Desert Needle Small

[qray]

After it was lying around nearly ready for quite a while, I finally managed to find a bit of time to finish it. It's a remake of my first map. Feels a bit like getting from being blind to being one eyed

Link to Springfiles

V3 has now a really symmetric layout/height map and much lower feature values. To even this out a bit, there are now a few more metal spots. Since besides metal and wind also feature values can be set in the map options, I included a simple widget to display the settings before the game starts.




After playing around for hours with splat details and the specular map/settings (and then notice that it looks quite different on another monitor and starting over... D'oh!), I think it's a pity that I read so many times in the help forum that people have to disable AdvancedMapShading LOL

One thing I couldn't figure out: what does "specularExponent" do? I had the impression it changes nothing...


Thanks to Smoth and Beherit for sharing their knowledge! So many times I search the forum, I stumble about posts from them with the answer I was looking for.

Edit:
and thanks to Forboding Angel for the feature placer, great tool! (couldn't post in the thread since it's locked)

[smoth]

t looks awesome! Dling now

[FabriceFABS]

Wow nice map
Upgraded from 2.0 to 3.0.
Love uncommon playing in the night, thx also for map options.

Have fun, it is available on :
- [ACE]Ortie (2v2),
- [ACE]Perge (3v3),
- [ACE]Censeur (BA Chicks) >>Pleasure>> http://replays.springrts.com/replay/8bf ... 779b8f899/,
- [ACE]Pirine (5v5).

[Beherith]

Very very nice work man! Good color scheme, great SSMF :)

[The Yak]

Huge improvement, very nice texture, ssmf, and balancing

[Forboding Angel]

This is really basic, but it also seems to be completely awesome. Playing evo on it nao, will report back with thoughts.

Autohosts can't see it because it's a duplicate map. You need to delete this listing and update the other listing. Duplicate maps are bad news.

http://api.springfiles.com/?springname= ... tegory=map

This map is listed 3 times

[Forboding Angel]

http://springfiles.com/finder/1/desert%20needle

Delete the v02 listing, and change the version to v04 and update v03 with v04.

This way the hosts should be able to pick it up correctly.

[qray]

Thanks for all the positive response

Though E323AI 3.25.0 does not seem to like playing on it

StupidBot.jpg (10.32 KiB) Viewed 5361 times

It builds itself into a solar and stops then (reproducible bug I noticed yesterday while play-testing)

Love uncommon playing in the night, thx also for map options.

Thanks have to go to jK and all contributing to the map blueprint! Great help, especially for someone being rather new to the lua stuff.

Autohosts can't see it because it's a duplicate map. You need to delete this listing and update the other listing. Duplicate maps are bad news.

Thanks for reporting!
Damn, and I thought this time I did everything right: changing smt/smf/smd names, giving new shortname, version number, 7z file name. And for the first time springfiles was behaving as expected (showing old version in version history).
Map versioning is a much more tricky business than I expected...

Delete the v02 listing, and change the version to v04 and update v03 with v04.

OK then: deleted v02 and updated 3.0 to 3.1 (changing again smt/smf/smd names, shortname, version number, sd7 file name). Hope it works now!

[Forboding Angel]

Springie hosts are picking it up now, for some reason my spads hosts aren't though. Doesn't seem like a map issue.

[qray]

Uploaded a new version to springfiles:
Desert Needle Small 4.0

Updates:
-new metal distribution (more spread out for less porc)
-added geovents (4 per side)
-improved mapoptions display widget (closable, movable, not present in ZK)

Somehow after playing it for a while now, it felt boring and too porcy. Therefore a new version with the metal more spread out.
New metal and geo overview (for better visibility in night setting):


After I saw the release of 3.1.1 by Ivand, I read in the ZK forums that the map options display widget was annoying them (or at least one admin?)... well, they don't have map options, so it's of no use for them. It should remove itself now automatically when ZK is detected. Would be nice if some ZK player could confirm that this works...

