Frozen Canyon (2-4) Options

[Rampastring]

My fourth map..

Size: 90x90
Players: 4
Theatre: Snow
Lighting: Dark blue, green at the ionstorm
Tiberium amount: Large

This is a small 4-player snow map which I've had ready for about a month.

There's a small valley going from northeast to southwest. The players start close to it.

There goes a bridge over the valley.

Every player has a low amount of tiberium next to their starting location. The valley also contains tiberium, and there's also some tiberium between the players.

The map is filled with forest, but some meteor showers will cut them down quite fast.

There also comes a long ion storm in 10 hours (Elapsed time: 6000, usually gets triggered in late game), which will cut down the rest of the trees (and blow up some structures...) in the area. The amount of meteor showers also increases during the ion storm.

I recommend you to close your curtains while playing this map.

The AI played quite well and used multiple attacking routes in my tests.

Screenshots:







The yellow sidebar text doesn't come with the map.

 Frozen_Canyon.zip ( 130.26K ) Number of downloads: 549


This post has been edited by ^Rampastein: Jul 5 2008, 11:40 AM

[Team Black]

Good atmosphere here. Good lighting, nice eye candy, lots of meteors
Not a cliff error that I can spot. You definitely put a lot of though and effort into this map

I'm going to vote for spotlight, and add it to the massive map pack
I need another experienced mapper or two to rate the map before deciding on that though.

Nice work!

This post has been edited by Team Black: Mar 14 2008, 06:02 PM

[Ixith]

well I haven't played it yet so I will hold off on giving my opinion on spotlight or not. However, I did just look at it in finalsun and have this to say:

-nice detailing, especially with the trees as there is a nice amount of them. Now if only there were more dead looking trees for snow maps.

-Cliffwork: overall a decent job. I did not spot a single cliff error although i only did a brief look over of them. I do have 2 things though...
a)Your next step with cliff work is using it to do major terrain leveling differences. The 2 spots on your map that I see this right now are the canyon area and the upper left corner that splits the 2 left side players
b )as for the canyon. I think the upper right side seemed more canyon like to me. It just seemed as if the cliffwork style itself in the bottom left seemed repetitive. The actual cliffs weren't though...it was more of a style thing I thinks. (yea this is a more picky kind of comment)

-Cliff ramps (aka Slope set pieces): I think you should experiment more with these. I think I only spotted 2 occasions where they were more than just a straight thing across. Make them more wide as this allows for more options especially if wanting to add a paved or dirt road going up it. As of right now your dirt roads just go straight up every time. If you look on some other maps you might get what I'm trying to point out here.

-balance and placement of things looks good really and triggers look good from what I saw in finalsun. Though I must admit I was a little thrown off at first by the trigger names being in a different language. LOL

So I will try to play this sometime this weekend and give an in-game review and my opinion on spotlight worthiness or not.

[Rampastring]

-Cliffwork: overall a decent job. I did not spot a single cliff error although i only did a brief look over of them. I do have 2 things though...
a)Your next step with cliff work is using it to do major terrain leveling differences. The 2 spots on your map that I see this right now are the canyon area and the upper left corner that splits the 2 left side players

I know I should use cliffs more for terrain leveling differences, and I've been trying to do so since I released The Hills Have Eyes.

I already have a work-in-progress map that will have cliffs used more for terrain leveling differences, so you'll see this more in the future.

b )as for the canyon. I think the upper right side seemed more canyon like to me. It just seemed as if the cliffwork style itself in the bottom left seemed repetitive. The actual cliffs weren't though...it was more of a style thing I thinks. (yea this is a more picky kind of comment)

Hmm.. You're right.. I just noticed that myself.

-Cliff ramps (aka Slope set pieces): I think you should experiment more with these. I think I only spotted 2 occasions where they were more than just a straight thing across. Make them more wide as this allows for more options especially if wanting to add a paved or dirt road going up it. As of right now your dirt roads just go straight up every time. If you look on some other maps you might get what I'm trying to point out here.

*looks at Tiberian Ring*

I'm not that sure how to do it.. but I'll try to do so in my next maps.

