well what im going to try is to add the texture detail over the solid colours, that info needs to be taken from the normal channels with a mix of my own art. theres a pic a few posts back of me in photoshop with solid colour and some texture lighting that should explain what im gona try. with your image try not mix more than 2 fields of same colour next to each other. and atleasst 2 light coloured fields in every quadrant. appreciate you thoughts on this pupaxx !

also im realising the the mimmick of the alpha channel needs split up more. like it is on the right hand image. Doh.

@Ali
about 'same colored adiacent fields' my thougt is I would avoid to fragment too much the fields, I'm afraid of patch-work looking.
In the pict below u can clearly see a lot of adiacent fields of the same color, they are differentiated by edge row, trees and so on. Here's why I made in this way. i'm with u it doesn't look good without edgerow and trees layer.
Attachment 6249

cheers

yeh agreed on too much fragmented is bad. roads between is currently a good thing tbh given lack of hedge rows. i believe that for those field areas without roads between a simple slight hue change would be good. i think half the problem with the original textures is fragmented nature. radical changes from 1 field to the next adjacent. think i might try 3 similar green everywhere on the map and break it up with the rest. top left quadrant must be fragmented as much as possible. the other quadrants can be "not as fragmented. 1 quadrant should have higher frequency lighter fields.

Does this mean that , currently, the roads/buildings pattern repeats the same all other the countryside ?
If only 4 different tiles can be possible, I suppose they have to be chosen very carefully (and also very contrasting to each other) ?

The landscape appeared to me very repetitive (not in the details but in the overall look) but I didn't knew why. Well I'll need to look more downside with my Hurricane I suppose ;)

well theres 4 for the fields. several for the towns, industrial, cities (london), trees etc and france has the same seperatly.

Ali- what's the resolution currently of each map tile? Is it 2048?

I've been thinking about having a go in the way that puppax has above, using photographic elements but with the aim of trying to fit them as best I can to the areas designated in the original layouts. I'm not sure whether to go ahead with a 4k resolution per tile or 2k just yet. I'm wondering if it may be better to go with 4k, that way you could have your colour map at 2k in game and possibly(?!) a 4k normal map that was generated from the colour map? It's a bit of a crazy thought really but that would give you a bit more detail down low when flying. It's just a thought (probably more of a brain fart). I'm not even sure if CloD handles 4k textures at present.

well doubling the size is a nice idea but by gcard texture memory wont cut it given how its running presently. i could be wrong though as i often am.

imo photographic work is a no go. 1C would have tried this along time ago. they did start with photography but ended up with what we have for numerous reasons. but i'd love to see anyone try !.

Cheers Ali. :)

I agree that it's probably unwise to tempt any further performance headaches by using 4k maps ingame.

I guess I'm interested in trying out a photographic collage/layering approach here as what turned me off originally about the CloD maps was the hand painted feel. Is there any other reason (apart from the insane amount of time this would take to do properly within the guidelines of the current layouts) that you would advise against this approach?

no reason. its technically daunting on one hand but very possible on the other depending upon the approach and consistancy.

meh !!! :( lol id be lying to say i liked this. but thought i'd show it anyways.

http://i.imgur.com/RTYDil.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/QoPZal.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Obexal.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/dUjFSl.jpg