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Forum - main
Guide to mapping page: 1 2 | ||
| http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=95409 Made a guide to mapping for teamliquid.net's sc2 beta key Guide making contest. | ||
| 2009, 06, 14 13:56 | ||
| You surely like to write a lot Oo | ||
| 2009, 06, 14 17:18 | ||
| Sc2 beta key is serious business. I finished it at 7 am this morning (June 14), and have been working on it a bit every day since the contest was announced, June 2nd. | ||
| 2009, 06, 15 06:58 | ||
| Quality > Quantity. Not saying your guide is bad or anything, but I bet you could've had the same chances with less effort. | ||
| 2009, 06, 15 13:10 | ||
| You get two beta keys right? So give the second one to me :P Nice article, haven't read all of it, but tough it looks nice and it sure got a chance to win. | ||
| 2009, 06, 15 13:57 | ||
| Lucky for me I live nearby and got a ticket last year. Sold the WoW Mount for 220$ and have a beta key leftover. BoT, What is this even pathing issue you mentioned in the guide? Elaborate on that more for me plz. And what is the scmdraft symmetry tool? I have been tediously counting squares and fucking up making maps . This is a very good guide btw, You should copy it to 'articles' on this site as well. modified by SpoR | ||
| 2009, 06, 16 00:27 | ||
| I've never seen a testbug map drawing, can you post some? I usually draw all mine out by hand too, but they are not very technical. Also, about Luna. The map was one of the first to deviate from the terran wall which ultimately lead to the shift in terran meta game. Bamboo terran, FD, Fast expanding etc. Terrans learned to adapt and make marines/bunker instead of relying on a wall. But overall Luna does suck. Really bad resource setups in the mains, lack of cliffs, lack of islands, and I agree. Lots of wasted space. But for this map concept, it is actually being used. The water areas serve as a private air only secret route across the edges of the map. Besides this, I've always hated the map. modified by SpoR | ||
| 2009, 06, 16 01:00 | ||
| I don't have any, I only had one and it's on my other harddrive which I can't use atm. Even paths has been discussed here several times. LGI was a big advocate of odd paths. If two paths lead to the same place and are of the distance and there is no obvious path units will take, units will take either path, potentially splitting your army up, causing armies and scouts to miss eachother, etc. Symmetry tool is a series of three checkboxes in upper right side of scmdraft while terrain tool is selected. X, which mirrors your isometric squares over the line x=0, Y, which mirrors your isometric squares over the line y=0, and x/y which mirrors your isometric squares over the line f(x)=x. | ||
| 2009, 06, 16 02:52 | ||
| Give an example of 2 even paths? I don't understand how this is applicable to any maps. So If I make a line straight across the top of the map from left to right it will copy this from right to left on the bottom? | ||
| 2009, 06, 16 03:45 | ||
| Undying Lands has a problem with even paths. Heartbreak Ridge has even paths. | ||
| 2009, 06, 16 06:35 | ||
| Gratz, Nightmarjoo! Who will get the second key? ;) | ||
| 2009, 06, 20 23:17 | ||
| Thanks. A sc friend of mine lol. My real life best friends are mad at me haha. | ||
| 2009, 06, 21 07:51 | ||
| Well, obviously you have rl friends that care about SC. That's kinda admirable too... | ||
| 2009, 06, 21 09:18 | ||
| Gratz on the keys. | ||
| 2009, 06, 22 22:05 | ||
| Well, I see you finally did it and congratulations for that but in some parts you come across as a pedantic academic. I think your rants against linearity and wasted space are somewhat overdone and certainly you admonishment to never make a two player 128x128 map is just plain silly. If you want your guide to have broad appeal you have to recognize/accept that people will play and make the maps they feel like regardless of what you and I think. I mean, just consider that some of the most popular Starcraft maps ever made would NEVER have been made if people had followed your guide: that sort of puts your views into perspective. I also suggest you make an alternate version of your "opus" that is much shorter, preferably with many headings each followed by bullet points that are max one or two paragraphs long and leave out all the philosophical rants. This would be the version to be read by mere mortals (95% of all Starcraft players/mappers). | ||
| 2009, 06, 28 19:45 | ||
| It's not silly, I've looked into this stuff indepthly. I've been studying promaps and learning from them. Through working with Testbug and learning from promaps I've learned a lot about how to make the best possible map for a concept, and that imo is the ideal aim of a mapper. People can make whatever map they want, but I'm saying if they want a chance at getting their map in iccup, ie a good map, they do have to follow some criteria. The most popular maps of starcraft of the past were not made with this knowledge in hand. They did the best they could with modern day gameplay, and with both their understanding of mapping and personal standards to meet. Simply put, the promap mapping standards have increased greatly. So instead of letting bwm (minus Testbug) stay in the dumps of 2005 mapping, I've been trying to explain to everyone what I've found in how the promappers make their maps now. Using space appropriately is paramount. People only resist that idea because they are lazy and don't want to hold themselves to good standards. As in all things in life, as technology and understanding rises, so do standards. It's silly to make a map with the standards mappers used years ago when the average quality of map and the average quality of a promap have both increased so greatly. My mapping guide could not possibly be shorter without lacking content. I am not going to give a bulleted list which may leave people to interpret general ideas on their own. I am making sure to clarify my points so that anyone can fully understand them: that's my aim atleast. I'm fucking serious, you cannot possibly make a perfect (2)128x128 map. You will either have too much going on, have everything too spaced apart, or have wasted huge amounts of space (and thus should have picked a smaller map size). I don't see how anyone could possibly argue against this. We should have learned from Arden's Velocity. That map both wastes a lot of space and has everything