Place your base. Proposals are invited

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montetank
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Place your base. Proposals are invited

Post by montetank »

Hello. nearly 90% of my maps are symetrical maps. Time to make an assymetric map. I know, many players like them. viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12168
So-where is the problem? I try to explain in my bad english.
It is very easy to create a map. Mountains..Roads...Water...Flats....etc. Thats not the point. It is very difficult, to place the bases and the oil more or less fair and playable. So-here you see a midsizemap (120-120). Typical midsize for a 4 player map. It is in Rocky-style. White colour are hights (mountains) black is hight=0. The red lines are cliffs and not passable. And now it is on you. Where should you place 4 bases and for exampe 32 oil-derricks? Have fun. Use your snipping-tool and paint and post it here (only the bases). You will see, how difficult it is :wink:
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Berg
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Re: Place your base. Proposals are invited

Post by Berg »

I understand what your trying to do But more info is needed looking at your map I can see the choke points at the cliffs.
First how wide are they all or are they different widths?
Second how steep are the slopes the units have to travel over?
I do like your Idea.
Now how much oil is on the map and where not counting bases.
If all things not considered I would PUT the bases as far apart as possible.
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Tzeentch
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Re: Place your base. Proposals are invited

Post by Tzeentch »

I'd place all bases very close for some fun. Oil further out from the initial bases
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Re: Place your base. Proposals are invited

Post by montetank »

I try to make a 4-player map. 3 Bases very close with much oil not so far. And 1 Base standing alone far away on the top of the mountain with less oil. So- just to see, what will happen. Yes-Berg is right. You need more informations. So, to be honest, i just want to show with this topic, how difficult it is to make a fair asymmetric map.
In case the WZ-game ends in a draw , the game winner will be determined by penalty shoot-out.
cumandgetit
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Re: Place your base. Proposals are invited

Post by cumandgetit »

i'm one fan that does not have to be convinced of the difficulty of making a fair MP asymmetric map. i made my first effort with TA many moons past and then later efforts with WZ, first using Edit World and then FlaMe.

so my interest goes beyond just the matter of acknowledging or demonstrating difficulty and extends to the actual making.

within that spirit of inquiry towards revealing useful principles, my thinking on this topic goes to what follows as a starting point.

* the concept of "fairness" has always been stricter in MP map making than in maps for SP Campaign mode. Fairness in SP can naturally include "handicapping" in its GP design so asymmetric maps are the norm in Campaign mode, for example. which leads to the possibility that if MP GP was accepting of handicaping techniques then fairness in asymmetric map design would take on a meaning different than what is conventionally assumed in traditional symmetric map design. and I think within that acceptance of handicapping, fair asymmetric MP map designing would be more feasible than only applying the conventional fairness criteria derived from symmetric MP mode mapping.

* i believe the requests for more asymmetric maps is reflective of the Campaign Mode fan base wanting an aspect of that mode's experience in playing on MP designed maps.... which simultaneously serve Skirmish Mode vs. Bots, the fans of which overlap more with Campaign Mode than MP vs. humans.

but, I'm getting ahead of myself. I really would like to get down to a more basic level in uncovering and stating clearly, the practical hows of going about making fair asymmetric MP maps.

so, I will reboot this post with the following


* the assumption here is that in the great set of all possible asymmetric WZ maps there is a sub-set that can be balanced, or made "fair", for FFA or Team MP vs humans, and that your map, montetank, as it stands now can with certainty be a part of that sub-set and not the other sub-set that can never be balanced fairly for MP GP using conventional fairness criteria that donot employ handicapping techniques.

* one could further posit that there is a better chance of balancing for FFA or Team MP if the topographic asymmetry is designed from the ground up with that in mind rather than if the asymmetry is random.

* so my first question would be:

~ is the topographic asymmetry of your map by design with balanced MP in mind or is it purely random ?

* my second question:

~ if your topographic asymmetry is achieved from the ground up by design with MP balance in mind, what were the criteria you followed in the making ?

i hope I'm not out of bounds in going down this path. if I am, donot hesitate to set me straight. :)
:lecture:

"Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to, to hide them." - Duc de la Rochefoucauld
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Re: Place your base. Proposals are invited

Post by cumandgetit »

so my interest goes beyond just the matter of acknowledging or demonstrating difficulty and extends to the actual making.

within that spirit of inquiry towards revealing useful principles, my thinking on this topic goes to what follows as a starting point.
because of that genuine interest I decided to do some research today and see what was out there on the web related to the points made & the questions asked. maybe something was lost in translation but not my interest or moxie. ;)

i was suprised by how little i found of a useful nature. from what i can tell i believe that reflects more the difficulty of this subject than a lack of interest in it. so let me share what i came across.

what little discussion i found was mostly out of the star craft 2 community. while warzone & star craft 2 are significantly different there was some overlap in what precise criteria to consider when trying to make fair asymmetric rts mp maps. the following 2 treads are typical of what is talked about but do not exhaust the subject imho.

