Spring RTS Engine

1.5 is up, area reclaim works now with the trees

These lava pools just look out of place and unnatural and they seem very unnecessary, the map is already entirely center-focused, I don't see how gimping the side routes is helpful. I think they should be removed.



Also for the lava surrounding the map, the flashing effect is a nice idea but it distracts from the gameplay, especially since the larva texture is very noisy and eye rapey. If you made the lava area of the map into mex-less water or just a very darkened lava, it would be much easier on the eyes and more playable.

The orfelius trees are also a bit messy and distracting. Very low poly and no texture is not a nice combo. He himself admitted they are unfinished and not supposed to be featured.

All I'm saying is there's nothing wrong with simplicity, most of the best maps are a simple green or simple red texture without any clutter. In it's current state, I wouldn't enjoy playing on this map but if the distractions were dialed down a bit it would be a decent map.

^^ I disagree with all this crap

Looking at the pic the lava pool edges could be made blurrier. Dunno about the rest.

Forboding Angel wrote:^^ I disagree with all this crap

I'm not as dismissive. I ended up with a similar conclusion after some work on Violence and decided the lava shader was too intense, Zed is intended as a 1vs1 map, and 1vs1 is a ranked competitive environment within the ZK community. I think debatable nuances such as distractiveness of background features is worth considering.

I toned down the lava tex brightness and like it better.

These lava pools just look out of place and unnatural and they seem very unnecessary, the map is already entirely center-focused, I don't see how gimping the side routes is helpful. I think they should be removed.

For the few games I've watched I've also observed a lack of action on the far side routes. Removing the lava pools would be trivial in effort, but I will give the map further playtesting before deciding to do that or not.



As for the trees, I like them enough to stay. People may as well stop complaining about them unless they have improvements to contribute. Sprung sent me a crystal shader I just got working but this may not see a release depending on if I can tweak them to my liking.

WIP screenie of the above changes:

I would be all for a version without features/trees. As a mapper adding features is perhaps gratifying, but as a player they tend to be detrimental and imo look kinda ugly on most maps that come to mind.

updated

2.0 bump

sorry for post

Nice map, always good to see new features getting picked up quickly.

Minor point: instead of
you can also define the subtable
which is a bit nicer and helps to kill off the old (.tdf holdover) keyN=valN pattern.

Cool, I updated the wiki with kloots info https://springrts.com/wiki/Mapdev:splat ... apinfo.lua

Btw, is there a map that uses the old, non-splat detailNormals? (now called ssmf_normals or blendNormals in the engine)

I've tried it before but never got a result that was better then default. I think a few of Forboding Angels EvoRTS maps use single-image normals.

Haven't been around here for a while. The new normals look really great.
@Yak: very nice map, as always

gajop wrote:Btw, is there a map that uses the old, non-splat detailNormals? (now called ssmf_normals or blendNormals in the engine)

I did some ssmf normals for Silentwing's map Meltwater to emphasize the rivulets and it makes a well visible difference.
I also used them in my maps Core Platform (my first try to use them) and Incandescence. In both maps the effect is more subtle.
Big problem with ssmf normals is, if you want to use them for a bit finer details, that the image has to be quite large blowing up the map file size significantly. With smaller images the effect washes out and becomes barely visible.

Comet Catcher Redux v2 also uses them to good effect. (when somebody complains about a disconcerting "fake heightmap", you know they work)

minor update

Prettiest map ever, but imo it will not get played so much because visually it is difficult to tell where units can and cannot move in the low ground areas - players dont like losing due to that kind of ambiguity and find it stressful to work around them.

Can someone make crystal-like features that don't suck please? That would be appriciated.

Sellin meth- in plain sight on this board- reported.

Seriously though.. crystalls come in many shapes and sizes.. How do you want them too look?

update