SC2Mapster

FTW, I might not have sc2... But, I have sc1 =D And this WTE is possible in sc1. Of course what you will see is not something you can argue about lightning, unit size, color, etc. Sc1 is very limited and making something interesting is quite hard.

I've done a kind of island with one "custom" building on it. I pretty like it considering this is sc1. I think in overall I got the "Tropical Islands".

Lets be straight:

1: Your pictures are too small. You should upload them while making your post to make them load at the end of it.

2: Your water color is great. I think it fits with what someone imagine when thinking to tropical island.

3: The reflectivity on the water is less great. There is something not quite natural in these white reflects.

4: Waterfall comes from nowhere. It's like if under the mountain there was pressure that would push up the water to the waterfall... kind of weird.

5: I feel like the islands are too smooth. If there are mountains, there are rocks. It's very hard to get a good moutain that we think is big. Either you place a lot of small trees and rocks or you get a good point of view or different ground heigh variation with good texturing.

6: There are not enough rocks. Put more rocks. More more more rocks. So many rocks that David Kim's face will appear! Look at: http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/scenic-view-of-the-tropical-island-bill-curtsinger.jpg

7: I see 2 or 3 textures. You have access to 8 textures. More grass, more green, more rocky for the cliff. Mix the textures.

8: You need more types of tree in general. There are plenty of different kind. You could add vines on rocks, bushes, tree underbrush, LOS (in the case you're not making a melee map), etc.

For more feedback on smaller details we need bigger pictures. Trying to give feedback on your waterfall for example is quite impossible or on tree variety. It's too small.

So in overall, I don't feel the size of the island. I can't say by looking at it, oh it looks like 2km long. This means there is something not working in the size. Though, the map looks way enough big like it is cause we can see the texture repeat on the water. It's not easy, but you can probably get it ;)

@DeltaCadimus: Go

Impressive. I like it. Large quantities of tree's while I don't get the impression of it being cluttered.

I might as well put my latest map out there for some criticism. Two selected screenshots of the most "tropical island"-like parts of the map.

Quote from Mozared: Go

@DeltaCadimus: Go

It could be sunnier, but overall I like it. Really simple, interesting take. I wouldn't mind a proper point of interest though - right now the rock tower is the main 'event'; other than that it really is just an island.

As for the WTE: a Protoss 'settlement' doesn't really exist, does it? Plus, we've had all sorts of ruins/temples. It's an interesting thought though, maybe next week could be the participants' vision of what a Protoss metropolis (Aiur) would look like. Christ, we really need some Protoss lore.

Well we're getting that Protoss space platform tileset in HotS so maybe then we could have more for Protoss settlements.

Also, I apologise for my absence for the past few months... still struggling with a nasty bug/cold :(

Quote from SGTMeowmers9: Go

Wow. Wo. Wow. Wow.

That's possible in StarEdit? I wasn't aware it could do that.

Haha! StarEdit is eh...if Starcraft 1 only had StarEdit, the game would have died a long time ago. It has a big lack of possibilities that other known editors such as SCMDraft 2 can do. As one example, you can resize your map, place units to player 13-255, have access to a bunch of triggers that are not in StarEdit, and a whole bunch of other things.

Basicly, SC1 is in 2D. A lot of doodads are duplicated and flipped, having them in 2 directions. In SCMDraft 2 you can place what they call Sprites. It's just an image without pathing. For example, if you place a tree, the bottom part of the tree will have pathing, the top part will be a Sprite. So, in the editor you can place all the possible Sprites. I've placed some I used next to the building in this picture at the bottom of the post.

From that, I took a bunch of them and placed them in a way that creates the illusion of a building. The order in which you place them is important. If you place them in the wrong order you will see that they will not overlap correctly showing bad parts of the Sprite and disabling the illusion. As an example, I remade the top of the building in the wrong side. The effect is totally different.

However, you can't do that kind of stuff endlessly. You have a limit of 250 sprites which kind of suck. This building uses 112 sprites. Soooo... you don't make many building I guess.

@DeltaCadimus: Go

Well done. I like it, though, I don't think I would take vacations there. There is something in the atmosphere from the color that do not make this place attracting. But it is surely an island and no one said the water always had to be blue!

@SheogorathSC: Go

This is the HoTS editor that I did not opened once yet *sad face* The only time I tried to open it resulted in an error. But, seeing this kind doodads "me met l'eau à la bouche" (sorry I don't know this expression in english, but it means something like; I really want to see more). HoTS comes with a lot of new doodads and whole terrain set and the possibilities will suddenly be much bigger than what we can do at the moment in WoL. We've been making WTE with the same doodads for so long that it's now very hard to mix them in a new way. New doodads and textures like you're showing is sooooo nice. HoTS will be sooooo epic. =D

@njordys: Go

njordys, I like the paths that you made and the texture very dark for cliffs and bright for the sand. You really see what is what. But I have some troubles when it comes to tree size. When I look in overall, some trees are huge, some are very small, ok, it's fine... Then in the picture 2 I see the small house. I lose the proportions... How big is what... I mean, what if a marine was as big as the house and in fact that house was a small toy? I think what you,re trying to do is an island/land where trees growth really big...but something is missing to get the whole feeling. Are the cliffs part of the weird size? Maybe. Are the number of plants and underbrush part of the issue? Maybe. You have already many doodads under the trees, but the first thing you see is the big ball at the bottom of eatch huge tree. The color distinction between the trees and the ground texture seems to drastic. It's gray-ish over dark green.

Aw, I'm taking long time to write eatch sentence because I'm not 100% sure. I just want to say that I'm not right at all. It might be really great to your eyes, but for mines, there is something missing. Take a look at the pictures from the movie Avatar. Of course it's totally not the same deal, but look at those picture and then look at your, could you add something that would make your forest, the ground, the huge trees... be more "as one".

@sgtnoobkilla: Go

My mouth lays down on the floor while my head and my eyes are still looking at your pictures.

There is only one thing missing and it would be a rainbow.

I've tried looking at it carefully to see if anything could be better and I didn't find anything else to say than -awesome-.

If we could move forward in time... so I can make that 2nd WTE video from 101 to 200 =P To rapidly show those epic terrains...but I guess more are coming with HoTS.