Map: 8c-MountainKing

[KenAlcock]

Greetings
Hello WZ2100 community!

My game handle is: "Cosmic Raven" or "Cosmic Raven 68". I was much more active back in the v2.x ↔ v3.x time period. I don't know if any old forum members or players I used to interact with are still around (paging Mero the map maker). Real life and other games took me away from the WZ2100 community. But I always pull WZ2100 back out every now and again and play it. What a wonderful game to have in open source! I'm glad to see The Project still going strong! (See what I did there? ) I wanted to pop my head back in for a moment and contribute something of value.

Introducing "New" Map: 8c-MountainKing
Because "King of the Mountain" is too long and "King of the Hill" is a TV Show.

Map Image

Editor: Kenneth R Alcock, born in Detroit Michigan, AKA KenAlcock, AKA Cosmic Raven, AKA Cosmic Raven 68

License: CC BY 3.0 + GPL v2+

Credits:

• Pumpkin Studios for creating WZ2100 and for releasing it to open source.
• Pumpkin Studios, whose employees were the authors of the two original maps that I used to create this map: Sk-4c-Basingstoke and Sk-8c-ThePit. I was inspired by both of these maps, each of which has slightly different concepts that I wanted to mash together into a single 8-player map. I outright copied-and-pasted significant portions of both of these Pumpkin Studios maps to create a much larger map that I named: 8c-MountainKing ... and then I manually reworked and manually re-tiled 80% of the 8c-MountainKing map anyway!
• flail13, the author of the Flame map editor.
• BlueMaxima for writing the User Manual for Flame.

Map Attributes:

• Type: Skirmish / Multiplayer
• Design: Symmetrical, Land only
• Tile Set: Rocky Mountains
• Size: 249 x 249, which was largest I could make it in Flame v1.28.
• Aesthetics and Features:
  This map utilizes complex usage of terrain elevations and painstaking application of the Rocky Mountain tile set to try to create an immersive impression that you are fighting up in the snow-capped Rocky Mountains, near and old NORAD airbase at the top of a large mountain. I spent a great deal of time on attention to detail with the visuals. I'm not 100% done with the aesthetics at the time of sharing in this thread. However, I want feedback from other players before I make further changes. This map offers different strategic areas outside the player bases that are designed to be heavily contested that players and AI can fight over. Some areas will change hands several times per game.
• Resource Level: Medium—there are 162 total oil resources for 8 players (plus optional Scavengers) to fight over.
  • 80 reside in the rear of 8 player bases, which are the easiest to defend—10 per base.
  • 16 reside outside the main entrances to player bases, which are more vulnerable to attack—2 per base.
  • 32 reside approximately halfway between any two adjacent player bases in small areas that are easily accessible from 3 different compass points—4 per area. These areas are where you will primarily: scout, claim resources, and fight to maintain control—and they tend to change hands frequently.
  • 34 are dispersed across The Mountain located at the center of the map, which is made up of several plateaus. The various plateaus are connected by several trails that lead from the lowlands up to an old NORAD airbase at the summit. Oil resources on the lowest plateau are much more spread out but they become more densely populated the higher elevation you are at, making the summit a significantly strategic location.
• Scavengers: Should you enable them, the Scavenger faction will have a full-fledged base on the summit of The Mountain, where an old NORAD airbase is located. Initially, Scavengers will control and utilize all oil resources on The Mountain, and they have placed defenses along each mountain trail that approaches their main base at the summit. The Scavengers are as well dug-in and defended as they can be, which makes it a significant risk to prioritize capturing their summit base in order to exploit its resources in the early game ahead of conquering your neighboring enemies!

Map Download:

8c-MountainKing.wz

Map File

(133.03 KiB) Downloaded 99 times

[KenAlcock]

Lets take a quick look at the Pumpkin Studios map: Sk-8c-ThePit:

Map Attributes:

• Type: Skirmish / Multiplayer
• Design: Symmetrical, Minimal water
• Tile Set: Rocky Mountains
• Size: 193 x 193
• Aesthetics and Features:
  This map utilizes both complex use of terrain elevations and painstaking application of the Rocky Mountain tile set to create a really immersive impression that you are fighting up in the snow-capped Rocky Mountains. It has really astounding attention to the visual details.
• Resource Level: VERY LOW
  There are just 4 Oil Resources inside each player base proper, with 2 more immediately outside each base entrance. Then there are only 4 additional Oil Resources to fight over in the center of the map.
• Scavengers: None
• My Opinion - The Positives:
  IMO, this is most beautiful map in the entire game, that is not part of the original campaign. The attention to detail is second to none. Each base is actually unique in terms of its terrain and coloration (as opposed to any of the Square Maps where each base mirrors another base).
• My Opinion - The Negatives:
  These are the things I sought to improve upon in my version of this map project.
  1. The total Oil Resources are far too few for my taste, even when set to high power.
  2. The aesthetic choice to use Rubble tiles as the flat surface of the player bases, dramatically impedes unit movement rate within your own base.
  3. The Player Base entrances are too narrow for even your own forces to egress your base somewhat efficiently.
  4. There is no Scavenger support (back when this map was created we could not have Scavengers on a 8 player map).
  5. Each player base is danger-close to the next one (back when this map was created, map sizes had smaller tile limits).
  6. The "back channel" paths between player bases are too confined for moving units through efficiently (again I'm sure map size factored in).
  7. There is hardly any thing to fight over in the middle of the map, and not much to explore or scout, just 4 oil resources
  8. Given how mountainous the perimeter of the map is, the middle is abnormally flat.

