Yes, what Jim said. It helps you see the "gaps" and "gulfs" with the naked
eye that just don't pop out without this process. I'm sure that doing a J3
or J4 version would also expose interesting insights, but it was just too
laborious to do back in the days of photocopies, scissors, tape, and magic
markers.
But since game design is all about maps, I always had scissors, tape, and
magic markers, and used our photocopier extensively. Another fun Traveller
photocopy project was producing variants of the TL-15 Rampart fighter. I
got the top and side views out of, probably Azhanti High Lightning then
scaled a bunch of line drawings out of Jane's All The World's Aircraft and
created all kinds of hybridized versions with avionics humps, variant
noses, canoe fairings, etc.
We never used any of them, probably because Frank came along and said
something to the effect of, "it won't work that way, in the future that
stuff would be smaller and internal and conformal and you won't see it."
1. Yes, I agree he had a point, think Stealth design,
but
2. No matter "when," people are always going to be needing to shoehorn
extra junk into a design that doesn't quite hold it, and you're going to
"see" that effort somehow,
3. Artists always need art references to work from, and
4. Even if it's not "real/true," people need a visual analog that they can
recognize from real life to help them see, "this is a sophisticated system
with lots of parts that work together that are constantly being improved,"
and being able to see that in our game's illustrations makes it look more
"real" than just some perfectly smooth, featureless thing.
And really, it's not that Frank talked me out of it so much we really
didn't have a necessity for it. I think I was probably doing it for
Arrival Vengeance, and we had already used up all the space on that folio
anyway.
>>
> I've been making use of the Traveller Map site. I'll scale the map so I
> have either just star presence or the high pop names, then screen cap the
> resulting map. Then I scan my way across the map using a paint program's
> fill tool to block out empty hexes that are not between two adjacent
> worlds. In effect, I'm highlighting the voids that you can't use a J2
> drive
> to cross in one go instead of connecting the dots. Since local traffic is
> typically J2 or less, this shows you the obstacles, the isolated worlds,
> and the paths that all but the long-range haulers are gong to live on or
> have to go around.
>
> I did one for the area around District 268 in the Marches for our last
> campaign, and just did another for our new campaign in Delphi. I also did
> one for the default star pattern in part of Foreven, out of curiosity.
>
eye that just don't pop out without this process. I'm sure that doing a J3
or J4 version would also expose interesting insights, but it was just too
laborious to do back in the days of photocopies, scissors, tape, and magic
markers.
But since game design is all about maps, I always had scissors, tape, and
magic markers, and used our photocopier extensively. Another fun Traveller
photocopy project was producing variants of the TL-15 Rampart fighter. I
got the top and side views out of, probably Azhanti High Lightning then
scaled a bunch of line drawings out of Jane's All The World's Aircraft and
created all kinds of hybridized versions with avionics humps, variant
noses, canoe fairings, etc.
We never used any of them, probably because Frank came along and said
something to the effect of, "it won't work that way, in the future that
stuff would be smaller and internal and conformal and you won't see it."
1. Yes, I agree he had a point, think Stealth design,
but
2. No matter "when," people are always going to be needing to shoehorn
extra junk into a design that doesn't quite hold it, and you're going to
"see" that effort somehow,
3. Artists always need art references to work from, and
4. Even if it's not "real/true," people need a visual analog that they can
recognize from real life to help them see, "this is a sophisticated system
with lots of parts that work together that are constantly being improved,"
and being able to see that in our game's illustrations makes it look more
"real" than just some perfectly smooth, featureless thing.
And really, it's not that Frank talked me out of it so much we really
didn't have a necessity for it. I think I was probably doing it for
Arrival Vengeance, and we had already used up all the space on that folio
anyway.
>>
> I've been making use of the Traveller Map site. I'll scale the map so I
> have either just star presence or the high pop names, then screen cap the
> resulting map. Then I scan my way across the map using a paint program's
> fill tool to block out empty hexes that are not between two adjacent
> worlds. In effect, I'm highlighting the voids that you can't use a J2
> drive
> to cross in one go instead of connecting the dots. Since local traffic is
> typically J2 or less, this shows you the obstacles, the isolated worlds,
> and the paths that all but the long-range haulers are gong to live on or
> have to go around.
>
> I did one for the area around District 268 in the Marches for our last
> campaign, and just did another for our new campaign in Delphi. I also did
> one for the default star pattern in part of Foreven, out of curiosity.
>