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One map per week


Moxar

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Hi everybody!

We had some discussion about this earlier, but no one seems realy interested due to the alpha stage of the game. Now is beta, now is the time for map creation!

As we all know, one of the most boring aspect of Xenonauts is the lack of variation between missions due to a lack of variation of maps. Of course, we can't blame Chris (well, actually we can, always blame the project leader, dat's his job!) for spending more time to communicate and dev the game than making new maps for now. This is why I will (try) to propose at least a new map every week to the community.

Feel free to share your feelings about the maps!

To test them, please report to this article

***Updated 7 june 2013***

Every map and submap proposed here are included in the upcomming version of Community Map Pack.

Global link

pack v18.5 (14)

pack v18.4 (25)

pack v18.3.2 (25)

Changelog 7 June

  • v18.5.zip no longer contains maps and submaps already native to Xenonauts. The pack droped to 14 maps (from 25). If you use v18.5.x or Steam's release, use this pack instead of the others/olders.
  • From now, every map I make will be include in the Community Map Pack. I will keep providing direct download links to my "personnal" stuff.

Changelog 6 june

  • v18.5 is now available. No additional features, but custom maps and submaps have been renamed. However, native submaps from a tileset used in another have not been renamed.
    The new map and submap names now follow the rules of the Map Pack Community

Changelog 18 may

  • One new middleeast map for medium slot. It's a map from a previous batch that I forgot to upload.

Changelog 11 may

  • 2 more maps for middleeast: lightscout and scout/corvette.
  • middleeast use now crates props
  • a new prop has bees designed for middleeast tileset: ruins (15x15). It exists in four variations, and can be placed on any ground.
  • 2 new props have bees designed for middleeast tileset: marketplace (10x10 and 20x20). It can be placed on any ground.

Changelog 10 may

  • 3 more maps available for industrial tileset. They are available for download with both map packs.

Changelog 8 may

  • Suppression of some submaps now native of v18.4. If you play v18.3, please use the v18.3.2 pack.

Changelog 4 may

  • 2 arctic maps have been added: a small and a medium. Arctical tileset has now chainfences.
  • 2 terror maps (town and soviettown tilesets) have been added for medium terror site (battleship, carrier, cruiser). Soviettown tileset now has industrial concrete, since there is not yet a proper soviet concrete.
  • lightscout maps have been tweaked a little regarding Chris's comments. There is no more alien spawn spot inside Ufos, and the Chinook no longer face an edge.

Changelog 3 may

  • 4 medium maps (landingship and cruiser) and a small have been added to the pack for farm, industrial, middleeast and desert tilesets. All should follow Goldhawk's standarts, but I'm waiting Chris's "validation" (as we so often wait for Desura's!).

Changelog 2 may

  • Corvette maps now share their design with scouts. The files have been renamed. You should probably restaure the Goldhawk's backup before installing/updating this map pack.

Changelog 1 may

  • Addition of a farm map for corvette.
  • Addition of a industrial map for corvette.
  • Addition of a desert map for corvette.

Changelog 30 april, later

  • Correction of bugs in two submaps responsible for CTD.

Changelog 30 april

  • mox_industrial_lightscout2 and mox_farm_lightscout2 have been removed as they did not follow the Goldhawk's standarts.
  • All maps have now a unique spawn spot for Xenonauts and a unique spawnspot for aliens
  • All maps are now bound to only one ufo type.
  • All maps should now be more faithfull with Goldhawk's standarts.

Changelog 29 april, later...

  • New industrial map, lots of rail

Changelog 29 april, late

  • New farm map, more like a forest mal actually
  • All Ufo maps are now available for scouts and smallscouts.

Changelog 28 april, a little later

  • New soviettown map

Changelog 28 april, early on the morning...

  • all lightcout maps are now 60x60
  • new submaps added to help leveldesign
  • individual map links have been removed. Everything is now within the .zip file
Edited by Moxar
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And here comes the third, it's a middleeast one.

W: 60, H: 60

Tileset: middleeast

Ufo: smallscout

possible ufo spwan: 2

possible Chinook spawn: 2

possible Shrike spawn: 2

possible Valkyrie spawn: 2

Edited by Moxar
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You might have noticed, 6 maps have been released. I will not post here everytime I publish another one, but I'll keep the original post up to date.

I've been trying to create new maps today, but the lack of submaps bored me. I want more concrete 5x5, 10x10, and grass 5x5 10x10 for industrial, farm and town tileset... So, I made them. Well, in fact, I took the existing one and cut/paste them to create "new" dimensions.

I am now reworking a little bit the "old" 6 maps to improve them with my brand new submaps. Thus, because of the growing number of files (submaps) and because the new maps will suffer from my submap's dependancies, I will only update the "mox_maps.zip" file, which will contain both maps and submaps. You will just have to extract it, copy-paste the content within your "assets" folder, and Magic should do the rest.

Expect new maps very soon!

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Yeah, sorry for the inattention. It's easy to get lost in the sea of threads here and miss some new stuff. I won't be playing X-nauts until release so it's hard for me to get into these things right now but mapping efforts are definitely appreciated and even needed I think.

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Got to try out the middle east map. I love it. Searching each house, carefully moving. Shooting a Caesan in the face with a rocket. Using 2 on the next one. Then gunning down the last 2 with shotguns.

Also got to check if putting Stun Rockets back breaks the game. It doesn't, they work fine, dunno why they were removed really.

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Downloading pack right now. Today I work overnight I will give feedback tomorrow :(

Since you are already working on mapping, could you try something? I would like to add even further variety and randonmess on maps, like totally new kinds. Say you add a farm map with actually no farm only trees and rocks from desert map so you actually fight in a forest?

