Well, I was sitting at my Laptop staring at the loading screen for emp_canyons with a picture that was off a cliff into a bunch of trees, and began to wonder about a map like emp_canyon and emp_cyclopean that was based more on forest combat than open fields. Granted I understand that there is only so much you can do with the HL2 engine when it comes to details, and this map is going to require a lot to look good. Still, here is my map layout: Any comments and suggestions would be appreciated :D . The Idea for this map is to include vehicles, but make this map more based on Infantry tactics and Aircraft in later updates. There are roads, but they are easily defended and vehicles can get ambushed while following the few path available to them by a stealthy grenedier, and the forests are thick and hinder vehicles, making a good force of infantry invaluable. I made this with a anti-vehicle rush style in mind. Infantry can go through the woods, but vehicles have to find roads and trails to get through. Ambushes can be set up, and this makes teamwork a neccessity because one man can't do much on his own on a map like this. I tried to make the map balanced with equal numbers or resource nodes accesible to both teams at the start and tried to provide multiple vehicle routes to both teams main bases. This map also provides a few useful areas a person good with artillery might like. With aircraft, this would make a stategic bombing approach useful, and dogfights more risky because of a S.A.M. that could be hidden in the trees. If I knew how to get my Hammer working, how to use it, and where I can get all the bloody (.wad - Not used anymore, thank you Broccoli) files i'm missing, I might try to make it, till then it is available for taking. My only request is if you do decide to make this map, please credit me with my name in the credits for the map . Otherwise, feel free to map away.
The dev team have been incredibly smart with the tree models, at a distance, they switch to something like image based rendering, which basically makes them very simple to render. I like the idea of forest combat, but it would require more tree models, and in greater varieties. If they made some more small rock and bush props, you could write a detail file to have them automatically emitted from displacement faces, which would help with the forest floor detailing a lot.
Check out the community map project (link in my sig). It's very similar to the concept you've got there. P.S. We don't use WAD files any more
Ok. I don't know mapping. I can't really help with any technical issues. All I know how to do is use mantis and play the game. But I will say a few things that I think might be issues on the map as best I can. From looking at the map it appears that the northernmost ref seems farther away from BE then the equivalent north NF ref- meaning that BE will have to struggle to hold that position (and their requisite 4 forward refs) early game, while the NF has the potential to storm forward from a fairly large hilly area and cap 5 refs before the mid game starts. This might be setting BE up for a big disadvantage later on. However, BE might have a defensive advantage depending on how deep and how wide the river is. If it's wide and shallow enough to ensure that crossing infantry get little to no cover then the BE might have a strong upper hand defending. This is especially true when the forest shielding the NF front lines can be hit along any point. However, if the river is like the mvalley river and allows quick and easy marine strikes, BE might be in even more trouble. NF looks to have a highly defensible center ref- it looks like BE would have to assault the city in order to gain access to this control point, whereas the BE have no such an advantage. And that doesn't even take into account the island ref that is impervious (theoretically) to vehicle assault. As a matter of fact, I see that BE only has two routes out of it's base whereas the NF has three. That sort of choke point imbalance could become an issue- if the NF cap the city then BE has only one 'flanking' route whereas the NF have two, and multiple ways to assault the city, at that. That extra route could make all the difference in the world: just look at glycen before the extra NF route was put into the map. Lastly, I see that BE has high ground both north and south of the map, whereas NF only has hill control in the NW. I'm not sure what this would do for tanks but would that give BE an advantage when using artillery tanks? If the hill is small it would probably only make the tank a sitting duck, but if the hill is large then it may confer some benefits. On the flip side... if the hill is capped by the NF then it seems like they could easily just storm down into the north road completely bypassing the city chokepoint, which would absolutely devastate BE. So if I understand it correctly, lots of pros and cons that I can't possibly balance out without more information. Seems like NF may have the upper hand, but honestly, each side has some unique strengths and weaknesses. This might make for interesting games, or it might make for horribly unbalanced suckfests if they aren't balanced exactly right. Frankly, I'd ask a mapper about these questions.... not me. Also, shinzon made a good point in another thread... the most popular maps are the ones that allow for a large degree of freedom for tank movement but still force both teams to assault chokepoints. The large amount of forest on this map limits the tanks... but honestly I don't know how you'd have a jungle map without doing so. Meh. Confusing.
