Spring RTS Engine

Here are a pair of map ideas i was playing around with, just done in paint. The motivation behind them is to blend all forms of combat and terrain into a single map, so that all tactics are viable in equal amounts.

How to read these: Black is water. Darkest grey is shallow water that is crossable by ships (incl subs) and units. Where there are two adjacent colours 1 shade away from one another, vehicles and hovers can cross. Where there are colours 2 shades away from one another, only kbots/all-terrain/air can cross. Where there are colours anything more than 2 shades from one another only at/air can cross.



The first tries to combine them in a mirrored cross fashion. Its a bit like a tropical mixed with SSB. each side has a bay for sea/hover starts, two land starts, one near a series of hills (kbots), one with a flatter path (vech, hover), and a high spot that can be air, or a land support. There are several hover/amphib islands and air islands to the side.

Sea has easy and relatively safe crossovers between the two seas, that also serve as points where they can help defend vs land attacks or cut off the enemy from the rear. There are also two pools in the middle with mexes, allowing ships to skirmish with land in the middle.



This map is an attempt to have the arenas of combat be more linear and direct, with a gradation from top to bottom, sea vs sea, vech vs vech, kbot vs kbot, air vs air.

Each side of the map offers smooth ramps between the bases, so if you break through you can attack other bases, while there is also integration through the middle. Players on the sea and vech spots can chose hover, and players in the kbot and air spots can chose all terrain, and the map is made with that in mind. In fact, if this were played as a 7v7, you might see Air, AT, kbot, vech, hover, ship, amphib- each player with 2 starting mexes. The map is designed with such matching and combos in mind.

If anyone would like to make these maps i might be able to texture them- though bryce (which i use) doesnt go over 4000x4000 pixels which is only suitable for rendering 8x8's, really. So, anyway, id encourage anyone who likes the ideas, to make them.

Those look interesting.

if my l3dt wasnt horribly borked id give them a shot

nice

Could you remove the metal map into a different image sak?

Thought you didnt like gimmick maps..

someone make both of these
i am too lazy, but trust me they will both pwn

the top one looks like a good 16x16, and the bottom should be 20x20, or maybe 18x18

Hi Otherside,

Otherside wrote:if my l3dt wasnt horribly borked id give them a shot

Perhaps I can help. What seems to be the problem? Have you sent a bug report?

Cheers,
Aaron.

hey aaron

i got a 3 month trial of l3dt pro and i love it, great program :D

but for the past month and a bit i seem to be getting errors after a certain stage of texture generation and the program seems to run slower i also get some conflict errors wen loading up. I tried reinstalling didnt seem to fix the problem.

I cant load up l3dt now cos my trial ran out and i got no screens of the errors but it seemed to happen some way thru texture generation usually around the halfway mark on big textures with lightmaps (that took over an hour) on smaller ones that took a few mins the error dusnt usually happen.

I was hoping to purchase it soon , but these problems seemed to creep up from out of nowere (worked fine wen i first installed) just weird :S

You were using mosaic right?...

Well, Coastal Run Delta is basically the top diagonal half of that first map concept, with some adjustments. It plays pretty well, might get Nixa to start work on a new revision using an adjusted/mirrored heightmap similar to what you have above.

Second heightmap also looks interesting, I might start on it myself if my Spring wasn't so horribly broken in Windows right now.

Here is the landtypes for first one. I got bored today.

Keep in mind that you are viewing this at 1/8th scale, so you aren't seeing everything, but it does a nice job of giving an idea of what the final thing looks like.

I chose a very rough texturing method which will do a good job of making the landscape look harsh, while not unnatural at the same time.

Is it even possible to have terrain that allows both subs and land units?

Oh btw, metal placement...

Do you want me to place it as I would place it from a map designers point of view or would you like me to place it exactly the way you outlined?

I can do it either way, and one way is not specifically better than the other, however, if you want me to lay metal as you have lain it, I need starting positions.

Pxtl wrote:Is it even possible to have terrain that allows both subs and land units?

If by land units you mean hovers? yes. If by land you mean units without a submersible chassis (triton) then no. Subs in TA/CA/Whatever A generally have their depths hardcoded at -100.

Forboding Angel wrote:

Pxtl wrote:Is it even possible to have terrain that allows both subs and land units?

If by land units you mean hovers? yes. If by land you mean units without a submersible chassis (triton) then no. Subs in TA/CA/Whatever A generally have their depths hardcoded at -100.

That's what I thought, and what I noticed about his "darkest grey" description on his first map design: it's impossible.

If you want to make players able to reach each other by both land and sea, but only want a single sea, then you need the whole map to be either a single land mass surrounded by water, or a single water mass surrounded by land.

edit: looked at modinfo. Dunno now.

What, it's perfectly possible. The water will be too deep for the land units to fire (the smaller ones anyway) but they can certainly cross.

Forboding Angel wrote:

Pxtl wrote:Is it even possible to have terrain that allows both subs and land units?

If by land units you mean hovers? yes. If by land you mean units without a submersible chassis (triton) then no. Subs in TA/CA/Whatever A generally have their depths hardcoded at -100.

Just looked at modinfo - the maxwaterdepth of most land units is around 20 (except for fleas and DTs. The minwaterdepth of subs is 15. That's a narrow band, but there is an overlap. Or will subs run into other problems?

you guys are wrong.

there is a specific depth of shallows that allows both submarines and flash tanks to cross.

download tropical for an example of this

Edit: oops, appears that CA is a bit different in this area.

I wish Saktoths intentions had been lain out a little more clearly. His descriptions are a bit convoluted. Regardless, it'll be allright

Edit#3

L3dt + 2 3ghz cores = fuckwin (Been a while since I used it).