Spring RTS Engine

Syrin: http://spring.unknown-files.net/file/2223/Syrin_Beta/

Sypor: http://spring.unknown-files.net/file/2224/Sypor_Beta/

This Map is meant for 4 teams (2 will work well too off course). 16x16, 4-8 players (maybe more will work too).

The 2 maps are basically the same map but with different metal layout. This Map is Restrictor concept executed by me, but we had major dis-agreement about the metal placement so it became 2 different maps. In Syrin the metal is spread all over the map (my metal layout) and in Sypor the metal is concentrated only in the main land mass (Restrictor's metal layout).

Features by Lathan and Noize.
Metal patches by Hrmph.

Goolash.

Minimap:


Syrin Metal Layout:


Sypor Metal Layout:


Assorted Screenshots:

your layout looks more fun imo, not that I'll ever be able to remember which name is which map.

Maybe the mountains inbetween should be a little more 'impressive', they dont really look good despite the fact they could add a great deal of depth to the map beign higher, whereas atm the entire map is 'shallow'.

However you have the startings of a good map.

I like everything except for the water. It's a very unrealistic pool-blue color, and very clear, when at that depth and given it's inland and looks like somewhere in northern Canada, should be a deep slate-bluegreen, and please use the shader stuff to make it fade to that color pretty rapidly, to give the water an appropriately deep / silty feel.

Making the water look natural is something that most map makers really don't pay enough attention to- the colors of water really differ very widely, depending on the temperature and how much silt is in the water. I get annoyed seeing maps where realistically the waters should be brown or gray (heavily silted riverine stuff) but they look like they've just had a bunch of chlorine dropped into them.

Otherwise, I like the map- it's artificial terrain, but it's pretty, and would play well if people want a slower game and be able to defend awhile.

The texture and layout are both nice. Cool map.

Argh wrote:I like everything except for the water. It's a very unrealistic pool-blue color, and very clear, when at that depth and given it's inland and looks like somewhere in northern Canada, should be a deep slate-bluegreen, and please use the shader stuff to make it fade to that color pretty rapidly, to give the water an appropriately deep / silty feel.

Making the water look natural is something that most map makers really don't pay enough attention to- the colors of water really differ very widely, depending on the temperature and how much silt is in the water. I get annoyed seeing maps where realistically the waters should be brown or gray (heavily silted riverine stuff) but they look like they've just had a bunch of chlorine dropped into them.

Otherwise, I like the map- it's artificial terrain, but it's pretty, and would play well if people want a slower game and be able to defend awhile.

you devoted 6.5 lines to commentary on how the map looked and half a line to commentary on how it might actually play.

That's because maps are 95% aesthetics, and 5% gameplay. Any fool can create a map with halfway-decent tournament-level gameplay, if they're mirroring it. This map, based just on the layout, is probably fairly porcy, but that's not a terrible sin- it's probably great for newbies playing one of the TA variants to bash each other and tech up a bit before a fatal clash occurs.

For a map to catch on with players, it needs to have aesthetic appeal and play solidly. Ugly maps with solid gameplay (see: EuroGreen) aren't played at all. Extremely pretty maps with gameplay problems (see: Black Lake Swamp) are played for their visual variety, and then are usually put on the backburner.

That, and and I get very tired of seeing maps where the terrain looks good, but the water and lighting are both not done well. These two things really make a map feel like a place, and most mappers seem to hose this, giving us maps that look instantly wrong compared to a photograph of a real place. The water issue is especially irksome to me, because any mapper can go get photos of lakes, rivers, deltas, and rivers from Google and see instantly that water's colors differ extremely depending on a wide variety of conditions- and that water of any depth in Nature (and keep in mind that water that is over a Peewee's head is about 20 feet / 6 meters deep, in Smoth's scale) is rarely clear... or really blue.

I guess I'm sensitive to this issue, because I live in Indiana, which for those of you who have no idea what that part of the USA is like... it's a flat state with limestone just beneath the topsoil. Standing water in Indiana tends to have a gray-brown hue most of the time, due to minerals held in suspension in the water all the time, and even our rivers tend to be cloudy, milky gray-brown, with tinges of green. Some reservoirs are the deep blues that I associate with waters in Canada (my family goes fishing up there every year) but nowhere do you see the true ocean colors, which range from blue-grays in the waters near the coastline, where sand is being stirred into the water, to deep, dark blues where you cannot see the bottom in deep water, to areas of crystalline blue-green in shallows.

But you can find areas on Earth, especially river deltas, where water comes in almost every color of the rainbow- rust-reds, almost true greens with some gray, yellowish silty waters, etc.

In short, water shouldn't be stereotypical. It should fit the terrain. Sure, it's an alien planet somewhere, that just happens to look a lot like Earth... but geology is geology, and water is water.

Argh wrote: For a map to catch on with players, it needs to have aesthetic appeal and play solidly. Ugly maps with solid gameplay (see: EuroGreen) aren't played at all. Extremely pretty maps with gameplay problems (see: Black Lake Swamp) are played for their visual variety, and then are usually put on the backburner.

I don't think that's true, explain speedmetal - one of the ugliest maps ever made. And about Blacklake swamp - Who plays it? it's one of the most beautiful maps ever made but gameplay is so problematic people just don't want to play it.

To tell you the truth (as some of you mappers out there might have guessed) since this map is a beta i just stole an smd from one of my older maps and changed the important stuff like mex output and wind, but the lighting, water and so on is just stolen from that older map.