spaced out too far. Fools like me thought the map was great from a picture because the proportions of the map are excellent. I even tested the map with psychotemplar (I think it was with him) and we both agreed everything was too spaced apart. I didn't at the time make the connection that it was due to the map being 128x128. I made a (2)128x128 map a while ago and didn't upload it to bwm. I tested a beta/alpha version of it with psychotemplar, and we both agreed everything was too spaced out. You can do this with any (2)128x128 map and I guarantee you'll run into the same problem. (2)Monty Hall is somewhat of an exception, but I would argue that it is not an exception because that rule applies only to normal melee ground maps. As Monty Hall is not, it cannot be expected to follow the same rules. However, Monty Hall is still too spaced out, it just works with the semi-island concept of the map. Also, no one likes or plays Monty Hall because it's really annoying to do so. | ||
| 2009, 06, 28 21:19 | ||
| If I was good at actually making maps, I would be able to use my understanding of mapping and starcraft to make atleast Testbug-quality maps, and pump them out. As it stands, I am a terrible mapper and can only try to help better mappers make such maps. | ||
| 2009, 06, 28 21:20 | ||
| First off, I'm pretty much a noob at map making. I've been doing it for some years now, but not seriously until recently. I do watch lots of pro games however, so I am familiar with the pro maps for the most part. I have to disagree with you Nightmarjoo about map sizes for a particular number of players, and in extension about wasting space. You say 128x128 is too big for 2 player maps, and ok for 4 players. The problem is, 4 player maps are played with 2 players 99% of the time, and yet they don't feel too big. Maps sized at 128x96 are well sized for 2 players I agree, but as I already said 128x128 maps are played all the time with 2 players and work nicely. This leads us to give a range of good sizes, 128x96 being the lower end and 128x128 being the top. Wasting space then becomes a way to wander between the two. Overall your tutorial was very good - I refer to it regularily when making maps now. :D | ||
| 2009, 08, 07 09:32 | ||
| Think, it's not really about the size of a map, but about the distance between bases, number of bases, and size of the bases. It just so happens that you can fit 4 mains, 4 nats, 4 3rd bases, and 4 4th bases pretty well. (4)128x128 maps work fine. The difference between a 4 player map and a 2 player map is the lack of two very large gas expos connected to a nat which must be safe to some extent and allow pvz FE wall-ins, allow sunks to prevent marine run-bys, and prevent protoss from crushing the nat with a bull-dog pvt, etc. Not only this, but this two-base thing must follow the same relative placement, positioning, and pathing connection with the rest of the map, as well as having pathing run through the rest of the bases. It takes a LOT of space to make a fully functional main/nat, and give it good distances from the 3rd base, 4th base, and the other mains/nats, and ensure pathing works the same way. Ensuring positional balance and symmetry (often rotational symmetry in 4 player maps) takes up a lot of space. In a 2 player map, you simply lack all of that. If you left those sizes, distances, and degree of linearity that all requires, you would have wasted a lot of space. There's no need to have a gas expo the size of a main, that space could be used on something else. Another thing to consider, is pathing. I mentioned how 4 player maps end up with fairly linear nat2nat pathing, because without it you'd have too-long distances. So you focus on creating nonlinearity with the pathing through and around the 3rd and 4th bases. "Wasting space then becomes a way to wander between the two". Well, I agree. The problem lies in that I eye "wasting space" as a critical failure of planning an execution, and would call purposefully planning a map requiring you to waste large amounts of space a mess and a half. I'm looking at the best (2)maps, and they are all 128x96 or 96x128. Looking at pro (2)128x128 maps, they're fairly terrible or annoying to play. (2)Monty Hall is a very well-made map, with a nice concept used very well. I however absolutely refuse to play the map because it's so ridiculous to play. The map itself from a mapping perspective alone is amazing, I won't deny. However it has a large flaw from the gaming perspective, it's annoying to play, it's too different from the standard, comfortable model to play. (2)Hwarangdo was a terrible map which was known to be highly imbalanced thanks to the nature of having an expo layout too spread out. The natless gas did not help the gameplay (but did help the concept). The only good thing that came out of that map was July winning the OSL since terrans couldn't win on it and it was z>p. Again, the map was well-made with its concept apparently well-executed, but it was flawed by being awfully imbalanced. I'm assuming you want to make good, balanced maps. If that assumption is false, then go ahead and do whatever you want since my guide no longer applies. tl;dr Assuming 4 player maps are made the same way 2 player maps are is incorrect and in my eyes flaws your thinking on this point. I hope I don't come across as being hostile, I don't mean to be. I'm glad you read my guide and had something intelligent to say about it. I just relish the opportunity to further explain my ideas, and defend my main points. | ||
| 2009, 08, 08 23:39 | ||
| "I hope I don't come across as being hostile" Not at all. But given the responses of the others and myself it looks like this is more of a rule of thumb than a law of mapping. If you removed 2 starting locations on a (4)128x128 map, the only negative change would be that starting positions would not be random. It would look strange to have 2 large expansions with naturals, but you could hardly call it a bad map. It would be funny to have a map competition for (2)128x128 maps which you could judge, although that would kind of go against your aim of not "letting bwm stay in the dumps of 2005 mapping" lol. | ||
| 2009, 08, 09 03:12 | ||
| lol, well maybe they're wrong. I've always seen myself as some kind of midunderstood revolutionary as far as mapping goes :D That competition would give me too many headaches I think hah. | ||
| 2009, 08, 09 05:38 | ||
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