Spring RTS Engine

Maplink http://www.springfiles.com/show_file.php?id=2552

My first map with a real work...

I'd like to have comment of other map makers to improve and improve my skills...

Full size pics please.

the full sizes are on the download page

I played your first version of this and it's looking the same with a better texture now.

Here's some pointers:

• Is the typemap on the road still the same? Cause if it is, it's way too OP.
• The texture looks very repetitive in some places, I would suggest you open up Photoshop or whatever and brush some different textures here and there to make it less repetitive
• The height map also looks very repetitive and unnatural. You should add some hills, small mountains and a bit of noise with some erosion and other naturalising techniques.
• You should try adding some features to your map. Some of Artturi's trees would complement it well I think.

It's looking better than it did, keep working on it

JAZCASH wrote:

• Is the typemap on the road still the same? Cause if it is, it's way too OP.

How the fuck is a road overpowered? I spam road and win?


But the cliffs are a bit iffy, they change from bot-passable to impassable without texture differentiation everywhere.

JohannesH wrote:

JAZCASH wrote:

• Is the typemap on the road still the same? Cause if it is, it's way too OP.

How the fuck is a road overpowered? I spam road and win?

When units travel almost twice the speed it seriously screwed with the balance, realism and seriousness of the map. Have you even tried it? Seriously, there's no stopping a nice pack of scouts or flash in early gameplay when they can travel that fast.

Road speed was decreassed a bit

It's the idea of the map, ppl should find a way to stop spam...

For the unnaturel look, I really have to balance between gameplay and realistic terrain... I dislike place where you can t build like in some dsd start spot...

btw thanks for the comment and have fun

PtiGeo wrote: For the unnaturel look, I really have to balance between gameplay and realistic terrain... I dislike place where you can t build like in some dsd start spot...

You don't have to change gameplay by making it more natural. It's just when everything is a set specific height with no noise or anything, it's boring a doesn't show a lot of work went into it.

Good job for a first map!

JAZCASH wrote:

JohannesH wrote:

JAZCASH wrote:

• Is the typemap on the road still the same? Cause if it is, it's way too OP.

How the fuck is a road overpowered? I spam road and win?

When units travel almost twice the speed it seriously screwed with the balance, realism and seriousness of the map. Have you even tried it? Seriously, there's no stopping a nice pack of scouts or flash in early gameplay when they can travel that fast.

I tried it quickly singleplayer, havent played on it. But whats so bad that theres a high speed (1,8x) road at 1 spot?

Theres no stopping the scouts or flash from doing what exactly? There isnt much mexes close to the road. Even if enemy manages to drive by your army with the road, should still be quite possible to stop them from doing much. It doesnt force you to use 1 predefined strategy in any way, just try and find clever ways to exploit the road.

JohannesH wrote:
I tried it quickly singleplayer, havent played on it. But whats so bad that theres a high speed (1,8x) road at 1 spot?

Theres no stopping the scouts or flash from doing what exactly? There isnt much mexes close to the road. Even if enemy manages to drive by your army with the road, should still be quite possible to stop them from doing much. It doesnt force you to use 1 predefined strategy in any way, just try and find clever ways to exploit the road.

Look if you haven't played a game on it then please just stfu. The road just ruins the game when the typemap is like that. A speed boost I agree with but when you have Flashes and scouts etc traveling faster than air it gets a bit silly. Units come at you like missiles and you can't really stop them unless you dt the whole thing up quite a way away from your base and even then they still pwn.

The road leads all the way from one side of the map to the other so units can just travel past as much def as they like straight into the back of players bases. Fun as it may be, it's just a novelty, "OOO LOOKEE AT MAI FAST UNITS" newb trap kinda thing.

Seriously, stop making thought up judgements just for the sake of it.

Well, there's definitely a lot to improve, but for the first map it seems quite good!

Some points beside other comments:

-Really big plus for taking the screenshots! I've argued with some newcomer mappers about this but they still seem to ignore this very essential part.
-Smaller plus for simplicity and symmetry. You are not overdoing it...

Then some negative things:

-The concept does not drive to teamwork but rather to separated duels. If this is truly your goal, then it's ok, but if you really seek for an intensivel teamplay map you need to design it in a way that the different parts of the map can interplay eachother.
-One way to achieve this is simply by making your map rectangular so that the allies are very near each other. DSD is good example...
-Seems like you are using pretty low resolution textures. Makes the landscape look quite blurry.
-Your simplicity is too obvious. It all looks very artificial, you need to do some artistic tuning: break some edges, add some noise, vary the texture etc...

SirArtturi wrote:Well, there's definitely a lot to improve, but for the first map it seems quite good!

Some points beside other comments:

-Really big plus for taking the screenshots! I've argued with some newcomer mappers about this but they still seem to ignore this very essential part.
-Smaller plus for simplicity and symmetry. You are not overdoing it...

Then some negative things:

-The concept does not drive to teamwork but rather to separated duels. If this is truly your goal, then it's ok, but if you really seek for an intensivel teamplay map you need to design it in a way that the different parts of the map can interplay eachother.
-One way to achieve this is simply by making your map rectangular so that the allies are very near each other. DSD is good example...
-Seems like you are using pretty low resolution textures. Makes the landscape look quite blurry.
-Your simplicity is too obvious. It all looks very artificial, you need to do some artistic tuning: break some edges, add some noise, vary the texture etc...

I agree with most these points. However, I think maps like DSD aren't a great example of an ideal map. Maps that get my utmost respect are maps which allow for teamplay, without encouraging porcing, teching and the like because of the meatshield effect. The meatshield effect usually only applies to maps where there's more players on it than there are meant to be, but if you design a map like DSD for 16 players, then you've made a mistake.