AF wrote: Maybe the mountains inbetween should be a little more 'impressive', they dont really look good despite the fact they could add a great deal of depth to the map beign higher, whereas atm the entire map is 'shallow'.

That is on purpose - so bots can climb over them but vehicles cant.[/quote]

Looks nice.

Although if I had to nitpick, the beach texture is kind of ugly, a more natural sand might look better.

Then that can be gotten around by making better pathways up the sides rather than small slopes that lead directly to the top.

Hi, I'm back!

Imho the lightning kind of ruins the map right now.

It's too bright, so is the water. I'd go for a more campy forest/greenish feeling with more pronounced shadows(ie lower sun) to add depth to the environment.

Otherwise I think it looks like a superb map, although the metal map could use some work (it's not 100% symmetrical right now - hm but maybe that was intended?).

Good work anyway, keep it up.

If you intend to make a final revision with only one metal map, I would go for Syrin's. Just a personal preference... Also, the fact that you have big ass excessive metal and energy rock in the middle kindof forces people to do one of those OMG RUSH TO TEH ROCK kind of strats, which is sortof forcing gameplay to go in a certain direction.

IMO the texture isn't all that great-looking :/, I'd go for a clean green-forest type of texture if you catch my drift.

As for metalmaps, I think Syrin's is more fit for traditional 4v4 then 2v2v2v2, on the other hand Sypor's is fit better for 2v2v2v2 with plenty of action on two fronts and the middle.

I think spring in general needs more maps with FFA teams in mind .

FFA teams are always fun.

Judging from the replies i guess this is not my best looking map, guess i was a little off in my judgment - i shouldn't be making maps in 4 am
I know the lighting sucks - i noticed it myself and i will change it but the problem is that negative sun values crash the map and i have it pre-rendered with some shadows that are of negative values so there are actually 2 shadows in 2 different direction if you look closely (you can see it on the high mountains). it will be taken care of in the next version.

@Revenge - "OMG RUSH TO TEH ROCK" - first of all recaliming this rocks takes ages so you can take a minute or two longer and nothing bad will happen but if you dont manage to gain control of the rock do what i do - Dgun it. it always pisses people off...

@Cheesecan - "although the metal map could use some work (it's not 100% symmetrical right now)" - it is 100% symmetrical. try drawing a straight line from every point on the map's edge that passes through the middle and you'll get equal amounts of metal on both sides of the line. if you mean the valleys having less metal than mountains by one spot - it's on purpose.

Might as well use this thread to do it: In the next version of the map we are thinking of implementing several changes:
1. making the hills in the middle of the bases not climbable but making them wider so you can build on them and you can get on them from defined locations.
2. dropping the water - make it a water free map so you can attack from both sides not only with hovers or amphibious vehicles.
3. More metal per mex spot.
4. Making the map 20x20.

Tell me what do you think of the changes...

As a 4 team map I think having the water there helps, as you simply can't defend so much territory against 2 potential simultaneous attacks. If nothing else, it lets you porc up your side a bit and focus on the land based threats more. Then again, in the game I played my team mate dropped within 3 minutes so I had to manage 2 bases, thus my perception of manageable may be skewed a bit :p

I had no problems with the middle rock, took quite a while to suck up and provided a nice little skirmish early on.

My thoughts on changes :


#1. I don't like this change - makes the map porcier, right now it gives most players the illusion that they're "safe" from attacks so they focus all their d-fens in middle =).

#2. Keep the water IMO, you don't want to know how many people get surprised when I launch a sneak attack on them by sticking to the edge of the lakes behind the hill on lower left and top right sides =) - the beach also tends to discourage people from making d-fens for the top left and lower right.

#3. Don't mind, but I think it's fine the current way it is.

#4. No quarrels with this one, more build space is welcome.

DAmnit a link in my text and gone it was

Well hi folks,

My last try in mapconv tells me ther is something wromng with -f and that my height map as some errous(demension). And :p well i used the old feature map of this one on this topic what diddent fit the new map. If any one wanna help me out with this errorous height map that would be deffestating.

This is my last line: mapconv -1 -l -x 500 -n -100 -m metals.bmp -a TehOne.bmp -t theone_TX.bmp -f features.bmp
sssssshhh sssshh (i might have a link to the files shhhh shhh)

hmm post here something or pm me on my b_daan(hotmail) shh shh

dont say link ok

thanks for the replays funny you will see that the concept i started with has lots of changes you guys mensioned so will be the walls in middel of base be alot higher and well wakkerwezen add ther a .nl after and a www. for and you can see for youself,

Cheers

Greetz restrictor

starting my line in mapconv it need to be i instead of 1

REs

I'll try to explain and answer.

First of all i don't have time to complete this map so restrictor is taking over, and he's gonna try to learn mapping in the process. His English is not so good so you might get posts you don't really understand from time to time .

And to try to answer your question: Your height map should be the size of your texturemap divided by 8 and then add 1. remember that 1024x1024 in the texturemap equals 2x2 in the game. So if your map size is 20x20 your texturemap should be 1024x10=10240x10240 (2x10=20) and your heightmap should 10240/8+1=1281x1281, your metal map should be 1280x1280 and your featuremap should be 1281. for the compiling part you got to have a texture and metal map but if you just want to check stuff out you can have an image which is just black and doesn't contain any information. You cant resize a texture map since it will ruin it, because most of the objects in the feature map are just 1x1 pixel and resizing it will ruin them.

hope this helps...