Maps by Phoenix

posted on June 22nd, 2010, 12:59 am

Sorry bud I haven't been by to check the changes yet.  I have a few extra days off though this week and I'd be happy to give it a look over.  I think though that just by reading your changes it's going to be a lot better for online play .

Map-makers, unite! 

posted on June 25th, 2010, 8:21 pm

After reviewing a number of maps, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that there are really two types of maps. One, multiplayer maps. The other, what I like to call "campaign" maps.

Most are familiar with the multiplayer map's philosophy: balance as a primary constraint, not getting in the way of two players competing, promoting that interaction, etc. And in the multiplayer arena, there is such a thing as "too much map".

On the other hand, for "campaign" maps, I haven't seen many folks talk about them. A lot of Pheonix's 1.0 version maps are horribly unsuited for multiplayer (unbalanced) but they're such a well of creative, fun ideas that it seems such a shame to constrain them by multiplayer constraints (mainly balance).

I'm starting to think that map makers should consider what goal (multiplayer or 'campaign') they are striving for when making a map. One of the things that I was surprisingly saddened by was the removal of some of the cool ideas in Pheonix's maps because of MP balance.

I think it would be really cool if there was a way to string maps together so that one game rolls into another - which would promote the campaign style maps more. And I think we need to keep some incentive for making campaign maps as they'll help generate new map making ideas and techniques (see Sigma Draconis's creative use of wormhole positioning and Beta Aquilae's small-blue-nebula-around-moon trick) that can feed into MP maps.

So... half-thought, half-idea, half-feature-request, half-crazy... blah

posted on June 25th, 2010, 9:28 pm

I think once MMM becomes a reality and campaigns can be made, those who are really good at "campaign" style maps will be able to go crazy.  The artists are here, just not their medium.  Not yet at least.

posted on June 26th, 2010, 8:04 am

I'd have to agree that at the moment MP restriction and the extensiveness of the Map Editor are the two main dampeners on my creativity for map making. That being said, I do have every previous version of every map on my hard drive, so once campaign ability is unleashed, I could convert them to be used for that purpose. Then there would be "Campaign" and "MP" variants. I'd imagine the MP maps would be downloaded from astro, while the Campaign maps would be included in mods like MMM.

At the moment, my primary focus is on MP maps since Campaign maps are not really feasible at this exact moment in time. Does anyone have any comments on how the newest versions play in MP?

posted on June 26th, 2010, 4:22 pm

Well, MMM should be quite doable for Fleet Ops - not all portions are functional (like cutscenes), but I do recall even more than 8 months back that Redmanmark had a working mini-campaign which I tried out

posted on June 26th, 2010, 6:50 pm

Well... tried out Accretion - OoS
Then tried Beta Aquilae 1.3 - OoS
Then tried Beta Aquilae 1.3 again - OoS

So... OoS is just killing your map's viability for MP play.


(note: I wanted to keep all versions selectable in the map chooser, so I tried to rename the Beta Aquilae 1.3 file name to betaaquilae_1.3. and it wouldn't let anyone download it - Any ideas why?)

[Phoenix]

posted on June 27th, 2010, 7:20 am

Last edited by Phoenix on June 27th, 2010, 7:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

EDIT: What does OoS mean? Out of Sync

I'm not sure why it would OoS, especially since previous plays on BA10-12 have been slow but otherwise in sync. Initially I'd say maybe the map object count is a bit much but BA13 has been lightened significantly (I'm not sure whether it could be lightened any further, without just losing everything that makes the map what it, isbecause I did go pretty heavy on it for 13) and Accreation is so small anyway. Seems like maybe one of the player's, internet connection may have been playing up...

For the file name: you could try renaming it to remove the first decimal as it's possible that the game might being thick and thinking the file extension is ".3.bzn"

Try: "Betaaquilae 13"

posted on June 27th, 2010, 8:16 am

Well... tried out Accretion - OoS
Then tried Beta Aquilae 1.3 - OoS
Then tried Beta Aquilae 1.3 again - OoS

Interesting, were the players the same for each game?

  It's possible that certain players are prone to OoS on certain maps.

posted on July 14th, 2010, 3:51 am

I just played a 1v1 on Tau Ceti.  It's a pretty interesting map, but I just wanted to give some suggestions regarding the blocking triggers.  Unfortunately there area  fair amount of pathing issues, some of them could be fixed by removing some blocking triggers.  Basically, any place where you can't place a starbase footprint could be widened.  I know that this was an issue on the top of the map, and could be on some other places.  Also, I think it would help if the center blocking triggers were reduced by 50%, perhaps only having 1 blocking trigger where the planet is.  There might be an issue with the damaging (I think it's damaging anyway, I forget offhand) nebula that is over the south wormhole.

It was still an interesting map, and has the potential to be a really fun multiplayer map with some fine tuning.  I'll definitely try some more maps and see how they work out.  Thanks as always for your maps, Phoenix.

posted on July 15th, 2010, 2:52 pm

Thanks for the feedback dude . I'll look into the pathing issues and see what I can do.

posted on July 24th, 2010, 6:06 pm

hey phoenix, some of your maps on astro say that they need the extension installed, but this comes with 3.1.3 now

oh and astro works with proxies for me, but not direct lol

posted on July 24th, 2010, 6:33 pm

Yeah, I've been meaning to update that . I think I left a temporary note in the news bit at the top of each page but I still need to go through the whole site and 3.1.3 it all

Interesting that Astro works under a proxy. I'm not sure why it wouldn't work otherwise . Alas, I'm not massively great at networking stuff so my aid is somewhat limited. Still, if it works; it works!

posted on July 24th, 2010, 6:36 pm

working through a proxy is annoying as they are generally slower

maybe your host is blocking me or my isp?

it seems odd that only i cant connect lol.

posted on August 5th, 2010, 9:48 am

I'm at a loss for what could be causing that.

Alas, I am moving house this weekend and so I will only have limited access to the net for a while.

If anyone has any general questions, such as help setting up an Astro-page, then ask in this thread. I'm sure people could help out with any queries of those kind. (Note that if you need file hosting, you may need to find a temporary solution until I get back).

Any technical issues should be recorded in this thread, so I can keep better track of what's going on with Astro's occasiona connection quibbles (instructions in first post):
//www.fleetops.net/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,3/topic,7741.0/

posted on August 5th, 2010, 11:17 am

I'm at a loss for what could be causing that.

Alas, I am moving house this weekend and so I will only have limited access to the net for a while.

If anyone has any general questions, such as help setting up an Astro-page, then ask in this thread. I'm sure people could help out with any queries of those kind. (Note that if you need file hosting, you may need to find a temporary solution until I get back).

Any technical issues should be recorded in this thread, so I can keep better track of what's going on with Astro's occasiona connection quibbles (instructions in first post):
//www.fleetops.net/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,3/topic,7741.0/

its ok now, it fixed itself about 5 days after it started misbehaving, and it still works now.