My thanks to Lobster for his Review . Having read the ideas put forth by Lobster, and observing the points he mentioned, namely the Island Ref and the 3:2 path base exit ratio, I have made a few changes to the Layout and have posted a V2 of the map :eek: . Here is the link: http://img520.imageshack.us/my.php?image=maplayoutforforestcanyoie1.png <--- Version 2 Also, I noted that the details about the actual sections of this map are somewhat vauge and lacking on my part :confused: , so I will try to provide some details. --- The Lakes are deep, deep enough that a vehicle couldn't pass through them. --- (If you can give the water a current) The River that goes North is fast and wide, with few rocks and is relatively shallow, but would stop a vehicle that were to say fall in, but not drive across at speed. The part that junctions East to the small mountain lake is deep enough to stop a vehicle that isn't moving at a speed greater than light. (ie 3 Phase engine). The section where it junctions is deep, and has little too no cover, and is moving at a high speed and is impassible to a vehicle. --- Infantry and Vehicles can cross over the dams at the North and South parts of the map. Gameplay and Tactic Wise > The Roads that are paved are smooth and mostly flat with 2-3 lanes worth in width, and have a few spots where trees have fallen and block a lane or two of the road, but do not block the road. > The cites would not be an Urban center, but is more of a Rural town, nothing higher than a 2-3 story building. > Ambushes and Mine traps are a good defense tactic against a tank rush, requiring advancing tanks to have an infantry escort to have a better chance of survival. > Infantry can move through the jungle, and depending on map makers discretion, small vehicles in the woods in thiner areas, but in general, no tanks off the beaten path. > Scouts have much more cover for the patient, methodical infiltrator, but fewer open long shots. > The Eastern Lake near the NF start has an underwater cave that the water flows into (Just for the sense of why the water has a small current towards the small East lake).
That's the level of design, I think. In most games, far away things can turn into images that stand up and turn to face you wherever you look at it from. Once you get closer, they become 3D models again and stop turning around.
If you mean LOD then it's level of detail, and not all games use image based rendering, which is where the things turn into flat images, most of them just reduce the model quality.
to be honest I think the best maps are real maps simple Even the most complicated map, like say cyclopean, is still a very basic design. and the need for it to be real means that it should be fairly simple. In my view, focus on a quater of that map, make that nice and into a playable map, and expand if you are still interested on working on maps by that time.
theres a CSS forest map on interlopers thats their map of the moment or was last time i looked. the standard empires trees are tiny but work nicely in canyon. I think you should be bold and go ahead with the whole map in one go, just be prepared to work on it for a while. That said, there looks to be a lot there for a 1x map (I could be wrong) so you may want to work with it for a while but wait for scaling and planes etc to make a full sized thingy
I would approve of this map, it makes more use of infantry from what I see, and I enjoy playing on covered maps as a scout!
Yeah, all the classic maps we have at the minute are far too tank based. That is except for crossroads. Streets of fire could become more infantry friendly with a few more buildings to hide in. And about the whole time to learn hammer thing, it takes only a few hours to learn hammer (less if you've used other editors before like I did). The time-consuming part is all the attention to detail and displacements.
The biggest problem I see with this map is that its basically completely open and filled with a massive forest and some roads in between. You need to consider having patches of forests here and there instead of basing the basic layout around having a forest all over the place. There needs to be things blocking the view or optimizing will be hell, a massive forest doesn't help either. Gameplay wise I have my doubts big forest will be fun, don't get me wrong, it could work but your concept isn't detailed enough to show any of the nuances of those forests. If what you had imagined is exactly like your concept, as one huge cluster of trees all over the map, with some roads and open areas intertwined, I will take a wild guess and say this map will fail at being fun. For one a forest can be quite annoying as you can't see crap when going through one. The commander will definitly not be able to see anything and will make his job tedious. Second is that trees do not give proper cover, all they do is create chaos and obstruct your view, In most cases the elevation will give you cover in forests. Also it's basically an open field with annoying poles of collision in between. Assuming from the proportions you could probably fit canyon twice in your map, thats a lot of forest, which brings me to a few more points. - people get lost, a lot of the forest area is not used effectively. - grenadiers can be in every square meter of a forest but tanks have to drive a big lap around the forests to get anywhere and there are basicly no open areas, theres more forest than anything else, this removes any fun in tank battles as grenadiers will rule, especially if roads are mined. - open maps like this will promote level3 turretfarming, sniper camping, rocket sniping and the basic tactic of just skipping the bigger part of the map and exploit the features of such a forest next to the enemy base. -strategy wise there is no way to hold mapcontrol by denying acces to an area with expanding and pushing, they can get to any area from any direction, infact it'll be damn hard to keep anything up fi they're all hiding in a forest. This enforces the use of turret farms and cheap tactics. It'll most likely deny a team from making progress as they will have to keep returning to the same area to defend it over and over. I think you should spend some time in improving the concept with more details. as this really does now show enough to dissect and criticize. When I saw this map all I could think of is a big void with too much oppurtunities for ninjas. Think about it this way, you've nerfed tanks as much as possible by having very narrow roads and with that limited movement, along with the waters they can't cross unless they go over a bridge. You have nerfed most of the RTS element by only having specified areas for expansion and forward bases, next to the roads and few open areas you've left shitloads of forest only usable by infantry, which I can guarantee you, infantry will never use that much forest, they will take the quickest path, or try and get somewhere unnoticed. They will never use all this forest space effectively but they can however use it for a rat and mouse game, it'll be a comeplte pain trying to kill a single infantry in those huge forests especially if the terrain has many ups and downs. They are unrestricted in movement all over the map, but restricted in a way as its all open field forests.
