We really need a few small non gimmicky, commander maps for the servers. About the size of money or crossroads. The active playerbase is small most of the time. 9 playing right now and about an average of 10 all day so far. It would be great to have more small maps to offer the players that do play. I hope mappers will consider my request. Thank you
I was toying with the idea of taking full size commander maps and maybe cutting the playable area down to half or so. Imagine Canyon with BE starting in the northeast, or something of that nature. With a bit of manipulation of the map itself they could be a lot better for small teams. Good candidates for cutdown versions IMO would be canyon, duststorm, isle, slaughtered, and maybe coast. As for making original small commander maps, the process for making a good map is pretty long term no matter what the size, and maps the size of crossroads are pretty limiting as far as gameplay design goes. I think we all agree that we need a bigger range of maps suitable for small amounts of players though.
The issue is that people usually think that small map means one linear fuckfest. A small map can still be open, or have more than one chokepoint.
In anything smaller than an 8v8 commander match the map really has to be linear. Linear not necessarily being one tight lane like district, but more like bootybay (as much as I don't like the map); with 5 people on your team and an open map like duststorm, there's just too much playable area. The players need to be guided to the battle and kept there by the map
You could still have an open map 1/4 of the size of duststorm. And all I mean is, having 1 choke really shouldn't be an option. Honestly, a map that was quite literally a circle should work. Imagine something maybe 1/3 of the size of canyon, and it's essentially a loop (much like canyon). You can add a few raised areas where you can fit maybe 1 building to match the hills on canyon, but for the most part it's nice and tight. Something simple like that, but actually plays properly like an Empires map.
I haven't done it in a while and I don't necessarily guarantee it'll work, but I'll try and properly design one for you with some help from others.
I don't think you should go for anything smaller than that, 8 vs 8 seems fine. Below that, even if the map is good, gameplay will be at risk anyway. If one team has 6 players and the other team has 7, or even if one team simply has one good player more than the other, the match will most likely suck. On top of this, knowing the empires community, you'll see the map voted for much more when there's 64 players than when there are 12. So i'd go for a 16 player map, not smaller. After all if it's optimized for 16, it should still be decent with 10 as well. Edit: I might try designing one myself, but don't let that stop you Trickster. I've started designing dozens of map, i just rarely manage to get it done.
Idea #1 Yes, my skills are subzero. Heighmap White/Black = High/Low ground Grey = higher than black but lower than white White = Inaccessible and impossible to shoot over RED/BLUE = NF/BE Yellow = Possible bases Orange = Refs All black ground = No buildings except for armories. May be too big, will throw more ideas.
you know how big the area for a vf has to be? then add rax, armory, radar and you have the size of the average cs map ... so much for yellow represents bases. if it would be that big it could be played with 64players aswell ... thing with empires is, you get quite huge bases quite quick. so the amount of possible chokepoints decreases dramatically. if you take half the size of any empires map (so actually 1/4th the area), there barely are 2 base areas let alone enough space for expansions. also arty.
Looking through my mapsrc directory now I have a few partial maps that could be made into pretty decent small player count maps. In particular I have an emp_harbor_wip half finished that was loosely based off of a Star Wars Battlefront map "Rhen Var Harbor", which if you don't remember it was an ancient ruined harbor on a frozen over sea. I'm looking at this again in particular because I already have a lot of the geometry and textures made, and the open ice gives the teams enough room even on a half-grid map. The basic layout would be close to this: with NF starting in the southwest: And BE in the northeast:
Looks good to me! As long as there are also interesting areas with cover for infantry i'd say go for it! I've quickly put together a concept map as well, with a different focus (more like slaughtered meets coast meets crossroads). I'll put it here as well should someone else get infected with the mapping virus. The red area is the real map, the yellow bars are the visibility blockers for performance, the grey 'I' would be some crossroads-like building vehicles can drive under and infantry walk over. Orange would be infantry pathways along the cliff (similar to crossroads), and green could be trees or whatever. Mapsize is about 25-30 % of emp_canyon There's 4 areas with enough room for every building a team can place, even in the western area. About a third of the map is just large enough for buildings as small as a rax or armory http://dl.dropbox.com/u/234836/mapping/small_comm_map/small_commandermap_scale.jpg Terrain would be quite flat for base building, unless where there'd be trees or other types of cover (the green parts on the image) and close to the cliffs. The image was taken from a testmap, since i found it quite difficult to make a design without having exact coordinates for the visibility blockers: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/234836/mapping/small_comm_map/small_commandermap.vmf The size of the areas and paths may seem small, but if the mapper doesn't reduce the playable areas when he's adding the cliffs, it's exactly as big as most of the areas in slaughtered. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/234836/mapping/small_comm_map/small_commandermap_scale2.jpg Main problem i see: The crossroads-like building might have to go, if people behave the same on this map as they do on bush ==> all rush the bunker thingy and ignore everything else
Loving all of it. w00kie generally has what I intended down in his concept for the most part, although I'd go for raised areas where you can fit rax/ref/armoury, and flat base areas on the same ground where you can fit a VF as well. But for the most part you've done what I meant so there's no real reason for me to do it. Also Varbles, I think your idea is awesome if I understand it right, with the right hand side of the map being more covered and infantry oriented, and that ref out on the boat being something that vehicles could contest? As for Silk, I can't help but think you've essentially made emp_coast on a smaller scale, with the main issue being that it does split into 3 chokepoints under certain circumstances, which I'm not sure is the best idea. Open is fine and 2 chokepoints should be fine, but going outside of that means that you need to spread too thinly at such low playercounts.
I'm not at all worried about that. Most of the time you'll be playing in areas with only 2 ways: left and right The places where it splits in 3 will most of the time be played as if there's only 2, since often 1 path is secure for 1 of the teams and needs no player presence. The splits mostly offer a possibility to try something else if the outer circle results in a stalemate, which is a risk with low playercounts; there just isn't enough power to break through a good defense like their would be with more players. And when you are divided over 3 paths - which won't be for long because of the small scale, in seconds you are either where you need to be, or death - with 7 players you can still have 3-3-1 or 3-2-2 But i'll grant you it's not a map for 12 players, though it's still way more fun to play with 12 than duststorm or canyon.
I have no idea what emp_cave is or was. If someone made that layout before, it wasn't me. Flat was as big as arid, bush and chain. I don't remember why i stopped working on it. I didn't saw a future for it, but i don't know why anymore.
