emp_atomic is now available

I've been withholding comments until I could actually play the map, mainly because I wasn't sure just how 'work in progress' most of the screenshots were.

Anyhow, some theories:

• Darkness: I'm an opponent of darkness in multiplayer maps because it encourages players to maximize their brightness settings and gives an excessive advantage to players with brightskins. And, honestly, there is a LOT of darkness in this map. The night sky is brighter than the map itself. It seems to me like a camper's heaven.
  To fix it: More light, less pitch-black shadowy areas.
• Size: The map is too big. I'm not just talking about "it's designed for 64 players maaan." There are four flag locations, meaning with 64 players you'll have 8 players on each team per location. The problem is, players die. When they die, they have to walk all the way back to the flag. There are about a half-dozen district-comparable combat areas in the map, and you'll have to walk through at least one of them, with only campers and stray dogs* to keep you company, before you reach an area with a flag in it.
  To fix it: Intermediate flags/spawnpoints to the main flags. Except, unlike those underground tunnel spawns in emp_king, these will be directly on the path to the main flags and won't be the exclusive priority of ninjas.
• Chokepoints: The combat areas might seem vaguely interesting, but effective chokepoints exist only in the doorways between combat areas. (This was seen frequently in the vehicular areas of King.) Combat will be focused in the doorways between areas, rather than in the areas themselves... Provided you ever get enough infantry in one place to make a decent Empires-styled firefight in the first place.
  To fix it: Mess up the grid-like combat areas so that there are only one or two usable paths through them, and cover that's only tall enough to block bullets, but not movement or vision.

The 'size' and 'chokepoint' theories are only tentative gut impressions, since I've yet to play the map, but I'm completely certain the darkness needs to go.

Something else to consider: You should add a flickering light in the NF spawn for the flame (but not remove the current solid light), and ditch the flickering lights on the stairs. That will help the flame seem more 'alive'.

 

The sky generally is brighter than the ground, that's how the sky works. If people want to turn up their brightness that's their issue. Personally I can think of at least one extremely obvious way to cheat that would be far more effective, and is not at all impacted by sv_pure, which wouldn't work with this map anyway given that it's a custom map. Cheaters gonna cheat, so what.

Generally one would expect combat to take place between the flags, you don't fight at the flags, you fight between the flags. Trickster complained about walking distance but I didn't find it at all an issue, although I was using speed upgrade because it's useful on this map. I'll tell you the same thing I told him, in order to put flags in I need to put spawn rooms in, and more spawn rooms is going to be pretty difficult to squash into the already busy map. Not to mention the annoyingness of having to cap flags. Something everyone needs to realise is that the flags are essentially useless, the only one that matters is the central flag, the others are just there to give you somewhere to spawn and a route to the central flag. If everyone camps the central flag, take their spawn, if they ignore the central flag, take it and bleed their tickets. I'm planning to add more direct routes between some of the flags so that combat between the core, the admin building, the filtration area, and the basin will be a bit faster, but I'm not adding more flags. It is simply untenable to do so. I can improve access to the central flag from the flags near it, but there is going to be walking involved at the start as well as if you can't secure any other flags.

Yeah the doors are the main chokepoints, and it is easier to defend them than anywhere else in the combat areas, so what? This is kind of unavoidable because the other option is having no doorways and connecting everything to everything, which leads to even less structure and turns the map into infantry duststorm more than it already is. Adding more crap to the space in between isn't going to make choke points less annoying, it's just going to turn it into district where the entire thing is one long choke point. If the enemy is camping a door, use the other door, that's why areas have multiple entrances.

NF spawn used to have a flickering light, I stopped it flickering because it causes visual stutter due to constantly updating the lightmaps.

If it seems like I'm just being contrary, I have actually considered almost all of the problems people are posting before, and have decided that fixing them would result in more, worse problems than leaving them. I'm not ignoring problems because the map is perfect, I'm ignoring them because I can't think of a way to fix them and don't really see them as major problems. Most empires maps have problems of equal or greater magnitude, mostly stemming from empires being a fairly badly put together game, so I am inclined to adopt an attitude of 'shut up and play it and you'll figure out the fun bits which make them seem insignificant' which is how it seems to work with most empires maps. Yes they kinda suck, but they're all you're getting, so figure out what makes them fun and suddenly they stop sucking as badly.

