Spring RTS Engine

ralphie wrote:drawing 600 lines leading into 3 tiny chokepoints does not make 600 ways of attack, it makes three. This is why altored is/was popular.

Im not sure if anyone shares my feelings here, but I always thought low metal, chokepointed maps like all the altored series sucked a fat dick.

as above, those maps were not about fluid attack-not at all.
they were about massively porcing chokepoints, then waiting till someone combombs or cracks one of the gates for everyone to pour through.

fusing chokepoints with low metal results in attacks being very costly and long periods of build up between each one. it means building up the density of force needed to overcome the porc at any given spot took a long time and a failed attack set the game back by another ten minutes. games become very long and slow, and become a race up the tech and economy tree with little or no battle or manuver required at all.

altored was popular because a huge majority of spring players are terrible considered as RTS players- terrified of being attacked, porcing profusely and very much afraid of open manuver, raiding etc.
they like small, very safe lanes in which to slowly build a super army of doom and then to release it.

that is why altored was popular.

the reason 8v8 delta seige is now more popular is because it provides more metal. more metal means the long, boring wait until big guns crop up to blow away nubporc is not nearly as long. high metal maps simply proved more enjoyable for this kind of player, and this kind of player makes up most of the playerbase.

even as a skilled player, most players preffer to be pushing around huge armies and packing massive economies- war on a massive scale- which is why comet 1v1 is so popular amoung good players.

there is simply no market left for low metal, porcy maps- not now noobs have discovered high metal, non-porcy maps but totally stuffed with players so any kind of breakthrough is impossible.
the best we can do is make the maps increasingly open and the metal increasingly towards the center of the map so the good players are rewarded for competency and can end the game much faster.

I'm tempted to rage over that, but the fact is, AA as a mod was not perfect, so at various times during its development porcing was too easy. So your point is valid, AA on AD did not necessarily guarantee an excellent game. BA as it stands is built on a shaky foundation because it's based so strongly on AA, so BA on AD does not guarantee a good game either.

But the maps themselves are not at fault here. RTS in general do not encourage porcing, so if AA at any time made this strategy too easy, then it's AA's fault, my fault. That doesn't mean that the design principles that the maps display are somehow wrong or any less valid.

ralphie wrote:drawing 600 lines leading into 3 tiny chokepoints does not make 600 ways of attack, it makes three. This is why altored is/was popular.

The point is, there could be defenses at any point in those areas. You can bypass them more easily than in most maps because it is difficult to set up defenses when there's a hill half-way through your line. The guns on one side can't complement the guns on the other side, so a large amount of your defensive strength is reduced. Can you just build defenses at the 3 main choke points? Yes, but you are 100% guaranteed to lose because you've surrendered the middle without a fight.

Note that when I say "build defenses", I'm not necessarily talking exclusively about actual defense structures, but units as well.

Compare AD to DSD. On DSD, there is essentially one location to build defenses - as far into the middle as your team can get before you start to get heavy resistance. So you and your team will build one defense line there, and that's it. If it falls, you lose. If you build defenses anywhere else, they won't be on the front line, so both the main line and your new line will fall quickly. It's so predictable. There's only one real point of contention because the north is so prohibitively difficult to navigate. AD allows multiple attack and defense routes, so if you make an all-out attack, your enemy can just as easily do the same - not so in DSD, since you'll just run into each other.

Even though there's only 3 entrances and 3 exits, there are a huge number of potential choke points in-between. The entrances and exits are the very last line of defense, and as I mentioned in the AD post, if you try to over-fortify them, you will lose. Ironically 3 three most dangerous chokepoints are also the three that are least important for most of the game.

I am making several assumptions: at the teams are fairly balanced, with an equal number of good and bad players and the mod must be properly-designed. Just because one or those factors is not guaranteed does not mean that map design as a whole should be a free-for-all that NO mod can be balanced around.

neddiedrow wrote:Also, virtually none of the newer flesh has played on Altored Divide. I haven't seen any games on it beyond some 1v1 I played in about... oh, six months.

Orly.

http://planetspads.free.fr/spring/stats/graph_81.html

It's just not as obscenely overpopular as it once was, which is a good thing.

altored divide does have horribly small chokepoints as entrance to the main base areas, but those areas are completely wide open. as soon as the weakest link on your team loses his choke then your whole team's base is wide open for assraping. the map loses overall porcitude from this, but i personally dont like this gameplay (see tumult).

i prefer the main base chokes to be larger, or just utilize a bit of altitude. also, i like slight chokes between the allies' start postions. it should be a punishment for your whole team if one ally loses his shit, but not the coup de grace every time.

as for metal spots, theres a fine balance to strike. i dont vary my metal amount very much now as i struck a good balance for 4v4 (see tabula, tundra, talus). i do like to utilize big spots though. i think my small spots are 1.6 and then my bigspots are 2.8ish. i use only one bigspot per each 1v1 of the map in the middle of the contested area. this does a few things - it tips the balance towards whoever claims the bigspot, which leads to faster games. it allows for new strats, such as airstart->atlas->lift comm around building bigspots. it also encourages the risky strat of building a t2 factory near your front line if you've captured the bigspot, as you can immediately build the bigspot moho with your first t2 con.

map guidelines are complex as fuck. as a general rule, the more cliffs and chokes there are, the less valuable attack units are and the more valuable porc/eco whoring become. as a general rule, water sucks cock and isnt balanced for anything but 1v1 sands of war, so use water sparingly and basically only for amphib/hovers to break porc.

its often a good idea to have a mix of pro frontline starts and noob spots that are more defensible, so less ambitious players can hide at the back where their failure does less damage.