Teamliquid on Asymmetric Melee SC2 maps

Asymmetrical Maps discussion on SC2 Battlenet

imho the real gem of my research efforts was a 14 page .pdf paper put out by Games Research Lab, part of the School of Computer Science of McGill University.

http://gram.cs.mcgill.ca/

the name of paper -

Geometric Analysis of Maps in Real-Time Strategy Games:
Measuring Map Quality in a Competitive Setting


it gets a little technical in math & algorithms but don't let that discourage you because all the metric criteria insights are spelled out in clear and basic english.

you can dl the .pdf here:

LINK

if the discussion picks up i'll participate. if not, all the best with your map making. :)
:lecture:

"Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to, to hide them." - Duc de la Rochefoucauld
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Re: Place your base. Proposals are invited

Post by montetank »

lol-i graduate in mathematics in Hamburg/Germany-don`t worry about that.
I found a way, to make an absolute fair, asymmetrical map. I am just at work. You will be surprised :)
Last edited by montetank on 17 Jul 2015, 13:46, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Place your base. Proposals are invited

Post by NoQ »

LINK
Wow, nice one.
Thanks a lot for the article.
Some of the references also look curious.
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montetank
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Re: Place your base. Proposals are invited

Post by montetank »

NoQ wrote: Some of the references also look curious.
Yeah-i know Edelsbrunner-very nice link. Have downloaded the file-something to read this weekend. Thanks to cumandgetit :3
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Re: Place your base. Proposals are invited

Post by cumandgetit »

as soon as i started reading the paper i felt an excitement building which turned to inspiration. when done i thought others might find its insights useful. it gladens me to hear both your responses, NoQ & montetank, to that end. thanks for taking the time to share. :)

my being inspired has led me to consider opening up flame again and trying to work out some simple 2p & 3p asymmetric map ideas that have been floating in my head for a while. :hmm:

on the technical aspects of the paper - i guessed there would be some who had the background to appreciate it but i thought that for those without that background they could still understand the insights presented and apply them in thier mapping. :ok:

the mcgill games lab has done other interesting work in game a.i. and pathfinding that i've been looking at too which might also be worth checking out. in designing asymmetric maps these are also factors that have to be taken into account since the maps will also be used with bots and while some designs will be entirely fair with humans, the same won't be the case with bots. like for example if you design an asymmetric map that uses urban features and makes thier destruction a part of gameplay advance. :scared1:
:lecture:

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Re: Place your base. Proposals are invited

Post by montetank »

cumandgetit wrote:
in designing asymmetric maps these are also factors that have to be taken into account since the maps will also be used with bots and while some designs will be entirely fair with humans, the same won't be the case with bots. like for example if you design an asymmetric map that uses urban features and makes thier destruction a part of gameplay advance. :scared1:
Yes-thats a great problem. For example to hide some extra oil-barrels or oil-derricks behind trees or buildings. So, that a player must research at first some tank to destroy the trees etc. to arrive the oil. Another example: I had some map-ideas, where i didn`t want, that the trucks blockade a way with labs at the beginning of the game. Would be easy to manage with one tree or another feature. But it isn`t fair later in the game. Third example: I made a 3-player map, where i want to force the player to build his first factorys near a cliff. I placed many trees in his main-base plateau. Later the player would be able to enlarge his base by destroying the trees. Not possible with the bots.
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Re: Place your base. Proposals are invited

Post by cumandgetit »

montetank, for sure bot limitations do put a damper on mp map design, esp asymmetric. for the sake of greater freedom of creative expression, i can see only one work-around. make one version of a map to account for bot limitations and another version of the map for human only play. of course that entails even more time & work on top of the already demanding proposition of fair asymmetry

this notion of greater freedom of creative expression in both asymmetric map design and variety in the mp gameplay experience also applies to "handicapping". in this case you would be going for asymmetry in the context of one very skilled player going up against 2 or 3 less skilled players. the obvious problem with that is it requires that a reliable and objective ranking system be in place as well some sort of convenient and precise game match-up matrix.

________________


file this post under oddly relevant to the topic at hand and maybe amusing at the same time.

i decided to take a relaxing break this morning from working on a personal project and watch a movie that i've had since last year. been looking forward to it since i first heard it was in production. don't know why i waited so long as reviews were predominantly glowing.

the movie tells the story of one of my real life heroes, a towering original intellect, and has some of my favorite performers - charles dance, kiera knightley & bennedict cumberbatch. some have likely guessed that i'm refering to "the imitation game" and the story of alan turing facing arguably the greatest cryptography challenge of the 20th century - the enigma machine.

the thought that occured to me today while watching the movie was simply in the form of an analogy.

the number of possible settings for the enigma machine was some astronomical number and they were changed every 24 hours.

the number of possible asymmetric wz maps is atronomical but only a small subset of that can be made fair for competitive mp.

turing's challenge with enigma was to find a method that could, within a matter of hours, narrow down that astronomical number of possible settings to the precise one that could inturn be used to decrypt enigma messages, any given day of broadcast. thus the first universal machine was born, ww2 won and the world we take for granted today.

as mappers intent on designing fair asymmetric maps our task is likewise to find what method(s) to winnow only the fair design out of all the possiblities. the mcgill game lab paper is about the method(s) to do just that. its an early & significant salvo. in a sense like turing's cambridge paper was well befor he built "christopher" to tackle the enigma challenge.

while turing's work to unravel enigma by creating the first computor definitely helped turn the tide of ww2 in the allies favor, the mcgill paper much more modestly may help turn the tide in making more feasible the creation of fair asymmetric wz mp maps.

well there you have my little thought - tale for the year. :)
:lecture:

"Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to, to hide them." - Duc de la Rochefoucauld
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