Map and mod interoperability standardization

[Pxtl]

Caydr, this isn't practical because other games don't have the same gameplay as the AA-family, and have specific map needs.

Gundam needs a farktonne of flat, empty space for SimBase work... and doesn't give a crap about the metal-map.

Expand and Exterminate needs some bot-only terrain to balance URC against GD.

Kernel Panic, up until recently, needed a tonne of Geotherms. It still works better with a short list of Geotherms rather than relying on Z's metal-to-geo converter.

PURE needs a whole glut of PURE-specific features in addition to metal (buildings, ancients, etc.)

And let's not even mention THIS.

Many of the above mods have no navy to speak of.

And I don't know what these high-metal-maps you're complaining about are. The most popular map is still DSD, which is decidedly resource-poor for the number of players it usually involves.

[Pxtl]

Aaand my old post vanished.

Another thought - Isn't there a map-blacklist feature where a mod can run a LUA script to say "this map does not work for me"?

In that case, you could simply blacklist _every_ map except
a) maps included in a pre-defined list in your script, and
b) maps that have been tagged in their metadata file as "supports mod X".

Then there's no worries of incompatible maps.

[JohannesH]

Caydr, this isn't practical because other games don't have the same gameplay as the AA-family, and have specific map needs.

Gundam needs a farktonne of flat, empty space for SimBase work... and doesn't give a crap about the metal-map.

Expand and Exterminate needs some bot-only terrain to balance URC against GD.

Kernel Panic, up until recently, needed a tonne of Geotherms. It still works better with a short list of Geotherms rather than relying on Z's metal-to-geo converter.

PURE needs a whole glut of PURE-specific features in addition to metal (buildings, ancients, etc.)

And let's not even mention THIS.

Many of the above mods have no navy to speak of.

And I don't know what these high-metal-maps you're complaining about are. The most popular map is still DSD, which is decidedly resource-poor for the number of players it usually involves.

Quoting the missing post for all to see

[Caydr]

Then there's no worries of incompatible maps.

Your approach makes mods require maps to be made specifically for them, creating more work for everyone and adding another barrier between someone seeing "New Mod X" and being able to actually play it. Maps are also quite large and it is burdensome to need to download a good selection of them just for BA, let alone all the other mods.

The "ubiquitous standard" (not my words) that I came up with for AA consists of arbitrary values that happened to work ON ONE MAP, Small Divide, which isn't even included with the game anymore. This is like saying that 16-bit CPUs and 66 mhz RAM should've remained the standard because they came first, and all games should be designed to work with them or else be incompatible.

[Caydr]

I should try to do some damage control...

I am not trying to enforce anything upon anyone. The only thing that's being enforced are wild arbitrary values that did not in any way take into consideration the future impact they might have. I just noticed one day, holy crap a Goliath can climb a 75-degree slope, I should probably fix this. I took a lot of shit for the decision to fix this, and I know in particular Forboding was very upset because some of his maps relied on the previous completely broken values. However, the interim values we now use are much better than the early ones.

Properly decided upon values for terrain tolerance will have a positive effect on everyone, especially newcomer mods. The examples I put forth earlier will, for instance, make it MUCH easier to design maps with AA/BA/CA in mind, but I would like to get some community input on things I may not have considered before I implement a new system in the (distant?) future AA release.

I WILL be implementing new terrain tolerances in a future version of AA. In the worst-case dire scenario that it finds a player base, I would very much like to resolve this issue. I am not attempting to "force my will" on anyone, and as AA is a "newcomer" mod of sorts again, I have just as much risk and benefit from this as anyone here.

IF your mod does not use the existing "old AA" standard and requires custom maps: That is fine. If your gameplay requires things that cannot be replicated on standard maps, okay. I'm not suggesting you change your mods to suit my ideas.

This post is NOT just for the modders or mappers of this forum, but for the players as well. When I made this post I was hoping to get some input, things like "I think tanks should not be able to climb even as they do now." or "I think infantry-type units should be able to climb better." or "that many climbing categories is too many, why not use less and make it easier for mappers?"

That sort of thing.

There are probably mods in development right now that are being designed to work on the existing map style. There are also things like CA which dramatically change gameplay, or SA which is TA-inspired but not a carbon copy, or BA with is AA-inspired but not a carbon copy, NOTA, BOTA, etc. People who work on these sorts of "tank, infantry, amphibious, all-terrain, boat" etc gameplay style reminiscent of C&C, Starcraft, and of course TA, are what the target audience of this post is.

Also, I can't emphasize this enough: I'm not trying to create a problem for mappers, but a solution. The existing values make it unnecessarily difficult to create maps which are both interesting to look at but also fun to play on. Case in point, Altored Divide, which has tons of "flat" terrain that can't be built on. Standard building slope tolerance is another issue I'd like to address.

Another example is of course how difficult it is to make underwater land bridges. While making Altored Arctic I had a lot of trouble with this, forcing me to make it flatter rather than spend excessive amounts of time tweaking the heightmap and min/max terrain height to not wreck shorelines.

IT IS TRUE that using greater bit depth on the heightmap allows you to reduce this problem somewhat, but the difference in two very similar shades of gray in 16-bit mode is virtually impossible to see on a professional IPS/VA display, let alone the crappy 6-bit panels most of us use. Smoth suggested the use of special heightmap editing software, however I'm not familiar with it so I can't comment more than to say that I think you would probably still want to use Photoshop or PSP or whatever at some point, adding the problem back into the equation.

[smoth]

I suggested that you try gundam because it comes with like 2-3 maps each of which have options like inverted heightfield and/or water on/off... making the maps very different as far as gameplay goes while reducing the download by being variable. Hell their feature sets vary also based on what map options you select. I posted an example here: working map options example thread.

I think it is good that you are doing an in depth post-mortem type discussion about what was done and how it can be done better. I just feel you need to see what is out there mapwise. I know for sure both pure and gundam have some very fascinating changes and s44/sw:IW has dynamic resource placement.

Also who is to say new standards for most generic baseline maps is not a goo thing. Many of the current maps are made with the old baseline and changing such a thing will start a whole new swathe of new maps with different gameplay. That is good IMO.

If we are going to talk about what mapping needs... SM3... it is needed. It is more efficient, allows for specular on maps and would allow for even more insane map options(we are talking one map being more than one baseline map and then map options on that and the ability to have much larger maps using much less filesize and resources)

[Caydr]

SM3 (which has been in the same state of almost-working for 4 years) is needed, as is a better control panel (which would be a trivial 30-minute project) and a developer who has an ATI card (which will only happen the day I finally get one who's not afraid I'm sending him a letter bomb). These are things anyone can agree on, but the idea of collaborating on the future needs of the project and putting them on paper is THE GREAT SATAN.



..."letter bomb" and "great satan" in the same post? BRB, FBI

[smoth]

Project as in engine or game?

When are we going to discuss some of these ideas about standarized slopes etc?

[Caydr]

Either, and whenever someone shows up to discuss them and not just tell me to stop trying to dominate the universe.

[smoth]

what do you mean by control panel then?

[Forboding Angel]

argh what does the heightfield have to do with the lack of shaders on the texture? The reason you would use 16bit is so that the terrain has no "stepping"

I don't follow your post.

Tbh that depends. I mean it's trivial, but if your max height range is say, 600, using 8bit + lowpass filter will do the job quite nicely.

But still, trivial discussion point is trivial.

[smoth]

I don't use ranges of 600.