Here's a verbal sketch of the concept, and I'll try to do a visual sketch and scan it, too, to give people some ideas. Ideally, I'd like somebody to make a heightmap and be willing to do metalmap / featuremap, and I'd be willing to paint it, to hopefully make it a nice environment for eye-candy purposes, as well as game-balance testing.
Verbal Sketch:
I'd like a map to run the "random enemies" script on, to do balance testing with, including areas like chokepoints of several sizes, positive and negative slopes, broken ground with heavy cover, forest, and a water area with a shoreline that is passable by almost anything that can go in the water. It should be easy to design something like that, with a player start on the bottom and a single start for the AI up at the top, where the AI is forced to go through lots of terrain types to get to the player.
Rough visual sketch of heightmap and terrain:
Notes: all grayscale heights I assume to start from RGB value 128,128,128. Water should be included. The "sun" should be from the "south", with a slight angle "east / west". Each "section" should have a fairly wide "flat" between it, with minimal heightmap, obstacles, etc., and the metal deposits, other than start-pos, should be there.
Section 1 should consist of a completely-flat ground covered withvarious sections of scattered obstacles- 1X1, single-pixel cuboids all the way through 16X16 stepped plateaus and pyramids. Everything should end at the same height, probably 16 pixels grayscale, just for simplicity's sake. When scaled, that should be taller than an average Spring unit, so they should be largely impassible, except to things with crazy MoveTypes, and too high to shoot over, by non-mortars.
Some sections should be random, some in grids or offset grids. Use imagination. No clear "roads" should exist, although winding areas of greater width, to allow large things to traverse, might be wise.
This section basically exists to torture-test the pathfinder, and break things in general. Fast units may not be able to navigate, because of collisions. Big things may not path their way out. It'll be interesting and useful for testing all sorts of balance concepts related to movement.
Section 2 should consist of forest of various densities. If you want to include some geometrical variation, then vary the height, but I'd say by no more than 16 shades of gray at the top of hills- keep it subtle. This is supposed to be an area to test forest-fire behavior, pathfinding, and other issues related to Spring's auto-generated forests.
Section 3 should consist of of water-filled pools of random size and shape, surrounded by absolute flats of varying sizes and shapes- a maze, pretty much. The water should be deep in some sections, but not all of them, to provide various tests of units that can interact with water, and provide yet more areas to test / break pathfinding.
Section 4 should consist of a single "ridge" formed by gradiants, all rising to the same final height (255). These are just ordinary, linear gradient fills- the only important factor is how quickly they rise to the top of the "ridge"- i.e., their angular value. Short gradients should be a serious problem or impossible for most units, medium may prove a severe challenge for tanks and moderate problems for kbots, and the longest gradients should be passable by almost anything. Good testing ground for artillery and MoveTypes.
Section 5 should consist of simple round hills. Hills that are basically half-spheres, from RGB 128 to 255. Hills that are flat on top. Hills that are conical. They just need to be round, and un-connected, with enough space for units to go around them. Test of chokepoints, angles of fire, pathfinding and other issues in Spring.
Section 6 is the Defender's home base. I'd like to see a grayscale that looks like a series of teeth with sharp gradients, and two ramps near the middle, with narrow "bridges" joining the "teeth" (hopefully my crappy sketch makes sense). Basically, a porcupine's dream-fortress made real, with multiple interlocking fields of fire and very narrow approaches.
If you're going to make this a map that people can also play seriously if they want to, then the Attackers should start with about 2X local metal available vs. Defenders, and metal distributed in the flats between the Sections. That way, it's a battle over each Section, at least in theory.
That's just a concept. Don't slam me if I've missed something that's very important or whatever- anybody with a valid point or something they feel might improve it, feel more than free to comment. If somebody makes a grayscale, and maybe preserves the layers so that I can texture the obstacles, etc. easily enough, I'll be more than happy to hand-paint it.
