Fu3lman's "Gifts Ungiven" (Updated)

[Fu3lman]

EDIT - 6-21-19: Minor fixes. Won't be revisiting unless issues are brought up.

Outstanding issues: None that I know of, though I'd like some help with...

• Flashing bright ambient light a second or two before thunder sound effect.
• Possibly making bridges 100% indestructible (even with destroyable bridges enabled.)

Players: 8, mostly mode-agnostic unless starting lopsided with uneven player amt.
Money: 214,600 with roughly half being "high stakes" and 1/5 being outside immediate base boundaries.
Triggers: Auto-assign ownership 1x Power + 1x Oil to the lower-outside perimeter of each starting area to the corresponding player. Periodic thunder sound effect and lightning ambient effect.

My best shot at an 8-player "fair as possible" map that doesn't force players into overextending until they have the field presence to do so. Naval combat is something I've never really fleshed out before in my maps, and I used this as an opportunity to try and remedy that.

Feedback is welcome, and any changes/improvements/etc will be reflected here.

 

 

giftsungiven.map

Edited June 22, 2019 by Fu3lman
Map/thumbnail updated.

[cypher]

How did you create these camera angles? The map looks nice from an aesthetic point of view. The fully bridged pathways to the enemy is sth. I dislike, it limits the tactical depth. But in general : nice one!

Edited June 12, 2019 by cypher

[Fu3lman]

EDIT: I took your advice (Cypher) to heart when working on the above version. If you get the time to try it, let me know if it "feels" any better.

The camera angle is just perspective being adjusted by resizing the (wide) image to a 1:1 aspect. It's definitely a weird effect.

I'm not a huge fan of the fully bridged paths to enemies either... so it's no coincidence that I've been working on creating a version of this map where the outside bridges are replaced with solid land paths without breaking the agency of naval on the map. The inner bridges are the cost of doing business in that respect. Thanks for the comment and the kind words

I'll update the above post as soon as I'm satisfied with it, and if you wouldn't mind downloading/trying it, I'd love more feedback.

 

 

Edited June 14, 2019 by Fu3lman

[McPwny]

let me show you something. looks okay 

press ctrl-f for framework quick and now you can see a little better 

fix those little errors quick and press ctrl-d for down syndrome depressed tile mode quiCC 

you can see theres some more errors.

so you might not notice these kinds of things on a multiplayer map between people, but little errors like these can make your computer AI's get stuck in little computational pathfinding loops and kill the whole AI outright. ra2 is kind of forgiving in this sense, but its smth to think about.

also i want to mention that ravage is not even good at making maps, before he comes in here telling you what you did wrong and why you should eat some tide pods.

[Fu3lman]

EDIT: Having zero luck finding a solution using Google-fu, and not sure if there even is a solution for it.

I'm having trouble getting the unpassable terrain on the upper rims of some of the cliffs (particularly the camera-facing ones) to "occur" with either the cliff painter or manual placement. Are there any easy solutions to this, or something I'm overlooking? Ideally, I'd love an "invisible_unpassable_tile" as there are areas that I'm currently cordoning off using... of all things... bridge repair huts due to visible area breaking the symmetry of the map.

Edited June 15, 2019 by Fu3lman
Frustration

[McPwny]

use ctrl-d to sink the cliffs and look closely. you will see on the lower left your height indicator 

and that will tell you what is cliff and whats behind the cliff, so you can make it seamless. i dont think fa2 has an impassable invisible tile, but rocks should work (except chrono legionaries picking up crates) 

map looks pretty good dude.

[Fu3lman]

Map in OP has been updated.

As far as I can tell, the majority of the issues you outlined have been fixed. I discovered what was effectively a "blank" clifftop (behaving as unpassable) tile that I didn't even know existed and it worked perfectly. Also reduced the agency of migration from base-start by bringing tech in a bit closer, and giving each starting player a tech power+oil on the lower level to facilitate expansion beyond their plateau while maintaining the urgency of protecting them. <-- This is a decision I may rework ?

As always, feedback/criticism is welcome.

Edited June 20, 2019 by Fu3lman

[[CC] RaVaGe]

On 6/15/2019 at 2:17 AM, McPwny said:

also i want to mention that ravage is not even good at making maps, before he comes in here telling you what you did wrong

???

@Fu3lman
Please don't change map preview aspect ratio it broke my brain.

Edited June 20, 2019 by RaVaGe

[Fu3lman]

4 hours ago, RaVaGe said:

???

@Fu3lman
Please don't change map preview aspect ratio it broke my brain.

*Fixed.

[YosefAnan]

Nice map dude  

[Fu3lman]

There's now a mild ambient light flash accompanying the thunder. Small victories.

EDIT: Nevermind.

 

Edited June 22, 2019 by Fu3lman