Empires Custom Map Pack: Release (17 maps)

Because you need 3 people to cap flags in the city now
its very hard to capture flags, they almost never
change the owner. To capture the flags you have
to draw alot people away from other chokepoints.
I mean you need more than 3 people to cap the flag
you need like 6-7 so there are enough left after the
fights to cap it or enough to withstand the respawning
enemy.

 

Thinking of my next incremental patch:

emp_research_1_2
emp_midbridge_b3
emp_shadows_rc11
POSSIBLY a new emp_insurrection
and I heard Drummer is making progress with maps too.

 

emp_tropicvendetta_b2 -might- be coming soon (don't hold us to it), but it depends on how things go this weekend.

 

So, you're basically saying I'm right. Second release or later != Beta 2. E.g. you could go from Beta 1 to RC1, with RC1 being the second release.

The way it should work:

Pre-alpha: internal builds where basic game mechanics (such as victory conditions) do not work
E.g. Just a compiled map without any Empires entities. If you boot it in Empires it will not work.

Alpha: internal builds with basic mechanics working
E.g. A compiled map without all the major locations laid out and finished but a wirk in progress with the required entities to make it playable in Empires.

Beta: supposedly feature-complete build, opened up for external testing (this could be publisher QA, outsourced QA or the public)
A compiled, playable Empires map with most aspects functional, suitable for external testing. Major and many minor balance, graphical/audio and optimisation changes will be made for future versions.

Release Candidate: Feature-complete, all final major changes made, all foreseeable polish done, and playable.
E.g. A compiled, playable Empires map with everything working: all known major balance, graphical/audio and optimisation issues addressed; all known, high-priority balance, graphical/audio and optimisation issues addressed. Only minor balance, graphical/audio and optimisation changes should be made for future versions. There should be no immediate need for a replacement version.

 

I just add a number whenever I release a new version and release a new version whenever I've done a batch of changes and/or when trickster pesters me.

 

Thanks so much for the mappack! I am downloading it now.
Vicki

 

I should have insurrection ready soon.

 

and BAM! thats how its done

 

I did not.

We are all in agreement on the concept of second release or later, that much is certain. However, your argument with KILLX was that "beta" tag was a poor judgement of quality. My point of view was that he was implying ANY second release, regardless of being called RC, alpha, beta, what have you. It seemed you jumped on the chance to "correct" him without attempting to comprehend the spirit of the post.

Furthermore, I clearly said "There is no difference between RC, a, or b. It is a mapper's choice of naming scheme.", while you believe in a strict interpretation of when each is allowed.

 

My post was implying that most amateur devs don't really know what these version labels are or what they mean, so someone saying that Beta 2 is an acceptable standard is naive.

To clarify, I added what I see as the standard naming formats for the various versions a map might go through.

If you look at the mappack you'll see that some RCs are Beta quality, some Betas are Alpha quality, and so on.

What I really want to say is that a mappack should try to take the cream of the crop, but with various mappers not truly understanding which naming conventions to use and when, it's difficult to apply a screening process for quality and create a truly good mappack. You definitely can't presume that every 2nd public version of a map is going to be good enough to warrant people's attention. It doesn't matter if it's Beta or not if the people calling it a Beta don't even know what a Beta is.

 

I am just lazy when I call anything RC.
Yayyyyyy.

 

What What ?

 

Right, doing an incremental update on Friday, and a full new installer, these are the new maps I plan to add.

emp_coast_b4
emp_research_1_2
emp_snowbound_1_2 (or whatever it is currently, a good map either way)
emp_insurrection_ob (if omneh finishes it)
emp_shadows_rc11 (if cyber-kun finishes it)
emp_midbridge_b3 (might be a B4 by then)
emp_smokies_rc2 (if cyber-kun finishes it)
emp_tropicvendetta a new one? (if john shandy/keef finish it)

 

It doesn't matter, it's not as if the map pack can't be updated, and the more playtesting that gets done the better and faster a bad map can be changed into a good one.

 

ya after that alpha fail 3 last night I wouldn't count on a new tropicvendetta for atleast a week

 

What happened? D:

 

let's see, you could walk through rocks, BAD BAd thing

 

If the purpose of the mappack is to test the maps, then no, it doesn't matter. If the purpose is to play the maps, then yes, it does. It also depends where this mappack gets distributed. If it's a free file for someone to get from FilePlanet or AddonDB (a.k.a. Moddb) then it risks giving a bad impression of Empires, which you wouldn't want.

 

Any map not finalized, but released publicly, is completely intended for play testing. That is, the testing of the game play. The point at which each map in this map pack has arrived, is one where "testing" and "play" have converged and become indifferent. There seem to be many people around here who lack any actual quality assurance testing experience. We don't need players to go around trying to break things or take the role of captain obvious and report "it works!" for everything that works (which we know they'll do to a small extent anyway). What we need to see (and what we will see) from the maps in this map pack are game play behavior, both at the individual level and at the overall strategy level. We don't need to see if A, B, C, and D work. We need to see how the players collectively move from A, through B and through C, to D... and provide us with feedback when we're not actively observing. Fun is important above all, and some maps still have some map breaking issues that have yet to be resolved - yet the players still consider them fun. Some of the maps I'm referring to happen to be "finalized" official maps. If you want to nitpick about maps that aren't ready for a map pack, first try nitpicking at the maps that are official and in need of thorough improvement - like emp_streetsoffire for example, which not only has a broken emp_resource_point, and an annoying earthquake accompanying the Apocalypse easter egg, but also crashes all clients immediately.

The problem thus far hasn't been the map name suffixes or the fact that incomplete or vulnerable maps make it into "map packs" or the official collection. The problem thus far is that they all haven't received adequate play testing.

Trickster's map pack simply offers an alternative way of obtaining quite a few of the latest custom maps in a one-stop shop. This is nice because not all of the 3 or 4 active Empires servers have Fast DL setup.

So please, stop trolling this thread and let Trickster's map pack be. More than several of us here are mappers, server admins of the most popular/active servers, and players combined... and we approve - the only approval necessary. We do not need (or want) your approval.

 

True dat.

Anyways looking at that list, we're waiting on about 4 maps. I'm happy to wait until they're all finished.