Voltic Plateau

[Silentwings]

New map!



22x12, made for large team games.

http://springfiles.com/spring/spring-ma ... ic-plateau

[Anarchid]

Silentwings stands confidently before you with a formidable map.

A -> talk about how it's lanes
B -> talk about how water split
C -> ask about preferences for teamgames
D -> ask about how long it took
E -> ask if SSMF actually got in (i remember it was mentioned at some point)
F -> flatter a lot about realistic terrain
G-> notice lack of cacti features at this zoom level
H -> complain about worldgen being too expensive

Anarchid says: "I think you need to water the cactuses"

Seriously though, well done.

[Forboding Angel]

Oh that is fucking sexy. This will make for some awesome evo battles :-DDDD

[Silentwings]

Thank you, I hope it plays well :)

It was about 15h of work in total, a large chunk of which was me being incomptent with World Machine and the passability from cliff erosion. The map is 100% World Machine. There are no features because I was too lazy by that point.

There is a specular map but thats all! The sand could probably be helped by some splatting.

H -> complain about worldgen being too expensive

I don't understand this? If you mean WM is slow to build texture this size, yeah the texture takes me 1h to build, because of heavy erosion steps + I have no idea why WM blurs take so long.

[FLOZi]

Stunning. Would make a great MCL or IW map if anyone was still playing it.

[FabriceFABS]

Nice map, thank you.
I hope I could do same job one day

[EDIT] : You are on WindowsOS ! (Remove Thumbs.db in your arc on next versions !)
[EDIT 2] : I don't want to pollute the topic, this line is related to your asnwer below.
Check out this, it should be ok (and not dangerous to proceed) : http://www.sitepoint.com/switch-off-thu ... in-windows

[Silentwings]

Remove Thumbs.db in your arc on next versions !

I wish I could stop it creating these. But I never quite cared enough to read up on how (its easy if you have one of the "better" Windows versions, but I just have home premium or smth so it has to be set manually in some obscure registry key).

[Anarchid]

I don't understand this? If you mean WM is slow to build texture this size, yeah the texture takes me 1h to build, because of heavy erosion steps + I have no idea why WM blurs take so long.

http://www.world-machine.com/download.php?page=buy
99$

I guess the free version can also do some stuff but i've come to distrust things like that.

[Orfelius]

Perhaps map could benefit with thicker water. Right now it kinda looks like... I cant even find an analogy here

Also nicer minimap could be had because people might mistake it as ugly one (some people over at ZK already did -.-), while it is most certainly not true since the map is really good looking.

[Silentwings]

99$

Oh, you are right. The free version is essentially not able to make Spring maps for more than 1v1 games. Actually for Spring you need the pro version which is twice as much as standard iirc, because its too slow without tiled (multithreaded) builds.

Also nicer minimap could be had because people might mistake it as ugly one (some people over at ZK already did -.-)

The minimap is auto-generated by Spring - the map does not include one. Tbh it looks fine to me.

I can only find one negative comment about it on the ZK forum, which simply reads "too ugly?". It's not clear to me if that comment was meant to refer to the minimap or to the map itself, but either way I'm not going to change it, sorry.

[FabriceFABS]

The minimap is auto-generated by Spring - the map does not include one. Tbh it looks fine to me.

Yes, but you can include one, it's quite easy.
Just build a 1024*1024 minimap @ your own to avoid auto-generating by Spring and it will be included in the 2 files of the map generated by springMapConvNG.
I did it on SevenIslands because minimaps were not very nice.

I know you have much much exp than me, but I don't know if you use springMapConvNG to compile your pics.
Have a look for springMapConvNG : http://springrts.com/wiki/Mapdev:Tutorial_Finalizing
And minimap characteristics : http://springrts.com/wiki/Mapdev:minimap

[Silentwings]

Yes, but you can include one

I know, I chose not too.

[FabriceFABS]

I was quite sure you know it... sorry.

[qray]

Nice map! Pity that I am not into large team games...

Also nicer minimap could be had because people might mistake it as ugly one (some people over at ZK already did -.-), ...

Why do people judge and comment on a map from the minimap only without having seen it ingame?
Maybe the ZK pages should include the ingame screenshots from springfiles (which many maps have), for the very lazy ones that do not want to start spring

Slightly related: it's not straightforward to do a minimap without perspective distortion from a screenshot. Or do I miss a simple solution for this?

[Orfelius]

qray when you hit tab in game it brings you to so called "tactical view" exacly of the size of a map. It still has some perspective to it though :\
The other solution to this is just to edit autogenerated minimap.bmp in your graphical editor of choice.

Why do people judge and comment on a map from the minimap only without having seen it ingame?
Maybe the ZK pages should include the ingame screenshots from springfiles (which many maps have), for the very lazy ones that do not want to start spring

That is beause of how zero-k.info/maps is structured http://zero-k.info/Maps/Detail/40201
I think it somehow extracts the minimap, metalmap and heightmap from DB and publishes them with the map (simmilarly to springfiles).
However there is no option to include any additional screenshot. Other than simply posting taken image in the comment section.
I myself am a victim of this system as I have misjudged your map as a pieace of trash because of how badly minimap looks like and then launched the game where it looks beautiful http://zero-k.info/Maps/Detail/38284

[BaNa]

mmmmmm sexxy

[zoggop]

Looks fun for my 2 player comp stomp games. PS 15 hrs is damned impressive. I mean, if the purpose of map making isn't to sink time

[Forboding Angel]

When you compile, the compiler spits out minimap.bmp. Pull into photoshop, edit as needed, include in archive, ezpz.

[qray]

That is beause of how zero-k.info/maps is structured http://zero-k.info/Maps/Detail/40201
I think it somehow extracts the minimap, metalmap and heightmap from DB and publishes them with the map (simmilarly to springfiles).
However there is no option to include any additional screenshot. Other than simply posting taken image in the comment section.

It just felt slighly ignorant to me to judge/rule out a map based on its minimap But it's not that important.
I had a look at the ZK map list before. Height map preview is nicer than on springfiles. Maybe a link to springfiles should be included given that included descriptions are cut harshly, springfiles descriptions and screenshots are missing. But that's a topic for the ZK croud and I don't want to derail this thread (and since I only tried ZK once it doesn't really matter too much to me...)

To not derail I opened a new thread to discuss the minimap creation topic - if anybody is interested.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

Beautiful map, love the water.