Well 1 I need to see if this concept will work or is any good How big will this need to be? (wiki says the minimum is 10000, but then Im not sure what the max should be, or the best size for MY map) Also, I am confused on this, since when do we need terraGen and dispgen to map? it even says in the sticky thread that if you want to know how to control more of your displacements, don't skip steps up to five, but considering hammer has its own displacement tool, and also gives you more control, I fail to see the use of it.
Terragen/dispgen is just a quick way to make complex terrain in hammer. It basically creates a vmf from a heightmap at any size/# of displacements you want (and puts a nodraw brush under each displacement at the proper height). You don't have to use it, but it makes creating large maps in Empires much easier and quicker. You can always adjust the displacements they create afterwards in Hammer. Also, there really isn't any necessary minimum size, but Empires' maps tend to be on the large size. For example, canyon is roughly 28,000 x 28,000, which I think is a pretty good size for an Empires maps. Just don't max out the size, because Hammer starts acting funny when a map is too close to the maximum grid size.
Maps like Duststorm, Cyclopean and Mvalley use as much as they possibly can of the hammer grid without causing problems. As for the map itself, I have no idea what your drawings mean. But, if that 2nd picture is underground stuff, then I would avoid it. Not only is mapping underground stuff a nightmare, but it's also pretty bad for gameplay (Underground will have no minimap, commander can't get his view under there). Have you mapped for the source engine using hammer before?
Height is a great advantage in maps. You can rain down fire on an enemy base or mortar them out of a corner. It's easy to defend. Hard to displace. That being said, multiple levels on a map generally take away from the map as a whole as it splits the team up, turning a huge map with 64 players into a huge map with 32 players on either team dicking around on a different part of the map while tanks ravage the remaining bit. The most important aspect is how you arrange your map. If the map is open, your refineries become the focus of the map, with tanks fighting as they can trying to kill the CV's, like on dust storm. Otherwise, you have a map like canyon where the goal is to push up as close as you can to the enemy base. Each base has a choke point immediately outside of it, and you want to be right there. refineries are simply controlled based on how far up you have pushed. You can also have a mix of the two like on cyclo, where some refineries are simply capped because you have a base between 2 points. They can be taken, but you control that are for the most part.
There's also something like mvalley where the refineries are so few and spread apart that the teams have refineries as a top priority.
Ok, I didn't know the commander couldn't go underground to place crap. Ill scrap the middle under ground. and yes I have mapped for the source engine before...
instead of having 6 refs right next to eachother you can just make the output of a ref 6 instead of 1, simpler and means someones a building bitch for less time on the field. Im not sure I have a very good vision of what the map is to be to be able to tell you the size to use. Also if you dont like terragen and co. I wouldnt bother with them, I never use them in creating a map. I think I used it once for the first map to lay out my displacements for me in size multiples of 16 and never touched again. Plus using terragen makes people forget the displacements can be adjusted on x or y axis rather than just the z axis. if you want a rough size judgement its about 11000 units or some such that droppable buildings in empires will disappear. So you can go load duststorm or something and walk away from the rax until your curiosity is satisfied.
It's not really all that relevant, but recently I noticed Empires lacks small maps that have a good layout. This is really needed when during the day and other times you only have 10-20 people on the server. Many people focus on making 40+ player maps, but if you could make a 20-30 player COMMANDER map with a good layout, I think it would quickly become one of the regulars.
Dispgen created this: With about 60 minutes work and a SpringTA heightmap. It's certainly not a masterpiece but it's pretty decent.
some map concepts benefit from being one huge displacement mesh, others benefit not being so. Duststorm would be a good example of a giant mesh and Canyon would be a good example of the opposite.
yeah now that you mention it, I think Ill just make a 10000 by 10000 map instead. but also I have run into a little problem, there is no grid on hammer when I configure it for 2.27... and I cannot place anything, I tried to change the view mode, but that didn't work. However, on every other source mod game hammer i can use hammer normally. EDIT never mind, its fixed.
