I lurk at SC2Mapster and I love checking out the WTE. I just figured I'd let everyone know I enjoy the work put into this, it's really cool and inspiring. :)
I'm looking for some artist folks to take a crack at a new color scheme for the map analyzer.
What's the problem? A few new things are coming in the next release that require some nice color schemes.
1. Openness levels
The openness levels are probably one of the most helpful outputs of the map analyzer besides the distance measurements. It shows, graphically, how "open" a point of the map is. In the next official release of the map analyzer I'm going to add another level of gradient to this output so a human can more easily detect the differences in openness.
This image shows the current official release 1.4.3 on the left, and what the next release will show on the right. The color scheme on the right NEEDS SOME LOVE!
2. Influence Heat Map
This is a new feature for the next release. What it shows you, for any given point on the map, is which starting location exerts more influence over that point. Right now I'm doing it as a bunch of gradients to a middle color, then the same gradients reversed to the other base. There is a visual balance to that so users can tell where the influence differences are. For instance, in Scrap Station you can see that the influence over the watchtower is even, but the green band of influence of the 12 o'clock base extends past the cliff between its natural and its third base. I think this tells you 12 can (slightly) better protect its third base, but balance discussions aside, the influence heat map needs a nice color scheme!
So how can you help?
Download this unofficial release of the map analyzer. It has already been set up to analyze Blistering Sands and Scrap Station (included in the download) so just unzip it, double-click the sc2mapanalyzer.exe file and it will produce images in the output folder.
Cool, now how do you play around with the colors? Open the text file "colors.txt" and see I've written instructions on defining colors, and given some descriptions of the colors.
For this community experiment I've moved the relevant colors to the top of the file.
Colors opennessLow, Mid1, Mid2, High are the endpoints of gradients for the openness levels. Low is the color of a cell next to a boundary, and High is the color of a cell in a wide open space.
Influence colors have two parts. "influence1" and "influence2" are the color of text related to Start Location 1 and Start Location 2 that are being compared by the analyzer (right now they are set to blue and yellow). Then there are "influenceMid1, 2, ... 7" which are the endpoints of the gradients in the influence heat map. You'll notice color 1 equals color 7, 2=6, and 3=5 because the gradients are reflected, color 4 is the color that shows areas of equal influence on the map. In the initial color scheme for Scrap Station shown, the color4 for equal influence is red.
Colors terrainEvel0, 1, ... are the colors of the cliff levels. The terrain is rendered in the background of all other output images. I chose black for chasms and greys for playable elevations, so colored information will show up nicely. I think a talented graphic artist will know how to adjust these to better blend with the colored information of different output images.
Once you've fiddled with the colors, double-click sc2mapanalyzer.exe again and it will generate the images with new colors.
That's it! If you have questions or cool color schemes to show, please post back. I suppose we can do a community vote about which scheme to use for the official release, but nothing is stopping us from including a bunch of color schemes to choose from.
QMJ3, it reminds you of novice maps? There is an open ground path to every start location, so you're not safe from early attacks like the Blizzard novice maps.
The original map was such a neat idea, but very poor for competitive play (just look at which mid-map paths border a main base and which do not!) so it needed some serious love. To really see the resemblance, look at the two northern main bases and their natural expansions in the original map, and imagine them reflected to the south; then you get a more symmetrical and balanced map that looks a lot like my remake.
Ramparts is like the lesser-noticed baby brother of Lost Temple. It's design is simple and interesting: the main base has one ground choke, but it's big with an internal high-ground of ramparts, so daring dropship play is encouraged. Also like Lost Temple, the Starcraft version has significant asymmetries. I decided to take this little mapling and give it a makeover, like Blizzard did for the Starcraft 2 version of Lost Temple.
Elements to keep:
Big main bases with the signature "ramparts"
One choke to main, with a natural expansion out on the low ground. Standard ground-based play is certainly possible.
Center island expo, which provides a high-ground staging area, furthering encouraging air tech or drop ships.
New elements:
Watchtowers useful for ground play, but carefully placed to allow drops to skirt if attacker is careful.
Mineral-only gold bases. Useful, but players are encouraged to expand into empty mains for gas and therefore air units are again a good choice for map control/awareness.
A semi-island base in the north and south serve several purposes (1) add two standard bases to the original map which was thin on bases, (2) provides an alternate ground path for a meaty army, (3) gives a players another safe/sneaky base to expand to as a reward for getting dropships or nydus tech.
So, welcome to Ramparts for Starcraft 2, see you on the wall!
I want to re-ask the same thing as Robeezy: does the SC1 map have to be on that list of classic maps in the OP? As in a Blizzard classic map? Or can we remake a popular community map?
Just double click the doodad, check "Don't use doodad footprint", paint pathing manually, profit.
Sure, sure. I'm trying to bring this to the mapper's attention who doesn't even realize that silly pathing is being created, like when you are decorating without the pathing layers visible.
