A pair of map ideas (pictures)

[smoth]

that red alertmap would be flat, those cliffsides have no ramp, the cliffsides are just blocking. It actually is flat with walls you can shoot over.

Post a picture of what you are talking about... I have only released 2 maps and the gundam map has VERY high hills. What are you asking for.

it is also difficult to make many varied levels of hill with only 256 levels of height. We can only get soo much detail and when we use the massive height we are really only stretching the distance between those 256 levels. 16bits per channel heightfields can help this though.

[Erom]

I think he's talking about the quantization of the terrain levels. IE, many maps do this:

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when the engine support full-3D so we don't necessarily have to have plateaus.

I dunno though, plateaus make for an easily understandable map so I don't think they are totally out of line.

[Saktoth]

Its a valid point WZ, but ill mirror what everyone else has said and say that in the end it comes down to gameplay.

Plateaus are important, Large flat areas allow you to build and fight on them. All mountain peaks with steep sides are good for is being inaccessible (except, perhaps, to all-terrain). Having an area of the map that is totally inaccessible is worse than distinct cliffs- its just a binary 'can go here, cant go here' and there might as well not be height difference at all.

If you have a not as steep, mountain whose whole surface is kbot only though, you will have a hard time fighting on it as you'll always be on an incline which means you will always be fighting the enemy either up or down of you. Fighting on a hill can be interesting but its always asymmetrical- its nice to have areas that only kbots can access that dont necessarily always lead to an asymmetrical firefight. Try Hunterw's Tumult. The side kbot areas suffer from LoS issues and are hard to play in because the hills are noisy and have peaks- a real shame.

Soft rolling hills are better, but then you cannot put a tower or unit on the 'lip' of the hill overlooking the area below. In order for the hill to look genuine but still have enough height to be meaningful the slope has to be gentle enough that most towers/units will only be able to stop the enemy taking the hill itself, not stop them passing below it.

Also, randomizing terrain leads to little abnormalities and odd little passable/impassable areas. Try plying Brazillian battlefield- unless you have it commited to memory or play with f2 (which chugs cpu) its almost impossible to know up which slopes units can or cant go (which is partly a failure of the texture).

That being said, i think that variation in slope is really important in a map- there should be kbot-only slopes, all-terrain-only slopes, as well as vehicle slopes. Beaches onto water areas need to be considered as well, for where hovercraft can or cannot pass. Ive included all of this. I also think there should be areas that are simply slopey or bumpey without being 'ramps onto cliffs', such as the small hills ive included in this map.

Finally, i probably could have gone more complex in the design with more rolling hills in some areas and natural features, but i made it in paint and behe was just following my design (excellently i might add).

[smoth]

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does he want something like this? Because we have maps like that also.

[Warlord Zsinj]

At work atm, so I can't get at maps that imo play well and don't look super artificial either.

But yeah, I'm not asking for anything I haven't seen before. I didn't say it was impossible and nobody had done it before, I said that many map makers fall into a category of ignoring the heightmap as both an interesting gameplay device and an important visually immersive element.

And Smoth, your maps usually don't fall into the category I'm talking about, they're usually fairly visually interesting.

And, plateau's are part of the game, I realise, and a convenient building area for map makers, but I still think it is possible to make the transition between flat land and high land more natural and sloping, and less like we're fighting on a bunch of upturned buckets. Most maps don't have dynamic heightmaps - they have two levels, a low level and a high level. In my opinion, that's a real shame.

that red alertmap would be flat, those cliffsides have no ramp, the cliffsides are just blocking. It actually is flat with walls you can shoot over.

I'm aware, my point still stands

[Argh]

Try plying Brazillian battlefield- unless you have it commited to memory or play with f2 (which chugs cpu) its almost impossible to know up which slopes units can or cant go (which is partly a failure of the texture).

How's about is "entirely a failure of the texture". Same as a lot of maps like that, tbh, which try to look "natural" but tend to just end up looking very bland.

I really like the gameplay on Arctic Plains V2, for example, but the texture + lighting doesn't really help people clearly see certain things.

Just using more angled light sources, and avoiding the "high noon" effect, and keeping shadows dark enough to really show people what's real geometry, etc., would have helped, but mainly the differences between the low areas and the heights needed to be emphasized a bit more, imo.

On this whole WZ mini-gripe, though... meh... unless you're at OTA scale, even a smallish real-world hill is huge, and then you have players' somewhat unrealistic expectations- realistic terrain with significant height changes would be impassible to vehicles, for example.

I think the major problem here is that we need to keep a fairly cartoony sense of scale, but make it look good, and tell the player what they're seeing, really clearly. True-scale is probably asking too much of the engine, tbh, until we have some miracle in terms of drawing maps much, much faster.

[smoth]

I wish I didn't have work tomorrow. The that sucks about having a job is actually showing up to it. I also have to work late tomorrow :\. SOO MUCH TO DO and I have the ability but none of the time GODAMNIT!

Warlordz, I know exactly what you are asking for. I'll be sure to make that starwars map with that sort of terrain when I do it for you guys.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Yeah, I guess my view is slightly slanted because in IW infantry can walk over pretty much anything other then a sheer cliff, so the game really isn't choked up too much by difficult terrain (it rather makes games a lot more interesting by breaking up where vehicles and bases must go compared to infantry)

[Argh]

I guess my view is slightly slanted because in IW infantry can walk over pretty much anything other then a sheer cliff

Meh, trust me, I see similar issues in P.U.R.E. (big surprise). There are a lot of issues, though. I have fairly large hills in my World Builder demo map, and had to keep 'em really quite shallow, to keep them passable by P.U.R.E.'s vehicles, which have a more sane slope tolerance, for example.

I've been wanting to do another demo map for World Builder- maybe I'll do something really extreme with height, just to see it. I have a feeling it won't play well, though. Meh, nothing tried, nothing gained, though...

[Beherith]

If anyone would like to make these maps i might be able to texture them- though bryce (which i use) doesnt go over 4000x4000 pixels which is only suitable for rendering 8x8's, really. So, anyway, id encourage anyone who likes the ideas, to make them.

Odd, bryce 6.1 only out of memory's on me when I go over 512mb image size (16k*10k). How much system RAM do you have, I have 2gb, so it might be a pc issue, not a version issue.
But anyway, i would not want to wait for rendering a 16k*10k image

[Saktoth]

My bryce only goes up to 4000x4000 pixels. D: