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Skirmish map - Egypt (previously "Egypt condensed")


mimesot
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Based on the screenshots, the map looks pretty good already (however I am not a good judge in these matters), but I think you forgot to attach the map files, so none can download the map :(.

Regarding the capture issue in the current svn (development version) there is an "uncapturable" flag, which might solve what you are after.

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10 minutes ago, bb_ said:

Based on the screenshots, the map looks pretty good already (however I am not a good judge in these matters), but I think you forgot to attach the map files, so none can download the map :(.

Regarding the capture issue in the current svn (development version) there is an "uncapturable" flag, which might solve what you are after.

Thanks for the hint. I would really love to be able to insert specific tags into the map-xml file, in order to affect just the specific item I want to manipulate. This would be much easier than to create a separate entity file for each modified enity class. Currenlty thhe xml can only store xy coordinates and orientation, right?

9 minutes ago, Loki1950 said:

Nice but you did not actually attach the files for download at all:blink: it takes awhile to get use to the forum software:angel:

Enjoy the Choice :)

You were just faster reading than me inserting all that stuff ;-)

Edited by mimesot
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The detail in this map is gorgeous

Just a word of warning, the Ptolemies and Athenians may see a change in art direction in the future. Native structures should still be available in the scenario editor, but it'll take a little bit of rebuilding if you continue developing this map

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Is the Nile shallow enough for units to cross it on foot at any spot, without needing any transport ships? If not, the map will effectively consist of a few unequal islands.

Also, if you're interested in a bit more historical accuracy (feel free to ignore):

  • The Southern Levant (e.g. Palestine) was also controlled by Egypt in 0 A.D.'s timeframe
  • The Nile delta historically had seven major arms: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Nile_Delta_Surrounding.jpg
  • The North-South Suez canal did not exist, but a West-East pharaonic canal (dug by Necho II, Darius, Ptolemy II, Trajan, or someone else, depending on which source you prefer) connected the Nile with the Red Sea.
  • The Nile valley is great for agriculture, but lacking in other natural resources. Mineral mines and stone quarries were located in the mountains beyond the eastern desert (e.g. towards the Red Sea coast). Wood was imported from the Lebanon.
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Hi!

26 minutes ago, Nescio said:

Is the Nile shallow enough for units to cross it on foot at any spot, without needing any transport ships? If not, the map will effectively consist of a few unequal islands.

Yes, the Nile has 6 shallow areas where you can cross it. As you said, if the parts of the map would be islands, this would be very difficult to balance. Their main purpose of the positioning of the shallow spots is to direct the flow of units across the map. The placement was particularly intended to provide three things: 1) To elongate the distance between Alexandria, Siani and Memphis as their starting positions are so close. This is of course irrelevant for the 1 vs. 1 version of the map, but it could potentially become even an 8 player map. 2) To reduce the  advantage of the north-south riverbank route regarding long distance travel time in comparison to the routes via eastern and western desert. 3) To make the the route from river Nile to the southernmost oasis via the valley of kings equally  convenient compared to the route via the great sand sea.

27 minutes ago, Nescio said:

Also, if you're interested in a bit more historical accuracy (feel free to ignore):

  • The Southern Levant (e.g. Palestine) was also controlled by Egypt in 0 A.D.'s timeframe
  • The Nile delta historically had seven major arms: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Nile_Delta_Surrounding.jpg
  • The North-South Suez canal did not exist, but a West-East pharaonic canal (dug by Necho II, Darius, Ptolemy II, Trajan, or someone else, depending on which source you prefer) connected the Nile with the Red Sea.
  • The Nile valley is great for agriculture, but lacking in other natural resources. Mineral mines and stone quarries were located in the mountains beyond the eastern desert (e.g. towards the Red Sea coast). Wood was imported from the Lebanon.

I honestly wouldn't feel comfortable ignoring your remarks. In contrast, as I totally agree with you. The question is, what can we possibly implement within the boundaries of the game mechanics and map size.

E.g. the Persian base on Sinai is just there to provide diversity. If we had the possibility to create a map twice as big, it could be extended to include the Zagros mountains.  Then the Persians could be used to represent the Parthians and the Seleucids could cover the area of Syria. I think there are two main problems with even bigger maps. The game, I believe it is the pathfinder, has troubles handling such large maps. It already struggles with the map size "giant" when you add more than four players. The second problem is that you would need to limit building to fertile areas or areas that are otherwise suitable: Otherwise you wold see huge deserts covered in civil centers and farms. I think a solution to this problem is currently out of reach. It it was possible it would shift the gameplay a little from tactical to strategic, as the time spent traveling on long distance routes and reconnaissance becomes crucial.

The reason I reduced the Nile delta to two navigable arms only is again map size. The arms are thinner than the main river. The width of the main river was chosen as small as possible, but it had to big enough to allow two ships of the biggest ship class pass by each other. The arms therefore can't handle that sort of ship traffic. As a consequence I created two major arms. If I dug an East-West canal this means there were three navigable rivers in the delta. I am thinking about a way to place them without creating too much additional water surface. It would look odd if there was more water than land in the delta. Any suggestions?

Indeed the wood of date palms is not comparable in quality to that of the cypresses of  Lebanon. Sure, you could create palms with less value in wood, but than you would has to introduce some kind of trade function for wood from external places or something like that. Do you have any idea on how to implement such a feature?

Greetings
mimesot

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2 hours ago, LordGood said:

The detail in this map is gorgeous

Just a word of warning, the Ptolemies and Athenians may see a change in art direction in the future. Native structures should still be available in the scenario editor, but it'll take a little bit of rebuilding if you continue developing this map

Thanks a lot!

I'm always glad to see that 0 a.d. evolves, and so will my map.

Of course this rises a few questions: What happens if an entity is no longer available in the map editor? Is the map going to load or crash? Will there be some kind of dummy-entity, which replaces all obsolete entities of will it leave void spots? Will all current entities still be present after these changes, with just their visual representation altered? 

Greeting
mimesot

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1 minute ago, mimesot said:

all current entities still be present after these changes, with just their visual representation altered?

this one, it has been decided the old actors will have their own new atlas entities for eyecandy purposes, the old entities will be visually changed. We're not planning on removing entities to my knowledge, but if that happens i think your map would simply throw a few errors into the console. I could be mistaken on that last point though.

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1 hour ago, LordGood said:

We're not planning on removing entities to my knowledge, but if that happens i think your map would simply throw a few errors into the console. I could be mistaken on that last point though.

In case that happens ... just a console error but no visual representation any more ...
Assume you removed the Ptolemaic wonder. Could I simply search my maps XML for the phrase "structures/ptol_wonder" and delete that entity section and it will be fine? Is a missing entity uid of any concern?

One further question. If I have an actor that has multiple visual representations that occur with specific frequencies when you place them (like it is the case with various stones and grass patches), how does the map file "remember", which one was chosen. I can't see my map pick a random kind of e.g. short cretan date palm each time I load it, fortunately.

Sorry, but I have a third question. It is an issue with my map, which you can see in some of my screenshots, but I think this can lead to a feature request if feasible. You surely noticed the black horizon on most flat angle screenshots, which is not very pleasing. I guess this this originates from some kind of compromise. The skybox is needed to create, well, a sky and the beautiful reflections on the water. On the other hand there is the equally beautiful circular map shape with its smooth transition into blackness, which you usually look upon from above. What if the transition wasn't into blackness but into transparency and the skybox had a much lower lower boundary. As the botton of the skybox is black, you wouldn't see any difference at the transition zone when looking down at a steep angle. At a flat angle the transition zone would look much slimmer (except the terrain was inclined steep upwards) and transition from terrain texture to sky texture. If the terrain at the map boundary was sloped downwards you would even get a hard horizon line. Is this possible? Does the engine support alpha values for terrain surfaces?

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7 hours ago, mimesot said:

One further question. If I have an actor that has multiple visual representations that occur with specific frequencies when you place them (like it is the case with various stones and grass patches), how does the map file "remember", which one was chosen. I can't see my map pick a random kind of e.g. short cretan date palm each time I load it, fortunately.

I didn't check the code, but looking at the map xml I'm almost sure that the 'Actor' element with the 'seed' attribute are storing the selected variation, example:
 

<Entity uid="4347">
    <Template>actor|props/flora/grass_field_parched_short.xml</Template>
    <Position x="1199.14869" z="103.9384"/>
    <Orientation y="2.35621"/>
    <Actor seed="62142"/>
</Entity>
<Entity uid="4348">
    <Template>actor|props/flora/grass_field_parched_short.xml</Template>
    <Position x="1198.7306" z="61.08883"/>
    <Orientation y="2.35621"/>
    <Actor seed="14988"/>
</Entity>

 

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1 minute ago, WhiteTreePaladin said:

Either the Athenians or Macedonians would get it most likely.

That's what I mean. The current Athenians set seems pretty good for the Athenians, with some minor additions, maybe make the Prytaneion more special looking. The Macedonians could possibly use an updated look.

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There is the problem that the night version is a duplicate of the daytime version. This means if there is one thing to fix in one map, the other one has to be kept in sync. So if the terrain is off and that requires manual brushing, that will be hard to keep in sync. The PMP file can be the same for both maps. But the XML file containing all entities would have to remain.

I'm not sure what we can do there. Changing the environment settings from a JS trigger script would be great, but we don't have that code (yet). I guess we can just use both maps and if there is something to fix, trash the XML file, copy the original one and copy over the night-environment settings.

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8 hours ago, niektb said:

Now this is some map design! Most maps that are posted in these forums generally don't surpass a mediocre level of aesthetics but this is some darn nice painting! :thumbsup: 

I fully agree (that's also true for the random maps, most of them are mediocre too).

@niektb do you want to do the review of this map and commit sometime it in the next 3 weeks?

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I can review the map design but I can't really comment on playability as I don't really have the time to playtest it extensively. I never committed anything since we switched to Phabricator, I think it's better if someone else does the actual commit (my SVN is also around Alpha 21 I think) :) 

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