FS The Hills Have Eyes (2-6) Options

[Rampastring]

This is my 3rd to-be-released-publicly map.

Size: 120x140
Players: 6
Mapper: ^Rampastein
Lighting: Bright "golden", will change to dark red after some time of gameplay.
Tiberium amount: Hm.. Enough.

The civilian in the area are tired of the war and to the soldiers and tanks moving around. They have warned the 6 commanders that if they kill too many of the civilians they should start digging graves for their soldiers.

If you have played some skirmish in RA: Aftermath, you should know something more about the civilians

It's the end of the summer in this map, and the night is coming closer as the players start making their bases.
After some time the sun starts going away, and there is a beautiful red glow in the sky, which affects the ground lighting too.

So, this map's lighting will start going darker and more red after some time of gameplay, but it doesn't have a day/night loop.

Screenshots:



; This is how the map looks like in the start.



;Argh, accidently pressed the Windows key before taking the picture -.-'



; Final lighting in the map, comes after a long time of gameplay.







I have a lot of time to do this map on the holidays, so expect this to be released soon.

I will make some small lighting changes, like making the cliffs brighter compared to the normal ground.
And of course, I will add Bridge Repair Huts.

Fixed the minimap - save as PNG from now on
-Team Black

This post has been edited by Team Black: Dec 27 2007, 06:13 PM

[Team Black]

Some intense lighting there..
You can add these tags in to the map text to control the brighness of your dudes (or you can just turn down your light posts)

CODE

[AudioVisual]
ExtraUnitLight=.2; Extra light to make units glow.
ExtraInfantryLight=.2; Extra light to make infantry glow.
ExtraAircraftLight=.2; Extra light to make aircraft glow.

ther than that, looks nice so far.. Keep up the good work

[Crash]

Looking at the minimap, there is a lot of space that could need more detail.

Fill it with detail, cities, anything you'd like.

And, lighting is something you learn more and more. Look into some spotlighted maps or ask professional mappers and you'll definitely learn something.

The map looks quite good, what you need is less intensity in lighting, more detail. I like the layout

[Rampastring]

Thanks for the extra lighting thing TB, might be useful since I couldn't sometimes really notice that are some units pink or red when 2 comps were fighting against each other, because the map becomes really dark in the end.

I personally like this map's strong lighting, expect the cities are a bit too intense at nights compared to the normal ground lighting, and it burns my eyes.

I will add 1 city more to the southern part of the map.
The lakes will get some extra lighting around them to the release version.

Otherwise it will likely get filled by forests, since I simply can't get big forests out of my maps for some reason. Probably because my family's house is surrounded by large forests.

This map will contain the following keys in the [AI] section:

[AI]
Paranoid=no ; To make sure the comps don't ally with the civilians.
ComputerBaseDefenseResponse=7 ; To make sure that the civilians will die if they attack an AI player's base or harvesters.

After the detailing and better lighting I have to do a lot of trigger work to make the lighting and the civilians work correctly.
Also I will test this map more than my previous maps before releasing this, because my earlier releases have had some bugs in them.

And I will post pics as .PNGs from now on. I was a bit busy and didn't notice that Paint saved the minimap as a BMP instead of PNG before posting this thread.

This post has been edited by ^Rampastein: Dec 28 2007, 10:04 AM

[Rampastring]

Some progress information:

Today I :

- Made a new town (I'm thinking about making it bigger atm)
- Fixed some trigger errors
- Detailed some ground
- Tested the map's balance.

Here's the new minimap:



I guess I'll get this finished in two weeks, if I keep my mapping interest up.

[Rampastring]

Hmm.. I have a little problem with an idea I'd like to put in this map.

My idea is that when you destroy a certain building from the civilians a crate will appear to the place where the building was.
Homever, I don't know how to spawn crates -.-

I tried looking through the trigger editor's actions, but I didn't find an action that would spawn a crate.

Help please

[Ixith]

Hmm.. I have a little problem with an idea I'd like to put in this map.

My idea is that when you destroy a certain building from the civilians a crate will appear to the place where the building was.
Homever, I don't know how to spawn crates -.-

I tried looking through the trigger editor's actions, but I didn't find an action that would spawn a crate.

Help please

well there is an action that spawns a crate in the FSData.ini that you can enable to be seen in Finalsun. However, I think this action is only supported RA2 because the one before it is "Reinforcement by Chrono" and the one after it is "Iron Curtain at"

You can still mess around with that if you'd like but I am pretty sure it won't work in TS.

Also about your map. My main problem with the looks of the minimap is that the water is too blocky IMO. But really the map looks like it is coming along quite nicely.

[Rampastring]

Hmpf, so I can't put that to my map.
Well, I put the "Crate from destroyed trucks" to yes in the Basic section and when I destroyed a truck in the map a crate appeared.
So, I still got my idea to it.

About the blockiness of the water.. It doesn't look as blocky ingame, though I still found some places to improve.

