Spring RTS Engine

I think a well made map that was styled after Quantos tournament maps would probably be more successfull than trying to make the next comet catcher. But I dont know, maps are a strange thing - Hrmph's Frostbite imo is about the best small map i've played, with excellent avenues for a ton of gameplay styles, yet somehow it didnt particularly catch on for 1v1 or team games.



In the past the 1v1 community has been split between the tourney style maps and Comet style maps.

Tourney maps were popular because:

1) You could play games on them expecting them to not last any more than 15minutes
2) Not alot of expansion, but very close proximity to enemy expansion from the start
3) Tactical battles rather than strategic


Comet on the other hand was

1) Heavy expansion, even adept non-comet players have trouble managing such a epic level of expansion required compared to other maps.

2) No terrain. No chokepoints, No worries about wrecks clogging things up. Just your tactics versus the other guys.

3) Theres always something to macro if you can handle it. This really just comes from the map being so much larger than what would normally be considered a 1v1 map. It easily accomodates 8 players.

4) Micro isnt a great factor - Although it helps, the amount of stuff going on in an average comet game makes it very difficult to babysit all your units. For better or worse.


I think the main thing keeping them together is that no matter what map, its impossible to porcupine against a skilled opponent.



Im just throwing this out there to give some thoughts on what the 1v1 community (when it really existed) liked. Though that being said, I think if anyone can come up with something to reinvent 1v1 competition its probably you, hunterw.

the most important thing for a leet map is that the metal is placed evenly across the map. maps where the only metal is in each players start position, hence no need to expand and/or use strats like tangerine are not very interesting. ideally, place minimal metal at start pos and maxium in the middle.

Ships are 1/5th of the tech tree. Hovers and seaplanes another 1/5th. I dont think we need another gator/flash spam map (Though it looks like Tropical is going that way thanks to me. :D).

I like ships. They need more love. What id like to see is another map utilizing shallows, they have so much potential. Perhaps with lots of smaller, closer together islands- within HLT or LLT distance from one another, to allow for serious island hopping. Also one that allows more interaction between ships and land units, giving the land units a chance to halt the progress of the ships, rather than just ships halting the progress of the land units.

Actually... a kind of open, CC sort of map made almost entirely of shallows, dotted with little islands (For land structures) and pits (for sea structures), some just LLT sized, some with metal in them, some enough to build a reasonable base on/in.

Wow, this is a lot of great feedback and a ton of good ideas for new maps...

It's funny you guys mention "reinventing" gameplay, or using existing gametypes in new ways, because thats probably the way hunter became really well-known in UT, his map Maelstrom took ONS and added the fast paced action of DM while allowing real strategy due to the checkerboard-like layout of the nodes. Completely revolutionary ONS map.

It was an extremely healthy and supportive UT community that fostered his mapping style, as well (hence the large amount of support and feedback, community, he fosters around his maps).

It's great to other people helping out too, especially people more familiar w/ the game than hunter, myself, and our normal group of players... We've been meeting a lot of people lately and they've all been very helpful. Keep the feedback coming =)

Ishach wrote:
Im just throwing this out there to give some thoughts on what the 1v1 community (when it really existed) liked. Though that being said, I think if anyone can come up with something to reinvent 1v1 competition its probably you, hunterw.

Oh, like that doesn't put any pressure on me

All of this 1v1 map input is extremely helpful. I will definitely do a 1v1 next, but there's still a lot for me to learn, and a lot to discuss about the basic premise of the map.

There's a multitude of ways that I can create a unique 1v1 map, but if my method of choice is too drastic no one will use the map. At the same time I don't want to just rehash the same flat square with lots of metal all over, because it's pointless to do that. I'd rather attempt a unique 1v1 map and fail rather than make a clone of comet catcher or mars, SO! I just need to discuss all the ways that I could make it unique.

One way (as Saktoth mentioned) is water, but Jackalope started the 1v1 map by requesting it be land-only, so this may be too drastic. I could use water but have no water deep enough for ships to be built, which would be less drastic but different. I could use damaging (acidic) water to prevent ships being used and promote hovercraft. Or, I could be more conservative, and just make a land map that is a good half-way point between the tourney-style maps (small and tactic-oriented) and comet style (huge and expansion-oriented) in order to possibly reunite the two factions of 1v1 players. If I did this, understand I will still have to have SOMETHING to make it a bit different, via reclaimables, or an interesting height map arrangement.

In any case I will make the map perfectly symmetrical. This is something I always do, because form follows function. This is the only way to have a perfectly balanced map, and as an added bonus I really only have to do one half of the work

I'll leave it up to the people that want the map to decide. In any case, I really do need demos of you guys at top form having matches on the various types of 1v1 maps to study...this will probably help more than anything.

I will make a thread in the near future about this, but I am starting back up at college this upcoming week so I may be a bit busy settling in for a bit. Feel free to continue discussing, as well as making those demos

Are old versions of spring kept anywhere for download?


I got like 1gb of replays and I cant watch a single one

Good question. Even if you could get the old versions, there's no way to know exactly what version any particular demo needs other than by checking dates.

They don't make it easy on us

I just tried to play a game fo this onyl to eb told I ahve incorrect media by spring.

If you ever re-release a map to fix something NEVER GIVE IT THE SAME NAME. Renaming the archives name isnt enough.

i learned that lesson back on tangerine

the fixed map's name is different, not just it's archive's name, so that's not causing your problem.

the old map and archive's name is tropic
the new map and new archive's name is tropical

there's no way you should get that error, unless it got corrupt on it's way to your HDD, or you modified it, or one of the mirrors has a corrupt version of it (ffs i hope not)

sometimes unknownfiles leaves a few kb off the end of the download, I've noticed...

well that's just peachy

can't complain though, the price is right i'd say just download it again, AF

Huh. So this map actually isn't porcy at all. At least, it's not if you use Storms. There's just no feasible way of defending against massed rocket kbots that are immune to flash/gatorspam because they just stand in the water. Even if light kbots/tanks are used to attempt to assault the rocket kbots, the lowered movement speed in water will severely hinder them, potentially to the point that it is totally unfeasible.

I'll try this a few more times, but I've got the feeling that it'll bear out.

try peewees/aks against that, they aren't too slow to where they get completely raped

also you could just counter with rockos/storms of your own

This is hands down the best map released this year. Perfect for 2on2 EE. LOVE IT!

OOmiz wrote:This is hands down the best map released this year. Perfect for 2on2 EE. LOVE IT!

Laughing irl

this is the nicest LOOKING map ever made. it plays badly though. now, a map looking like this with agressive metal placement, airdrop zones.. charlie in the hills on a desert island, with these textures and added streams and sea.. bliss.

I love this map, I have hosted many games with it

I don't really think this is the nicest looking map ever played, but it could do well with a better placement of resources.

Updated to V2 (New texture, SSMF, splatting, Palm trees)

Nice work behe! Looks fanfuckingtastic!