Spring RTS Engine

Although this appears to be just about maps, the actual topic is maps' playability with my mod. So... please don't move.

I'm considering taking a variety of community-made maps and re-releasing them, rebalanced specifically with Absolute Annihilation (or ANYTHING, really) in mind. The way some maps are set up right now is just plain awful. Constant +30 wind, 30 metal per player at 5 minutes, etc. Positively hideous.

What the package would consist of is probably about 20-30 maps with no actual changes to the terrain but with adjustments made to the metal output, extractor radius, and wind amount. The entire package would only have to be downloaded once, although it would probably be about 60-80 megabytes. Multiplayer compatibility would not be an issue since I would add "AA-" as a prefix to all the map files and names.

Currently on many maps, a player can quickly jump to level 2 or even level 3, have a nuke launcher, a couple berthas, and an army the size of Texas by the 30 minute mark. This is partly due to the brokenness of min and max wind, which often makes not only 10 times cheaper but almost always providing more energy than a solar.

Imagine the possibilities - maps which are currently all but unplayable due to poor resource distribution would become playable and enjoyable. Not only would they stay just as pretty as they are now, but there'd be substance to them as well. Ideally I'd like every map to be balanced similarly to Small Divide or Sparewood (possibly my favourite map thus far).

One of my OTA favourite, Starfish Isle, has been raped and pillaged by someone who just didn't care about balance, only wanted to claim the title of being first to make it. And how many other examples of this are there?

At some point in the future I'll probably even begin remaking my OTA maps from the AA maps packs ( http://www.planetannihilation.com/aa/download_maps.htm ) which are very popular among OTA holdouts. "Great Divide^3" in particular is one I'd love to convert/remake when I have a chance.

Is there support for this idea? Maybe I should just leave well-enough alone. I sure know I'd love to have an unsucky game of Starfish Isle though. If you like the idea, please post a few of your favourite maps below, especially ones which are victims of poor quality TA > Spring conversion.

You can't just change filenames in maps like you suggest, I think. I'm fairly certain the names are hard coded into the files themselves...

Great divide 3? Hmm...

Gnome wrote:You can't just change filenames in maps like you suggest, I think. I'm fairly certain the names are hard coded into the files themselves...

Nope. Did the procedure not 5 minutes ago.

Personally, I think almost every map should be re-released with better metal balance. We need a default extractor radius, which should be huge, because othewise it's ugly (millions of metal extractors), and lower average metal available in the maps. The exception would be metal maps, which would have about 50% more metal available in any given area (still a lot less than currently is). Also, metal maps would be consistently metal, which means that the actual avaible metal would be about tripple that of other maps.

Now, make a new section of the dl page for balanced maps. At the moment, only a few maps would go there. Every map that is uploaded, is not put in the balanced section until it is actually play tested and is found to at least moderately meet these guidelines. Also, it would have to be relatively balanced for all players.

I know it will create a sort of a kind of elitism, among map makers, but I think it's necessary.

Because all the maps would need to be re-released (again, sigh), we might as well take this opportunity to change the way player locations are defined, so that for any team combination, the default start locations work. Can't say I'm sure how, but it's also necessary.

But don't release a pack specifically for AA, it's a waste of 80mb.

EDIT: Oh another thing, now maps can be re-released with features, and more trees! Plus, any maps that can be deformed too easily can be brought into shape.

Rebalance some maps is a good idea. But I don't know the best way to do it.
Perhaps an "quality" label can be made?
Now, we are flooded by one hundred of map where only 1/10 are "finnished and tested".

And what do you thing about terrain deformation? Of course, it must be set separtly for each map. But having a terrain deformation of 10342342432 (like in metal heck) is a bit absurde. If you set it to 300, it will not effect the gameplay and the terrain will look a bit wrecked after a long battle.

I think it would be neccessary to re-release them, Doomweaver. He's talking about balancing them round AA, which would have far-reaching consequences and potentially make them unplayable in other mods. If you're fussed about hard drive space just wipe the originals out yourself, it'll only take five minutes.

I think it'd be a good idea. Better yet, though, would be a stickied thread of map reviews - limited to one post containing map ratings, maybe links to more detailed reviews. Crystal Harbour would be great if it had less metal (and the extractor radius is far too wide for the metal there is). The huge supply of metal in the centre unbalances it too.

Targ Collective wrote: He's talking about balancing them round AA, which would have far-reaching consequences and potentially make them unplayable in other mods.

What? He will just redo the smd file.(-> just the ressources)
AA is based on OTA. If it's balanced for AA, it will be balanced for XTA and all mod based on OTA.

To me, the best approach would be to allow parts of a map to be overridden rather than creating redundant data. This problem was exemplified in UT2k4, where maps are frequently in excess of 10 megs, and very often you find yourself downloading an old map all over again just because some mapper has changed the unit loadout and the texture theme - for a 10 minute game of all things!

The ideal solution would be to take a "browser" approach - you fetch the map, and then the engine fetches the things the map needs (map meshes, metal layer, geom layer, tex layer, landscape,etc.) - a simple stat-changing of the map would then be downloading a new text file, as it would simply reference all the old files that you alreayd have.

maybe this will encourage SecurE to remake River Dale with half the metal per patch... grrr *pokes SecurE*

Allowing multiple smd (spring map definition?) for one map could be cool.
You select the map and then, you select the smd with the balance you like.

But there is really some map that need to be balanced ressource wide.

Ideally I'd love to just keep the texture and heightmap of maps while redoing the metal, geo, and feature placement, but I would need the original 200+ megabytes files to compile...

A map balanced for AA would be balanced (at least, relatively speaking) for any other TA-themed mod as well. Basically all I'm talking about is having maps where the very most a player is allocated in terms of metal at start location is +7 or so. In addition, wind in most cases would never exceed 20 per tick (as in OTA). Unfortunately, I would only be able to adjust the aggregate amount of metal available, so maps where one team has more metal than the other couldn't be fixed and would be a writeoff

Oh, and by the way, I'm planning on doing a Spring map review site in the near future. My reviews will be fair and anyone who can write legibly will be able to write their own reviews as well.

Maps will be rated in the following categories:
Metal - where metal patches are placed. Do they open up strategic opportunities? Does one team have more access to them? Is there more than +10 metal available at start locations? Is there altogether too much metal? Is the extractor radius set to something sensible? (30% of final grade)
Energy - Are there a fair number of well-placed geothermal vents? Does wind generation utterly and completely outdo solar collectors? (20% of final grade)
Start locations, Strategy - is FFA play possible? Are start locations spread out properly? Are there strategy-enducing choke points? Is there a reason to go kbot rather than vehicle or vice versa? Is there any purpose to the map's design besides looking pretty? Is there enough flat land to actually build things? Do both teams have the same amount of flat land available to them? (20% of final grade)
Features, Appearance - are trees and other features placed in an intelligent manner? Is the map pretty and eye-catching? (15% of final grade)
Tilt - Personal feeling about this map. Is it fun? Is it the sort of map that I ALWAYS would want to play, or would I play it once then remove it because it's clutter in my Spring directory? (15% of final grade)

[size=59]Caydr[/size] wrote:

[size=59]Gnome[/size] wrote:You can't just change filenames in maps like you suggest, I think. I'm fairly certain the names are hard coded into the files themselves...

Nope. Did the procedure not 5 minutes ago.

only worked bc original files where in the same folder.
do a test without any other map in there..

like what maps are you thinking about?

multyple smds are too open to abuse, what keeps the host from making even "balanced" maps suxs?

*pokes map makers with a wooden stick*
*hides*