In regards to the contest thing; I've been thinking about starting a 'weekly terraining exercise', like we used to have them on Warcraft 3 campaigns. I reckon that should be a good start for the terrainers here to keep busy. I'll probably upload the first one somewhere in the weekend, so I can make them last a week and post up a new one every satur- or sunday.
I like that a lot, awesome work. I reckon your edges could use some smoothing and some parts are a bit 'bland'/empty, but overall it works really well.
In regards to both the bits on lightning and on a skybox I wouldn't mind an answer to this either - I have the same problem. Warcraft 3 had options for both these things but I haven't found them yet in the editor (though admittedly, I haven't looked yet).
Its a little off topic but intergration of water can have some cool effects as well... ill post some pics when I get home tonight but for now, un moving reflective mostly alpha water makes for a cool looking glass floor (just hide the terrain under it on a space platform mission and bam!
As a little footnote to this; you may want to note that this might not work at all/as well depending on the graphic settings of the player. Changing the graphics in-game could cause a technique like this to possibly look really bad/a lot better/very weird when comparing low-end to high-end graphics. For a showcase or something though, I reckon it'd be perfectly viable.
I took the liberty of 'localizing' it for players with the European beta, to get rid of the nasty varam/parameter/whatsit error. If you're a European player, this should do it. Edit2: SCROLL FURTHER DOWN FOR AN UPDATED LOCALIZATION.
Edit: Alright, maybe I should've waited for an update. The basis for the map seems pretty strong but jesus christ, hardcore much? I lost a lot of units in the initial attack, but otherwise got through the first phase of the map fairly easily. But that's when it began.
Before my Nexus was even halfway done I had an 8 marine/Thor drop in my base, even though I attempted to intercept the Medivacs with my Void Rays. As I was cleaning that up, a tank/2X Viking force attacked me from the south. I send Eisenkhur in and he cleaned that up alone pretty well. On the downside, STILL before my Nexus was up, three banshees and a mofo battlecruiser were coming in. I sent in my Void Rays and did some pro micro'ing that managed to kill them all, but not before they took down the two pylons I was building. After this I had about ten seconds of a breather, getting my nexus up, before another tank/2X viking force came in. By now my entire starting force was down to two Immortals and a Stalker. As I sent my units over there, ANOTHER 8 rines were dropped on the north side of my base, along with a Thor on the east. I sent Eisenkhur to the Thor while I send my leftover 0 shield, 15 hit points Immortal up to the marines. The Thor went down, but by the time I actually managed to kill all the marines, my Nexus was going down and I was stuck with 385 minerals. I should mention that during all this time, my Void Rays were busy trying to kill the gazillion Medivacs floating around on all sides of my base. As I was leaving the game another tank/2X Viking force ran into my base.
Really, it was pretty epic trying to deal with all that, but suffice it to say, I reckon your triggers are bugged. Instead of once every five, three or even two minutes, attacks are being launched pretty much every twenty/thirty seconds. I'm not sure if the map is even beatable like this - extremely pro Void Ray micro would probably be your only option.
In addition, the opening fight was pretty damn hard as well. The red base had a force about as large as mine, but his Ghosts kept sniping my Templars and he was mass-producing additional Marines to ball. I'm not sure whether this is also intended to be that hard.
What Tradnan said. Also, what Jakpe said - bumpyness is key there. You can make the terrain less of an exact spiral and 'shuffle' it around a bit, while keeping the same base shape? The reason your terrain doesn't look natural is because nature never works in 'exact' or 'predefined' shapes.
In response to ralme's terrain, like others have somewhat said, you're overdoing it. The place is just littered with redundant doodads. It doesn't look original, but more like constant copy/paste. I don't mean that as harsh as it sounds, the basis is quite good, but you need more focal points, height variation and less 'similar doodads'. If you want to do something with pillars, try and make one or two raised 'paths' where the pillars act as a 'fence' on the side of it.
Use triggers. Have you worked with them before? If not, you'll want to follow some tutorials. They're really quite easily and allow you quite literally to just set what you want; "when unit X moves into Y range of unit Z, unit X dies".
Awesomely interesting project. I'd love to terrain something like that. Speaking of which, d'you have in mind what you're going to do with the terrain yet? Going from the 'out of the box' idea an earlier post gave, I was thinking you can make it *less* squaric and do some pretty interesting things with specific areas.
Is the foliage tool you are talking about the thing where it automatically generates random shrubs and such?
Normally I reckon it is, but I'm simply talking about the object named 'foliage' in the doodad layer that automatically places random kinds of shrub when you click it down. Hence why I put 'tool' between marks, I wasn't sure whether I should word it that way.
I hope to finally get started on something nifty within one or two days.
I hear you and would like some clarification on this myself. I got a curse e-mail when I made an account here. Is SC2Mapster an alternatively-named Starcraft 2 community-section of Curse? Are the two affliated? Or am I seeing things?
This might be an obvious one, but you can use rock archs to create caves. Especially with the new possibilities for FPS-play inside maps, this should prove useful in many a map.
Edit: Heck, you can create some pretty interesting alcoves this way. All this needs is some lightning to set the mood and it's ready to go.
0
In regards to the contest thing; I've been thinking about starting a 'weekly terraining exercise', like we used to have them on Warcraft 3 campaigns. I reckon that should be a good start for the terrainers here to keep busy. I'll probably upload the first one somewhere in the weekend, so I can make them last a week and post up a new one every satur- or sunday.
