More FFA maps!

[Beherith]

Hmm, it seems to be that time of year again, when FFA gets massively popular. Even 3 ffa maps in top 5! http://valinoreternal.no-ip.org:10004/springstats.html

Some large FFA maps, all good for 16 players:

Knockout
Neurope
Blindside
Mearth
DWorld
Nation
Melange
Mosh Pit
Claymore
TMA-0
Throne
(all but Neurope and Knockout by me)

@Cheesecan:
Im glad youre trying your hand at large FFA mapping, its pretty lonely in there :) But seriously, if you need any hand with some texturing tools that can handle large maps well, or some heightmapping tools or just general SSMF or feature placement, feel free to ask.

@gota:
uncalled for

[smoth]

well what is it that makes a good ffa map. Cheesecan and behe, I am looking at you.

[Beherith]

Well, in my experience, I could say that once map sizes get larger - and they do get larger once you plan for 16, you're forced to used typemaps to overcome porc inertia and keep good attack flow going.
Mines still work wonders even if porc doesnt help that much.

My FFA stuff usually has the recurring theme of: if map is full, everyone should have an equal number of neighbors, and an equal number of expansion opportunities.

The layout is usually made to incorporate the fact that in less than max players, only the first N spots will be used, and I try to make the game fair even if there is an odd player count.

I find the double mex expansions to be encouraging - as two spots worth almost +5 is a real boon.

Having a spot have too many expansion options -or not clearly defined expansion options- is not good. It requires you to have a bit too much porc and is quite newbie unfriendly - as they will just sit in their base if they aren't clearly shown what their options are.

Throne is surprisingly a decent example of map that gives a decent amount of players some quality playtime, as in the players die slowly, and can even have fun with some sim base.

In my experience, people like it more if the map clearly defines how it should be played - where it's passable, where the expansions are, etc.

A theme that also works well, is that all expansions connect 2 players, and all players have 3 expansion options. I think I may just switch this around, to make that players have 3 options, but all three are contested by 2 other players.

[KaiserJ]

valid points made, most maps get almost no playtime

dsd is not a successor to altored divide IMO, they have almost nothing in common besides the suggested number of players

and people will bitch no matter what. for teamgames, unless you follow a set formula (raised starts, central basin, centralized metal) people will not even consider playing your map. and when they do play, you get "oh this is too much like delta siege".

also players are quite "brand conscious". if you've made a poor map in the past, don't even bother, as soon as someone sees you've made it, then they wont want to try

also theres a fair amount of "why bother" at this point, as stated, spring has 3k maps, many of them quite playable, but at the same time people only want a) super high quality b) something they've already played. i mean, why do you guys think that almost nobody has made new maps this year except for beherith? because nobody will fucking play anything else. do i blame them? no. he's better at mapping than me

i have a "top 10" map, chicken nuggets. its nice to see people playing it, but at the same time, its quite discouraging to think that no matter what else i make, that one will always be the most popular

tbh i'd love a purge, just throw away everything before the next spring version, let mappers re-release the designs they think are worth it, break backwards compatibility, and move forward with things. (ofc this would be a shitty thing to do because its disrespectful to older work, but at this point, how else are people going to end up playing these maps)

edit: partially the problem of the balance of quality lies within the tools and format, most graphics programs can't handle 16 bit greyscale in a paintable, editable way, so unless you're a master of some obscure tech, or buy worldmachine or whatever, your work is always going to be worse.

[ginekolog]

Dworld is one of best and most balanced non symetric FFA maps.
Luckily Most of your maps are quite balanced and loads of fun tbh.

The thing that bothers me is inbalance in otherwise very good map Throne. Middle ring (we have outer ring, middle ring and inner ring) start gives u no chance to win, as space is too limited and player do not get any advantage for being crushed between. IMO removal of outer ring geo and moving it to middle ring would help to balance this out. Inner ring is allready quite ok as getting cener can win game.

Best place by far is outer ring ofc. Giving outer ring little less M income would be nice too.

Thanx for effort in making these awsome FFA battles possible :)

[Beherith]

edit: partially the problem of the balance of quality lies within the tools and format, most graphics programs can't handle 16 bit greyscale in a paintable, editable way, so unless you're a master of some obscure tech, or buy worldmachine or whatever, your work is always going to be worse.