Old version for porc lovers still available under Desert Needle Small 3.1

[qray]

Playtesting shows that the new metal layout doesn't change too much. Update with a second try on reducing "porciness" will come in a week or so ...

[Forboding Angel]

It should be noted that featureplacer was written by smoth and put into evo. I simply decoupled it from evo and made it standalone so people could use it without needing to have a copy of evo.

There were a few very slight improvements by me and funkencool, but nothing too major (funken gave it isn't own ui).

Scened is the new hotness, but it doesn't have 1 or 2 features I rely on fairly heavily so I haven't switched to using it yet.

[gajop]

What features would those be?

[Forboding Angel]

We've been over this...

The ability to add a bunch of features to a single group that is randomly placed when you click.

For example, I add Aleppo 1 - 10 to group. When I click, an aleppo feature is chosen form the 10 I selected and placed on the ground. So in this way I can place forests quickly

I should probably make a video showing how I place features, so that you can see exactly what I do when I make maps.

The other feature doesn't work anymore in FP so it's a moot point, but I used to be able to select a random grouping of features like what I described above, turn on clustering and select a size and density, click once and have those random features placed in a radius.

Those are my "go to" features that I need. As long as I have those, anything else is a bonus.

[qray]

It should be noted that featureplacer was written by smoth and put into evo. I simply decoupled it from evo and made it standalone so people could use it without needing to have a copy of evo.

Could have guessed it, there's a bit (or a lot) of smoth in so many things around here
So thanks to smoth for this handy tool, too!

Back to topic:
Apart from metal spot distribution, I was also wondering if 4 vents / side might be too much. Anybody any strong opinion or suggestion on this?

[gajop]

So basically things that I did last year. I thought I informed you? Maybe I didn't.

We've been over this...

The ability to add a bunch of features to a single group that is randomly placed when you click.

https://github.com/gajop/Scened-Core/issues/89 (using layoutpanel's ctrl/shift selection to pick groups)

The other feature doesn't work anymore in FP so it's a moot point, but I used to be able to select a random grouping of features like what I described above, turn on clustering and select a size and density, click once and have those random features placed in a radius.

Those are my "go to" features that I need. As long as I have those, anything else is a bonus.

The clicking was always possible (#89 made it pick random objects).
More importantly I implemented brush add (and delete) which is much better than clicking for your usecase imo: https://github.com/gajop/Scened-Core/issues/90

Clicking supports amount although I don't think rotations are random (trivial to change). Brush does random rotations and supports spread (inverse density).

Keep in mind that the UI is far from final as I've told you in PM, but it's a big release and worth the wait.

I made you a video too so these things are finally clear: https://youtu.be/YTn8PMPCksM

[Forboding Angel]

Very nice!

I'll give it a go on the map I'm currently working on.

Moderation (gajop): removed annoying flashy gif. It's too early.

[qray]

Updated now to V4.1 with a more spread out metal distribution - similar to other maps I like to play. Hope this works out now...
Also now 3 vents per side (didn't get any replies, but my question may have been lost in the discussion between forb and gajop).

Here's an overview of the new distribution:

[eronoobos]

Glad you updated this map with geovents. It's one of the maps I play most. I agree that four geovents per side was too many. The non-clumpy metal distribution looks difficult to wrap one's head around, but after all that's part of how they resist porc.

[qray]

Glad you like it! (at least the old version )

I guess it still allows a bit porc. Metal distribution along the virtual border between sides is so that BA HLTs built close to one's own spots don't reach into the opponents metal distribution. I hope it nevertheless allows for a quick rush to disturb the enemy by being first and controlling some area.
The gaps between the spots on each side hopefully naturally defines a bit the defensive lines in game. But yes, the border is now more jagged and a bit less defined.

But one thing I learnt while making maps: it's one thing what I think how it should work and another how it plays out in real games and how other people play a map
So, I will also need a few games on this one to see how it works out...