So, after some iterations, here is my latest piece, titled Moor.
http://www.springfiles.com/show_file.php?id=2700

V3: http://springfiles.com/spring/spring-maps/moorv3
Featuring:

Fog surrounding map edges - modified GLSL shader gadget.
Camera constrained to playable area (widget only)
No commands outside play area (except commands where the target isnt a position, but a feature outside playable, need help fixing that)
Massive, 12000 features - automatically placed with my forest painter. (thus its compatible with every spring mod)
All new trees, courtesy of 0 A.D.
24*24 size, 16*16 playable.
Plenty of metal, made for 8v8 games.
36 hours of CPU time for rendering

Features that are only in new spring:

Nicer grass blade textures
Larger grass patches
Animated grass, blows with the wind
Fully splat mapped - great detail
Specular mapped for those great water worn smooth rock looks.

Needs: Fixes for boundaries, new minimap widget (which culls unplayable bits), a decent PC

V2: fixed log spam.

Purdy! Is the new spring ready to go?

There are a few kinks to be ironed out, but it looks ok to me.

Picture of the whole map?

Added.

My God, prettiest map I've seen in Spring so far tbh...
Has a nice atmosphere, I'll definitely use this for screenie taking in the future.

Beherith has taken spring engine mapping to a whole new level. Please, from now on, boycot all old crappy maps and start playing his piece of arts...

Couldnt help notice, what are those black lines on the map? Rendering errors? Couldn't those be shopped away?

The black lines are intentional, they are the maps boundaries, since play area is smaller than whole map.
I got flak for not putting the lines there last time, so im putting them there this time. I agree it breaks the seamless flow..

You could try some other ways of letting players know which area is playable and which areas isn't. Perhaps darkening the unplayable parts slightly or only making the lines show up (fade in) when cursor is hovered over the unplayable area.

Imo it should be luaside feature which draws red rectangular/box/lines whatever around the edges when player clicks the map or moves the cursor outside the boundary.

But Im happy with this aswell. The map is so perfect...

I agree. Instead of having it on the texture, make it a widget that draws/shades a boundary, so some of us can turn it off.

Or some kind of natural barrier, that makes it obvious exactly where exactly it ends.

And while it looks good, kinda undecided about things beside that... Its quite unsymmetric, doesnt always seem clear where units can pass, and doesn't really have such clear structure how to play it. But as a "tech demo" it's awesome of course!

Nice looking map. The hill layout should make for an interesting non-linear game. Just out of interest what makes a map Official or Unofficial?

If you're going to continue with limit play area Spring needs to support it. At a minimum gadgets should be told that some areas on the map are considered completely out of bounds and I think engine side fixes for things like reclaiming out of bounds would be more desirable than gadgetted ones.

Exactly.

As far as I can see, the gadget side is doable, the only realy issue is when the target is out of bounds, but since only features start out of bounds, and only wrecks can go out of bounds, the issue can easily be done in the allowcommand phase, I just need to check the target of the reclaim/resurrect order. Also, checking for wrecks that go out of bounds and pushing them back may be needed.
If you see any other issue - besides AIs being screwed, please tell me.

Johannes:
If you want barriers on the boundaries, look at Quoth or Albion. They both have really obvious barriers, and I got tons of flak for them not being part of the map.

I have been known to sacrifice a bit of playability for looks, but going with the usual "gameplay optimal, starcraft-esque" cliff-pass separation, It would have looked very unnatural.

This map is not a tech demo. Its about as symmetric as Blindside. The starts and metal is symmetric, and there are only minor variations that could put it off balance.

Widget drawing the boundaries is a must, apparently.

I like the effort to get rid of ugly map edges.
Is it possible to make minimap smaller too to only contain "playable" area? Its very annoying to have scrolling on minimap or elsewhere interrupted by invisible boundary and jump back abruptly. (Hold middle mouse over minimap).

And for CA its speedmetal.. but we can change metalmultiplier.

Licho, the camera restraint is a widget, so it can be disabled.

Of course, if you use a widget instead of a map texture then you can make it stay in front of all other game elements and be visible at all times, you can easily customise it and you can turn it on and off.

Landing planes there and use patrol command to send commanders around the map.
In CA you could use newtons to place units. :)

Clamp position of land(ed) units to "playable area"?

I agree with google that this should be an engine feature.

i await "specular maps for dummies" and "map borders for dummies" beherith editions respectively

map is uber sex

why unofficial ?