FS Final Battle of Ypres 2.0, The Second Release Options

[KingByng]

Now here is my first map, but the second release. I'm pretty proud of it. The first version sucked, but this second version is far better, it has some ini editing, lighting, a moving train, etc.

Players: 2-3
Size: 100x75

Background:

Throughout its history, the town of Ypres in the north-western part of Belgium (Flanders) has played a huge role in European and World history. It was one of the largest towns in Europe in the Middle Ages, and was an important cultural centre for much of its history. It wasn't until 1914 that it played a huge part of military history. The town was the focal-point of 4 battle throughout WWI, with 2 battle in particular that stand out. It was the site of the first gas attack in the Western Front (with almost 7 tonnes of chlorine gas used), and the 3rd Battle of Ypres, also know as the Battle of Passchendaele. Passchendaele was one of the most horrific battle fought in history, with people regularly drowning in the liquid quick-sand like mud (among other horrors, look it up). Almost a million people had died there over the course of WWI, and Ypres has seen many people travel here to see its numerous war monuments. This tourism brought money and jobs, which brought people. It quickly grew to become the 4th largest town in Belgium in the 2020's, and it became one of the 3 cities untouched by tiberium (the others being Brussels and Kortrijk). However, it soon suffered from numerous meteorite attacks, which turned the Ypres area into a mutated wasteland. The Canadian division of GDI had fortified the city to protect it because of historical importance to Canada (again, look up the war). However, the tiberium harvesting division of GDI soon replaced the Canadian GDI as the primary force in the region, due to the fact that tiberium has become extremely advanced in the area. The defences eroded, and the tiberium harvesting division had to leave due to increased pressure from Nod. Eventually, the tiberium infestation brought GDI back, and Nod has taken an increased interest as well. Now, the two superpowers are deadlocked in this once-important city, ready to engage in a war of attrition like the Allies had done so with Germany so long ago...

Pics:


Minimap


Old GDI Harvesting Operation


One of two river crossings


Entrance to Ypres


 Ypres.ZIP ( 94.38K ) Number of downloads: 367


Note: I tested the download to see if, like last time, any cliff errors would arise from the upload. And sure enough, even though there was none when I saved, there were cliff errors. I am aware of them, and they don't affect my game, so no real need to point them out. They are insignificant, small things, no big worry.

EDIT: Here is version one, for comparison.

This post has been edited by Cross: Jul 10 2008, 02:04 AM

[Rampastring]

It doesn't look bad for your second map (or, for the second version of your first map)

I took a look at it in Finalsun and here are some comments about the map:

- Some of the cliffs are too repetitive.
- The terrain in general could be more detailed. I recommend detailing terrain slowly with a 1x1 brush (you can set your default brush size to 1x1 by modifying FSData.ini, which is located in FinalSun's directory). Look at some spotlighted maps for what I mean.
- Some places could use more lightposts. For example, there are many places with large amounts of green/blue crystal LAT which don't have any lightposts in them. However in some other places there are lightposts in crystal LAT tiles and I think it'd look weird ingame when there are lightposts only in some crystal areas.

I'll see if I can get to test it ingame tomorrow. For now I'm not going to give more comments because I'm really tired and I've been playing 8 hours of Mass Effect without a break at all between the hours

This post has been edited by ^Rampastein: Jul 8 2008, 08:28 PM

[Ixith]

I will have to check this out sometime this weekend. Though I may not get an ingame review until next weekend if things are going like they currently are.

[KingByng]

@ ^Rampastein, I was always wondering if it was possible to make 1x1 default, but I was too lazy to look (I finished this map months ago and only put it up now, that's how lazy I am ). I never really noticed that the lighting thing, I just put lightposts near tiberium riparius's.

@ Ixith, I have patience, I can wait


Anyone else want to take a look? I also put up the link to version one's thread, for comparison and lols.

[Rampastring]

Well, I just played two short games with 2 level 2 AIs. In the first game I got owned by some random Subterranean APC + 5 engineers attack, and in the second one I won.

I would've played it earlier, but it was thundering here so I couldn't.

The terrain detail seemed a bit.. rushed. It was ok in most places, however it seems like you've haven't touched the corners of the map at all.

Also, like I said earlier, you should have used an 1x1 brush while detailing terrain.

The lighting was a bit too dark. Also it looked a bit weird when only half of the places containing fona had lightposts. By adding lightposts there you could make it look better and it could fix the dark lighting at the same time.

Gameplay: Was quite basic, expect for the northern player. I think that having only 2 bridges to attack the player from isn't enough.
If bridges are everything you can attack from, I think there should be about 3-4 bridges from different directions to attack the player from.

It isn't only that the player's base is really hard to destroy, but the 2 other players could easily just destroy the 2 bridges, freezing the northern player's economy.

I'd give it a 7/10. Keep mapping and you'll get better at it

This post has been edited by ^Rampastein: Jul 11 2008, 03:35 PM