Civ for the next 6 months.
DaviddesJ
Deity
I don't see how it's "constructive" to complain that sheep are white. Would blue sheep be better?
I also don't understand why it matters what color they are. The resource blips are all that matter, and they are easy to see and read. The GOTM resource blips are in fact much easier to make out than the original DrAlimentado blips (because food and coins looked almost the same in the latter).
I also don't understand why it matters what color they are. The resource blips are all that matter, and they are easy to see and read. The GOTM resource blips are in fact much easier to make out than the original DrAlimentado blips (because food and coins looked almost the same in the latter).
Well, if I were not the easygoing fellow that I am
, I might be tempted to dislike this statement...I do not want to enter into the 'resources' discussion, nor do I want to comment on Cracker's or anyone else's attitude towards life and its problems. Even from the limited observation point of a forum, you can get to know people and learn how to deal with them.
Being one of those "hard working" people, I only feel compelled to point out that the logic above is flawed: you simply cannot compare the time spent by those who provide a service with that spent by those who use the service.
The whole thing is so plain, in fact, that it should not even be necessary to discuss it. But I have done volunteer work in many fields, and I have always met a lot of different responses -from the ones that were exceedingly grateful to the ones that took everything for granted and were in fact "wanting their money back" many a times, regardless of the fact that they were not spending a single cent.
To be honest, it is also true that volunteers do sometimes fall to the temptation of abusing of the gratitude that people feel for them.
Doing something on a voluntary basis is obviously no excuse for not doing one's best -which, incidentally, means that I have no excuses for not having prepared (yet!) the GOTM19 stats
Having said this, I'll go back to work (and to preparing the stats...
)
DaviddesJ
Deity
I'm still annoyed by Smirk's attitude, but after playing GOTM21 for a while, I do agree with his basic observation that it's very hard to distinguish between sheep/goats and lambs/menudo, except by looking for the resource blips.
But I can't think of a good way for the art to distinguish between sheep and lambs (or goats and menudo), in a way that's easy to see even when scaled down. Anyone have any constructive ideas?
But I can't think of a good way for the art to distinguish between sheep and lambs (or goats and menudo), in a way that's easy to see even when scaled down. Anyone have any constructive ideas?
rabies
Happy Dad
I think the problems stem from there being 2 or 3 resources that all share a common graphics 'theme'. Rather than having sheep, wool and lamb that all kinda look the same, just use the one graphic for lambs...and then come up with 2 new resources that look completely different that gives the effects of the wool and sheep. Did that make sense?
The downside to doing this is that it is tougher for the map maker/resouce artist to come up with all these new resources.
The downside to doing this is that it is tougher for the map maker/resouce artist to come up with all these new resources.
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