 

Touche!
What I was trying to say is that increasing the ambient light would be appropriate for the brightness of the sky and would also address much of the map's outdoor darkness. Alternately, the sky needs to be much darker.

That's a shame.

 

The map really is too big, and I don't know how you can say floating mines in the elevator killing an entire team isn't important. One gren can cause SERIOUS problems on this map.

 

I uploaded the maps to viper and fast dld, I double checked the files I downloaded from your link and they appear to be in the correct directories on the servers. But we were mssing the minimap it was checker board and the people who dlded it from viper could not spawn.

I am not sure why this is.

 

The .res file probably needs to be remade proper. It looks a bit sloppier than the ones used for emp_king, for example.
(It lacks quotes, and there's a tab instead of a space after "resource/maps/emp_atomic_rc3.txt".)

 

I was spectating people yesterday and I had things like watching game for 1 minute, switching from person to person and not seeing anyone shooting enemy. Most people were trying to get back to the front after dying or were disoriented.

Brightness - it's too dark. Sky, brushes and minimap.

Speed upgrade should be useful not required.

Minimap and layout - as with emp_king I have no idea what to do. All the information that I can get from minimap is that someone put fancy lights on it. District, glycencity, escort, shadows and god knows how many other maps do it much better.

"Something everyone needs to realise is that the flags are essentially useless" - you lack contact with reality. No one knows that. Even if it were in a description no one would know that. YOU have to convince your players naturally not to do that or even remove the section/feature.

Empires sucking is not enough of a excuse.

What dizzyone meant but got tired of trying to get it through: you made a map, you didn't follow any of the established level design rules, you tried something which you think was harder and you put a lot of effort into visual detail. So now every person that criticizes it seems like an idiot/troll to you. The thing is you're judged by amount of 100% polished stuff you delivered. You delivered lots of stuff but it isn't polished at all.

 

Chris likes to think he knows everything better, he won't accept anyone saying his maps are flawed at the core. Flawed to such a degree that the only thing he can do is listen to others who actually do know what they are doing. The same with king and everything else he has done, he prefers to blame others for not understanding it or just being whiny bitches.

This map, and his last, are perfect examples of how you should never approach level design.

For it to ever become close to anything that is playable, it needs tons of work. And he won't have it, he'd rather let his map die out like king because of his stubbornness to accept that he is not as good as he likes to think he is. You can add as much visual detail you like, but just like polishing a turd, it will always remain a turd. The weirdest thing about it all is that these maps only serve as a showcase of what Chris can do artistically and technically. But if this is the case, why not just say so, instead of trying to defend the gameplay values it might have.

A bad map with good characteristics can be salvaged, aslong as the one who created it doesn't have an attitude problem.

 

Found a good article on map flow: http://www.lunaran.com/page.php?id=189

It's no surprise Chris's map fails at every single point. Which isn't the only fundamental mechanics the map fails at. Since all games require different level mechanics, and the mechanics may work completely different from game to game, it's hard to find good resources that fit Empiresmod. That aside, theres still dozens of good resources that explain very basic concepts, like the articles on the Valve Developer wiki, that Chris should've read thoroughly (more thoroughly if he already has).

http://www.johnsto.co.uk/design/common_sense

A good design doesn't need a disclaimer, this is the case with every field of design. The second you need to explain how things should work, or how people should use it, it only displays how bad the design is.

 

It works fine on trickster's server.

 

I'm explaining because most people haven't played it more than once, once people play it enough to know how to play it properly, I won't have to explain it.

It's like playing any empires map, first time you play it you don't know where the buildings are supposed to go. First time you play mvalley you don't know that north is the only important place, which is why people fight over dam and centre, and why the first thing any comm does when commanding a team is yell at them all to go north. Instruction helps to shorten the learning curve.

