It's actually just a passive income system with an exponential formula that increases with time. There's other ways to get income but this is where 95% of your minerals come from. It's dull and lacks depth.
I actually have a kinda good idea for this then.
Seeing as how there are two types of resources, minerals and vespene, what you can do is this.
For each control point you have, you gain more minerals, but you gain less vespene in exchange.
Heres the rationale:
1). Minerals make you able to buy higher tier items. Over the long term of the game, this will mean you eventually win because you have a better income if you hold onto more of the control points.
2). On the flip side, Vespene should be more valuable for the short term, like giving all the bio a stimpack like buff for a short time, or dropping down units that are good at pushing the enemy bio back. In this way, if one team loses the middle, they haven't completely lost the game, as they have an opportunity to push the lanes back and retake the middle.
3.) This still leads the game towards an end, because holding the middle becomes more and more valuable the longer you hold it. If one team is working together and keeping the lanes from pushing, then they will eventually win the game, as it should be. But because you gain more vespene the less nodes you have, it isn't (as I am drawing it is now via previous posts in this thread) that whoever gets the early advantage always wins.
EDIT: To clarify, the minerals will still ramp up slowly over time as it is currently, just the ramp up will scale based on how many nodes are controlled.
Well on the idea of the income system, I haven't played the map as I am in the US, but I am assuming that your system uses the dota esque idea where when you kill an enemy tank, the owner of the killing unit gets all the income.
An idea is to use a function which gives the owner of the killing unit some higher percentage of the kill reward minerals, maybe 40%, and then splits the other 60% among the remaining 4 players (15% for each in this case). If you look at how DotA worked, the "Carry" heroes always got more gold in the end than the support ones, but that was the intent. You have support to give your best mech all the tools it needs to demolish the other team (slowing, disabling, healing, etc. etc.) so in this sense, you'd still be giving the killing unit a benefit over the other players, but you are also still distributing the minerals around the team, so they don't fall too far behind.
I like yours gameplay-wise but I wish it had more than one main entrance. If I were you I would add two more. One at each side where manmade-clif-expansions could lead to the Xel'Naga Watch Towers. Yes, I do believe that we should take liberties such as these to improve the maps. (OR you could argue that your map is a mainly-air-focused map, thus one entrance is enough).
This was actually something I took a lot of time to think about, and I felt like adding more than the one main access bridge would change the map a bit too much from the idea of the original. I agree that gameplay wise it has some flaws because of this design decision, and it does very much so favor air over ground especially because of the massive rush distance on the map. After I had finished polishing the map, there was a part of me that wished I had chosen a map that would have been a bit easier to balance, but at the end of the day, I would say that I am pretty happy with how it turned out in the end.
The other thing that I found was very successful on this map was proxy buildings because there are a lot of LoS blockers to hide buildings at on your opponents side of the map. Because of this its possible to apply early pressure as protoss and terran to prevent the zerg from mass expanding everywhere on the map.
I've finished my heavily modified version of Crescent Moon.
Some of the changes: - added Gas to the main land expansions. - connected two of the four islands to the main land. - tighter chokes. - lowered ground area around central island. - connections to central island via Rocks. - Terrain theme: Much manmade stuff added so the map will look a little more varied. - SC2 stuff like Rocks, LOS Blockers, Watch Towers and Gold Minerals. - I tried to balance those four starting positions a little more so the long cliffs won't affect the players on 9 and 3 o'clock so much. Still, 1v1 and 2v2 is recommended, FFA is not.
Well here it is, finally released. After a lot of play testing, this map feels relatively balanced, with the favor going towards early macro and late game air control because of the tight chokes. It is fairly safe in this map to take the natural early, and its also easy to defend the third, while the gold expos can become the critical point of control in the mid and late game.
Note that this map is also currently published on B.net, so if you want to play it with some friends, you can find it by searching "Full Circle SC2"
MAJOR CHANGES:
1). Swapped the original location of the main with the original location of the natural, mainly to keep in line of the trend of SC2 maps having the main on high ground.
2). Changed the way the outside path works by removing the back access to the natural, and instead making it lead to backdoor rocks to the main.
3). Added a third in the spot that used to be just meaningless high ground.
4). Changed the center expansions to both high yield minerals and high yield gas (needs testing) and added destructible rocks to that same expo.
5). Added four watch towers.
6). Added various line of sight blockers.
The basis of the map still remains the same, with the focus being on the three major choke points that the bridges on the map provide.
Here's my second attempt... a little better than the first in my opinion. :) It's a copy of the 4 player map Caldera... Volcanic activity? No problem.
