Spring RTS Engine

PLEASE can you consider the playability of a map in Single Player mode when you place your start positions?

I have downloaded the "spring_maps _30.01.2007" torrent that contains nearly 500 maps. I am working my way through them play against a single AI. My aim is to pick out what I consider to be my preferred maps then go back and play against more AIs. Once I feel more confident I will start playing on-line against real opponents.

Unfortunately quite a high number of the map have c**p start positions for one-on-one play. Often the SP's are nearly next door to each other making 90% of the map redundant. The other weird one is a map where both Commanders start in the top left corner as good as on top of each other.

Fortunately the forum helped me understand how the positions are set. I have now extracted every .smd file to my \Maps folder and can modify the duff ones to make the map usable.

I guess my main comment would be "why take all that time creating a great map just to spoil it by adding start positions that make the map un-playable?"

An example I have come across on quite a few maps is;
Don't Map Makers test their maps? If so, didn't you notice that the above is garbage?

In my opinion the start positions should be as far apart as possible thereby encouraging full use of all the map for resources, defence etc. Each subsequent start position should be placed to maximise the distance between adjacent teams.

This should really be in the Map Makers section so that map makers see it but unfortunately that section has restricted access.

Paul.

P.S. Please note that all the above are meant to be a helpful comments and not a flamebait.

Or when say on an east west map, the west has 1234 down the side and then 5678 on the east side, which means in fixed/random mode both player and enemy start next to eachother in the west top corner.

Also:

Random doesnt mean randomly pick from ANY of the start positions. It means, if there're 2/3 teams, pick randomly from the first 2/3 positions.


I've been going through mappers pming them to try and get them to change or at least make them aware of the issue. Ideally they should re-release their best maps with the fixes for these.

most maps have players 1 and 2 on opposite sides from one another. I am not sure who you are adressing etc but most maps are thus. Some maps have bad start points. Perhaps, it would be more helpfull to LIST the maps in question so the mappers can correct the issue?

smoth wrote:most maps have players 1 and 2 on opposite sides from one another. I am not sure who you are adressing etc but most maps are thus. Some maps have bad start points. Perhaps, it would be more helpfull to LIST the maps in question so the mappers can correct the issue?

I agree that the majority have good starts. I am addressing those that don't take a few moments to think about the playability of their fine creations and turn them into a wast of time that is not worth playing or plain un-playable.

NO I will not 'name and shame'. That is not what this is about. I just want to raise the issue so that some Map Makers think about it before releasing their work. If a Map Maker sees this they will know which category they fall into, or at least should do.

AF wrote:I've been going through mappers pming them to try and get them to change or at least make them aware of the issue. Ideally they should re-release their best maps with the fixes for these.

Good for you. Do you get a reasonable response from them? Do they understand the issue?

this is one thing i like in SupCom is that when you start a skirmish, you can see on the minimap where are the start points and yu can select the one you want to start and the same for the AI.

Tangerine is one of those nice maps that is unplayable in solo exept in a 4v4 match (but 7 AIs kill everybody's computer)

Almost all of Hunterws maps suffer from this, and some of forebodings maps (even the recent ones) suffer fom bad start pos syndrome. For example on EE conqueorors isle you start next to an uw mex spot near the top left corner, and on tabula your enemy AI starts to the south less than a screen aways distance, certainly less than that of a radar tower.

Yes, hunterw has kept up a conversation via pm trying to suggest workarounds to the fixed/random problem I noted in the previous post, and knows not to make the same mistake on future maps.

vital wrote:this is one thing i like in SupCom is that when you start a skirmish, you can see on the minimap where are the start points and yu can select the one you want to start and the same for the AI.

Tangerine is one of those nice maps that is unplayable in solo exept in a 4v4 match (but 7 AIs kill everybody's computer)

That (SupCom) sounds ideal. Could the feature be added to XTA? It might also cause the Map Makers to see the problem themselves. Mind you, I doubt that the 1,1 2,2 3,3 type mappers would notice as I don't see how they ever tested. Still can't get my head round that one - create but not test. Weird.

I see Tangerine mentioned quite a bit. Strangely enough it was next on my list and I fixed it this morning but will not get round to playing it until later.

AF wrote:Almost all of Hunterws maps suffer from this, and some of forebodings maps (even the recent ones) suffer fom bad start pos syndrome. For example on EE conqueorors isle you start next to an uw mex spot near the top left corner, and on tabula your enemy AI starts to the south less than a screen aways distance, certainly less than that of a radar tower.