So I've been working on making the map analyzer aware of all doodads, specifically the different footprints they have; they block units from walking, or building, or LoS or some combination of these, and I came across some strange behavior for rotated doodads that do not have rotational symmetry (like non-square rectangles).
Here is the same Deadman's Port Dumpster doodad placed horizontally, vertically, and diagonally. The first oddity is that while the no-path footprint (the one that blocks units from walking) will rotate only 90 degrees, the no-build footprint doesn't rotate at all!
Next, notice that the dumpster's no-path footprint is 5x2; which means the center of the doodad (the point about which it rotates) is placed at the midpoint on an edge between two playable cells. The point here is that when you rotate the 5x2 vertically, the footprint actually partially overlaps a 6x3 grid of playable cells. And when the game decides where you can build, it uses BOTH the original no-build footprint (which stays horizontal no matter which way the doodad is rotated) and the 6x3 cells that the no-path (also no-build) footprint when the doodad is more than 45 degrees off horizontal.
The following image illustrates where units cannot walk and what cells are no-build for the placed doodads above.
So what does this mean? If you are placing doodads in very important, well-traveled or critical choke locations on competitive maps: be aware of the no-path and no-build footprints of rotated doodads.
Just look at how silly the SCVs and building placement is for this example doodad in vertical and diagonal rotations:
Hi, I've got a strange problem that I can't even test myself, maybe someone has seen this and fixed it?
I made a map in US with US editor, published it in US as "Axis of Industry", everything uploads to Bnet fine.
A volunteer was nice enough to help me out. I sent him the map file, he opened it with EU client, changed the name to "Axis of Industry EU" because Bnet apparently keeps published map names unique across all regions (BUT NOT ALLOW THEM TO BE ACCESSED?!?!). Okay, so far, so good.
Now, the problem is when uploading this map file to EU server, the editor generates this preview image automatically, and it's flipped horizontally! I can't even see it or mess around with it myself (no EU account). Has anyone experienced this?
This is an interesting subject. Has anyone considered looking for map sponsers? Can we organize portfolios and ask Coke if they want to choose maps to have their logo in it? Vjeux, Sixen what kind of contacts do you have?
I haven't played with any scripting yet because I like to make melee maps and I was wondering if you think I can leave out the multi-plane to get a similar bridge effect that is still melee compliant? What I mean is, I don't care about pathing underneath; is it scripting or a region property that keeps the marine on the bridge from "falling down" to the cliff level below?
If it's just a region, maybe there are all kinds of cool "bridges" we can make in melee maps, too! Either way, I think a lot of RPG mappers are drooling over a way to increase the complexity of their spaces with multi-plane environments.
This does seem like a strong move by Blizzard; maybe that guy who spammed the Blizz forums to death last weekend was the final straw for them. I understand they want their forums to be a constructive place to talk about Blizzard games, but slapping everyone's real name on their posts, wow.
Hey gang! I've been hard at work on a melee map analyzer to help understand and development new maps. I love melee maps and if you do, too, come check it out! Here's some of the images it can generate:
If you have ideas for more analysis output please post something on the project site!
0
Hey all!
I lurk at SC2Mapster and I love checking out the WTE. I just figured I'd let everyone know I enjoy the work put into this, it's really cool and inspiring. :)
0
I'm looking for some artist folks to take a crack at a new color scheme for the map analyzer.
What's the problem? A few new things are coming in the next release that require some nice color schemes.
1. Openness levels
The openness levels are probably one of the most helpful outputs of the map analyzer besides the distance measurements. It shows, graphically, how "open" a point of the map is. In the next official release of the map analyzer I'm going to add another level of gradient to this output so a human can more easily detect the differences in openness.
This image shows the current official release 1.4.3 on the left, and what the next release will show on the right. The color scheme on the right NEEDS SOME LOVE!
2. Influence Heat Map
This is a new feature for the next release. What it shows you, for any given point on the map, is which starting location exerts more influence over that point. Right now I'm doing it as a bunch of gradients to a middle color, then the same gradients reversed to the other base. There is a visual balance to that so users can tell where the influence differences are. For instance, in Scrap Station you can see that the influence over the watchtower is even, but the green band of influence of the 12 o'clock base extends past the cliff between its natural and its third base. I think this tells you 12 can (slightly) better protect its third base, but balance discussions aside, the influence heat map needs a nice color scheme!
So how can you help?
Download this unofficial release of the map analyzer. It has already been set up to analyze Blistering Sands and Scrap Station (included in the download) so just unzip it, double-click the sc2mapanalyzer.exe file and it will produce images in the output folder.
Cool, now how do you play around with the colors? Open the text file "colors.txt" and see I've written instructions on defining colors, and given some descriptions of the colors.
For this community experiment I've moved the relevant colors to the top of the file.
Once you've fiddled with the colors, double-click sc2mapanalyzer.exe again and it will generate the images with new colors.
