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It's the Stinky's terrible maps thread.


Ol' Stinky

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Download Stinky Maps 2 here which contains 71 maps as of the 2nd of September.

Map pack 2 contains:

17 farm maps (12 60x60s: 6 for Lightscout, 6 for Scout/Corvette; 5 70x70s, Cruiser/Landingship)

15 arctic maps (10 60x60s: 5 for Lightscout, 5 for Scout/Corvette; 5 70x70s, Cruiser/Landingship)

5 town maps (60x60, Corvette/Landingship)

4 industrial maps (1 40x50 and 1 40x80, Lightscout; 1 85x40 and 1 60x75, Scout/Corvette)

30 desert maps (6 Lightscout, 6 Scout/Corvette, 6 Landingship/Cruiser, 6 Carrier, 6 Battleship)

(Original post follows.)

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I'm having a go at making maps. Today's the first time I've even looked at the level editor. I'm not very good at it. But if you want more maps, you might as well give these a try. Note that I haven't extensively tested them.

What I'm doing is making one map, then altering it rather than completely redoing it. As a result, the area around the dropship is the same on all maps. However, the alien's ship moves around (it's always at the top, though), and buildings/scenery changes. Alien spawn points are also different on each map. This is to try and make encounters feel a bit more random than they are at the moment, even if the not-random-placement bug is a major factor in that. It's also to try and prevent the "learning" of levels. It's certainly not because I'm a lazy git.

If you see any muckups, please post about it here. A screenshot would be great!

Also, the ground is boring, yes. I'm naff at making it look good. Sorry about that.

Edited by Ol' Stinky
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I salute the initiative, welcome in the map designer's world. I insist you do not feel attacked or insulted by reading my feedbacks. English is not my mothertalk, and I might have some difficulties to express my feelings about your maps in a smooth way. So please, don't take it personaly.

I like the global design of your map. They feel "real". There are some bugs with your paddoc walls, but it's easy to fix.

There is a bug in the top left corner: you used a corner paddock where you should use a down paddock. Moreover, why did you paint paddock_D instead of paddock_U in the upper edge ?

Stinky_ME_lightscout_60x60_1A:

  • I think that this map lacks of LOS deny. There is a whole clear-LOS-line from chinook to ufo, which makes the sniper very/too powerful. You should draw a wall to cut LOS or place a building somewhere in the marketplace.
  • Concerning spawnspots, having every alien spot in the marketplace will deny the interest the buildings. The map will be reduced at a 60x30 corridor. You should maybe put some (4-6) alien spawnspot aside this line. I'm also not sold by the civies/allies spaws, as there is no challenge reaching them.

Stinky_ME_lightscout_60x60_1B:

  • Once again, I like the design. This maps offers better LOS management. There are clearly sections here.
  • About spawnspots: same comments here: aliens are confined in a poor section of the map, when the marketplace and the ruins are abandoned.

Stinky_ME_lightscout_60x60_1C:

  • You have a bug with paddock corners.
  • Good section distribution.
  • Same comment about spawnspots.

Stinky_ME_lightscout_60x60_1D:

  • There is a diagonale, you should probably split it.
  • You have a bug with paddock corners.
  • Same comment about spawnspots.

Stinky_ME_lightscout_60x60_1E:

  • There is a diagonale, you should probably split it.
  • You have a bug with paddock corners.
  • Same comment about spawnspots.

Stinky_ME_lightscout_60x60_1F:

  • You have a bug with paddock walls.
  • Same comment about spawnspots.

I think that some little rework on your pack could make it far better.

Anyway, thanks for sharing it to the community. it's already in my maps folder!

Edited by Moxar
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Wow, brilliant. Thanks for the feedback!

As for spawnspots, I was trying to make it so you can't predict where they're going to be - I know with the default maps that after a while, you know that there's an alien hiding behind those rocks up ahead. I probably went too far though, I'll scatter them around a bit more.

I'll admit, the civs spawning there all the time was me seeing whether the not-random spawning bug was limited to aliens or not. There's about six spawnspots for those guys, but they always seem to be down by that 5x5 house when I run it. I'll scatter them, too.

Edited by Ol' Stinky
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I'm not using that, I have the map I'm testing and use a save where I'm just outside the battle. :P

I don't know why I was so confused about how the walls fit together. I'm fixing 'em now.

Edit: I've put a new version of the maps up in the OP. They should be a bit less terrible now.

