Warzone 2100 Forums

You call "maps" where everything map-related is missing "maps", totally flat "maps" without any terrain?!

Next time they'll probably ask to include that map based on a *** picture. Cause "it'd make the game popular, people will like it, everybody enjoys staring at big *** instead of doing annoying micromanagement" and "the world isn't going to end, just don't play it if you don't like it for some reason, it's just your tastes, you know, you should respect our tastes as well"

btw: there are so many really good maps out there. why did we put that terrible cockate map into the game? o.O

NoQ wrote:If they include a high oil map with the latest release of WZ, that's it for me, i will never play this game again.

At least he didn't threaten to commit suicide...

The petty insults and childish ultimatums grow tiresome. I will now kindly exit this thread. Good day.

themac wrote:btw: there are so many really good maps out there. why did we put that terrible cockate map into the game? o.O

That was a long time ago.
It is pre-FlaME epoch.

I see a positive development in this thread.
It is not the time to be offended so fast. This is counterproductive
We all know why we are going around in circles in this discussion.

I haven't played one RTS that has included generic, flat, high oil maps.
I have seen no valid reason to start now.

The main reason why people want high oil is so they can research things faster, to get at the 'better' stuff.
Pumpkin saw this, and said, we can compromise. Thus, the tech levels are a way to level the playing field so to speak, for people that want the 'better' stuff sooner.

Having non-flat terrain in the game, serves a major purpose for this engine (and most others), you will get less lag, and most routines will execute quicker when the area is split up into sections.
Of course, there is more to it than that, but for now, that description will suffice.

In the future, we could also have a way to specify the starting amount of power to fine tune this even more.

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Pumpkin's start Tech Levels didnot anticipate that getting to the good stuff quickly is only part of the attraction, and not even the central one, of High Oil, flat maps. The hyper process itself of getting there, and all that this experience entails and demands, the compelling exhilaration of that process if you will, was never foreseen. After enduring almost 15 years, it has to be acknowledged as a legitimate segment of the fan base. All the different segments, their diversity, even those incompatible with one another, in aggregate, constitute the games future and longevity, I believe. Accomodating that diversity is not, I think, the gaming equivalent of Physics M-Theory. I already suggested a positive approach to that end.

Even 15 years later, WZ is a significantly different RTS such that apples to apples reasoning can be misleading, IMO.

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montetank wrote:I see a positive development in this thread.
It is not the time to be offended so fast. This is counterproductive

+1

montetank wrote: We all know why we are going around in circles in this discussion.

I do not know. Please explain.
I do not understand many things in this thread.


Content below can make you hatred, dont read.

Content below can make you hatred, dont read.

I confirm.

This minds me of an experience I made back in 1993. A 14 years old boy bought my old home computer. It was his first home computer. I visited him when he begun "playing" the famous space trading game "Elite". He flew cycles with his spaceship, shooting on the background stars like stupid. I said: "hey, these are just background stars, you can´t shoot them". But he continuted shooting onto the starts like stupid not responsing. At this point I said: "if that game does not interest you, just tell me." No response. Then I went home, leaving him alone. I did not like to waste my time with him.

If you guys really want to make flat high oil maps, might aswell make at least decent. There's plenty of examples in the real world, and one of them is probably Prokhorovka, the stage of the biggest armored fight of WW2.
Flat, empty, woefully bad-looking and bad-thought maps is what keeps me from playing NTW every now and then and keeps me away from most of MP matches.

