Spring RTS Engine

Here you gents go, my first released spring map. It is a 20X20 u shaped river in a canyon valley. Feel free to steal my skybox if you want it, just give me some props if ya' do :).

are the rivers impassable for land units?

It is a nice looking map but I have one prob.. 51mb is pritty big, you might
want to see if you can cut down the file size. Just incase you don't know it is
all in the texture map.

1v0ry_k1ng wrote:are the rivers impassable for land units?

I am not sure, depends on the mod really. Gundam/ee has no problem and there are shallows in the water. I do not really test for the TA:S mods.

Runecrafter wrote:It is a nice looking map but I have one prob.. 51mb is pritty big, you might want to see if you can cut down the file size. Just incase you don't know it isall in the texture map.

Nope, I could 7zip it but we have learned that 7zip is not the best for loading a map and may contribute to desync. I also could take 7 megs off and lose the highquality sky. I did not want to lose detail though I did compile it at 0.4 compression, I am not sure if that is low or not. Reducing quality for map size is not my concern but bear in mind since you were gone we have upped the map sizes significantly. Forb, lathan and myself are of the belief that no one should sacrifice quality for a few megs.

I love the way the map looks and the cost for others is not that high and is not a concern for me. I will be honest, I am probably going to hold nothing back as far as texture. If I can later find a way to further optimize it I will consider updating it but not at the cost of detail/texturing.

whenever I host a game on a map more than 15 megs theres a chorous of "ohh that maps huge I cant download that" or some 10 minutes later; "im 20% done, plz wait for me".

please, try and compress it somehow

I will see what I can do, but odds are I will not be able to do much with it.

ok, I reduced the compression down to 17 megs and it looked like shit on a plate. I will try one more time at compression level 1 and see.

ok, compression level 1 reduced it all of 5 megs and I still had obvious tiles.

sorry man. the texture is just too detailed for it to be at a high compression.

Cool, I will run it on my games for the next days and see what people think (including myself)

is the river based on trogdor?

no sorry, I know that would make the map that much cooler but no

The *only* way to get a significant reduction in file size is to use tiles. Either the map compiler will make up tiles for you (using higher compression settings), or you put your own tiles in the texture map. The latter yields better results.

Unfortunately it's probably too late for this map.

I use tiles for the grass / plains textures in my map, and then render everything else. It doesn't look as good as rendering the whole map, but it cuts down a LOT on file size. And sometimes the tiles aren't noticable at all.

For BlueBend all of the blue stuff in the map is tiled. I made a single 1024x1024 tile which is just repeated all over the map. You can't really tell unless you know what you're looking for.

no offense but that looks terrible to me. I want natural looking transitions, detailed hillsides etc. tiles look uninteresting and repetitive. I have areas where the grass is partially dead, areas of bright vibrant grass.. you cannot get that with tiles.


*edits*

PLease understand it is not that I do not appreciate the help being offered but I did not intend to design the map as a lower quality so people could download it 5-10 minutes faster. I designed the map to play and look good fully knowing that it would be over 30 megs at the very least.

You cannot have a quality texture at <10 megs unless the texture is very low on detail.

smoth wrote:You cannot have a quality texture at <10 megs unless the texture is very low on detail.

or small..

small?

small map, I assume

smoth wrote:small?

as in like an 8 x 8 map, or a 6 x 6 or something.. "small"

edit: small maps for small computers, and small internet connections, and small patience people...


edit 2:
I'm not sayin small is "better" hell, or even "good"....
but if its small downloads they want.. let them play old skool warcraft 1.
Spring was never "small"... it was always middle grounded... and thats because of the lack of creativity when it came to mapping, like 3 years ago... as new mappers get more and more detailed maps, and include 30 megs of features... maps get, well, big!.. get over it. f'in whiners..

because ati cards fail in ways that hurt my balls..... because crappage does like furries... because i have pretty hair(you know I do!)... this map may run slow for some of you out there


zorbawic and I have looked into the matter and learned that it is because I used a high res skybox that some of the shitier cards cannot handle because their mommies did not punch them enough. I will patch up the map later with a smaller skybox image(funny enough, it doesn't reduce the map size as much as one would think.... actually next to nothing in size change).





so my first release has to be tarnished because ati needs a punch in the face. YAY!








for those who can play it fine, which should be most of you... enjoy the pretty map. I am sorry you will have to download it again... blame ati!

smoth wrote:because ati cards fail in ways that hurt my balls..... because crappage does like furries... because i have pretty hair(you know I do!)... this map may run slow for some of you out there


zorbawic and I have looked into the matter and learned that it is because I used a high res skybox that some of the shitier cards cannot handle because their mommies did not punch them enough. I will patch up the map later with a smaller skybox image(funny enough, it doesn't reduce the map size as much as one would think.... actually next to nothing in size change).





so my first release has to be tarnished because ati needs a punch in the face. YAY!








for those who can play it fine, which should be most of you... enjoy the pretty map. I am sorry you will have to download it again... blame ati!

don't change anything, its not our fault they have prehistoric hardware... modern cards are expensive sure.. but the one I have, a x1600 is like 100$ maybe, and its an ATI and it kickes the crap out of spring, supcom, CNC3, Oblivion, just about everything...

I say they need to step up, get a quick little part time job, work, omg, 2 DAYS!.. and go get a f'in new videocard.. its worth it.

I have ATI x1600 mobile and this happens on this card,
it doesnt on GF 8800 GTS on my desktop

When you say a high quality sky box, what do you mean? Just out of intrest here...

(And I wont coment on file sizes, cause its my belife that as its YOUR map its YOUR choice. Wish people would understand that...)

aGorm