Sea of Dunes

[aeonios]

Well, I finally got around to making an original map. As opposed to living lands, which was mostly an exercise in texture paint, Sea of Dunes uses only one sand texture and literally everything else is based on terrain. I made it entirely in gimp, krita and SME, most of the time being spent getting the big sand dunes to look just right. Metal spots are also marked with terrain features, which turned out to be really easy after having worked with height maps so much already. All in all it was probably about two weeks of work.

http://springfiles.com/spring/spring-maps/sea-dunes

[hokomoko]

I haven't tried it in game yet, but it looks very nice!

[zoggop]

as someone who has spent far too long agonizing over dune heightmaps, i feel your pain. the map looks lovely! i haven't seen those kind of metal spots, i like them. my preference is for less symmetrical, sharper-topped dunes, but those may be a pain to make playable. i like how (in BA at least) the map is actually possible to navigate with vehicles, but it becomes a maze. i imagine this map could enable some entertaining stealth tactics (LOS and radar would have many blind spots).

[smoth]

FORB, whackamutungaririoogabooga 2!

[aeonios]

I haven't tried it in game yet, but it looks very nice!

Thanks. :)

as someone who has spent far too long agonizing over dune heightmaps, i feel your pain. the map looks lovely! i haven't seen those kind of metal spots, i like them.

Thanks, and no kidding. XD The inspiration for the metal spots actually came from this:


which I randomly found while looking for ideas for a texture. Using height and leaving it as sand just seemed more natural, and it kind of looks like an ant lion pit or something.

my preference is for less symmetrical, sharper-topped dunes, but those may be a pain to make playable.

Well, 'sharper' and 'less symmetrical' are really two different issues. Originally they were sharper, but I had to smooth them a lot to get them bot pathable. Spring still doesn't render them quite right even after the smoothing, although I put in a request to fix that. Less symmetrical is more a matter of technique, and I just haven't found a particularly good way of achieving that yet. That was what I had originally planned on, though.

i like how (in BA at least) the map is actually possible to navigate with vehicles, but it becomes a maze.

I hadn't even noticed that, but it's true in ZK as well. I thought for sure it had ended up unplayable for veh since the dunes are on top of a sort of rolling-hills terrain to give them a more realistic wavy shape, so this is kind of a nice surprise. I noticed the maze-effect in earlier versions and thought it was cool as well.

i imagine this map could enable some entertaining stealth tactics (LOS and radar would have many blind spots).

That was something I did consider in the design. The way the metal spots are spread out, the amount of space and the terrain favors ambushes and raiding, or at least that's what I hope for anyway. I guess we'll see, assuming it actually gets played at all. >.<

FORB, whackamutungaririoogabooga 2!

lol, can I take that as your seal of approval smoth?

[smoth]

the only issue you may have is the terrain not being flat in between the dunes will cause the players base to show up by the deformation of the ground that is why I ended up flattening my map in spots where expansions made sense. http://zero-k.info/Maps/Detail/17929

I like what you have going here though, just take the feedback as a consideration for future maps.

[aeonios]

the only issue you may have is the terrain not being flat in between the dunes will cause the players base to show up by the deformation of the ground that is why I ended up flattening my map in spots where expansions made sense. http://zero-k.info/Maps/Detail/17929

I like what you have going here though, just take the feedback as a consideration for future maps.

I think I know what you mean about that. I did do that with earlier versions, but that was before I introduced the rolling hills bit, which I don't really know how to flatten effectively. There is the concern that it's difficult to build things on the map (although it's still very possible), but what I've found is that while solars are difficult to build, windgens and most defenses are not, and wind is also very cost effective on this map, which helps. Building facs is about as difficult as solars, but since you don't generally do that often it shouldn't be a major concern.

[smoth]

this looks like a Worldmachine file? if so can I have a go at the file, I might be able to show you some cool tricks

[aeonios]

this looks like a Worldmachine file? if so can I have a go at the file, I might be able to show you some cool tricks

Nope, all SME. I only used gimp and krita for making height brushes, and krita for the microdunes.

[Anarchid]

Yak's Obsidian map seems to have sharp cliffs that stay sharp at zoomout and have geometry similar to your large scale dunes.

Unsure how much of that is because it has a diffuse to attenuate sharpness.

[Jools]

Nice map. We tried to play this but 20x20 is a bit big for xta games. But look forward to trying this.

[PicassoCT]

Error: Failed to load: fp_featureplacer.lua (error = 2, mapconfig/featureplacer/config.lua, Include() could not load 'mapconfig/featureplacer/set.lua')

Dont know if map-based troubles.. maybe jw lacks some lua..

[aeonios]

Error: Failed to load: fp_featureplacer.lua (error = 2, mapconfig/featureplacer/config.lua, Include() could not load 'mapconfig/featureplacer/set.lua')

Dont know if map-based troubles.. maybe jw lacks some lua..

I haven't had that problem or heard of anyone else having it, so it's probably your game. I'm not really sure what fp requires, either.

[gajop]

That file: https://github.com/jk3064/Map-Blueprint ... er/set.lua can usually be found for many maps that are based on blueprint, and something's trying to read it without checking if it exists.

[qray]

Very nice map! Well done
The metal spot design is a really neat idea (good that they have a large radius, else it would have been a problem for BA 2nd level extractors).

Haven't had the chance to play test it yet, but the flat areas for building larger structures are really quite limited. Could become an annoyance in longer games with 2nd and 3rd level stuff.

Error: Failed to load: fp_featureplacer.lua (error = 2, mapconfig/featureplacer/config.lua, Include() could not load 'mapconfig/featureplacer/set.lua')

Have this too in my infolog. Doesn't hinder map from loading, though. So it probably goes unnoticed by most people.

If you take requests: I could image a small version (8x8 or 8x6) for 1v1 could be very much fun

[qray]

aeonios: by chance saw your post in the ZK forum:

yeah the preview makes it look like it's terrible. I'm not sure why some maps seem to show terrain in their preview while mine don't.

Since your map design relies heavily on the heightmap and the auto minimap is done of the diffuse texture only, you don't see any structure in the preview.
To produce a minimap that might reflect better in the preview what the map is, I tried a gadget of mine on it (see Minimap creation thread). The attached minimap image was done without height rescaling since that changed the look of this specific map too much. So there could be small perspective distortions; though I used a fov of ~3 to keep them minimal.
I was too lazy to recompile the map to include it, so it might be that it doesn't work out in the ingame minimap display (since that seems to include height information by itself, which could lead to a bad mixture).
This you would have to try youself, if you're interested

[aeonios]

Thanks! It works pretty well, although there's a slight darkening of the minimap in game it isn't too noticeable.

If you take requests: I could image a small version (8x8 or 8x6) for 1v1 could be very much fun

I'm not sure if that would work or not. If I had to scale the dunes down they'd lose their effect, but if I keep the scaling I'd possibly end up with a strange asymmetrical map. It'd probably have to be around 10x10 even then. I may mess around with that later and see what I can cook.