As to complexity, I don't see that as a problem either, streetsoffire has masses of unused stuff, it doesn't affect the map at all. 90% of the fighting takes place on the bridge, the rest can be largely ignored. Knock out a couple of walls in this map and you should get the same thing. The rest is there if you need it and smart players will use it to get round the enemy, but you don't have to use it. Personally I happen to like streetsoffire.

The lack of linear paths is present in just about every empires map, especially duststorm, and duststorm is bizzarely popular even though I personally dislike it, so I don't see that as an issue either.

It is going to take time for people to learn how to play the map. I could make it simple enough to play on the first go, but it would get very boring very quickly, so there isn't any point doing that.

As I said before, there isn't any point making a level which is exactly the same as the hundred or so other empires levels which are essentially different looking classic maps with no distinguishing features, the game doesn't benefit from that, and I have no interest in making it. I would rather make a map that is in some way different and introduces a little variety into the game, rather than another classic map.

If you don't want to play it, that's your loss, not mine.

 

I think i said this while playing the map yesterday, darkness + lots of details = not a good idea.
You're also using a lot of map hazards, the acid pools and moving objects will cause random deaths, having to cover the same distance twice because you slipped isn't fun.

 

The moving parts are fairly risk/reward oriented, I did try to provide alternate routes. They are also brightly lit.

I'm going to make a fairly direct diagonal route across the map so you should do less walking when it's done, and it should stop the game moving about so much which it did a little too much in the test.

 

I haven't played civ5, so couldn't comment on that. But my statement doesn't concern complexity itself, if anything, it concerns unnecessary complexity. bad design isn't about functionality, it has to do with interaction, if you have to read a 300 page manual to learn to ride a bicycle, its probably a badly designed bicycle. Every other bicycle has 2 or 3 very simple mechanics that can be learned in less than a minute. If for instance you say, but what about flying an apache, it might require you to read 300 pages. That isn't necessarily bad design as an apache might be 300 times as complicated as a bicycle. If you asked why the hell it uses 15 knobs, 12 handles and 8 switches to control ascent, you could on the other hand argue that it's bad design, Since all it could take is a joystick.

@chris0132

While you have explained things that aren't required for anyone to play the map, your basic claim against my initial criticism is that I don't understand how your map works. And you went on to explain how it should be played. This is the disclaimer I'm talking about. I believe theres a misunderstanding here, your map needs to be fun to play from the get go. It should make sense intuitively for players, as they will judge it on how it plays. Only after an enjoyable experience will they bother understanding the more intricate details of the map. Trying to dismiss people's first impressions is futile, they decide how your map is perceived, and they are in fact far more important than whether or not you have good reasons to make things the way they are.

Also, please stop pretending everything played out like you intended it to, it's clear that a lot of things happened that you had not foreseen, and if you did, you made decisions based on bad judgement.

Let me give you an example: The chokes at the top-left area. They have absolutely no cover. The car is practically the only cover around. This is possibly the worst choke design as your movement is restricted by hazardous water. On the other hand, you put a truck as cover, in an area you would consider dead space. It's the last place people would go. While it doesn't hurt to put cover there, its odd to have the actual chokes devoid of cover, while a dead area does have cover.

Instructions help, sure. Your map however has far too many rules, with a bleeding flag, flags with no spawn etc. Explaining them doesn't make their functionality any better. You can explain to people why your bicycle requires their balls to serve as a brake, but if they could use a piece of rubber as brake, the explanation won't make busting your balls feel any better.

Streetsoffire has a whole underground that isn't used 99% of the time. It has negative effects though, your team can get lost in it. It's purpose and functionality may have been thought out well, but the cons outweigh the pros by far. Also note that streetsoffire has gone through 2 major revisions. (something you don't seem to understand) Many dead spaces were removed and improved. Streetsoffire is also less complex than your map and suffers less problems than your map. It also suffers from a few major flaws, some partly due to its complexity. It is in no shape to be used as an example in favor of your map.