Hmm... I can see your point Dizzy. I'll give it the map a going over after my classes today. I'll see about maybe sizing down the map a bit, and try to get a new version up soon. Thanks for the critical review Dizzy. I see that it needs to be shortened by approx 1/2, and lose at least 1/3 of the forest in that remaining 1/2 of the map, but could you give me a few more ideas on what to add to it, like larger or increased numbers of roads, fields, cities, hills, etc? My hope is to keep the map similar to what it is, such as being a wooded map, but I as I said, I see how bad it could get. I think the first thing I should consider is making the wooded areas not as dense, making it more possible for a vehicle to get through. Oh well, I think more after classes. Again, thank you dizzy and everyone else for their comments and reviews, and Please, keep them comming.
Your idea looks pretty good, try adding some things in, like small roads walled by cliffs but blocked by rocks, so you can transform it into a 16X map if you want to.
Honestly, the best forest maps I have found have come in two games: Red Orchestra, not because the forests are especially nice, but because of the intertwined trench and cover system allows a very fun tactical experience. Project Reality for BF2 has the best forests, gameplay-wise. Its really too hard to explain, you have to try it for yourself. The best map is, I don't remember the name, but it involves a big fort on a mountain that is approached through a forest. Just fyi, you know. Forest maps rock.
New map style Well, I finally got the chance between school, homework, and playing games online (and the occasional party ) that I finally revised my map. Actually to be fully honest, I just scrapped the idea of the old one and just started anew from scratch keeping in mind the details suggested in the posts of those who were supper nice and critiqued, whether for better or worse, the map. So here is V3: I guess I am going to need to re-explain the ideas behind this map. First off this map includes a grid to base scaling off of (Based off of Dizzyone's map size Comments). I think the grid may need to be cut to a smaller size. Second, this map does still focus primarily on Infantry, but I have made it much more tank friendly. -:Map Details:- The general lower levels of the ground are smooth where there are roads, slightly bumpy on dirt roads, and sorta of grizzled and bumpy with scattered rocks and debris in random areas of the open and forested areas. On elevated areas, the grounds is relatively flat with a few scattered rocks and trees excepted in the bases, which will be clear and flat. The edges of the hills are all for the most part scalable, although the final call is up to the map editor, cliffs are just as useful in this map. The hills that are by the rivers, the riverfaces are cliffs just for noting. The main paved roads are wide and open, similar to those found on emp_cyclopean, as is the city split by the river. The other city located in the woods is more of a hunting lodge or an older european town with a rustic, aged, and majestic looks. The Wooded areas are not as thick and there are now multiple areas where it looks like there are bypass routes around some of the hills and trails that are more than large enough for tanks, and a skilled tank driver should be able to drive through the dense woods easier (If they dare brave the Grenadiers hiding in them that is ). The dirt roads are wider than in the previous versions, so that two large tanks or three light tanks could be placed side by side on the roads, making it harder to concentrate mines. The resource nodes are all placed at an equal and almost inversed position to each other. The Dams are all vehicle accessible and can be crossed by a vehicle with ease. All of the bridges, even the wood ones are indestructable (mappers choice on the wood, the others need to be indestructible). The Freeway can be littered with the wrecks of vehicles from both teams (mappers choice). The resource node on the large central bridge is actuall atop the center support, as the bridge is a small suspension bridge, that is accesible by two elevators and laders on the left and right supports of the bridge. An example of the type of bridge I have in mind is this: http://www.howardmodels.com/dpr/brooklyn-bridge/Brooklyn-Bridge.jpg The only change that would really happen is that the center brick support would be larger and lower (For ease of making) so the resource node and points can be built and placed atop of it. If anyone has any questions about further details, please feel free to ask them, and if you would like to try your hand at mapping this, I would be glad to test as I can not even get my installed source sdk to open so I can't even start up hammer. Its annoying . But if you want to make this, I would be happier than hell. Also, please keep in mind that this is a general sketch, and it is hard to better detail than this in macromedia fireworks for someone that is rather not used to it.
adrian: did you see dod_forest in day of defeat? (http://dwl.17buddies.net/link/map/373/dod_forest.html)
MOOtant: No I haven't seen that map. To be honest I don't have either of the Dod's, whether DoD for HL1 or DoD:S. I recently just cleared up some space on the drive I have my Steam app. on so I can now get some more games. Why, is mine like it, or is it something I should look at to make revisions off of?
