New Map - Downriver v1

[1v0ry_k1ng]

DownRiver_v1
16x16
4v4



DOWNLOAD HERE!

A tribute to Oki-river, which was one of the few maps with good sea gameplay and sea intergration with land. It suffers from being much too big, having too much metal and a very plain texture so I decided to renovate it for 4v4 play.

I put alot of thought into making the sea play well and be strong enough to cause land serious concern. The 'Front' players have about 300m of rocks each to make the position stronger and more desirable. metal extraction has been largely reduced since the beta release. A few contensted geothermals reward expansion, and about 35% of the maps metal is contested to hopefully reduce porc. both ships and land units can traverse the shallows of the rivers.

Texture made with springmapedit and photoshop, I'm not completely happy with it... if someone can make a better texture with the next gen tools I will happily use or at the very least blend it in for v2!

Wind: 7-13
Tidal: 18

gl & hf !

[Argh]

I love the overall concept. The water needs to have the color changed to greens or browns, though, real rivers rarely look that blue.

[Jazcash]

I love the overall concept.

It's just a remake

[AF]

This reminds me of original delta siege

[knorke]

zomg tentacle monster map eating my post
are this metalspots on the islands? nice.
shallow areas in the rivers could look more like passages if there were some trails leading through the river or a different texture (on the beach)
i hope rocks are close enough to the start area otherwise conplanes stealing rocks becomes popular and thats a little gay and noobtrappy.
some features could look good, even a simple plant thing adds a lot character if its on the smal island or something.

but would be cool to see a map where the rivers do not divide the players but run parallel to the ground attack routes..

[Forboding Angel]

EHh, I can't tell if I like it or not. I've always loved okiriver, that fact is painfully obvious, but I don't really care for this attempt to dsdify it, seriously, you can be more creative than that.

I can say, that without a doubt I do not like the texturing in the north, It needs a lot more detail. Additionally, you should put dirt roads or some paths in it with trees and crap. That would make me like it a lot more, but what it looks like to me, is that you took portions of the dsd heightmap (not literally) and stuck them on okiriver, and that I do not care for at all.

Synopsis, you can do a hell of a lot better, you just aren't trying. Making me not like an okiriver remake of sorts should be one of the 7 deadly sins.

[KaiserJ]

ouch forb XD just ouch.

i liked oki river the few times i played it, it certainly seems worth a go.

i sux at gaem so i won't comment re: layout, looks fine to me though

shoot me a msg on the forum in about 4 hours or so (or whenever you see me) i got some cool textures you can use to enhance the northern area a bit if you like... just a rock texture for the passable hills, and a bit of scrubby grass i think would work very nicely. (same ones really that i did on that "Forgotten crossing" map; just don't overuse them massively like i did hehe)

btw it looks very nice for a SME texture script if that's what it comes from, very cool.

anyways good to see you're making maps again, i was wondering what happened

[Gota]

I never liked Oki River layout(I cant really understand what I feel repealed by in it) but aside from that this version,IMO,Needs to not have those (as Ivory said) intentional rough lines and squares in some parts and the lower part of the heightmap needs some work.

[JohannesH]

This is much better than okiriver or deltasiegewet actually. It has some of that feel of having several separate battlefields instead of 1 battle, but thats actually good when playing with random teams.

[Forboding Angel]

Well I wasn't trying to be mean, I just think that more could be done with the north than the bland dsdness that we've seen 50 billion times already.

I can tell you what I would do in the north... I would separate it out a little bit, and turn it into a rasied valley with high sides on the north, with a sort of winding-ness to it with trees and stuff. However, as it is, it's just bland. I saw that map that IK made a while back and it was beautiful and the layout and heightmap were very well thought out in my opinion, but I don't see that level of thought put into it here.

It seems like most of the care and detail went into doing the south and the north was more of an afterthougth than anything.

Moreover, have you ever seen any of my map release threads? People always come out of the woodwork to tell me "what you shoulda done wuz" crap all the time. If you can't take criticism then you shouldn't be drawing attention to your map release on these forums.

[Jazcash]

In all honesty, I like bland maps because it allows for more concentration on the units and gives the units more of a boldness.

Noisy maps with lots of different textures and small details make a map look very pretty, however, in terms of gameplay, it can get a bit cluttered and just give a player a sense of a lack of space, even if there isn't.

I have nothing against very detailed maps with lots of variation in height and texture, however when it comes down to gameplay, I would always prefer a lighter less intimidating map

It's similar to any art, I consider a good piece to have complexity surrounded with simplicity.

[SirArtturi]

Imo the textures look fine. Maybe a bit too repeatitive. Overall look of the map is good. I'd try to get rid of the blocky parts of the heightmap, but those indeed give some detailness to the landscape...

This is much better than okiriver or deltasiegewet actually. It has some of that feel of having several separate battlefields instead of 1 battle, but thats actually good when playing with random teams.

This can be also seen as a downside(especially, as you said, with random teams). You cant really call a map as a teammap, if it has allway separated battlefields without not much interaction between those. That kind of maps also tend to have that 'first blow the final blow' where one ally breaks weaker opponent and after that is able to rape enemies assess by flanking from their allys base (altored divide is pretty good example)

I feel that this map provides alot of interaction possibilities, but they seem somehow vanish due the size and distance of the battlefields. If you find that as a problem, I suggest doing one simple thing that is reducing the height of the map, for example to 12.

[Gota]

I agree.
maps with a very detailed "messy" texture are unplayable even though they are pretty.
Hard to see units.more strain on the eyes --->confusion.

