Mountain Pass

[Moderator]

old

17:47, 24th Mar 2016
Ardenian: Definitly an eye candy, good job with the custom terrain.
However, the tile variation could be better
aple, if you are already importing custom textures,
why not also adding a custom texture for leaves under trees, for exmaple, to have a difference to the ground texture for creep camps ?
A second texture for the roads would be good, especially the middle road is too uniform/big.

Areas that are not walkable should be indicated as such in-game,
with rocks or drastically height change ( custom height tool),
for example, not only with texture.

Also, aple, a lot of your doodads are placed outside the camera
bounds, you could think about finding some balance between
designing borders and saving some doodads for other places.

The starting areas are too small. The little tree group prevents the build-up of an appropriate base.
You could think about removing it, to give the players a space to build on and
not two places to build around a third.

The two taverns as well on the Northern side and the Southern side
are not necessary, what do you think about one at the road's curve for each Northern and Southern site ?

18:50, 5th Apr 2016
Ardenian:
Map improved and changes made, approved.

You could, however, remove files you don't use from the Import Manager

 

[Legal_Ease]

Looks decent. Can you hit [enter] between the images so they don't stretch out to the right so far? Also a touch of bbcode would make the description look much better. Finally, a few more screenshot would be nice. Some in game maybe and one of the whole terrain.

 

[aple]

The side-by-side comparisons are actually 1 image. ^^;

I suck at making a good-looking description. I guess I could put the credits into another spoiler...?

 

[Legal_Ease]

The side-by-side comparisons are actually 1 image. ^^;

I suck at making a good-looking description. I guess I could put the credits into another spoiler...?

How about a title with bigger font, color and some sub-headers? and borders?

Title About This is some text about the map. Screenshots screenies Some images here Credits This is some credits to people who made things.

the bbcode for that sample

[table]
[CENTER][COLOR="Lime"][SIZE="4"]Title[/SIZE][/COLOR]

[COLOR="SeaGreen"][SIZE="3"]About[/SIZE][/COLOR][/CENTER]

[COLOR="YellowGreen"]This is some text about the map.[/COLOR]

[CENTER][COLOR="SeaGreen"][SIZE="3"]Screenshots[/SIZE][/COLOR][/CENTER]

[HIDDEN="screenies"]Some images here[/HIDDEN]

[CENTER][COLOR="SeaGreen"][SIZE="3"]Credits[/SIZE][/COLOR][/CENTER]

[COLOR="YellowGreen"]This is some credits to people who made things.[/COLOR]
[/table]

Also, you can use: http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/miscellaneous-tutorials-456/map-description-templates-171659/

Or you can use your own VM and 'go advanced' and make a description with the text editing tools there. Then just c&p it into your description.

 

[aple]

Definitly an eye candy, good job with the custom terrain.
However, the tile variation could be better
aple, if you are already importing custom textures,
why not also adding a custom texture for leaves under trees, for exmaple, to have a difference to the ground texture for creep camps ?
A second texture for the roads would be good, especially the middle road is too uniform/big.

Areas that are not walkable should be indicated as such in-game,
with rocks or drastically height change ( custom height tool),
for example, not only with texture.

Also, aple, a lot of your doodads are placed outside the camera
bounds, you could think about finding some balance between
designing borders and saving some doodads for other places.

The starting areas are too small. The little tree group prevents the build-up of an appropriate base.
You could think about removing it, to give the players a space to build on and
not two places to build around a third.

The two taverns as well on the Northern side and the Southern side
are not necessary, what do you think about one at the road's curve for each Northern and Southern site ?

I'm trying to figure out how to make the mains bigger, yeah. I have made several changes to the mains already, so after I make some more changes I'll update it. The problem with it is you have to have a certain amount of wood for mains, and cutting out too much can throw off the balance of the map. So I'll probably have to rework the mains entirely.

There are unfortunately not very many alternative road-like textures that fit WC3's style and would also fit with the idea of the map I'm trying to go with. (Namely: These are the paths the humans took when escaping into the mountains from the Undead) As well, they're not really "roads" they're paths. High-traffic routes, which is why I used a softer but less colorful texture as it's been trampled pretty hard.

The non-walkable areas could use some work, I agree.

I made sure there was 1 tavern per player well within Militia distance, but that might work too.

Can anyone suggest a good mirroring tool? It's really difficult to copy/paste and align the 4 cells of my map perfectly. (My map looks really wonky and kind of unprofessional without it being mirrored perfectly)

As for the tile variation, I might have to work with a different texture. The main grass texture I'm using doesn't have much variation and doesn't really blend seamlessly either, looking at it closer.

@Legal Ease

I'll try using that once I update the map.


EDIT 1: Okay, I think I finished making enough changes to my cell. I just need to mirror it to the other 3 cells now. Probably will be another day before this gets updated.
EDIT 2: I will be adding some more screenshots as well when I get around to finishing it up.

 

[aple]

Map has been updated! The cell has been completely reworked and more details have been added. I tried making the cliffs as obvious as possible, but they still may need some work.

 

[Ardenian]

Suggestions after new version:
- Middle the Southern hero tavern, as you did with the Northern one.
- The hay at the troll camps looks weird, I would suggest to remove it
- I still believe a leaves texture for trees ( terrain type) could greatly improve the map
- Yes, the cliffs are still not obvious enough, mostly ( Northern side of Teal, e.g.)
- For the center of the map, what do you think about small grass hills out of the water,
to have some difference in the terrain type ?
- Why is there a throne at the North-West top ?

 

[aple]

1. Fixed.
2. They sleep on that, though! Also adds some color. If it's that bad, I'll tone down the count or think of something else.
3. I'll have to look through standard WC3 textures, because none of the textures on THW fit the style or quality I want. I think what I'm using already under trees looks a lot like leaves though. =\
4. I don't want to put too many rocks, because then the texture would be pointless to have. You'd barely see it. I'll see what I can do.
5. I'll work on that next.
6. For shits and giggles, easter egg.

EDIT 1: Putting up a new version with the center addressed, worked on cliffs slightly more, and the troll hay dealt with.

 

[Ardenian]

2. The default hay clashes with the surronding green, in my opinion
3. Hm, up to you, only a suggestion
4. Hm, indeed. Maybe try a combination of height and noise

 

[aple]

Noise seems to have made a slight difference. It looks a little more jagged now.

Adding another update that adds a few more orange camps with Golems, increasing the creep diversity some. Quite a few other minor improvements as well.

EDIT: One more update coming. Decided I'd take a look into breaking the slop limit in the editor and it's surprisingly easy. Made a lot of the cliffs much steeper, to near 90-degree drops now. This will be the last update for the day. Wanna work on other things.

 

[Ardenian]

Yes, great job with the cliffs!

I think there are some unused files now, aren't there ?
Like the sand tile texture. You should clean up the Import Manager and
remove tiles you are not using, as well from the Import Manager and the graphic set.

You might also take a look on the item drops, they seem to be a bit strong/too many

 

[aple]

I need some more feedback on the items, yeah. Right now I'm okay with them, but they can definitely be toned down if necessary. I have lots of creep camps with items to make the map feel more alive and have more stuff to do in times that are a little slow as well as plenty of advantages to turn around games.

Yeah, I could probably check the file management. I could probably cut the filesize down a lot, actually.

 

[Ardenian]

Yeah, you could, go for it!