-l filter in mapconv or 1 pixel radius gaussian blur in gimp to the rescue!
Or use the S button in springmapedit - which is even better cause of the full 32 bits it uses.

[Cheesecan]

@Cheesecan:
Im glad youre trying your hand at large FFA mapping, its pretty lonely in there :) But seriously, if you need any hand with some texturing tools that can handle large maps well, or some heightmapping tools or just general SSMF or feature placement, feel free to ask.

Thanks I'll try to give you some competition then.

I'm working on a map right now, just wish I had a better rig, takes 12 h to render a big map like that, and the filesize kind of limits the amount of post-render touch up I can do on the texture. Not at all like making 16x16 maps which I'm most used to.

I'll post a picture soon, would be nice to have help with the placements.

[Forboding Angel]

Oh cry me a river,what a baby.
when will you Stop posting nonsense?

Of those 7 maps, 2 are gigantic ffa maps.

[Beherith]

Whats your rig, and what are you using to texture?
Usually takes me overnight to get texture.

[Cheesecan]

I'm using good 'ol Carrara3D on a 2.53GHz Core2Duo with 4GB RAM. The reason why it's a bit slower than you might expect is because I'm running it inside of a virtual machine, so things take a bit longer. I just leave it on during the night and then it's nearly done by the time I wake up.

[zwzsg]

tbh i'd love a purge, just throw away everything before the next spring version, let mappers re-release the designs they think are worth it, break backwards compatibility, and move forward with things. (ofc this would be a shitty thing to do because its disrespectful to older work, but at this point, how else are people going to end up playing these maps)

DSD will be remade within day, the other 10 most popular maps within the week, so the map rotation as seen by the regular players wouldn't change a bit. The only different would be that the few people who were sometimes using the other thousand maps will lose that choice and be forced to convert to DSD.

[Gota]

Its a pretty daunting task to try and renovate old maps...
I mean you have to redo textures and add all the new features but in such a way that the map will still feel like itself and people wont play the old variant..

[zwzsg]

Not really, there's a tool to extract the textures of a map.

[Gota]

Not really, there's a tool to extract the textures of a map.

I don't understand.
I was referring to any future attempt at giving old maps a facelift since its the only way to deal with crappy looking maps unless people just make many new ones and with time the older ones wont get played much..
Obviously nobody is actually gonna remove all old maps from circulation...

[smoth]

updating the textures requires actual work and will increase the filesize many times larger. Players baw about "large" filesize (LOL 40 megs)

[Pxtl]

updating the textures requires actual work and will increase the filesize many times larger. Players baw about "large" filesize (LOL 40 megs)

40 megs is a lot to be downloading if you're on a light DSL plan or something. I used to use a light DSL and the wait was cringeworthy every time I had to dl a new 50 meg map, holding up game-start.

In a lot of places, light DSL is the only option.

[smoth]

well, there is no way to make a really detailed map. The devs took away my little trick with skyboxes in the mod archive so that is +10 megs for each skybox(which I chose to leave out this time because of this). features, and an uncompressed texture mean that the map can be huge. Add in stuff like ambient sound, effects for level objects etc and you start to get a huge file. To do the sort of "breathing" world that I want to do requires a lot of files and frankly because of the way spring works it means they need to be in the map or game archive.

gundam is pushing 180+megs now because of all the included content.

[Cheesecan]

Here's a shot of the 30 x 30 ffa map that I'm working on, taken from a heightmap engine I made(I actually had to go through the trouble of implementing screenshot saving just for this).


The sunken down area along the edges is going to be flooded in the spring map so it will resemble Dworld a bit in that way.

Thoughts on feature placement? Starting spots?

[Gota]

Well unless its a 4 FFA your heightmpa is a bit problematic in terms of balance due to the fact the center only has 4 entrances.
I have to say though that with as much entrances as players into the middle the heightmap might look unaesthetic and messy.

Perhaps leave the center flat? each player gets a cousy starting place but the center is this huge mess of units fighting...

[Beherith]

I like it. Go for it!
Though it does resemble Mosh Pit in a vague way.