Duststorm isn't a flag map. Pointless comparing them. For the sake of argument, we could say your map is a commander map as well, and compare them. In that case, I would argue simplicity is the key. Duststorm has only one level, ground level. And more important: it has a very simple four square layout. But other than that the maps are not comparable. Again, not a very good example in favor of your map.

Game inside of a game syndrome, people play the game, not the map. Level design is about knowing the game, and complementing gameplay of that game. It's like playing soccer in a maze. Quite frankly, your map is one of the most boring empires maps I have played as of yet. After around 10 minutes, I felt like leaving the server. The worst part was, it dragged on for another 70 minutes. Not being able to play the game is boring, your map does that. People were all camping the fucking elevator, I was in places where I wouldn't see an enemy for 10 minutes. Your argument is actually saying that the game itself is boring.

There is a point in making a map that plays good, and it's a far more challenging process than making a horrible map and bitching about how I don't understand your ingenious design. Mapping isn't easy, and perhaps you should find something else to do, you completely miss the point of making a map. I've seen this stance a dozen times by many so called mappers, for many different games. It's an argument from ignorance. You don't understand what it is that makes a map good, and you don't understand what it takes to make a map playable for a specific game. So instead you try to incorporate your ideas of "fun" and "uniqueness" in the wrong ways.

I'm sorry you don't see what makes all the other maps unique, and why you can't see the fun of them. I could reverse your last statement just as easily. If you don't understand what makes a good map, its your loss not mine. At the end of the day, I lost a lot less time and learned a whole lot more by trying to learn from your mistakes.

 

As a side note, most of your arguments are based on your lack of knowledge in interaction design. Your map is practically the Microsoft Word of typing text, the Fried egg of the commercial music industry, the realplayer of streaming video, the Empires of source mods. There is a lot you still need to learn, so arguing with you is simply for the sake of theatrical intercourse. For a brief moment I completely forgot about your stubborness and attitude, but after 30 minutes of playing your map with you commenting on it, I was reminded that you're still Chris, and it won't matter how intelligent you are, you need some kind of authority that you respect, and you seem to have a real authority problem.

 

I'm not pretending anything, it really did do a lot of the things I expected, I was actually relatively pleased with the test, it went better than I expected. Towards the end of the game people seemed to be figuring out how it works and focussing on the centre, but then when that happened they found they lost their spawn point due to not defending it enough, which is exactly why all the flags are cappable.

Previous tests indicated that the vehicle area is more distracting than I thought, I don't entirely like that but it does have the very important function of providing something to do on smaller games, so while unexpected it is not unwelcome, all I really have to do is connect it to the centre a bit better, as people favoured the basin a lot more than I thought, and that is easy enough to correct.

The basin is supposed to be vehicles only, with some infantry, not infantry hugely and vehicles also. But I should be able to fix that by making routes from the basin flag which don't put infantry in as much danger, which I plan to do because that's easy enough.

It does hurt to put lots of cover in the northwest because vehicles would be hard to use, they already keep hitting the rocks and things so I'm not putting more in.

SOF I would say is probably about as complex, I certainly don't know where all the tunnels go, and there's probably about as many interconnecting paths albeit more spread out. Mine's just busier, it crams more detail in but most of it is superfluous. You're just familiar with SOF while you are entirely unfamiliar with atomic. I'm familiar with both and I would say they are probably similar in complexity.

Atomic really only has one level, most of it occurs on the ground, and the vehicle section is a cosmetic difference because it doesn't go under anything, it's just lower down. The only over/under parts are the elevator and the admin building roof. Everything else occurs on the ground level.