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In re-reading this thread I'm reminded of a now classic scientific experiment first conducted in 1975. In the 38 years since, it's been constructed in many variants and the findings independently confirmed all over the planet. Let me quote Wikipedia in brief:

.... The best-known study demonstrating inattentional blindness is the Invisible gorilla test, conducted by Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Christopher Chabris of Harvard University. This study, a revised version of earlier studies conducted by Ulric Neisser, Neisser and Becklen, 1975, asked subjects to watch a short video of two groups of people (wearing black and white t-shirts) pass a basketball around. The subjects are told to either count the number of passes made by one of the teams or to keep count of bounce passes vs. aerial passes. In different versions of the video a woman walks through the scene carrying an umbrella, or wearing a full gorilla suit. After watching the video the subjects are asked if they saw anything out of the ordinary take place. In most groups, 50% of the subjects did not report seeing the gorilla. The failure to perceive the gorilla or the woman carrying an umbrella is attributed to the failure to attend to it while engaged in the difficult task of counting the number of passes of the ball. These results indicate that the relationship between what is in one's visual field and perception is based much more on attention than was previously thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness

There are other hard-wired heuristics, potential cognitive pitfalls we are all predisposed to, that also come into play here (like cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias and selective exposure) that we have to be mindful of in carrying on any discussion whose purpose is to best serve the game and the diversity of its audience segments.

I get high-oil, flat maps and thier team play. Why they are made and what some enjoy about them. Ditto, other map types, team and FFA GP, MP / SP modes, degrees of "low oil", topographic detail and the differing pleasures people derive from the experience of playing these variants of WZ. I appreciate and respect the diversity of prefs and their respective audiences, also acknowledging that the simple designations of Hi-Oil and Low-Oil are more representitive of a continuum than an either-or polarity of how the game "should" be enjoyed.

Where I part company is that I donot think one type enjoyment (and thier respective maps, fans and GP styles) inherently superior, or that the binary needs to cater to only one audience segment above all others in order to succeed as a game with a unique identity in the RTS genre.

Both mapping and the binary can already accomodate the various audiences with thier differing prefs and GP pleasures.

That said, I also think there is room for refinements and enhancements that would benefit ALL fan segments, including those that are mutually exclusive and fundamentally incompatible with one another. That is part of the deep beauty of the game, IMO. There is a place for objectivity here that does not deny the value and legitimacy of subjective playing experience that differs.

The challenge upfront is carrying on discussions that can identify areas for improvment that are mutually inclusive without degenerating into ad hominem exchange or declarations about whose particular style of enjoying the game is superior, therefore making them the superior voice, the one and only voice to attend, to shape the game around, going forward. Facilitating the like minded finding one another to enjoy their prefered GP style of maps and mods without hassles would also help.

This exhausts my constructive thoughts on the subject so I will bow out to solely, and graciously, vest in my odd projects thread. Do appreciate the opportunity to clarify my thinking, if nought else.
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Noobs start to play WZ with oil, then they try low. Somebody of them like low, somebody no. But fact is fact - 80% games r high oil, we have many pro players (+-) on high oil games. If we include high oil maps as standart, nothing changes. Really.

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Let's put these statistical refs in perspective.

Your total fan base is 100% and is comprised of diverse segments. I'll be super generous and posit that the MP segment makes up 25% of the total fan base. That would translate your statistic to 80% of 25%. Now the last statistics I was privy to are from the anchient days of Retail / Mplayer (that's where I'm getting my 25% MP segment as being super generous). Perhaps there has been a radical transformation in recent years in the total fan base profile of segment %s and MP has flipped to representing a 75% segment of the total fan base rather than the 10%-15% segment of the Retail / Mplayer era (a factor in why the game tanked, dev shut down and the plug pulled by the publisher). More recent bonafide statistics on the game's fan segment breakdown would be interesting but still would not change the viable strategy of respecting all disparate fan base segments as a powerful way forward.

I also rather find making up your own contrary definition of an English word whose etymology was set in 1798 a dubious proposition, to say the least, especially when there are actual English words that fit the circumstance perfectly (ie. adept, virtuoso, grandmaster, etc.) Just can't buy into it unless I've missed where you can make a living playing this game as you can with others, like SC, and the attribute would be thoroughly appropriate.

Here's the actual definition for the last 300+ years:

(of a person) engaged in a specified activity as one's main paid occupation rather than as a pastime.

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