Game Design Thoughts - Working the Map

This is the original logo that Colin and I devised for our line of 18XX games. We had grand plans!

There comes a time when you just have to buckle down and put something on paper, or in this case on the screen. For experimental purposes I'm doing this in Visio, not the greatest platform for this kind of thing but I'm very familiar with it and it will do the job, although ultimately not in a format really fit for publication, if I ever get that far.

One thing that makes the map process a little easier is the fact that Colorado is a rectangle with perfectly straight boundaries. None of the borders with the neighboring states following geographic features, like rivers, as a lot of state boundaries do. Colorado is the 8th largest state in the United States, the northern border follows the 41st line of Latitude and the 37th line of Latitude on the south. The eastern border is, basically, the 102nd line of Longitude and the western 109th line of Longitude (+/- a bit). The state measures 380 miles from east to west and 280 miles from north to south.

I decided that the easiest way to approach this was to decide on a scale for the 1 1/2" hex overlay, and I arbitrarily started with 25 miles, flat side to flat side. With that value set (the value "r" in the formula for hexagonal calculations) I could figure out how many, approximately, hexes I needed for the east-west dimension. The final result was 14 1/2 hexes. The north south is always more difficult to determine since you are measuring point to point, but you need to  consider the hex overlap so just dividing by 28.87 would get me in the ballpark. I ended up with 12 rows of hex running north-south which gives a rectangle that looks about right.

There are four major rivers that flow out of Colorado's Rocky Mountains; the South Platte, The Arkansas, the Rio Grande and the Colorado (originally named the Grand River important to know if you are looking at old maps). For now I'm ignoring the rivers, the reality is that only the Colorado River is a true obstacle, the others tend to only be obstacles during the spring run off. They will definitely be features on the map when (if?) I get that far with this little project. Then I need to add the cities, not something I was looking forward to.

To start I took the latitude & longitude for Denver and measured about where I would expect it to fall on the map, but didn't want to go through that process for all the towns and cities that might be needed. To make the process a little easier I found a geological map of Colorado from 1913. It solved the problem, it included towns and cities but didn't really show roads which tend to obscure details. It did, however, include the rail lines that existed in 1913 so I could see which towns I could consider including. What you find, which I think I knew in the back of my mind, is a north-south corridor of major cities along the front range and a concentration  of towns in areas of heavy mining or agriculture. 

This exercise allowed me rethink the towns I was thinking of including, some just didn't exist in 1913 or were to small to even be included. Some towns that I didn't think of including are important from a rail service standpoint and others are so clustered together that I will have to adjust their location or exclude them altogether, decisions, decisions. Back to the map. I downloaded a high resolution copy from the library and inserted as a picture into the Visio file I built. Using the picture as a background image I placed the hex grid over it and adjusted the size of the image to fit the borders I had determined. It actually worked really well, the proof being that Denver ended up almost exactly where I expected it to. I then used the map to pinpoint the towns/cities I wanted and within a couple of hours I had the beginnings of a useful map.

With the railroads printed on the geological map I think I can pinpoint the passes that were actually used, although they are not named on the map. I know most of them already its just a matter of translation. The hard part will be determining passes that were surveyed and could have been used and passes that were surveyed and were not viable routes. For instance Berthoud Pass was surveyed but not used, it would have required a 3.5 mile long tunnel to be a viable route, however Rollins pass (known as Boulder Pass at the time) was dismissed as a viable route in 1864 but construction began to in 1903 (and completed in 1904) to get over this "insurmountable" pass, while a 6 mile long tunnel (the famed Moffat tunnel) was built (construction on the tunnel didn't begin until 1920 and the first train rolled through in 1928). Things to ponder.

With thoughts of republishing 1869 I have fully transcribed the rules back into a word document. Now I need to start rebuilding the board. I just need the right software, something that would be equally useful the Colorado game.