I think chokepoints are important, but the entire map should never be choked- dsd for example, is 50% flat plain, the other 50% porcy noobchoke. nuclear winter, the thinking mans dsd, is more like 65% flat plain. the more flat plain, the less noob friendly a map becomes.

i think water works ok as a border around a map, but definately within a map, its best to avoid anything beyond ponds for anphibs..

1v0ry_k1ng wrote:the more flat plain, the less noob friendly a map becomes.

pretty much just reiterating one of my main points. less chokes = attack units more important, porc/ecowhore less viable as strat = less noob friendly

flats and chokes are entirely different though. talus has no flats, but its definitely not noob friendly.

Its nice to have maps with both low and high metals. Just have it contested (ie. not dsd) and have a decent amount near the start pos (ie. not Barren).

And Altored Divide is porcy for sure, at least with many players, but thats not always a bad thing.

You guys are making great points. Mods also take a big piece of the blame. If AA/BA have terrible sea balance, and they're the most-played, it doesn't make much sense to make maps that have a lot of water. Perhaps this is a big part of the reason Altored Arctic never caught on the way AD did.

Because water units are so out of whack, hovers and amphibious units are also failing to live up to their potential.

I was planning on making a major water fixup one of the features for AA's comeback, but now I will certainly focus on it with greater priority.

hunterw wrote:i prefer the main base chokes to be larger, or just utilize a bit of altitude. also, i like slight chokes between the allies' start postions. it should be a punishment for your whole team if one ally loses his shit, but not the coup de grace every time.

This much I can agree with 100%, it's a pity I didn't think of that. If I get back into the map making business I'll be sure to do this.

It's possible I DID think of doing something like that but hesitated because I didn't want people trying to play FFA on it, or thinking that I thought FFA was viable on it.

I've been busy for the last week or so messing around with lua, and my time during the upcoming weeks will be occupied with AA, but I'm glad to see there's some recognition that a set of general map guidelines would be a positive thing. When I have more free time I'll try to put something together, in collaboration with some of the more experienced map makers.

not sure how relavent this is, but im about to start my first big team map- was thinking somthing like 18x16 -if anyone has an overwelmingly awesome idea for a map, im open to suggestion

1v0ry_k1ng wrote:not sure how relavent this is, but im about to start my first big team map- was thinking somthing like 18x16 -if anyone has an overwelmingly awesome idea for a map, im open to suggestion

make it so kbots dont suck i like kbot

to be fair, kbots are relatively effective on even semi-flat maps in every mod but BA. but yeah, I'm all about the kbot too

to be a good map the map name must not contain any of the following

- Speed
- Balls
- Redux
- No Metal
- Metal
- Dry (when used as a variant)
- Wet (when used as a variant)

if 2 or more of these words are used the map is instant fail and probably made by trademark.

I've never been a fan of guidelines. Both mods and even people's individual tastes vary so much. A lot of people hate speedmetal and yet it was extremely popular.

Another example.. You use altored to illustrate a good setup. Whereas I know a lot of people hate altored because it is so choke-pointish. Personally, I like most any map. From metal maps to ladder style 1v1 maps to really strange maps that require unconventional strategies. I even have some fond memories of surprise airdrops on altored.

Guidelines are pretty tricky if you consider the fact that there are many different TA mods which can differ from one another, that there are more than just a handful of ways to proceed in a XTA/BA/AA/CA/MA/NOTA game and that there are no single player maps which you could use as references for both basic gameplay and the basic difficulty level a new player would be used to after playing some SP games. What commercial RTS's benefit of is the fact that they already have a proof of concept from which they can go to MP gameplay. I think, the TA-based mods are still in the phase in which 'default' gameplay is defined, right, and so will the maps evolve slowly.

However, I have to admit that I'm no fan of fun maps either. Speed metal was fun in the beginning, but not something I'd really want to play regularly. There is no challenge at all in building a forest out of metal extractors and power plants and then brute force the enemy - which takes one fun element from the game.

Altored is the height of porc. It has 3 entrance ways for 5 players. Once they are broken, the WHOLE LINE collapses and the game ends. Worse, due to the 3/5 mismatch, you almost always get 2 on one entrance and 1 on another, and often this leads to a 2v1. This tends to mean your stronger players are fighting their weaker to see if they can beat them faster than their stronger player can beat your weaker players. Tabula has this same problem, for different reasons since its so easy to take the upper left and lower right, and easy to push and hold territory from there as well as getting lots of metal. The players opposing this have an uphill battle, literally. I prefer balanced fights and metal distro, and a fluid map with shifting lines.

