IanBruntlett said:
atpollard said:
With respect to the proposed Superfreighters, I would imagine them to be a very boring deckplan - especially 'lots of them'.
Personally I think that doing the deckplans for Superfreighters need not be boring. The overall shape of the ship and its massive cargo areas could be shown at one scale (e.g something that would fit on one page) and the interesting areas would be shown in greater detail.
That's what I thought too, one upon a time. Then I actually did a commercial deckplan for a 4000 dT craft and discovered that there is a constant tension between the scales. Zoom out enough to show the 'big picture' so people can understand what is going on, and the plan becomes too schematic for actual role-playing ... it gives you just enough information to make you want more, but not enough to answer those critical in-game questions.
Zoom in on an 'important' area, and two things happen ... First, the close-up looses context and it becomes hard to tell at a glance where you are in the ship, and Second, you realize that the 'important' spaces are linked by long corridors that are important to certain unfolding action, but separated from other important spaces by lots of boring spaces (how much space on a page do you really want to dedicate to fuel).
So while it could be done, it really almost isn't worth the effort. And a 100 page book with 5 to 10 Capital sized Freighters would be a tremendous waste of time, talent and resources (obviously just my opinion).
I would strongly recommend getting some drawing software or graph paper or just notebook paper and a ruler and try laying out a rough design of a large ship, just to see how much of it would be important vs unimportant space. then map out one of the important spaces at a scale that would let you see furniture to get a feel for how many pages the whole thing would be. You don't need a lot of detail, just enough to get a feel for the scale of the task of creating deck plans for a large ship. You may be surprised at what you find.
IanBruntlett said:
The work involved shouldn't be too much - Mongoose seem to have abandoned the "pixel by pixel" approach and replaced it with "SVG - Scalable Vector Graphics". I believe that having deckplans in two or more scales could be a no-brainer.
I work with scalable vector graphics all of the time (AutoCad mostly) and frankly its virtues are over-rated and its vices understated on most Traveller sites.
First, commercial printers are capable of over 1200 DPI which far exceeds what a person can see.
In addition, the benefits of scaling the image (which is where SVG excels) only apply to PDFs (or other electronic media) on a screen. Ultimately the image (or a portion of it) will need to be printed and will end up locked into some pixilated resolution anyway - we have just transferred the decisions about what resolution best presents the important data from the graphic designer to the end user. While empowering, the average designer probably knows more about the issues than the average PDF user (again just my opinion).
Furthermore, while not an issue for printing, computer screens tend to display solid areas as a pattern of fine lines that detracts from the aesthetics of the image on the screen. Rasterizing the image and storing it at 600 DPI Grayscale greatly improves the appearance on a screen and 600 DPI still allows the user to zoom, doubling the size and doubling it again, to 150 DPI resolution and still maintain reasonably high quality. A 600 dpi 8.5x11 inch sheet is equivalent to drawing the image at 150 DPI (still 2x the resolution of many computer monitors) on a 34x44 inch sheet (or over 5x7 feet at the resolution of a monitor).
Lastly, it is not uncommon in SVG to create a drawing that looks great when zoomed in, but all of the fine lines blend together when zoomed out to create large dark splotches. Now your graphics need to start employing layers to control the amount of detail based upon the scale you are displaying it at. The file size, time involved and cost of the project, just went up ... and compared to true 600 dpi images, for relatively little benefit (once again, in my opinion).
What even SVG may not fix is the loss of data and detail by certain compression or translation software that may be used in the layout or post-production process. I have had very detailed images trashed in the final product after they left my control - SVG may or may not change that.
For the record, I am not opposed to SVG formats, I just don't see them as the panacea for all that is wrong with the world. They have both strengths and weaknesses.