My current to-do list before releasing:

- Make the shores less blocky.
- Detail a small area of the map.
- Make some reinforcement triggers for the civilians.
- Test!

Will probably post new screenshots tomorrow . Especially from the time between the final lighting and normal lighting.

I've already pretty much "finished" the lighting.

I personally think this map is better than my previous maps.

This post has been edited by ^Rampastein: Dec 30 2007, 09:57 AM

[Rampastring]

The ground is now detailed! (Some shores will get changed before the release)

I couldn't get ingame screenshots, since I'm not allowed to play here today. I'll get some tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.

Now, everything I have to do is to make the civilians work correctly and some testing after that.

5 new FinalSun screenshots for you: (The white things in the west aren't visible ingame ofc)

Shouthern city



A chokepoint between two players



Eastern city



Some cliff art north of a chokepoint between two players



One chokepoint, again



This post has been edited by ^Rampastein: Dec 30 2007, 05:03 PM

[Crash]

Hey! That looks very good actually.

The only thing I don't like is that you put grass under or close to tiberium. Avoid that.

[Rampastring]

Hm, I don't have a problem with tiberium on vegetated ground, after all, doesn't tiberium grow better on vegetated ground than on sand?

Though if some more people say that I'm wrong and it looks bad, I can change it.

[Crash]

Well, AFAIK tiberium kills grass and trees.

Atleast lots of people said that to me

[Dudeinabox]

Well, AFAIK tiberium kills grass and trees.

Atleast lots of people said that to me

Perhaps it hasn't got there yet

Looks like a great map so far, nicely detailed and the civilian AI sounds interesting.

-DIAB

[eXit]

Tiberium mutates grass and trees, thus, there are the crystal tiles and mutated "plants". But i don't mind if they are on grass, sometimes it just looks better like that and there's no reason to change it. Although i'm worried about those lightposts, there seems to be a lot of them. Other than that the map seems to be coming along nicely.

[Rampastring]

Some progress info: Arrghhh, I'm getting mad, there are dozens of triggers, taskforces, scripts and teamtypes... and still a few left... ARGHHH!!!!
I've made most of the civilian triggers etc.
Still a few left, will start testing after that.

Ok, so I wont remove the grass.

About the lightposts: They have low visibility and pretty weak colors, so they won't look bad. Actually, their light isn't nearly visible at all at the night.

This post has been edited by ^Rampastein: Dec 31 2007, 12:33 PM

[Aro]

What I hate with a passion, is the fact that in the red lighting, all structures and units are pitch black (Don't even think about making a "Goth's like black" comment anyone )
Apart from that, Everything else is looking good, to be honest.

[Rampastring]

What I hate with a passion, is the fact that in the red lighting, all structures and units are pitch black (Don't even think about making a "Goth's like black" comment anyone )
Apart from that, Everything else is looking good, to be honest.

Sorry, cannot do anything to that, though I already added Team Black's idea to this map, which makes it better.

Testing started. I would've put even more civilian stuff to the map, but I ran out of waypoints xD

This post has been edited by ^Rampastein: Dec 31 2007, 01:44 PM

[Rampastring]

Just got my first test session finished, however, I will play a second one before releasing the map.

I changed the civilians so that they will destroy all defensive structures before attacking other structures. This change was necessary because otherwise the AI didn't always attack the civilians who were destroying their Construction Yard.

To the players of normal, unmodded TS and for those who haven't modified the AI smarter: It is recommended to play this map with AI level 2, because otherwise the civilians might cause too much problems for the AI players.

I've also added more yellow light to the cliffs.

A huge load of screenshots for you! Note that these screenshots were taken while having Visual Details on Low, because I was playing with my old computer and the game wouldn't have been too playable with Visual Details on Normal/High.

So, if you're playing with Visual Details on Medium/High, this map will look better than it looks in these screenshots.

**Day**

Ingame screenshot of the chokepoint



A player's starting location west of the eastern city



An other chokepoint; the civilian shot the AI player's harvester and the AI player is counterattacking the civilian.



For the most part, the AI does fight the civilians back.. Actually, it sometimes gets annoyed of the civilians and can fire them with a superweapon.



An AI player attacking the civilians



**Afternoon**

A junction next to a player's starting location



A chokepoint at afternoon



A screenshot of a waterwall, while some civilians are attacking an AI player's laser turret



**Late afternoon**

A chokepoint at late afternoon



**Early night** ; Will be a bit brighter in the release version

The red glow is coming.. and about 1/4 of the map is glowing red.



The red glow is expanding.. and about half of the map is glowing red.



3/4..



The whole area is darkening and the red glow has expanded to the whole area. (Isn't the same as final lighting, as in the final lighting the map will be even darker and even more red, I just didn't have enough time to play that long)



Comments are welcome

This post has been edited by ^Rampastein: Dec 31 2007, 05:46 PM