[KenAlcock]

Now, lets take a quick look at the Pumpkin Studios map: SK-4c-Basingstoke:

Map Image

Map Attributes:

• Type: Skirmish / Multiplayer
• Design: Symmetrical, no water
• Tile Set: Arizona
• Size: 192 x 192
• Aesthetics and Features:
  The Sk-4c-Basingstoke map utilizes a complex usage of terrain elevations to create an immersive experience that you are fighting up a very large mountain that has several (8) plateaus. The average height of each plateau is actually not much higher then the previous one. The palisades (the vertical cliff face) of each plateau are actually an optical illusion that any map maker should pay close attention to. (It took me quite some time to figure out how to do it myself.) The original map maker had only 255 units of elevation to work with, yet they created 8 different plateaus (different elevations) that when looked at from a perspective view, appeared like you were climbing a very large mountain. They accomplished this with deceptively pitching the terrain of each plateau so that its downhill cliff side was much higher than its average elevation and its uphill palisade side (that is the base of the next cliff) was much lower than its average elevation. So as a unit moves from the outer cliff toward the inner palisade, toward the center of the Mountain, the elevation actually goes down dramatically not up—it's not a flat plateau at all, but more like a clever concealment of concentric ridges disguised as palisades and cliffs. This means when we look up the Mountain from the lowest terrain on the map, in an elevated perspective view (the default view when you start playing), all the palisades on the Central Mountain appear much taller. In contrast, if each plateau was 100% flat terrain between its cliff and its palisade, then each palisade would be about half as tall and the cliffs would not appear so grandiose, and the mountain as-a-whole wouldn't seem as tall as it does.
• Resource Level: VERY LOW
  There are just 4 Oil Resources inside each player base proper, with 1 more located some distance away on the low ground. There are 26 additional Oil Resources to fight over on the Mountain in the center of the map.
• Scavengers: Should you enable them, the Scavenger faction has a weakly guarded base on the top-most plateau of the center mountain with additional defenses on the next lowest plateau. However, they are only working with 4 Oil Resources and a single generator and control very little of the center mountain.
• My Opinion - The Positives:
  I always found the massive mountain to fight on and conquer fun. It gives the game a true strategic objective that is important to fight over.
• My Opinion - The Negatives:
  These are the things I sought to improve upon in my version of this map project.
  • The total Oil Resources are far too few for my taste, even when set to high power.
  • The Arizona tile set it really ugly, plus I started with a map that was tiled using the Rocky Mountain tile set.
  • Many of the ramps between plateaus dramatically impede unit movement rate. This is due to both their pitch and their staggered locations.
  • The Scavengers are there, but they don't start with enough resources to make them any challenge.
  • I felt like the base at the summit of mountain needed a plausible backstory and should look more like an abandoned military base.

[KenAlcock]

Significant Changes I made Over-and-Above Features Provided By The Two Source Maps:
These are the things I tried to improve upon in my version of the combined maps.