This is a legacy convert so the terrain placement is nearly identical, aside from mineral placement and a few balance issues... I added a back door to each base with curtain blockers and a destructible rock pile... as well as a few high yields in the center on two separate islands. As you can see by the analysis, it's fairly balanced for space even though its not symmetrical. Also added 2 vespene nodes to each main, left only 1 at each expansion... the two naturals in the middle are meant to be a bit contentious, as the other 4 expansions will typically open your backdoor, so it should be a bit of a trade-off.
Doodads, terrain tweaks and balance issues are still being tinkered with, but this is a playable version.
EDIT: Oh, the remake screenshot is a tad inaccurate... in the lower right base (4 oclock), the main choke was scaled back a touch for balance... now each base has space for 17 CCs according to the analyzer, and a more equal distribution of minerals/gas. Also added more doodads/changed the terrain somewhat to pretty it up. :)
I probably would have put the destructible rocks at the other entrance to the mains, because as it stands, it can only be used really as a 2v2 map, because the both players on a side share the middle as their natural. If you put the rocks the other place, then each base would have a natrual to expand to.
So, heres what I have so far of my map, not quite entering it yet as I would like to get some people to play on it who are much more skilled than I am, but either way I think it ended up better than I originally anticipated it would be!
I guess I will forward my question to here, since there seems to be no response on the "How to make a Legacy Map" guide.
I am looking at recreating the map Full Circle for this contest, but there are some issues with the original map that I wanted to correct. first of all, I want to swap where the main and the nat are in the map (not change the cliff placement, but put the main on the high ground like is common in SC2 maps) and to also add a 3rd in addition to the middle expos (which will become gold). How much of the map are we able to change to still qualify for this contest, especially in the case of a map like Full Circle which has a lot of potential if it wasn't for some of the obvious flaws?
In sort of the same idea of balance that OutsiderXE is talking about, a lot of the SC1 maps don't have naturals at them either, which could lead to disadvantages for certain races. Would we be able to add expo spots in places that the old maps didn't? Not really change the terrain, just plop down some minerals and gas in a logical spot on the map.
EDIT: Or, would it be possible to move the start locations while keeping everything else on the map virtually the same? There are some maps I am considering working on that would make more sense for SC2 balance to have their start positions at one of the original expos.
Eeeeeelllo! So I promised it would be ready for testing on Saturday, and now it is! This is a beta version of the map (I need some players who are better at ladder matches than I am to give it a proper testing) but here is a screenshot of what has been done with some text added for the locations of things.
It is currently going under the name "Salvage" which can and probably will change once I can think of something more clever.
Sorry for not getting back to you sooner, I have been busy with school and what-not.
Sadly, no screenshot as of yet, but its a 1v1 map on the Braxis Alpha tileset. I need to fix up some of the terrain and get the doodads taken care off, so I would predict it to be ready for testing on Saturday sometime.
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So out of curiousity, since there are two parts of this contest, how is it going to work as far as placement goes? Is it just based on overall votes?
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Good luck everyone in this competition, there are some really good entries here!
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I am wondering the same thing, but I am assuming that all the Blizzcon action/news has put the voting for this contest on temporary hiatus.
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I actually have a kinda good idea for this then.
Seeing as how there are two types of resources, minerals and vespene, what you can do is this.
For each control point you have, you gain more minerals, but you gain less vespene in exchange.
Heres the rationale:
1). Minerals make you able to buy higher tier items. Over the long term of the game, this will mean you eventually win because you have a better income if you hold onto more of the control points.
2). On the flip side, Vespene should be more valuable for the short term, like giving all the bio a stimpack like buff for a short time, or dropping down units that are good at pushing the enemy bio back. In this way, if one team loses the middle, they haven't completely lost the game, as they have an opportunity to push the lanes back and retake the middle.
3.) This still leads the game towards an end, because holding the middle becomes more and more valuable the longer you hold it. If one team is working together and keeping the lanes from pushing, then they will eventually win the game, as it should be. But because you gain more vespene the less nodes you have, it isn't (as I am drawing it is now via previous posts in this thread) that whoever gets the early advantage always wins.
EDIT: To clarify, the minerals will still ramp up slowly over time as it is currently, just the ramp up will scale based on how many nodes are controlled.
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@Eiviyn: Go
Well on the idea of the income system, I haven't played the map as I am in the US, but I am assuming that your system uses the dota esque idea where when you kill an enemy tank, the owner of the killing unit gets all the income.