Flag/notflag is largely irrelevant, flags and refineries are functionally very similar, you go to a point, you capture it, you build a base there. As opposed to you go to a point, you capture it, base functionality automatically occurs there. The more significant difference is infantry/not infantry, and for that atomic occupies a much smaller area than duststorm, to counteract the slow speed of infantry. Duststorm has five key points in the corners and the centre, as does atomic. The rest is just interconnected space, as with atomic. Again this is probably because I know the layout better and the minimap is indeed hard to read, perhaps this image helps:



Running around doing nothing is sort of a staple of empires in general, I do that on all empires maps, often for a good portion of the game. I assume everyone else does as well, it certainly doesn't bother me. I do of course have an advantage because I know not to bother using the elevator if the enemy is defending it because I know it's going to be a deathtrap, as elevators by definition are. Instead I know to capture one of the other bases and go from there, but I'm going to see about adding in some stairs in addition to the elevator so people will have a more immediately obvious alternative. Seeing as the basin flag is so bizzarely popular anyway. Honestly I don't know what it is, must just be the shiny tanks that have people so enamoured with it.

I also have the advantage because I know playing a scout with speed and enhanced senses is a very good idea on this map, also intentional because that setup doesn't get very much use in normal empires. So I spend a lot of the time tracking people and trying to get into a good position to ambush them. I don't really see an issue with that build being very good on this map because it introduces variety, which is the whole point. The map is supposed to be different, you use different class setups on it and it plays differently. I don't see this as a problem either. If I want to play normal empires I can. If I want to play empires without commanders I can play shadows or urbanchaos or god forbid district. If I want to play this map, I can. It is something of a weird one off map, but I'd rather have a weird one off map that I can play occasionally than another classic map which I probably wouldn't even notice.

The map really only has one rule, you win by killing all the enemies. How you do this is up to you, you can capture the bleeder flag until they run out of tickets, you can capture all of the spawn flags, or you can kill them until they run out of tickets. Same as classic mode, you can capture all the res nodes until the enemy runs out of money, you can blow the crap out of them with tanks, or you can go for the CV and ignore the main body of the enemy. Options are what allows empires to shine in organised play. And if you don't want to organise you can still just run around the map and shoot people on your own, which is what I did for a decent portion of the test.

Don't confuse lack of understanding with lack of agreement, I know exactly how to make a good classic map, I could knock out a lovely looking classic map that plays exactly like all the other classic maps and I could do it in half the time this one took, but I don't think it would be at all worth it. All you would get at the end is a pretty looking classic map, which empires already has quite a few of, and they all play more or less the same.

I don't need to make more classic maps, I don't want to make more classic maps because that isn't interesting to me, I make maps because I enjoy making them, not because I want to play them or I want you to play them, although I admit it would be nice if other people enjoyed them as well.

I enjoyed the test, I enjoyed it a lot more than I do playing king, so as far as I'm concerned this is an improvement, it's unfortunate that you don't enjoy it but I don't enjoy playing duststorm, or mvalley, I prefer crossroads and SOF which is not popular concensus, so I don't expect everyone to like it.

I'm certainly not going to do what you say when you say to change things because I have other things to think about. When you say 'change something' I don't just go 'oh well better change that' I think 'well I could do that but it would cause these problems and those probably would be worse than the thing I was triyng to fix, so I'm not going to change it until I can think of a way to improve it without causing more problems'. In that respect I do have issue with authority, I don't do things because people say to do them. I do them because they make sense, and most of the suggestions don't. One thing I have learned is that level design by comittee never works, so I think I'll continue to make changes as I see fit, not because you yell at me.

Some things make perfect sense, the basin is obviously going to be a focal point whether it should be or not, so I can design around that, I can make it worth being a focal point, by adding in better connections to the middle. And then I can add in better connections to the middle from the other corner of the map, making it into a fight over the middle from the corners, which is what it should be. But things like 'Add more flags I don't want to walk' are not good suggestions, because addng more flags won't make you walk less, it will simply change the walking from walking to the front to walking in order to cap flags. The better solution is to knock walls through to provide more direct routes between the flags. It accomplishes the same thing, but doesn't cause the problems.

Same with northwest, you say 'put more cover in' ignoring that it needs room for vehicles, I say 'no, don't put more cover in, put an infatry route in which doesn't get in the way of the tanks, that way you can use tanks to take the flag, but you don't use the flag to access the tank area, you use it to access the underground tunnel or elevated catwalk which is out of the way of the tanks and doesn't obstruct them.' Same result, better implementation.