-balance and placement of things looks good really and triggers look good from what I saw in finalsun. Though I must admit I was a little thrown off at first by the trigger names being in a different language. LOL

Heh, the trigger names are in Finnish. I actually wrote the names in Finnish to "throw people off" =P
It's quite easy to find out what the words mean though... You just need to understand what a few triggers do and you'll get the rest revealed.

I think that I should have leaved more open space for the players to build their base. Right now you can't build a base much larger than the AI opponents do (Although no-one really needs a base larger than the AI does, I still think there should have been more building space..)

So I will try to play this sometime this weekend and give an in-game review and my opinion on spotlight worthiness or not.

Okay..
Thank you both for your comments and thanks to Team Black for the spotlight vote. I find this map's terrain detail and lighting much better than my previous maps'.

This post has been edited by ^Rampastein: Mar 15 2008, 04:02 PM

[Ixith]

Sorry for taking so long to get an ingame review.

I find this map's terrain detail and lighting much better than my previous maps'.

I agree with your statement there.

Lighting: 7.5/10 I liked the dark blue lighting. But then again when does dark blue not look good on a snow map? lol The things that brought your score down here were that
1)There could have been more variance IMO.
2)The Ion storm Lighting was magnificent...except for the fact that it made the invisible lamps light get really blocky.
3)Not really a highly major issue but your building lighting was WAY too dark. I could hardly tell what buildings were what. Then with units that were dark but not as dark as the buildings things kinda stood out big time. For example: harvester docking into the Refinery.

Layout: 7/10 A Very nice 2v2 layout. I didn't really grasp that until I got in-game. However, like I said in the final sun comments. It could just use some work.

Detail: 9/10 Very nice detailing of the map. I liked the amount of trees and cliff points and LAT work.

Triggers: 8/10 All the triggers seemed to work fine. The ion storm brought a nice length of my being focused on my base rather than the enemy which adds to the fun. The meteor storms were nice to. Though possibly a few too many IMO. Though I must say they made you worry about your harvesters lol.

Game Play: 7.5/10 it was pretty good. I played with just 1 AI and then again with 3 AIs. Against 1 AI it wasn't all that great to be honest as the AI kept using the same path to get to me. Against 3 AIs though that was a little bit more fun. I was a little surprised when the AI took the back route on me. (I was at the top right)

Overall: 7.8 This map makes for a very nice 2v2 player map and I would HIGHLY suggest it for online 2v2 games. My only complaints are building lighting and cliff ramp slopes and layout could be a little better and style more varied.

Again you are getting better. I think if you work on certain things such as those cliff ramps and what not then your next map will be a spotlighted one. Great job. And again...sorry it took so long for me to get an in-game review.

[Team Black]

I know Ixith didn't say it, but I know e wanted this spotlighted.

It's clear you put time and effort into this map, and that deserves special recognition.. Congrats Rampastein, looking forward to more stuff from you!

I would recommend making a singleplayer mission soon, if you feel comfortable with triggers and such

[Rampastring]

I know Ixith didn't say it, but I know e wanted this spotlighted.

It's clear you put time and effort into this map, and that deserves special recognition.. Congrats Rampastein, looking forward to more stuff from you!

Hm, I'm not that sure if it's fair to spotlight this map when the best mapper around here thinks it isn't worth it..

But when I look at Ixith's Overall rating for this map (7.8) and most spotlighted maps are about 8, I think I take the spotlight.

Thanks, TB.. and you will get more maps from me.. in a few weeks.

Time to analyze Ixith's review...

Lighting: 7.5/10 I liked the dark blue lighting. But then again when does dark blue not look good on a snow map? lol The things that brought your score down here were that
1)There could have been more variance IMO.
2)The Ion storm Lighting was magnificent...except for the fact that it made the invisible lamps light get really blocky.
3)Not really a highly major issue but your building lighting was WAY too dark. I could hardly tell what buildings were what. Then with units that were dark but not as dark as the buildings things kinda stood out big time. For example: harvester docking into the Refinery.

1) Well.. there already is variance.. like the purple lighting, the dark places, tiberium fields..
Although, I agree, there could have been a bit more.

2) Ye, I noticed that blockiness too, which is why the negative light posts shut down when the ion storm comes, and reactivate when it ends. I forgot to do so for the other lightposts too before I released this..

