The Northern faction have risen up in the north of this country, cutting off oil supplies by road and rail severely hampering the Brenodi forces that have moved north to intercept them. Now with the Brenodi armed forces in the area sufficiently weakened the Northen Faction make their move to cross the ancient wall that splits the countryside in two. The Brenodi garrison in the small town of Gilsland just north of the wall provide the only real resistance to the rebels march south. The garrison and town itself must be taken if they are to continue southwards. It is up to the Brenodi garrison to halt the advance long enough for reinforcements to arrive and help defend the town with its valuable bridge across the Denton river. The Northen Faction, after seeing the threat to their advance have started sending in their reserves to help the assault on the town. Now it is up to the commanders and the men themselves to battle to the death in order to protect their cause. ---------------------------- This will be a standard style empires map with a river running through the middle of the map that blocks vehicles from crossing apart from at just two points at either side of the map. Infantry have another crossing point in the centre of the map across shallows in the middle of a forest. The Northern Faction will start in the northwest and the Brenodi will start to the southeast with the town itself roughly in the middle. The centre of the town will be too narrow to build any proper bases inside so both sides will have to build around the outside leaving the inside only open to turrets, tanks and infantry. The other crossing point to the north east of the map will be across a narrow rail bridge. This should be guarded by both sides to prevent flanking attacks but if one side does cross then they will be able to assault the sides of the opponents army and possibly take valuable resource nodes from them. Have a look at the concept image and tell me what you think. I've tried to avoid having cliffs around the entire map but it was necessary in parts. Other parts will be blocked by dense forest, the wall itself and an abandoned railway yard and oil pipeline.
i like it alot. a question and an idea (short of a suggestion, just tossin out), what does "infantry passable hills" mean? and mabey reverse one of the bases (have 1 open to the east and the oter to the west) so both tank crossings are used.
Infantry Passable hills basically means that there are either passes through for infantry or the inclines aren't too steep to stop people walking over them. Basically I'm using them to stop tanks from swamping the opponents bases while still allowing groups of infantry to harass them. I might toy around with that idea but the main idea of the map is to have major battle in the town itself with the rail crossing as an optional flanking manouvre. I may place a couple of the res nodes closer to that crossing to make it more attractive to an assault.
I think it's a great concept for one exception. I think that the vehicles should have more than one way out of the starting bases. But I think it would work with one route only. The town seems to be the hotspot for this layout and the rail crossing seems to be a lot "cooler" area. Add some tempting res near the crossing or a flag that gives you res from some warehouse.
That's the general concept yes. I was considering something along those lines. I'll have to play around with the emp fgd.
I like the way infantry is emphesized in this map, however the first thing you should ask yourself when designing an empires map is "how will artillary be used." I find that maps with one way in and out of the base for vehicles ends up in one of the bases totally being blocked off and bombarded. Though, if you have enough cover by the hills, perhaps grenadiers could fight it off a little.
This map will be a lot bigger then the concept would at first suggest. I am hoping that artillery won't be able to get that near to the opponents entrance to their base from the far side of the river. Even so the entrance into their individual valleys will be very wide so knowing exactly where to shoot will be hard unless you have a scout up there in which case it would be a valid move.
Seems to be that the Brenodi have a much more embedded base than the Northerners, and that could screw with the balance. I also agree with Quackums in that one of the base's exits should be changed; specifically, I think the BE base should open to the East. Otherwise, I see the entire East side of the map being neglected.
Well I used DispGen to import a map from terragen and I'm in the process of editing it in Hammer to get close to what is in the concept. I spent about half an hour just clicking through Terragen random generations to try and pick the closest one I could. Ouchy.. The one I have now is pretty close and it imported well. I set up the resource text and minimap file by taking a copy of other maps and threw in a skybox, barracks, spawn point, comm vehicle and a standard start point just to test the map. It compiled fine but when I went to load it in empires it crashed after 30 seconds of stalling. Anybody know why? I looked on the wiki and it mentioned the resource files but they didnt help. I was hoping to show a screenshot of the map but until I manage to load it into empires thats a no go. It is currently 850m x 850m almost the maximum map size in Source so this is going to be a big bastard of a map. I will be allowing for aircraft in the design of it as it probably wont be fully finished by the time the aircraft patch is out. I have the terrain in and a river running through the middle. I have to modify the terrain around the spawn points to reflect the concept more accurately. I'll toy with the idea of having one of the spawn points point east or maybe both having two different access points. Keep in mind that infantry will be able to get in and out in all directions as it is. My main aim is to have the battle focus around the town with the eastern side as a possibility if they get entrenched. The east will also have some valuable res nodes.
for the map to no crash just copy and rename all the non vmx(or whatever the actual map file is) files from another map. yes the minimap will look like money or canyon but for testing thats fine. the more i think about it, the more i like a neglected area of the map. it alows interesting tactics. i also really like the idea of a flag in the town, mabey in a warehouse or ammo dump or something, instead of a ref. and remeber infantry can swim, so unless the river is poluted or something to cause dmg, infantry can cross it anywhere. and as far as arty goes, does anyone know the max range (in hamer units) that a ER cannon can go?
Looks awfully alot like the Hadrian's Wall/Snowdonia Forest zone from Dark Ages of Camelot. Did that inspire you?
Actually I've never heard of that mod even. If it is a mod. I started off with little to do with an actual wall then I realised that it would be very useful for blocking off one whole side of the map. The storyline came after that. I started off with the basics. A valuable area in the centre between both spawns, a fast method to get there for vehicles and a secondary crossing point across a middle obstacle. I plan on having some sort of hedge blocking off vast sections of the river from infantry. Not too high so that you can't shoot across it though :D A lot of the landscape will be divided up into rolling fields with stone walls that will have to be blown apart before tanks can cross them. quackums I've already copied the resource file and the minimap files and renamed to to my map name but that hasn't helped. Does my map have to start with emp because right now I only have it as Hadrian.bsp I'm in work now so I can't look at it til I get home.
well i think arty could be easily blocked with fog, so thats why my map is pretty foggy. but i was also wondering if you could create a flag to capture and spawn from in a normall head-on-head map. but i need to learn how to make a flag capture poin in hammer. but its a very good idea. i would try to intice people in to the point with a few resource points and an unequall amount in the map would help conflict.
With any luck I'll have the bridge itself as a capture point. If I can set it to a quick neutral time but a long capture time like in the emp_Railroad map then that would mean a team would have to actually stay on the bridge and hold it for 20 seconds before they capture it. Seeing as how I plan on having several enterable houses with windows looking out over the river and bridge on either side then that will be difficult at best. What do you guys think of some destroyable walls on the houses facing the river so the snipers in the windows can have their cover reduced by tanks and arty?
now darg, destroyable walls is a good idea, you could also make parts of the bridge destrotyabls so tanks couldnt go along it but troops could...
Well the whole aim of controlling the bridge is to give you a quick path to the enemys base. So.. maybe not. Possibly if I can make it repairable again after it gets destroyed. Here is a very quick bridge model I just did to show my idea of how wide the river will be. The model is pretty high poly at the moment with all the little doodies so I have to get rid of half of them or lowere their poly count somehow.
Yea but that looks far too 2dish. I can just take out every second one and drop the middle bulge and that should third the polycount.