I agree with SIR.
When the different battlefields are separated in roughly the middle of the map when one part gets overwhelmed its practicably the end.
If you indeed want to avoid that But have the same heightmap I suggest changing the metal ratio and decrease amount of metal towards the middle.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

I don't really care for this attempt to dsdify it, seriously, you can be more creative than that.

I'm fairly annoyed by this one! To clarify:


I am not all that familiar with DSD (have played games there about 10 times in my whole 45k minute spring career and they were all porcy suckfests, but then I dont play BA except 1v1) but I can tell you that it wasnt even remotely an inspiration. The landbridge at the top is a mirrored aping of the kbot hills lining the top left/bottom right start-expands of Tabula, because the gameplay on those is freakin ace.

What is copied from DSD...? the hills have little or nothing in common with the DSD hills, paths or gameplay. The landbridge with cliff was a feature of the original oki-river heightmap- all I have done is make it teired to make the gameplay a little slower and porcier, since on the original oki-river the top battle often ended much faster than the battle in the middle, deciding the game prematurely.

So: not an attempt to 'dsdify' oki-river, just an exchange of oki-rivers flat plain for a multi-tiered hill, for considered gameplay reasons. I agree it looks kind of fugly, but I was hoping for advice in fixing that.

Synopsis, you can do a hell of a lot better, you just aren't trying.

I dont know if you recall my other like, 2 maps, but *I* thought this was marked improvement of texture, heightmap and playability over my last release... my texturing is crude because I am total noob at mapping and do everything inefficently

@ Kaiser, I can only map when im home from uni to use my rig (laptop dosnt support opengl lol), which is almost never. I dont get alot of time to refine my technique
those textures would be fantastic btw, my texture library is sadly lacking in appropriate grass ramps and high-ground.

@ knorke, what features where? My own experiments with features always look really contrived and poor, advice would be mega welcome

@ argh, if the water was murky green it wouldnt look pretty

I feel that this map provides alot of interaction possibilities, but they seem somehow vanish due the size and distance of the battlefields. If you find that as a problem, I suggest doing one simple thing that is reducing the height of the map, for example to 12.

I noticed that in the beta version testgames, but they were only 3v3 and with much higher metal values.. has anyone played the map as it was intended at 4v4 or higher? if so, does the feeling of detatched battlefields persist? I dont really want to shrink it any further, the original oki-river was all about the huge plains and distances, im worried that cramming it together any further would result in porc, but I will change it if it dosnt work out @ 4v4 level.

I will fix the grass in the next release, I made a vegitation map but it seems to have got lost in the works. I need to standardise the ramp depth for a v2 anyway..

*

btw, can someone tell me how to compress maps lol? 40mb is a little hefty

[Gota]

Usually having a porcy heightmap towards the middle only intensifies the problem.If its easy to proc middle the one that grabs first is hard to chase out.
The porc,IMO,should concentrate behind the middle somewhere in between the starting point and the middle.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

I agree.
maps with a very detailed "messy" texture are unplayable even though they are pretty.
Hard to see units.more strain on the eyes --->confusion.

do you mean my texture is too busy, or that it is bland?

I agree with SIR.
When the different battlefields are separated in roughly the middle of the map when one part gets overwhelmed its practicably the end.
If you indeed want to avoid that But have the same heightmap I suggest changing the metal ratio and decrease amount of metal towards the middle.

have you played v1? if so, can you send me the replays? I have dropped the metal value per spot from 2.2 to 1.7 since the beta... how will changing the metal ratio in favour of metal heavy start pos lessen the effect of 'one player caves, gg' ?

edit: oh, you mean it will slow down the coup de grace... I suppose I could re-arrange the north metal

Usually having a porcy heightmap towards the middle only intensifies the problem.If its easy to proc middle the one that grabs first is hard to chase out.
The porc,IMO,should concentrate behind the middle somewhere in between the starting point and the middle.

I thought the whole top would be fairly equally porcable, it basically plays out as two thin lanes, both of which can be clogged fairly economically. what change(s) do you suggest for v2?

[Jazcash]

I agree.
maps with a very detailed "messy" texture are unplayable even though they are pretty.
Hard to see units.more strain on the eyes --->confusion.

do you mean my texture is too busy, or that it is bland?

We mean your texture is good for gameplay. I'd prefer to play games on your map than a pretty one.

[Gota]

I agree.
maps with a very detailed "messy" texture are unplayable even though they are pretty.
Hard to see units.more strain on the eyes --->confusion.

do you mean my texture is too busy, or that it is bland?

We mean your texture is good for gameplay. I'd prefer to play games on your map than a pretty one.

LOL,NO.
I did not mean to say his texture is ugly.
I think its fine Just the greenish part nedds a bit of tweaking IMO,but thats a matter of taste.

Well Seems towards the middle the heightmap rises making the middle the porciest place.
Im not saying its wrong I'm just saying That making The middle area less porcy while making an area behind the middle more porcy would allow a player that starts losing there to back up and porc easier without losing the entire game for his team cause he lost the the middle.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

ok, how about I horizontally flip the start pos heightmap:



that way, the protruding hill with the mex on will give each player a choke away from the center as well as a center point between the two ramps to build defences on

[Gota]

Basicy the orange is highest ground and that slope is kbot only(or not) and that yellow is lower ground.
As you see the top middle has a shore with the sea not a cliff and u can go there from the middle easier
without having to climb the top side hills.


This is just an idea though.