ORIGINAL: SRA
First of all, I'm GREATLY impressed with what you have done with this mod.
My comment is not actually something that is wrong with the game, just a wish that for me would make it even better.
The map: for me personally, I would like a larger map. Maybe when you first started designing, your size was as big as ATG allowed, but Tom Weber's WaW for ATG is a fair amount larger than that for GD 1938. For me, the larger map allows more fun/flexibility with tactics.
Now I understand that expanding the map would be quite difficult, so I have no expectations that anybody would even want to put the effort in. I just thought I'd at least mention it.
But even with the pretty crowded European map in GD 1938, you've created quite a great scenario. Congratulations.
Thanks for the kind words!
As for the map. This subject has come up quite a few times. Sometimes in discussions between me and Alexandre, sometimes brought up by the players.
Let me start at the beginning. In the beginning the map was designed for AT:WW2, so before ATG. It was a far worse version of the game than is now, but the map was ok. It couldn't be bigger for two reasons. First of all, I did not know how to make maps bigger than 200 hexes wide (which I do now), and the game included up to 52 AIs which have a hard time dealing with bigger maps, especially cause Each regime takes up RAM, as well as the AI does. So for that reason, for a long time, the map was fixed in stone, as for size.
I did once the AI was removed, and the "Faux-regimes" put in place (the system that makes the neutrals work the way they do), strongly consider making a bigger map. In fact I put together a damn good try. I managed to make the outline of everything on a 280 wide map, with every city and terrain rethought, for every country in Asia and Europe and Africa, save the Soviet Union. However the sheer amount of time needed to be put in to make this map, was almost defeating by itself. So the project died.
Most recently Bombur and I talked over the subject again. Firstly we agreed that we had to take in consideration that the map graphics had to be less RAM consuming than some of the sets out there. So the Realist mod, which the game currently uses, would probably be the best.
Secondly we had some discussions on map scale, and we agreed that bigger is better. But we also agreed that it would be a pity to include areas that are mostly unused, and big, cause those are timeconsuming to make, yet serve no purpose, and eat up more RAM. RAM is still a consideration cause we are using so many SFTs that it litterally has not been tested before, and there is no telling when and if the system crashes. And when I speak of RAM, it is the RAM that ATG can access, not the amount of total RAM on your computer. I think that limit is 2 GB.
In any case, we came to much the same conclussion that tweber came to in WAW for ATG. That perhaps a map scaled in different sizes different places was the most practical. So in as sense we were slowly coming round to that fact that WAW for ATG got it right. While this is not as pleasing to the senses, there just is something more pleasing to the exact picture of the globe, rather than something warped. It would also mean different air ranges in different areas of the world, and possibly duplicates of landscape types, that just had the effect of being "bigger"...
In any case, it has stalled on the sheer amount of work it would be to do so. There are so many lines of code that too need to be gone over, that we might as well make a GD 1938 v.3 (The first being the one before this one, and the second being the one played currently). A complete recoding might as well entail alot of other changes. It was with that in mind we sort of made this thread.
In a sense we are waiting to see if there is enough backing for us to redo it completely. With the news that VR designs was working on the new baby siblnig to ATG, Shadow Empire, that too gave us reason to pause... perhaps a new GD 1938 could be made for that?
That is the list of thoughts we have had, regarding map size.
