Green River Confluence

[zoggop]

I've been tweaking this map for a while in response to some two-player games, occasionally with a bot for a third player. This being the fourth iteration, I think it may be ready for a release. It's an SMD--no lua, specular map, or splatting.

http://springfiles.com/downloadmain/start/15596





The basic idea is that there's lots of metal in the river, but the river is a vulnerable place to be.

PS out of curiosity, how do you make heightmaps? I've been using GIMP and Wilbur (http://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/~jslayton/software.html).

[smoth]

I use WorldMachine 2 pro.
my source files

I think the concept is excellent! Neat map man! A bit that there are no large shots though.

*edit because my acronym is unclear*

[Jools]

It's beautiful.

[danil_kalina]

awesome

[Beherith]

I checked out wilbur, and it works a lot like world machine, but world machine has a way better device network system for amazing control.
I use world machine 2 exclusively for heightmaps.

[SirArtturi]

I like it. It also works now! and settings seem to be right.

So why dont you give it a go and upload it to springfiles!

Take a feedback, and revise if needed.

If you revise, I suggest you to use 16-bit heightmap. 8-bit is bad, you can get a lot more details with 16-bits...

[zoggop]

Posted: http://springfiles.com/spring/spring-ma ... confluence

Believe me, I've been getting quite frustrated with 8-bit making this map. Unfortunately, GIMP doesn't output 16-bit grayscale. So I will have to use something else. Wilbur outputs 16-bit, but, err, is more for simulating geomorphology than for map-making (I only use its precipitation-based erosion).

Glad you all like it! Smoth, feel free to post large screenshots

[KaiserJ]

well done, i really like the look of it and the idea of the rivers being the points to hold.

welcome to the top 10% of maps

edit: photoshop and xnormal are the only two i have that can output 16 bit bmp

[smoth]

If you want I can run it through my wm texture macro but with the heightfield being so coarse(ramps etc) I suspect the results may not be desirable.

[SirArtturi]

I thought you had L3dt? You can do 16-bit heightmaps with that. It also has pretty good errosion tools.

[Forboding Angel]

Ahem: http://springfiles.com/spring/spring-ma ... luence-v01

=D Nice job! Looks pretty good. Heightmap could use a little work but it's a pretty neat re-imagining.

Also, apparently evad doesn't work anymore. I maek fixie.

Doah, I lied, works fine:


If you look at mine (which was a recreation of the original), you see that it's very flattish.

I like yours because it has some nice variation to it, and despite the texturing looking somewhat lo-fi in places, it's really nice.

Well done!

Edit: Needs moar ssmf!

Edit2: Heightmap needs some serious love. Too many sharp edges.

[Forboding Angel]

You should probably add this as a dependency when you ssmf it: http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=25752

Then you can use featureplacer for placing all the features.

As far as ratings go, it's an incredible BA map. For everything else it is adequate and will really come out of it's shell with proper ssmf.

I'm sorry to be Hairy McArsehole, but non-ssmf maps simply cannot compete with ssmf maps. I think smoth is probably the one that has proven this the most. In the case of this map, non-ssmf would be semi ok if the texture was awesome and excellent. Unfortunately, it just isn't that great (not to say that it is bad, it just isn't anything particularly special), and so without ssmf it looks very bland. Inviting, to be sure, but bland.

IMO With just a little bit of work this could be one of the most incredible maps in spring. And after that was done, I would want to include it with the evo install.

[Jools]

I played one of these evad maps in spring, don't remember which one. But my comments is that it didn't feel like in OTA, the map seemed much smaller. Maybe that's something that could be taken into consideration.

[zoggop]

Yeah, the heightmap definitely needs some love. I did some playtesting and found the edges of the plateau extremely annoying when trying to raid mexes from above. 16-bit is the way to do it. I'll look into which way to make a 16-bit heightmap (photoshop, xnormal, l3dt). I only use l3dt for texturing because the way I build heightmaps is more convoluted than using brushes on a canvas. There are about a dozen layers, and most things are built by making distinct, non-anti-aliased areas, and then creating all the slopes between them with stroking, blurring, etc, for consistency.

SSMF would be cool. The thing is, I can't see the results. None of the hardware available to me is capable of showing specularity, shadows, or splatting other than regular detail texturing. It's not really worth my time to make these things, and what I would come up with would be dodgy because I wouldn't be able to test them. If someone else would like to, great. (In case this is actually a possibility, don't waste your time until I revise this map once more--the heightmap clearly needs some massaging.)

Lol, there are no original maps. Art is dead, postmodern gibberish, etc. It hadn't really occurred to me that this map is like Forb's confluence map or the original TA map. The closest thing in my mind is Aberdeen, but the metal placement in this map is inverted (metal is in the river, not much on the plateaus). It's an evolution of a 1v1 map I was working on:

I've kind of stopped working on it because it's not as fun to play as this newer one. I might go back and rework it to be more like a 1v1 version of green river confluence, or at the very least make it a bit less of a pathfinding nightmare.

Anyway, I'm much more interested in how it plays. If anyone plays an interesting game on it, please send me a replay! I want to work out the balance kinks.

[zoggop]

Also: oops, the southern geothermal is in very much in the wrong spot

[SirArtturi]

Yeah, the heightmap definitely needs some love. I did some playtesting and found the edges of the plateau extremely annoying when trying to raid mexes from above. 16-bit is the way to do it. I'll look into which way to make a 16-bit heightmap (photoshop, xnormal, l3dt). I only use l3dt for texturing because the way I build heightmaps is more convoluted than using brushes on a canvas. There are about a dozen layers, and most things are built by making distinct, non-anti-aliased areas, and then creating all the slopes between them with stroking, blurring, etc, for consistency.

I think it should be easy as follow:

1. Follow your own design process
2. Then go to L3DT
3. Convert your heightmap to 16-bit
4. Scale up the heightmap like 2x or 3x of the original size. (Or even more if needed, it really depends how to final result looks like)
5. Run some filters, like errosion etc. (cant remember all those anymore)
6. Relax, it takes some time...
7. Scale it back to original

And there you go, high detailed, high quality, smooth and nice 16-bit heightmap.

Then do your texture?

[BaNa]

:D

When i looked at the map i thought : man, you did what i wanted to do with aberdeen (riverwise) but made it look more natural. Nice heightmap concept! I hope the river-based m eco works out, as the aberdeen layout did quite promote porking it up.

As others have said before, the 8 bit heightmap doesnt do it justice, and the texture could use ssmf. The good news is that your heightmap creation style seems greatly compatible with world machine, i encourage you to play with it, as the layout system is very powerful and perfect for conceptual drafts. You can also generate the distribution maps for the ssmf textures in it.

[Forboding Angel]

Just fyi, l3dt does heightmaps in 32bit. What you need is not more definition, but more smoothing.

[smoth]

Just fyi, l3dt does heightmaps in 32bit.

8bits per channel is not good for maps.
I don't follow you.

[Johannes]

Try just smoothing the heightmap when compiling by adding -l to the compiling line. Should make most places much better pathable. Simplest and fastest solution by far.