I totally want to try to mix anything I can to get new map classes but couldnt get the time to learn enough yet. If you could find some time to try something like it and tell if its feasible I would be more than happy :)

Your effort on making new maps is really apreciated.

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@Sathra: I'm glad you liked it. I will try to procure one or two more tonight.

@lightgemini: I will create a forest map, as I want one too. Thus, using tiles (or props) from differents tilesets (ie: using desert rocks in farm maps) requests to past submaps from a folder to another one.

The two next maps should be a forest (farm tileset) and a railway station (industrial) for scouts.

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I just finished the forest map. Unfortunatly, there are not many trees which block line of sight, so it's some kind of open field. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Moreover, I've updated every map to make them support scouts too.

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Thanks for doing this. I've had a look through the pack and I'll give some quick comments on the maps to bring them into line with how I make maps (if you're just doing this for fun, feel free to disregard them - but if you'd like some of them to maybe be included in the game then they should be useful):

1) All the UFOs face south east (bottom right of the screen). This means you can't put them on the bottom edge of the map, because it's difficult to get around the front of them that way. I prefer them against the top left edge of the map simply because it doesn't expose the player to the non-destructible sides and rear of the UFO, but you can put them against the other two sides if needed too.

I think in beta we'll probably add a SW facing of all the UFOs up to Landing Ship size though, just to allow a bit more map variation. But until then, I'd design the maps around the SE facing UFOs.

2) Only have one possible UFO spawn point and one Chinook / Shrike / Valkyrie spawn point in each map, it'll make the map more structured and let you place aliens better if you know where the player will be coming from.

3) The map categories are Light Scout (60x60), then Scout / Corvette (60x60), then Landing Ship / Cruiser (70x70), then larger ships (as required). Don't mix from category to category if possible, so don't have Light Scouts and Scouts on the same map.

4) Think about LOS - there should be things that divide the map into "sections" by blocking LOS through it (like walls), so it's not just a sniper's paradise (and lets you end up face-to-face with aliens). Having little blocking LOS within a "section" is fine, but you shouldn't be able to see much from one sector to another.

Arctic Light Scout - Generally looks decent, but there's too much water / impassable terrain for a map that size. I don't think the Ferret could navigate it. Also, I'd use more trees and less rocks - trees block LOS, rocks don't.

Desert Light Scout - Very little wrong with this map, other than the multiple spawn points. The LOS ranges are very long, but the desert tileset doesn't really have much to block LOS with anyway. I wouldn't make too many empty maps like this one (use the base tileset for a more "urban" desert map), but this one is fine.

Farm Lightscout 1 - There's not enough LOS blocking stuff here, only the horizontal hedge wall blocks LOS (concrete wall and hedgerows are both ideal for this in the farm map). Also, cover walls between fields don't generally have their open bits at either end, it's usually a single entry point somewhere near the middle. Not sure about the field of tree trunks either!

Farm Lightscout 2 - This isn't going to be navigable by vehicles. There's also not really any "sections", and as those trees don't block LOS it's also going to be very open despite being packed with props. An area of the map like this could work, but not a whole map.

Industrial Lightscout 1 - I like the basic layout of this one, but I think it'd benefit from you picking one dropship landing area and one crash site area (I'd replace one of the buildings with the crash site). The buildings need improving - I'd make some new sub-maps for them, ones without the attached concrete tiles on the ground. The map also needs more LOS blocking, which you can do by replacing some of the central fence with concrete wall and / or by adding more freight trains to the railway.

Industrial Lightscout 2 - I don't think the idea here is going to work. Too crowded in gameplay terms and also doesn't look natural.

Middle East Light scout - Not bad. I think it's a little too crowded with buildings and would benefit with one less, and more cover (those mixed wooden fence / ruined wall dividers I use in the middle east maps work quite well for that). I'm also not sold on the concrete ground around the office, doesn't really look that natural to me. The Middle East tileset is difficult to get right though, it might need some more tiles done still.

Soviet Town - Those ground tiles and the wooden huts are going to be formed into a separate "Tundra" tileset. You should use the more urban ones instead. The map needs more cover too (flowerbeds are good for that on both Town tilesets). Admittedly this tileset still needs more work.

Town - This is pretty good. Probably needs more green though, just a sea of grey at the moment. I'd probably move the shop and bank to the right edge of the map, then put a park or something in the upper central part of the map (so the buildings are around the edge). The road / concrete area in the top-right seems a bit superfluous at the moment.

Overall, these maps are good for someone just starting out. A bit too cramped, probably (less can be more), but they're interesting. I'd start playing with adding new building submaps too.

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Thank you for those comments Chris. I will rework them. My purpose was to grant us more maps for beta, but if you can add them to the next builds, I'd be happy to save you some precious dev' time.

As you said the soviet town tileset need more work. I don't think I will make more until we have more submaps for this one.

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Actually played the Town terror map just now. I loved the damn thing, and it was pretty scary for a day mission. The sheer amount of buildings meant I kept walking into alien fire and lost a couple good troopers. And since you start in the middle of the map I had troops all over the place.

Next time I'm going to start shooting my way through buildings :P

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Well, I reworked the 7 maps Chris was interested in, and deleted the old ones. I made some submaps too, and renamed some others of my creation. The new pack follows now the Goldhawk's standarts. The goal is to make something which can be used by Goldhawks to spare them some time.

Note that farm2 and industrial2 have been removed.

edit: Chris, if you have some free time, could you tell me if this new batch is Okay? thanks a lot!

Edited by Moxar
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