An idea is to use a function which gives the owner of the killing unit some higher percentage of the kill reward minerals, maybe 40%, and then splits the other 60% among the remaining 4 players (15% for each in this case). If you look at how DotA worked, the "Carry" heroes always got more gold in the end than the support ones, but that was the intent. You have support to give your best mech all the tools it needs to demolish the other team (slowing, disabling, healing, etc. etc.) so in this sense, you'd still be giving the killing unit a benefit over the other players, but you are also still distributing the minerals around the team, so they don't fall too far behind.
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This was actually something I took a lot of time to think about, and I felt like adding more than the one main access bridge would change the map a bit too much from the idea of the original. I agree that gameplay wise it has some flaws because of this design decision, and it does very much so favor air over ground especially because of the massive rush distance on the map. After I had finished polishing the map, there was a part of me that wished I had chosen a map that would have been a bit easier to balance, but at the end of the day, I would say that I am pretty happy with how it turned out in the end.
The other thing that I found was very successful on this map was proxy buildings because there are a lot of LoS blockers to hide buildings at on your opponents side of the map. Because of this its possible to apply early pressure as protoss and terran to prevent the zerg from mass expanding everywhere on the map.
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This is probably my favorite entry aside from my own of course... the doodad work is phenomenal!
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Well here it is, finally released. After a lot of play testing, this map feels relatively balanced, with the favor going towards early macro and late game air control because of the tight chokes. It is fairly safe in this map to take the natural early, and its also easy to defend the third, while the gold expos can become the critical point of control in the mid and late game.
Note that this map is also currently published on B.net, so if you want to play it with some friends, you can find it by searching "Full Circle SC2"
MAJOR CHANGES:
1). Swapped the original location of the main with the original location of the natural, mainly to keep in line of the trend of SC2 maps having the main on high ground.
2). Changed the way the outside path works by removing the back access to the natural, and instead making it lead to backdoor rocks to the main.
3). Added a third in the spot that used to be just meaningless high ground.
4). Changed the center expansions to both high yield minerals and high yield gas (needs testing) and added destructible rocks to that same expo.
5). Added four watch towers.
6). Added various line of sight blockers.
The basis of the map still remains the same, with the focus being on the three major choke points that the bridges on the map provide.
Original
Remake
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I probably would have put the destructible rocks at the other entrance to the mains, because as it stands, it can only be used really as a 2v2 map, because the both players on a side share the middle as their natural. If you put the rocks the other place, then each base would have a natrual to expand to.
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So, heres what I have so far of my map, not quite entering it yet as I would like to get some people to play on it who are much more skilled than I am, but either way I think it ended up better than I originally anticipated it would be!
SNIPMoved to a new reply with the released map.
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This is looking really nice, I am liking the texture work you are doing in the second picture there. Keep up the good work!
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I guess I will forward my question to here, since there seems to be no response on the "How to make a Legacy Map" guide.
I am looking at recreating the map Full Circle for this contest, but there are some issues with the original map that I wanted to correct. first of all, I want to swap where the main and the nat are in the map (not change the cliff placement, but put the main on the high ground like is common in SC2 maps) and to also add a 3rd in addition to the middle expos (which will become gold). How much of the map are we able to change to still qualify for this contest, especially in the case of a map like Full Circle which has a lot of potential if it wasn't for some of the obvious flaws?
EDIT: Moved Map image to new post.
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In sort of the same idea of balance that OutsiderXE is talking about, a lot of the SC1 maps don't have naturals at them either, which could lead to disadvantages for certain races. Would we be able to add expo spots in places that the old maps didn't? Not really change the terrain, just plop down some minerals and gas in a logical spot on the map.
EDIT: Or, would it be possible to move the start locations while keeping everything else on the map virtually the same? There are some maps I am considering working on that would make more sense for SC2 balance to have their start positions at one of the original expos.
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@Anonimuss: Go
Eeeeeelllo! So I promised it would be ready for testing on Saturday, and now it is! This is a beta version of the map (I need some players who are better at ladder matches than I am to give it a proper testing) but here is a screenshot of what has been done with some text added for the locations of things.
It is currently going under the name "Salvage" which can and probably will change once I can think of something more clever.
0
@Anonimuss: Go
Sorry for not getting back to you sooner, I have been busy with school and what-not.
Sadly, no screenshot as of yet, but its a 1v1 map on the Braxis Alpha tileset. I need to fix up some of the terrain and get the doodads taken care off, so I would predict it to be ready for testing on Saturday sometime.