Mapping Tournament 3 (AU Summer of 2020)

[SPL]

Eh? Hello.
Seems I haven't got enough time to present my map properly. So here I attach some screenshots.
Here's my map I made a couple (or more?) of months ago:
-Exterminator Has Arrived

Spoiler: show

-Adaptive Exterminator Has Arrived

Spoiler: show

Main Features:
-Lots of paths
-4 Hydros
-Huge Reclaim on the middle
-2 mex openning

[biass]

OP: Maps already in the vault at the time of posting may not be submitted.

25 minutes.

[biass]

We're closed, and i've downloaded each current version of the map as to avoid sneaking in extra changes.

The results will appear in a few days.

[biass]

These are the winners for this tournament:
Sadly, Highway to Hell; a crowd favorite and podium contender, had a broken mex and was disqualified.

Also, no credit was given for a map being adaptive or not, but checks were made on different mex setups.

Spoiler: show

1: Salt and Pepper

Spoiler: show

2: Daybreak
Make sure reclaim is not hidden by lighting

Spoiler: show

3: Hardshield Oasis
Notice: check middle for potential issues with interactions with civ structure

Spoiler: show

4: Synthetic
Had potential to contend for number 1, but the river in the middle will be terrible for gameplay. Also, you spelled tournament wrong in the popup, also, popups are really annoying. Textures need a rethink as well and maybe tone down the trees and think some more about the spawns, good attempt, please continue to to work on this.

Happy to defend the choices made here, so feel free to post comments.
Contact a mod for your allocated prizes. Thanks for entering.

[Petricpwnz]

For synthetic, to expand on what biass said i'd recommend shifting the 1st 2 spawns from where they are to around where my cursor is

Spoiler: show

And sadly river just kind of ruins the map, should just replace it with a flat beach with maybe a few terrain anomalies to keep aurora from being too op in the middle, and yea the textures look very good zoomed in but very contrasting and not good zoomed out/in the preview. Otherwise imo map has the most potential gameplay-wise of the bunch. I havent checked if the plateaus can be dropped consistently tho, the small one looks like any non-aeon transport will refuse to drop.

Also sad that highway to hell got DQd, should fix the mex and should fix the spawns to be mirrored

Spoiler: show

then I think the map would be perfectly qualified to be played in ladder.

[Jip]

These are the winners for this tournament:
Happy to defend the choices made here, so feel free to post comments.
Contact a mod for your allocated prizes. Thanks for entering.

I'd love to hear the feedback and what I could've done differently.

About the shield structures in the middle: there's no interaction with them as long as you don't directly click them. In my own tests, the units did not auto-engage on them.

edit: and congratulations to the contenders! I'll join in for the next one too

[biass]

I'd love to hear the feedback and what I could've done differently.

Yes, i'll expand on my notes:

Lighting: was fine
Textures: Also fine, though they were painted onto some mountains in a way that appeared generated/pixelated
Decals: The best in bracket, though I disliked the way you traced the mountains like you did and other people judging agreed.
Reclaim: Nice, but putting down so many tree groups or whatever in the middle could have an adverse gameplay effect.
Theme: Solid
Gameplay: Seemed unclear, we felt it might be fine early but the mex placement being so sporadic and disperse that players would end up just playing tug of war thru the middle.

My note about the middle stuff was that while I was testing midmass, attack move engies were not responding occasionally when they were told to reclaim thru the middle.

[Jip]

I'd love to hear the feedback and what I could've done differently.

Yes, i'll expand on my notes:

Lighting: was fine
Textures: Also fine, though they were painted onto some mountains in a way that appeared generated/pixelated
Decals: The best in bracket, though I disliked the way you traced the mountains like you did and other people judging agreed.
Reclaim: Nice, but putting down so many tree groups or whatever in the middle could have an adverse gameplay effect.
Theme: Solid
Gameplay: Seemed unclear, we felt it might be fine early but the mex placement being so sporadic and disperse that players would end up just playing tug of war thru the middle.

My note about the middle stuff was that while I was testing midmass, attack move engies were not responding occasionally when they were told to reclaim thru the middle.

Thank you for the expansion.

I understand most of the feedback.

Reclaim: Nice, but putting down so many tree groups or whatever in the middle could have an adverse gameplay effect.

I was thinking about that too, thought that it'd be nice to have single trees instead of groups of trees. On the other hand: in practice some bot may run over it and destroy the groups. This is what happened in the majority of gameplay sessions that I had. And since you start with so few mass / power, the little boost was nice according to people (and even requested by someone, though not in the middle).

The best in bracket, though I disliked the way you traced the mountains like you did and other people judging agreed.

Cheers, I didn't like it a lot at the end either but couldn't switch back anymore.

Gameplay: Seemed unclear, we felt it might be fine early but the mex placement being so sporadic and disperse that players would end up just playing tug of war thru the middle.

I can't find the replay where you played on the map against other players. In my own test sessions people enjoyed the map a lot because it seems at first that the middle is important, but the sides of the map turn out to be a lot more critical not just because of the mass but also because of the hill behind the base.

About the hills / mountains, I'd love to know how to do them right. I found that to be quite difficult. In a map such as Flaming Saddle (that I expected to be here too) they are done beautifully and I would love to know how. Anyone has tips / tutorials about how this can be achieved?

And I'd love to know what the other testers though (you mention a pool of people in your first post). I'm trying to improve and it seems my idea of what makes a map good differs from yours ^^.

[svenni_badbwoi]

I am very happy that Salt and Pepper has won

Thanks to all the contenders for their contributions and the time invested.
It is definitely sad that "Highway to Hell" could not take part in the tournament. Great idea.

Again, thanks to biass for the opportunity.
I would also appreciate a short feedback to find out where I can improve.

[biass]

Expanding on the notes again:

Lighting: was good
Textures: very good use of mutiple texture sets
Decals: big decal thing looks okay most of the time but i would have liked to have seen some more smaller ones to compliment it, also looks strange on ramps
Reclaim: was ok, boat wrecks in middle might suck on lower game counts
Theme: again, good use of tundra to create theme
Gameplay: should be okay, probably need to make ramps brighter because some judges needed to ask if the corners were passable