0
I like that a lot, awesome work. I reckon your edges could use some smoothing and some parts are a bit 'bland'/empty, but overall it works really well.
In regards to both the bits on lightning and on a skybox I wouldn't mind an answer to this either - I have the same problem. Warcraft 3 had options for both these things but I haven't found them yet in the editor (though admittedly, I haven't looked yet).
0
As a little footnote to this; you may want to note that this might not work at all/as well depending on the graphic settings of the player. Changing the graphics in-game could cause a technique like this to possibly look really bad/a lot better/very weird when comparing low-end to high-end graphics. For a showcase or something though, I reckon it'd be perfectly viable.
0
I took the liberty of 'localizing' it for players with the European beta, to get rid of the nasty varam/parameter/whatsit error. If you're a European player, this should do it. Edit2: SCROLL FURTHER DOWN FOR AN UPDATED LOCALIZATION.
Edit: Alright, maybe I should've waited for an update. The basis for the map seems pretty strong but jesus christ, hardcore much? I lost a lot of units in the initial attack, but otherwise got through the first phase of the map fairly easily. But that's when it began.
Before my Nexus was even halfway done I had an 8 marine/Thor drop in my base, even though I attempted to intercept the Medivacs with my Void Rays. As I was cleaning that up, a tank/2X Viking force attacked me from the south. I send Eisenkhur in and he cleaned that up alone pretty well. On the downside, STILL before my Nexus was up, three banshees and a mofo battlecruiser were coming in. I sent in my Void Rays and did some pro micro'ing that managed to kill them all, but not before they took down the two pylons I was building. After this I had about ten seconds of a breather, getting my nexus up, before another tank/2X viking force came in. By now my entire starting force was down to two Immortals and a Stalker. As I sent my units over there, ANOTHER 8 rines were dropped on the north side of my base, along with a Thor on the east. I sent Eisenkhur to the Thor while I send my leftover 0 shield, 15 hit points Immortal up to the marines. The Thor went down, but by the time I actually managed to kill all the marines, my Nexus was going down and I was stuck with 385 minerals. I should mention that during all this time, my Void Rays were busy trying to kill the gazillion Medivacs floating around on all sides of my base. As I was leaving the game another tank/2X Viking force ran into my base.
Really, it was pretty epic trying to deal with all that, but suffice it to say, I reckon your triggers are bugged. Instead of once every five, three or even two minutes, attacks are being launched pretty much every twenty/thirty seconds. I'm not sure if the map is even beatable like this - extremely pro Void Ray micro would probably be your only option.
In addition, the opening fight was pretty damn hard as well. The red base had a force about as large as mine, but his Ghosts kept sniping my Templars and he was mass-producing additional Marines to ball. I'm not sure whether this is also intended to be that hard.
0
What Tradnan said. Also, what Jakpe said - bumpyness is key there. You can make the terrain less of an exact spiral and 'shuffle' it around a bit, while keeping the same base shape? The reason your terrain doesn't look natural is because nature never works in 'exact' or 'predefined' shapes.
0
@ralme360: Go
In response to ralme's terrain, like others have somewhat said, you're overdoing it. The place is just littered with redundant doodads. It doesn't look original, but more like constant copy/paste. I don't mean that as harsh as it sounds, the basis is quite good, but you need more focal points, height variation and less 'similar doodads'. If you want to do something with pillars, try and make one or two raised 'paths' where the pillars act as a 'fence' on the side of it.
0
@AzuAzuShade: Go
Use triggers. Have you worked with them before? If not, you'll want to follow some tutorials. They're really quite easily and allow you quite literally to just set what you want; "when unit X moves into Y range of unit Z, unit X dies".
0
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
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@Lennywing: Go
This is a bit off-topic, but... MAH EYES! You need to smooth those edges, even if just a little bit. Otherwise an awesome piece of work.
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To add to the list, an alternative way to make aesthetically pleasing cliffs/ramps; http://forums.sc2mapster.com/development/artist-tavern/3627-a-revamped-ramp-terrain/
All credit goes to PoisonHunter for coming up with this technique.
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@PoisonHunter: Go
I have to say I'm amazed at how well that looks for such a simple technique. Nice find! I'll post the link to this topic in the creative doodad uses thread, over here; http://forums.sc2mapster.com/development/artist-tavern/3475-creative-doodad-uses/#p13
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Awesomely interesting project. I'd love to terrain something like that. Speaking of which, d'you have in mind what you're going to do with the terrain yet? Going from the 'out of the box' idea an earlier post gave, I was thinking you can make it *less* squaric and do some pretty interesting things with specific areas.
0
Normally I reckon it is, but I'm simply talking about the object named 'foliage' in the doodad layer that automatically places random kinds of shrub when you click it down. Hence why I put 'tool' between marks, I wasn't sure whether I should word it that way.
I hope to finally get started on something nifty within one or two days.
0
I hear you and would like some clarification on this myself. I got a curse e-mail when I made an account here. Is SC2Mapster an alternatively-named Starcraft 2 community-section of Curse? Are the two affliated? Or am I seeing things?
0
This might be an obvious one, but you can use rock archs to create caves. Especially with the new possibilities for FPS-play inside maps, this should prove useful in many a map.
Edit: Heck, you can create some pretty interesting alcoves this way. All this needs is some lightning to set the mood and it's ready to go.