4c-Arena #14

[Olrox]

Hail, dear members of the community

Now this was a personal challenge to myself. Usually I hate geometric maps, but I thought they could surely look & play nicely (take 8c-ConcretePlayground, a really good map IMO, for example), therefore decided to make one myself. Of course I didn't pay less attention to detail - that's something I won't give up.
And I wanted to make at least one map in each tileset also, to explore their textures and better decide which one to use later.

This is result of such effort:

I present you...

~Arena #14~
(oooohhh :suprised: )

Arena 14 announcement.png

That's it, occasional ladies and usual gentleman. I highly recommend seeing it with you own eyes! This one is ready to go: (Please vote on the poll! Even your indirect opinion can help the map to improve )

4c-Arena_14.wz

There is a known issue with a few of my custom cliff transition to the water. I've fixed the cliffs to 2-tile to prevent the infamous suicide VTOL wheelie maneuver, let me know if you notice any issues with that.

The streets were supposed to be a bit lower in relation to the city level, but I've reduced the height of mostly every white part in the heightmap to help avoid the forementioned issue with VTOLs. Let me know if you'd rather have them lower.

Comments and improvement suggestions are welcome as always!
Thanks for your patience!

Have a good war!

~Olrox

[Olrox]

Edit: Version 1.3 is out.
Changes: Added the missing oil resources from the northern bases' back passage.

[Dylan Hsu]

Tell me more about this wheelie thing.

[Olrox]

Tell me more about this wheelie thing.

It's when a VTOL pass over a clif that's too steep (like, from less than 20 to more than 200 height), there's a common bug where the VTOL will remain with the front part tilted sort of "upwards" - hence the nickname, "wheelie".
The problem with that is that the VTOLs go awfully slowly when in this situation, and usually get shot to death by AA defenses.

To avoid that, while mantaining the drastic transition from 0 to 200+ height, I've made the cliffs 2-tiles, so that their angle doesn't cause the infamous bug to VTOLs

~Olrox

[Dylan Hsu]

cliffs with that big of a gradient look ugly anyways. you should know better aesthetically and pragmatically.

[Olrox]

cliffs with that big of a gradient look ugly anyways. you should know better aesthetically and pragmatically.

Why, do you prefer 2 cliffs one before each other?
Feel free to edit the damned map if you want to, it's published under CC-BY-SA-3.0 + GPLv2. Post a better version if you want, of give me suggestions if you wish me to change something - if someone else agrees, I might very well commit the changes.

And gradient? Only gradients on the map are in the height map, lol.

You really should change that attitude of yours if you ever want to be taken seriously. Really, you're the most annoying member around, IMO.
Actually, I can't really decide between you and TVR. You're more like a "big-mouthed version of TVR", to me.

~Olrox

[Dylan Hsu]

look, here is what i am trying to say. the freakin texture is unskewed on a flat, square tile. if you have a height difference of 200, the texture is applied on a sqrt(200^2 + tilesize^2) rectangular area, much longer than that square tile, resulting in the cliff texture being very stretched and ugly. i agree with your decision to do 2 ply cliffs. (however, why you need that much height is still unbeknownst to me)

[Olrox]

look, here is what i am trying to say. the freakin texture is unskewed on a flat, square tile. if you have a height difference of 200, the texture is applied on a sqrt(200^2 + tilesize^2) rectangular area, much longer than that square tile, resulting in the cliff texture being very stretched and ugly. i agree with your decision to do 2 ply cliffs. (however, why you need that much height is still unbeknownst to me)

Yeah, that's a pity, and it looked way different in the map editor.

I need that much height to produce the effect I've wanted on the slopes that go from the bases to the central part of the map, and grant access to the defense platforms. Its effects on unit speed were something I've wanted to play with in this map.

Also, your formula is wrong as there are 2 tiles. A more correct calculation would be A²=(102²+65²), as the 204 height difference is split between the 2 tiles. This is one more reason for me to use 2 tiles, for the textures not to be too stretched.

Anyway, here's a picture showing how it looks like in the editor:

2-tile cliffs.PNG

I could change the cliffs to another unused texture, anyway.

~Olrox

[Safety0ff]

There is a known issue with a few of my custom cliff transition to the water. I've fixed the cliffs to 2-tile to prevent the infamous suicide VTOL wheelie maneuver, let me know if you notice any issues with that.

It's an issue that has been fixed at r10022, you won't have to worry about it in future releases.

[Olrox]

There is a known issue with a few of my custom cliff transition to the water. I've fixed the cliffs to 2-tile to prevent the infamous suicide VTOL wheelie maneuver, let me know if you notice any issues with that.

It's an issue that has been fixed at r10022, you won't have to worry about it in future releases.

Hmm, nice to know!
1 less problem with changing height scale. Zarel/Per mentioned an essential problem with the way artillery fire, is that a problem with projectiles crossing terrain? I know it isn't related to *this* topic, but anyway - I'd like to know directly what's that problem, as mapping just got relevant to my interests
BTW Safety0ff, Zarel, Per, or any other dev that comes across this, just give me a "go search for that yourself" if it's an abuse of patience

Thanks,
~Olrox

[Dylan Hsu]

look, here is what i am trying to say. the freakin texture is unskewed on a flat, square tile. if you have a height difference of 200, the texture is applied on a sqrt(200^2 + tilesize^2) rectangular area, much longer than that square tile, resulting in the cliff texture being very stretched and ugly. i agree with your decision to do 2 ply cliffs. (however, why you need that much height is still unbeknownst to me)

Yeah, that's a pity, and it looked way different in the map editor.

I need that much height to produce the effect I've wanted on the slopes that go from the bases to the central part of the map, and grant access to the defense platforms. Its effects on unit speed were something I've wanted to play with in this map.

Also, your formula is wrong as there are 2 tiles. A more correct calculation would be A²=(102²+65²), as the 204 height difference is split between the 2 tiles. This is one more reason for me to use 2 tiles, for the textures not to be too stretched.

Anyway, here's a picture showing how it looks like in the editor:

2-tile cliffs.PNG

I could change the cliffs to another unused texture, anyway.

~Olrox

you missed my entire point, i was talking about cliffs which were 1 thick. the stretching i presented was to support your decision to go with 2ply.

[Olrox]

you missed my entire point, i was talking about cliffs which were 1 thick. the stretching i presented was to support your decision to go with 2ply.

Hmm, yeah, reading it again I see I've missed it on the part I refer to the formula, sorry.
But don't you think it's silly to say that the cliffs are too ugly and then support my decision to make them like that? I think that's why I was confused while reading your post. Man, and I really appreciate it when people put an effort in writing their posts with quality - I don't know if (actually don't think that) you care, but would make it easier for other members to better understand your point.

Also, I didn't missed your *entire* point, as I had the care of explaining my reasons, especially the ones for having that much height difference in a single cliff. After all, I really think that only the 2 lines about the "stretching" were affected by my misinterpretation, and that's a small part of my post. I've even opened the editor especially to provide you an image of how the cliffs were supposed to look, see.

I won't do that for you anymore, as you don't seem to appreciate it at all - sorry if it offended your intellectual capabilities.

~Olrox

[Michal]

I tried this map with adv. bases. Looks cool, but for me, its too much that 'gravel' ground. Kinda hurts my eyes to look at it - maybe add some features (bigger rocks etc.) or mix textures. Now its just a sea of small dots, when you scroll its not that good - psychodelic effects

Generally map looks promising, I have to try it with a friend vs. Dydo AI or so.

[Alpha93]

Tried this with no bases. Took me almost 3 hours to take the AI down while it was consta targetting me with 2 Laser Sats. Pretty much interesting map overall.