That's it! If you have questions or cool color schemes to show, please post back. I suppose we can do a community vote about which scheme to use for the official release, but nothing is stopping us from including a bunch of color schemes to choose from.
0
@QMJ3: Go
QMJ3, it reminds you of novice maps? There is an open ground path to every start location, so you're not safe from early attacks like the Blizzard novice maps.
The original map was such a neat idea, but very poor for competitive play (just look at which mid-map paths border a main base and which do not!) so it needed some serious love. To really see the resemblance, look at the two northern main bases and their natural expansions in the original map, and imagine them reflected to the south; then you get a more symmetrical and balanced map that looks a lot like my remake.
0
Ramparts, you coulda been a contendah
Ramparts is like the lesser-noticed baby brother of Lost Temple. It's design is simple and interesting: the main base has one ground choke, but it's big with an internal high-ground of ramparts, so daring dropship play is encouraged. Also like Lost Temple, the Starcraft version has significant asymmetries. I decided to take this little mapling and give it a makeover, like Blizzard did for the Starcraft 2 version of Lost Temple.
Elements to keep:
New elements:
So, welcome to Ramparts for Starcraft 2, see you on the wall!
0
I want to re-ask the same thing as Robeezy: does the SC1 map have to be on that list of classic maps in the OP? As in a Blizzard classic map? Or can we remake a popular community map?
0
Sure, sure. I'm trying to bring this to the mapper's attention who doesn't even realize that silly pathing is being created, like when you are decorating without the pathing layers visible.
0
So I've been working on making the map analyzer aware of all doodads, specifically the different footprints they have; they block units from walking, or building, or LoS or some combination of these, and I came across some strange behavior for rotated doodads that do not have rotational symmetry (like non-square rectangles).
Here is the same Deadman's Port Dumpster doodad placed horizontally, vertically, and diagonally. The first oddity is that while the no-path footprint (the one that blocks units from walking) will rotate only 90 degrees, the no-build footprint doesn't rotate at all!
Next, notice that the dumpster's no-path footprint is 5x2; which means the center of the doodad (the point about which it rotates) is placed at the midpoint on an edge between two playable cells. The point here is that when you rotate the 5x2 vertically, the footprint actually partially overlaps a 6x3 grid of playable cells. And when the game decides where you can build, it uses BOTH the original no-build footprint (which stays horizontal no matter which way the doodad is rotated) and the 6x3 cells that the no-path (also no-build) footprint when the doodad is more than 45 degrees off horizontal.
The following image illustrates where units cannot walk and what cells are no-build for the placed doodads above.
So what does this mean? If you are placing doodads in very important, well-traveled or critical choke locations on competitive maps: be aware of the no-path and no-build footprints of rotated doodads.
Just look at how silly the SCVs and building placement is for this example doodad in vertical and diagonal rotations:
0
@MotiveMe: Go
Interesting, thanks for the reply
0
Hi, I've got a strange problem that I can't even test myself, maybe someone has seen this and fixed it?
I made a map in US with US editor, published it in US as "Axis of Industry", everything uploads to Bnet fine.
A volunteer was nice enough to help me out. I sent him the map file, he opened it with EU client, changed the name to "Axis of Industry EU" because Bnet apparently keeps published map names unique across all regions (BUT NOT ALLOW THEM TO BE ACCESSED?!?!). Okay, so far, so good.
Now, the problem is when uploading this map file to EU server, the editor generates this preview image automatically, and it's flipped horizontally! I can't even see it or mess around with it myself (no EU account). Has anyone experienced this?
0
Hi! Got a simple SC2Mapster project page question: how do I get rid of the project's default image from showing up at the top of the overview page?
Here is a link to the main page directly,
and here is the overview, which just points to the main page.
You'll see that the project's default image is automatically thrown into the upper right when you look at the overview; I want to get rid of that!
0
This is an interesting subject. Has anyone considered looking for map sponsers? Can we organize portfolios and ask Coke if they want to choose maps to have their logo in it? Vjeux, Sixen what kind of contacts do you have?
0
caspersc, this is cool!
I haven't played with any scripting yet because I like to make melee maps and I was wondering if you think I can leave out the multi-plane to get a similar bridge effect that is still melee compliant? What I mean is, I don't care about pathing underneath; is it scripting or a region property that keeps the marine on the bridge from "falling down" to the cliff level below?
If it's just a region, maybe there are all kinds of cool "bridges" we can make in melee maps, too! Either way, I think a lot of RPG mappers are drooling over a way to increase the complexity of their spaces with multi-plane environments.
0
dimfish.490 on US
0
This does seem like a strong move by Blizzard; maybe that guy who spammed the Blizz forums to death last weekend was the final straw for them. I understand they want their forums to be a constructive place to talk about Blizzard games, but slapping everyone's real name on their posts, wow.
0
Hey gang! I've been hard at work on a melee map analyzer to help understand and development new maps. I love melee maps and if you do, too, come check it out! Here's some of the images it can generate:
If you have ideas for more analysis output please post something on the project site!