I'll agree with everyone else and say it is players that determine which map is popular, not mappers.

But BA is designed for and towards and around Comet Catcher. Thats the map its meant to be played on. Bot play on maps like brazil and battle for planet also, but mostly comet. It is the very definition of flat and too much metal.

But lets talk solutions. CA has metalmultiplier, but this allows players to set it as they please and offers no recomendations on balance (remember, players want to play with too much metal anyway).

You can set the max metal per players using lua, and even vary it by map size and other variables.

Finally, you can re-do the resource system entirely. KDR's THIS uses a random number of mex-like objects (planets) they are captured around the map. I used this in Eternal Struggle Continued to translate this income into metal- it would be trivial to make metal extractors be the only thing that activates them (and make mohos make more metal). This would mean your metal extractors are randomized each game, increasing replayability. Though some mexes may end up inaccessible and you lose the mappers careful positioning of mexes (if, indeed, they have carefully considered it).

caydr i look at your posts about map balance and i think to myself "yeah yeah i get that", but in reality, the maps you made and the logic behind it are very much yours, and impressive (assuming you didnt get these maps from somewhere else).
when i think about it, if i was given a mapping utility and gimp and asked to make a well balanced map, i would produce nothing short of complete shit, so hats off

also i agree with whats being said about your map altored divide. i joined around the time where big games on that map were popular and nobody played on toy maps like speedballs yet. i remember many games where few people would even bother going for t2. stumpy spam was usually the most it took to turn the tide and tbh i kind of miss that

thx to my sync issues i had to spec a game instead of play it, but what i saw said something. it was tabula, 7v7 i believe, and i sat there watching until both sides had buckled down and porced up. i went downstairs, made myself some corn soup with chicken bits, drank it, jacked off, and came back to see who won.

nobody won.
EDIT: yet

i gues the tl;dr here is, i wouldnt mind some maps from you caydr following these guidelines. if you can make them popular again, maybe id be playing a war game instead of an arms race eco sim

dont play 7v7 games they are all porc

problem is no one hosts 4v4s anymore

I havent played in a while (not that that keeps anybody else from posting :p ) but to me, 4v4 tabula is/was where the fun is to be had. Altored divide i did not like for the low m and porcyness, altored artic somehow didnt get a lot of play so no opinion on that, comet is grueling on 1v1 but i dont find it that fun in teamgames.


now my reply to op:

For instance, it occurs to me that maps almost universally have about 300% too much metal for the gameplay that I intended when I made AA. I made Altored Divide at the very maximum upper limit for "good" gameplay, and people tell me there's not enough metal.

as said before, in-mod lua things (or non lua things i guess) can take care of that.

I think most map makers do put a lot of thought into their metal placement and amount, but you have to keep in mind that their point of reference is not OTA, but current day overcrowded BA teamgames. Or maybe evo or pure or gundam or s1944.

If you make a 4v4 map you can be sure that it will be played as 6v6 most of the time, so you may as well accommodate for it.

I prefer my starting mexes to give about 1.8-1.6 per mex. And yes, more metal can make a game more fun, because being starved for metal at the start of a game makes it slower, with metal maker eco playing a bigger picture.

Wind should never output on average more than 2/3 of what solars do, ever, ever. Wind is supposed to be for the very beginning of the game and for emergencies. Altored Divide gives you 11.5 average, with a maximum of 19.

Geothermal spots should not be abundant. Except for rare cases or very large maps, there should be 4 per map at the most. A more reasonable number might be 1 or perhaps 2!

Imo wind output should be set, in most cases, to make the avg wind output/cost ratio slightly higher than that of the solar (I think your quoted average would make wind much more worth it - no wonder we all make windfarms on altored). If the map contains a lot of easily defendable space then these ratios should be close, if your base is easily raided and small then wind should be worth it much more.


I have rarely seen an abundance of geo spots on maps, they are more likely to be left out of a map altogether. That said, yes, 3-4 can be a good number (i would go to 6-8 on a 6v6 map), but really, placement of the spots matters so much more than the number.

As for open space being much more commonplace in new maps: with spring pathing it is a nightmare to have non-smooth surfaces (not hills but some kind of low intensity fractal noise to make the terrain more realistic). And you need large spaces to have large-scaled tactical battles. If we could deny building in large plains with slightly uneven terrain, we could have both things. As it is, either you loose the fun battles and make space valuable or you have tons of space and playable maps.

make wind 9-9

no, the main diffrence between from solar is its unreliability as an energy source- ie, if you rely too much on wind, and at a crucial moment wind drops, all your HLTs stop working

making it reliable kind of destroys that risk

While I dislike metal maps, I also think the "barely any metal" maps are a big problem too. The game is far too concerned with eco-management and SimBase in those games. Low-metal gameplay is fun, imho, on games that don't have the geometric growth of the TA-family games. For TA, "low metal" really means "econ spam".

Besides, Caydr, you should be happy - the spiritual successor of Altored Divide is DeltaSiegeDry, which is quite sparse for metal when played on 5v5 as is popular. And DSD gets the most players by a long stretch, even compared to SpeedMetal variants.