1. Given how mountainous the perimeter of the original Sk-8c-ThePit map was, its center was abnormally and conspicuously flat. There wasn't much to explore, scout, or capture, and hardly anything worth fighting over in the middle of the map (just 4 individually placed oil resources). The original Sk-8c-ThePit map had no Scavenger support, because we couldn't have Scavengers on a 8-player map back when it was created. My idea was to fix all of these things by dropping the central mountain from the Sk-4c-Basingstoke map down in the middle of a much larger version of Sk-8c-ThePit, and then I wanted to level up the Scavenger defenses a notch or five to make it a considerably risky mission to take them out early. However, ...
2. The central mountain from the Sk-4c-Basingstoke map has a diameter that is nearly the same length as one side of the original Sk-8c-ThePit map; it also has 8 plateaus, and was designed for only a 4-player game. This meant I needed:
   1. a much larger version of the Sk-8c-ThePit map.
   2. a central mountain with 8 different access points and trails that were spaced correctly so as not to give anyone an unfair advantage
   3. a central mountain with a much smaller diameter than the one in the Sk-4c-Basingstoke map
   4. a central mountain with perhaps fewer plateaus than the one in the Sk-4c-Basingstoke map
   5. oh yeah, and I had to figure out how to do the same cliff elevation optical illusion that Pumpkin Studios had so sneakily pulled off.
   6. and furthermore, since the Sk-4c-Basingstoke map used the Arizona tile set, I would have to re-tile the entire mountain manually to make it look somewhat as beautiful as the original Sk-8c-ThePit map I was basing my map design off of.
3. Apparently, map sizes had smaller tile limits back when the original Sk-8c-ThePit map was created. Since each player base was danger-close to the next, and since the "back channel" paths between player bases were also too confined to move units through efficiently, I extended the total size of the map from its original 193 x 193 to 249 x 249. This naturally extended the distances between each player base. And having more total map space, permitted me to widen the "back channel" trails between player bases. I still left choke points that could be easily defended. And while I did all of this extension around the perimeter of the map, I also added more areas of contested oil resources for players and/or AI to fight over between each player base.
4. The much larger map dimensions meant I could use a central mountain with 6 plateaus (down from 8 plateaus) that the Sk-4c-Basingstoke map used. But I basically had to redesign the whole mountain anyway, because it required 8 access points and trails. I cheated like crazy! I only designed 1/4 of the entire mountain and then I copied and pasted it 3 times, rotating and flipping the copied parts as required. So we ended up with a much more symmetrical mountain than you would find in nature, but I also spent 75% less time creating something basically from scratch.
5. I spent the most time on the getting the elevations of each plateau correct, and their deceptive pitch angles, along with the grades of the trails up the mountains and entrances to the player bases. I'd like to think my mountain illusion is less noticeable than the one produced by Pumpkin Studios in Sk-4c-Basingstoke, thanks to some clever math, and the Smoothing function in Flame. But you all will be the judge of that.
6. I also widened the main entrance to each player base so that a player's forces could egress more efficiently. Unfortunately, a notable downside to this entrance widening is that the NullBot AI will tend to defend his main base entrance by constructing hardpoints in the middle of the road, which 100% defeats the purpose for my widening of the entrance. At least we human players will have better entrances to launch our forces through!
7. I've sacrificed some aesthetic choices Pumpkin Studios made when they created the incredibly beautiful Sk-8c-ThePit map, in order to allow better and faster base construction and faster unit speed within a player base, as well as better unit pathing in between player bases. Pumpkin Studios had prolifically used Rubble tiles as the more-or-less flat surfaces within player bases, as well as the "back channel" pathways between them. This dramatically impeded unit movement rate. Instead, I transitioned the terrain from: the surrounding snowy mountain tops, to their cliffs, to the rubble at the base of palisades, to sandy brush, eventually giving way to a concrete surface that we could build a base on and move units on more efficiently. The "back channel" pathways have no concrete and only use Sandy Brush so they are faster than they were on the Sk-8c-ThePit map, but they are still slower than concrete.
8. I increased the total oil resources on this map to considerably more than double those that were provided by the combination of the two source maps. Even still, we are no where near the range of max-oil. Both original maps were very low oil resources and this one is squarely in the medium resources range.

My WZ2100 Background Bias Has Definitely Impacted This Map's Design (hopefully not adversely)
I have to give everyone fair warning upfront. I HAVE NOT PLAYED ANY WZ2100 VERSION PAST v3.2.3! In fact, I tend to go backwards and not forwards in my WZ2100 versions. Why, you may ask? Well, one of my personal pet peeves was when someone had the idea to make the Seraph Missile system a direct fire weapon, which IMO royally screwed up the graphics of how both the Seraph and Archangel missile system projectiles appear onscreen when they fire their salvos. So my being stuck in the past may or may not impact how you experience this map in whatever WZ2100 version you play, against whatever AI you play against, or with whichever mods you use with it. But I have only tested this map up through v3.2.3. I did download and install the most recent build and confirm the map loads and I saw no errors, but I didn't play it in that version. Your mileage may vary, but I suspect things will be just fine.

Current Map Project Status:
I have finally completed my intended design for this map project that I actually started working on waaaay back in 2010. I realized back then it was going to be some work, and I was quite overwhelmed at first. But lately, I've played a lot of single player WZ2100 Skirmish against different AI scenarios and I've really desired having this map to play on. I've been play testing it for about 1 week now, and I think that NullBot AI does well enough on it.

1. The map's overall intended design is 100% implemented.
2. I have only applied minimal aesthetics or variations to each Player Base. I'm trying to balance the aesthetics with leaving enough room within a player base for the I-want-to-build-everything-in-a-neat-base type of players, like myself.
3. I actually use the dark roads in each player base tell me where to build my buildings when I play through. I'll upload a screen grab of my base on my next play through, so you can see what I mean. For now, I'm leaving the roads there as references so when I go to add more aesthetics later, I make sure we can still build a complete base.
4. I haven't placed any base structures or defenses yet in player bases for the Advanced Bases setting. I wanted to see how the AI would defend the Gates I defined 1st, and I thought getting player feedback would valuable for this. However the base structures will be place somewhere along the existing road tiles in each base.
5. I haven't applied any aesthetics (elevations or tiles) to the intermediate terrain between the 8 Player Bases and the large, central mountain peak. I wanted to be sure I'm 100% done adjusting the size of the middle Mountain 1st.

So I hope others will download and play through this map and leave some feedback comments!