04-07-2014, 05:21 PM
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Looks really cool. I like how it's a little smaller, but not much. Map size reduction has reportedly failed in the past but I don't know how massive a snip was made.
Yeah I'd play on that without a second thought. It's probably about time I played with a first thought, though ...
Good work GC6
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Thanks!!
My goals were..
Center the map ; Allow us to better utilize the radius settings with less need for 'mapping voodoo.'
Reduce the size of the map slightly.
Retain the look, feel & flow of the original map.
I agree with assesments of past 'reductions', and to explain a bit of my thinking on this topic.
Past reductions have been tricky, primarily becuase ; We tend to want to retain total familiarity with the map..
Ie: you know what J12 is, and how to get to it form anywhere on the map.. also for instance, "The Spiral"... )
However, Maps also have some physical constraints that must always be considered.
For instance, it's 1024x1024 'tiles' (think a single square tile, or small asteroid in size..)
Center is of course tiles 512/511x512/511 (4 square tiles)
Physical Settings correspond to these 'tiles', those settings being :
Radius settings: How far out objects spawn from the center per number of players (usually)
1: Green Spawn Radius
2: Player Spawn Radius
3: Flag Spawn Radius.
& 4: LVZ Object placement (The leaderboard in Wobits House for example.)
Simply put : We want to make sure that Players and objects aren't spawning outside the playable area of the map.
Obviously not a concern with a full size map as the radius are limited by the 1024x1024 size of the given playable area.
As we start cutting into the map, we create issues....
The struggle then becomes balancing the familiar with the needs of the game engine.
We end up with an oddly shaped map, that is not really centered, limiting the spawn radius so it gets to be more static, than random.
(Ie; at some point, we won't spawn any farther out no matter how many people are in the zone / greens never spawn in area X etc..)
I believe that we are firmly at the epoch of using the 'original map' in any capacity without hacking it so much that the flow is completely destroyed, or, having to better center it - which causes another re-hack, and coord familiarity is lost.. Ie: J12 is now J6 or other such oddities. Which is why I think my several attempts to re-hack the map to reduce it's size simple did not inspire me.. it gave up too much, and couldn't be done without drastically leaving the playable areas off center, and causing more spawn radius issues than we already face, and or destroying the natural flow of the areas, killing running in certain places, and or leaving abrupt dead ends where escapes used to be.
Naturally, I had to conceed something, and I choose the coordinate familiarity , and balanced that by reproducing as closely as possible, all of the orignal map. I feel that is what is most familiar to most people, and with %coord and %area it's not that big of a deal.. I'm positive you can say "I'm at J12", and everyone would end up at the same place, even though it's now at J11 on my map,
Plus, we get to actually use original areas that haven't been in play for a decade or more... and at reduced scale, it will be new enough to level the playing field a bit in terms or learning the map again... of course, I expect that Lancasters, Terriers, and Levys will be a lot more dangerous in these tighter spaces of the map, but will still have enough room to stretch the legs of the Jav, and lots of spots to lay in wait for cloakers, and lots of tight gaps to lace with the sharks razor wire bullet streams. The Warbids manuverability will come in handy in the tight spaces as well. I think it will increase the aggregate "chaos" in the zone, and hopefully help bring back some of that feeling from days when we still have 80 people in zone - so avoidance and conservation become an active skill, and not a byproduct of not seeing anyone on screen for 5 minutes because you're hanging out way on the edge, where greens don't even spawn.
I didn't take this lightly... I've been thinking about this for a while now, and still am, as you can see... I just wanted people to know my process, if you understand it, you can suport it better, get excited about it's goals, and you'll know what you expect going in instead of being blindsided by it... I think many of us have found recently, that we're to the point that we're going to need to abandon certain constraints to keep things fresh and working for the population we have. I think a good start is to stop trying to make a map made for 200 people work for 50 people... and making life harder in managing settings to make it work that way.. and shorting other opportunities in the process. The map is brilliant, so I get why we've done all we can to keep it as much intact as possible..
Hopefully, this project is the next step for the zone... I really do hope so...
This map is the map I always wanted to make for CZ.. So thank you for your reception of it thus far.. please spread this thread around to more regulars so they too can see, and offer feedback..
Thanks!