3) I know that the units are brighter than the buildings, and it's meant to be like that.. And I also know that the harvester looks a bit foolish when it docks into the refinery.. But the main problem was that there is no "ExtraBuildingLight" key.

I agree with everything you posted there.

Also, I could see the building fine when I closed my curtains (Read the first post ^^').

I'm with you about the detail and layout.

Triggers: 8/10 All the triggers seemed to work fine. The ion storm brought a nice length of my being focused on my base rather than the enemy which adds to the fun. The meteor storms were nice to. Though possibly a few too many IMO. Though I must say they made you worry about your harvesters lol.

Yes, the meteor showers made me worry about my harvesters =P
I really lost some harvesters in my tests because of those.

I also thought that there might be a bit too many of them.. although there were meant to be really much of them at the ion storm. I really liked how the meteor showers in the end of the ion storm striked.. although dozens of meteors coming in a few seconds makes the game lag, sometimes flying meteors filled all of my screen and it was quite beautiful.

Game Play: 7.5/10 it was pretty good. I played with just 1 AI and then again with 3 AIs. Against 1 AI it wasn't all that great to be honest as the AI kept using the same path to get to me. Against 3 AIs though that was a little bit more fun. I was a little surprised when the AI took the back route on me. (I was at the top right)

I've noticed that the AI uses the back route only on the top places.. not on the southern ones. I think I could fix this in an update...

Overall: 7.8 This map makes for a very nice 2v2 player map and I would HIGHLY suggest it for online 2v2 games. My only complaints are building lighting and cliff ramp slopes and layout could be a little better and style more varied.

Again you are getting better. I think if you work on certain things such as those cliff ramps and what not then your next map will be a spotlighted one. Great job. And again...sorry it took so long for me to get an in-game review.

Thanks for your review.. I almost thought you'd never post it.

I would recommend making a singleplayer mission soon, if you feel comfortable with triggers and such

I've made many singleplayer missions and I've got no problems with triggers.. I have planned of making and releasing a one, but my problem is making a good story.

I'll see if I make a one in the future.

[Team Black]

the best mapper around here

that would be me, of course

[Ixith]

Hm, I'm not that sure if it's fair to spotlight this map when the best mapper around here thinks it isn't worth it..

But when I look at Ixith's Overall rating for this map (7.8) and most spotlighted maps are about 8, I think I take the spotlight.

It lol if my decision on what is spotlight worthy or not was the overall ruling decision then the spotlighted section would look a little more bare. Though with that we need more people to comment on this map. Where's Crashking, Tore, Warlord, eXit, Raven, and Aurora and various other people. LOL

Though yes anything that gets an 8 or above from me is usually spotlight material IMO. And 7.5-8s are possibilities. This one was right on the edge. I think it is fine being in the spotlighted map section, as like TB said, it is clear that you put time and effort into this map.

LOL and saying I am the best mapper around here...wow..I feel special. I have certainly lead the way into the making of great maps, I think and probably have the most amount of maps released and the most spotlights. However, that doesn't make me the best.
I don't think it's possible to say there is a best mapper out there really as we all have different styles. So it's like art....everyone has a different opinion.

[Rampastring]

LOL and saying I am the best mapper around here...wow..I feel special. I have certainly lead the way into the making of great maps, I think and probably have the most amount of maps released and the most spotlights. However, that doesn't make me the best.
I don't think it's possible to say there is a best mapper out there really as we all have different styles. So it's like art....everyone has a different opinion.

Yes, you're right there, but you're still the most experienced one =P

And, like you said, you've led the way to making detailed maps.

We all do have different styles, but for example, when I look at your cities and cliff usage.. I haven't seen as good placement of buildings and other things in other mappers' maps.

Although I really hate one thing in your maps.. there are always only 2-3 narrow routes to players' bases, making them a bit too easy to defend IMO (I'm not entirely sure about that is it a bad thing.. it makes me use other tactics than just Titan rushing =P)

that would be me, of course

The only real map I've seen you release so far is Siege City, which is quite good otherwise, but like most of Ixith's new maps, defending is way too easy =P