Looking for mapmaking input

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Cruz
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Looking for mapmaking input

Post by Cruz »

I love catching my opponents troops in ambushes, i love sneaking an assination squad up and winning totally undeserving, and its damn hard to make good maps for it:P

Sooo

Im trying to make a map whose purpose is:
-Beeing fun (ofc;)
-Allowing for prolonged fighting (aka the war is not lost even if you lose the inital battle(s) and unit lvling.
-Fog of war, leading to ambushes etc

Using the standard era

My main problems comes with the ,espesially the flying, scouting units.
Make tha map too big, and their speed becomes invaluable.
Make the map too small, and they see too much of the map, aka you can't "sneak" enough.

The only way i see to inhibit their sight is:
- Impassable terrain
- Mushrom groves (unbalacing factions a bit)

Any more ways to do it?
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Gambit
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Re: Looking for mapmaking input

Post by Gambit »

Bottlenecks and channels. Make it so the map directs most of the traffic through certain ways. But then there are other longer ways.
Then there are ways to visually make the players take certain paths.

Caves would be the easiest way to do this. Another would be mountains. You could even have a split map with one half being aboveground and the other being underground and a few holes that lead between the two.
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Baufo
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Re: Looking for mapmaking input

Post by Baufo »

Stickied in this very forum http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=19669 8)

However I feel I should warn you that experience has shown you need to be a somewhat decent player yourself to design a balanced map.
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again. -- Oscar Wilde
Cruz
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Re: Looking for mapmaking input

Post by Cruz »

Thanks for the link, i would never have thought to look in the very forum i posted for something related to the very issue that i asked about .
No, its not like i would have any cognitive abilites, or gods forbid, the smarts to use them.

:lol2:

Sorry, just joking, but i couldn't help it, it's just the reply made me wonder what kind of questions these forums usually get :P (Or what kind of herbs ask them...)

Anyways, that's all the input one can get?
"Channels and caves" , is a bit too simplistic advice.
Ex: Caves would favor bats as scouts too much, and really make life hell for loyalists. We're talking mapbalance here.
Caphriel
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Re: Looking for mapmaking input

Post by Caphriel »

The only real way to limit flying scouts is impassable terrain: cave wall and impassable mountains. The bat has a 1 MP cost everywhere except mushroom grove, and the groves tend to favor the undead anyway. The only idea I can come up with is a maze, web, or other network of paths separated by impassible terrain, but players would just post scouts at key intersections, or failing any meaningful scouting ability, they'd be poking around aimlessly in the dark, which doesn't sound like much fun.
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Turuk
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Re: Looking for mapmaking input

Post by Turuk »

Cruz wrote:Sorry, just joking, but i couldn't help it, it's just the reply made me wonder what kind of questions these forums usually get (Or what kind of herbs ask them...)
Imagine some of the most obvious questions you can think of about the forums, and you will answer your own question.
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Pentarctagon
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Re: Looking for mapmaking input

Post by Pentarctagon »

if you want something to look like a cave, but have normal bonuses, then use the cave path terrain. i've made a couple maps with cave path as the flat terrain, and more than one person didn't realize that it wasn't cave floor until they actually moved.
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Cruz
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Re: Looking for mapmaking input

Post by Cruz »

Well the map in question is this one:
TheCruzMultiMapv1.03f

A 1vs1 map of wonder, excitment and.. wonder.

Feel free to take it for a swing and post suggestions to it :)
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Pentarctagon
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Re: Looking for mapmaking input

Post by Pentarctagon »

a picture of the map would also be nice, instead of just the map code.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 little bugs
take one down, patch it around
-2,147,483,648 little bugs in the code
Cruz
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Re: Looking for mapmaking input

Post by Cruz »

Just take it for a spin in the game:P
Cruz
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Re: Looking for mapmaking input

Post by Cruz »

Here's a link to a updated version of the map
http://folk.uio.no/kjellwi/TheCruzMultiMapv1.04c

And a picture of it too:
Spoiler:
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Pentarctagon
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Re: Looking for mapmaking input

Post by Pentarctagon »

i'd say that if nothing else you should make the villages more evenly spaced out. both sides have an entire flank with either a bunch of villages or no villages at all.
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take one down, patch it around
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Cruz
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Re: Looking for mapmaking input

Post by Cruz »

Sneaking in the fog in those areas is kinda the point of them, putting villages there would make them more "inhabited" and make scout units too good at village snatching :)
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Turuk
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Re: Looking for mapmaking input

Post by Turuk »

Cruz wrote:Here's a link to a updated version of the map
http://folk.uio.no/kjellwi/TheCruzMultiMapv1.04c

And a picture of it too:
I have seen this somewhere else... :hmm:
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Cruz
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Re: Looking for mapmaking input

Post by Cruz »

Maybe you played me ingame? ;)

I would not post a map on the forums without testing it on the servers first. Public shaming, hello :lol2:

It's about eh 15th edition of it so, tuning a map is rough buisniss indeed :wink:
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