Adaptive maps, next level map creation

[CookieNoob]

and finally, I made a poster for the last of the 3 maps

[nine2]

are these original maps? or adaptivications?

[CookieNoob]

the maps on the three posters are original. I made them last week. Metir is mirrored and adapted from the map I made for the third mission of the nomads campaign. But all 3 maps are brand new and made by me.

[JoonasTo]

Please find a way to make a way for people to see what setup the map is at, without having to join to check.
It's really annoying having to join every game hosted to see which one is reasonable. Just seeing the amount of slots unlocked would be very, very helpful. People seem incapable of writing that in the name.

[CookieNoob]

well... I like that idea (and this was brought up several times before), however: it is far more complicated than it might look.

the game lobby needs to send the closed spots to the server
the server needs to store and refresh them (in case they change) and broadcast it to all clients together with the gamelist
the clients need to display the reduced spots

in summary, adding this requires changes to the server, the api, the client and the game code...

most of these changes are probably not that hard to do, unfortunately I didnt work with the server and/or the client code or the api before (and my python skills are not really sufficient). So realistically, I probably cant do it without an unreasonable amount of effort.

[JoonasTo]

I had a hunch it would be something like that since it hasn't been done yet.

About the only thing I could think of was changing the lobby name automatically, like a prefix that would be modified accordingly.

[CookieNoob]

I created a new map "Adaptive Proteus", it's in the vault now (after several problems with the upload it's there as v4... the other versions before were not downloadable, so it is really just the first version). A poster for the map is coming later eventually. A first impression of the map:

Most of the cliffs at the water are not passable for hover units, they can only enter the water at the beaches. Besides that, the map has a huge amount of customization options:

• dynamic spawns
• separate settings for the number of island/underwater/plateau mex
• close-spawn mex
• civilians (and their level of fortifications)
• adjustable wrecks and scalable relaim in trees and stones
• forward crazyrush mex
• ...

Some more good news: I will have a look at the ramps on twilight hill either tomorrow or in the next few days and try to make them easier to see.
And even more good news: svenni_badbwoi is working on an entire set of new adaptive maps!

[Morax]

Hey cookie, that looks visually stunning!

I have one suggestion or rather desire for the future: would you consider using the gameplay area to make 15x15 maps? Andrastea and this new one feel quite crowded! The concept of expansion seems to be lacking and is left to using reclaim and heavy ecoing with a turtle-like gameplay.

Metir doesn't feel this way as you can actually use some strategy with aerial drops, unit placement as the territories are large, etc.

It's certainly fine and appreciated to have some close quarters combat maps, though!

Great work and looking forward to seeing these weather effects!

[CookieNoob]

Hey Morax,

yea definitely... I realized that too. This map is totally fine up to 4v4 (when you pick the outer spots) or 3v3 (any spots), for more players it is really too crowded (16 spots dont mean that it has to be played 8v8, it makes it just more flexible where the teams are located). I am thinking about increasing the size of the map to 20x20 or something in between 10x10 and 20x20 by just scaling up the heightmap and strata masks, maybe I will try that tomorrow.

you can easily enable a few expansions when you leave some spots empty and use the close-spawn mex feature

for future maps I will most likely use a larger map size

[JoonasTo]

Impossible to tell what is deep water on that. Please use a different texture for underwater terrain or colour the water or something.

New version, so much better


EDIT:
After testing out different teams and starting spots, I'm pretty much convinced Proteus is most suitable for a 1v1 map.

Any more than 2v2 feels crowded and in 2v2 you're either as far from your ally as you are from your enemy, delegated to a cliff spot or have like 10 free mexes in your base.

Also zhtuues are really OP as frigates have trouble shooting up the shores. But that's more of a game balance, than map specific as the shores aren't that high.


EDIT2:
Got a complaint from one player in game that he could not distinguish the ramps on Twilight Hill due to slight colourblindness, just thought I'd let you know.
Otherwise it has a nice "StarCrafty" feel to it with the chokes and ramps. Very intel heavy since if you move units to the wrong place, getting them back in time is nigh impossible. Need to get more games on it, especially 2v2, should turn out interesting.

Liking Metir the best out of these new ones so far. At least it makes for one hell of a 3v3 map where you get action all over the place, very nice. *thumbs up*
It's not too badly zhtuue favoured either because of the size and the mexes being close to shore so you can raid them with frigates too.