As soon as you have more than one layer of players, players at the back tend to feel protected which usually leads to techers and the like.

The best maps encourage team play and expansion without making players feel safe and comfortable. This is why FFA usually works so well, no player usually has an advantage and there is nobody to protect them so players have to do as much as they can to protect themselves form dying instead of relying on others.

But this is off-topic so I'll shutup now

JAZCASH wrote: I agree with most these points. However, I think maps like DSD aren't a great example of an ideal map. Maps that get my utmost respect are maps which allow for teamplay, without encouraging porcing, teching and the like because of the meatshield effect. The meatshield effect usually only applies to maps where there's more players on it than there are meant to be, but if you design a map like DSD for 16 players, then you've made a mistake.

DSD is very good example. Its for 10 players max... Im not talking about overcrowded games, you should know that...

Playing it how it is designed will lead to a very intensive teamgames, where mostly the team that has best teamplay wins...

JAZCASH wrote:

JohannesH wrote:
I tried it quickly singleplayer, havent played on it. But whats so bad that theres a high speed (1,8x) road at 1 spot?

Theres no stopping the scouts or flash from doing what exactly? There isnt much mexes close to the road. Even if enemy manages to drive by your army with the road, should still be quite possible to stop them from doing much. It doesnt force you to use 1 predefined strategy in any way, just try and find clever ways to exploit the road.

Look if you haven't played a game on it then please just stfu. The road just ruins the game when the typemap is like that. A speed boost I agree with but when you have Flashes and scouts etc traveling faster than air it gets a bit silly. Units come at you like missiles and you can't really stop them unless you dt the whole thing up quite a way away from your base and even then they still pwn.

The road leads all the way from one side of the map to the other so units can just travel past as much def as they like straight into the back of players bases. Fun as it may be, it's just a novelty, "OOO LOOKEE AT MAI FAST UNITS" newb trap kinda thing.

Seriously, stop making thought up judgements just for the sake of it.

Nigga please. If you have played this few times doesnt really make you more educated in it at all when talking of a feature thats very obvious from just looking at it. How is it supposed to be both newb trap-like and OP anyway? You really can stop units coming, just keep close guard with your own tanks on the road, ready to attack or just defend, and dont let go of that position. Or get some mine planted there, or whatever. Sure its not easy to keep it consistently blocked but not impossible either.

Theres nothing wrong with having something thats just a novelty. If you dont like it, thats cool, but dont say its somehow inherently broken.

JohannesH wrote: Nigga please. If you have played this few times doesnt really make you more educated in it at all when talking of a feature thats very obvious from just looking at it.

I'll have to disagree with you there. How do you get a good idea of how units play on a typemap just from looking at a texture?

JohannesH wrote: Nigga please. If you have played this few times doesnt really make you more educated in it at all when talking of a feature thats very obvious from just looking at it. How is it supposed to be both newb trap-like and OP anyway? You really can stop units coming, just keep close guard with your own tanks on the road, ready to attack or just defend, and dont let go of that position. Or get some mine planted there, or whatever. Sure its not easy to keep it consistently blocked but not impossible either.

Theres nothing wrong with having something thats just a novelty. If you dont like it, thats cool, but dont say its somehow inherently broken.

why do you have to respond to everything, you don't even know what your talking about. Try playing the game first.

I played it and I had llts all along the road and a small army of flash just wizzed straight past and didn't get affected at all then they just came up onto our base, you just literally have to dt it.

Just lessen the speed a bit and the heightmap would be cool with a bit of noise and those long oval shape hills look too artificial and obviously done in photoshop or something, try making them more realistic and have make em more hilly.

If you want to control team play you can design maps for it.
You can create maps where you decide for the player exactly what lab he will construct.
It's is better to say that you create appropriate conditions to ease team play.
For example,a map that has one starting point which is clearly air,this will mean that you can count on one player being an air player on your team and doing a certain something.
What prevents team play is when players spread on a map which means you have to go to your allies base and look what he is doing.
You can try and create maps where all the players of one team start in the same place and than go separate ways.this will ease moves to different labs and strategies as players will easily see what their allies are doing.

hah. i haven't tried this map, and although i personally see the road as a novelty / tactical feature rather than a noob trap, i'll leave it to the rest of you guys to argue about

pretty cool ptigeo; i remember a few months ago you were just learning the ropes of mapping and i think that judging from this one you've come a long way.

i really like the look of the road; than the shorelines look good too.

if i did have an overall criticism; it would be that the map looks a bit "plastic"... there could be a bit more variation of textures... when i texture using a SME script, for each texture i use, i have another similar texture that i use to scrub around semi-randomly in order to reduce the look of tiling and give kind of a chaotic / natural look.

also i'd suggest for your next map to try using one of many methods of burning a shadow/light map on; i think for this map at least it might add more visual intererest.

otherwise; it looks like a lot of fun to play! *punch in the arm* keep up the good work champ!

p.s. adding a line like this :"Thanks to Smoth for the sky and to Beherith for the trees." most people ignore thanking anyone; you made sure to give thanks, and for that, you get +1.

thanks for the tips and comments.

I habe a trouble with a kind of stair effect when I raise max level... anyone know how to avoid it?

For the shadows i akso had pb whith my own shadows aand the spring ones, thats why I shut down my own

Last point: does really high res texture make the difference? I noticed that little details on my texture disappered while compiling. thats why I used a low lvl texture... Thought spring rerender it...