So why do some people find it so hard to understand? If you can create maps you must have good spatial visualisation to 'see' the heightmap etc. In my mind it is a simple step to see the relevance of the starts.

Maybe one or more of us should offer a service to mappers? Post your pre-release map and get the starts created for you.

My problem is that I can not resist converting to a speedmetal while in there as I HATE waiting for metal.

The truth is, an awful lot of map makers -dont- think before releasing their work.

The vast majority of maps are utterly unplayable, with zones that are impassable, solid or non-existant metal maps, feature maps which were obviously just the height or texture map (say, trees only at a certain elevation, geo-clusters at another). Others have almost no flat land, so that building anything is a tiresome chore.

Those few that have reasonable metal and feature maps and playable elevations are totally imbalanced no matter what configuration you play them in or boring, mostly flat, and utterly uninteresting to play.

Its hard making a map, and it is a community of amateurs out there. A lot of maps are going to be 'lol my first map' and others are just going to have fundamental design flaws due to oversight or lack of experience.

Id suggest you just download the good, popular maps and play them. Most will have reasonable start positions, esp the popular 1v1 maps.

Id also suggest forgetting playing solo, and just playing online against real opponents, if thats your eventual goal. The AI will teach you virtually nothing and wont play in the slightest bit like a real player.

Saktoth wrote:The truth is, an awful lot of map makers -dont- think before releasing their work.

OK so how about this.

Craete a thread - Map Testing - get your map beta tested before releasing

• Creators drop in a link to their pre-release map
  
  Anyone can test/comment
  
  Once the creator is happy they release the map

A sort of pre-release quality control system.

The first post of the thred should be guidelines on how/what to comment on etc.

Worth a try?

its cause most ppl don't play offline. a good case for why this is would be that id not found out that there was any problem for months before AI pm'd me.

it's really not very intuitive that spring is unable to correlate start positions to team number. before this gets fixed though, just remember to always stagger the numbers. ally 1 has to be teams 1,3,5,7,9 etc and ally 2 therefore is 2,4,6,8,10 etc.

Spring does correlate team numbers correctly.

The team numbers in the lobby are not the numbers spring recieves, the lobby re-orders them so they're consecutive. If the lobby feeds spring nonconsecutive team numbers spring crashes.

Most good quality maps that are released these days have a beta game or two to test em out.

Most bad maps aint going to read this forum or take suggestions like that before putting stuff up.

People are going to do what they want- there is nothing stopping them putting another variant of duck up.

Just dont play it.

Saktoth, sorry to jump in on you, but you are not a map maker, and you really have no idea how most map makers function.

Anyway, most of the time, we do get testing before release. I did. I'm even getting testing for an unreleased map as we speak.

People that make maps for Spring do test it out with others from
Spring ..

I myself test my maps with others. Most of my testing is done over
a LAN. I've also tested some maps over the TAS client too.

Paul-in-Devon-UK wrote: NO I will not 'name and shame'. That is not what this is about. I just want to raise the issue so that some Map Makers think about it before releasing their work. If a Map Maker sees this they will know which category they fall into, or at least should do.

Hi newguy who presumes too much. Let me explain something very simple, I help a lot of people, mappers, content developers etc. Now, I am also one of the veterans of this board? The relevance? I know most of the mappers and many of them have made 10 or more maps, they may or may not remember what maps they dinked up the start points on. Now, before you jump on someone consider their intentions.

I do not expect you to know who or what I am around here, you are new, and I have to ALWAYS put it all on the table for you new guys. However, this is not the C.S. community, outside of a few personal issues the people on this forum want to see spring succeed and do well. So when spotting issues on a map, there is nothing wrong with pointing it out. Most of us work as a community and frankly we, myself included, want to see all spring content at it's best, that includes the work of others. So consider that next time you make assumptions about a myself or others.


Further more, many mappers are so busy that they do not have time to check their work for issues as they are working forward and not back. So, it may HELP to point these things out. Some maps have issues and are unplayable all together, I am an UF admin. If such a map exists I can fix the file or even lock it if the file is all together bad!

So again, we are here to help, not to hurt. Remember that.

smoth: +1. spring deserves to be good, therefore its maps deserve to be picked on. for the greater good.

imbaczek wrote:for the greater good.