Second edit: After uploading the second version of the Middle Eastern maps, I whipped up a small map for the desert tileset. I've edited the OP. Hopefully the ME maps are now actually acceptable, with no more mucked-up walls for example, although I suspect there are still gameplay problems. I've tried to apply the lessons learnt from day 1 (thanks, Moxar).

First of all, although I still float a vague idea of what I'm trying to do, I'm trying to plan it a bit more carefully. In the ME maps I wanted to do "outskirts of a village under attack", but didn't really consider LoS, LoF as I should have done. This time, I've gone for a base that's under attack from the aliens - original, I know - and its three sectors shouldn't lead to any silliness with snipers. I've also gone right ahead and not focused the aliens, civs and local forces in any one spot.

Edit: I ended up making the lightscouts 60x60 as well, despite thinking it was a bit too big. It was a bit too cramped going down to 50x50, so that's that.

Edited by Ol' Stinky
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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for the feedback. Updated the submaps:

- I didn't go through with the layer 0 beds, but I did move them so the second tile didn't touch the wall, which is when problems seem to happen.

- I put in the fire escape.

- Layer 2 issues should be fixed. I thought I got rid of all the layer 2s when I tried changing walls to L2 to try and solve two tile prop problems, thanks for pointing out missed ones.

- Put some beds back in the clinic.

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looking good. I like the farm variants, though could do with those props :)

I personally wouldn't do more than 10 variants of a building else your going to go mad.

Also if your worried about doors, always leave 1 tile around the edge of your submap. Worst case you have alley access.

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Luckily, I'm already mad!

Yeah, you're right, I should probably turn the farm buildings into 10x10 rather than 8x8 and have an empty ring around them. It's safer and the benefit of 8x8 (being able to place a wall right next to it as opposed to always 1 tile away) doesn't really outweigh that.

I'll go back and put props in afterwards, I wanted to knock all of them out fairly quick. The farmhouses will have props in from the start, but I'll most likely only get around five done before the end of the day.

---

Hey Gr00v3r! Check the link in the sig. I'll update this thread's links, though. Sorry about that!

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Another option that I think the original submaps used was for each to have a specific facing.

farmhouse_se would always have the doors on the south east wall for example.

You know when placing the submaps into levels which sides you should avoid blocking.

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Stinky if you didnt see my message last time, here is the summary.

1 ) love new grass blending. Mixed on a muddy pasture looks awesome.

2) lose the concrete that was out of place now :)

3) you need to fix the roof tiles because you have layer 0 issues with those industrial tiles against the walls.

I have tested out a couple of alternatives the one on the right flat roo is also industrial but lighter tone

e1c020.jpg

dre6mt.jpg

Additional - dont set a default tile!... if someones game is not stored in the same directory as you the map will crash the game.

Edited by flashman
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Using the long grass around the buildings looks fine for disused or seldom used ones, like sheds or barns.

I think it makes the houses look a little odd though to have grass growing up the sides as if no one had lived there for months.

However using it for some buildings and not others may make the map look a little disjointed.

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Glad the forums have recovered. It felt like they took a direct hit from an alien battleship.

I've updated map pack 2 (link). I did see your original post, Flash, and although I made the mistake of trying to refresh the page so I couldn't reference it, I got the message of "rooftops, mixed grass".

  • Grass blending is in for my farm building submaps. I also replaced the house rooftops with industrial/roof-blue.
  • I updated the one farmhouse without rooftop access to have stairs. The idea's that you risk the cramped close quarters of a farmhouse to get a vantage point, so the old design was, well, dumb. Here's a pic.
    OoaRF5l.png
  • Concrete slabs for buildings from the farm maps in pack 2 are gone.
  • Randompropfield now has a "safe zone" of a 2x2 square in the centre to place NPCs on. This means that I can make the spawns less remote and hopefully, this'll make the maps feel less empty. I've also replaced the garden/shrubbery-in-grassfield type submaps.
  • Misc layer problems solved. Submap editor, why do you sometimes change the layer on your own?
  • Level 0 tends to be fine, buit I get some odd visual issues with levels 1/2 sometimes. Am I screwing up room transparency painting?
  • If you want to use the old farmhouses for anything, they're still around in maps\farm\building\Farm_Farmhouse_10x10_Stinky. The wooden ones are their own submaps (Farm_WoodenFarmhouse_10x10_Stinky).
Additional - dont set a default tile!... if someones game is not stored in the same directory as you the map will crash the game.

Gah! I didn't know this. Also fixed in map pack 2.

Using the long grass around the buildings looks fine for disused or seldom used ones, like sheds or barns.

I think it makes the houses look a little odd though to have grass growing up the sides as if no one had lived there for months.

However using it for some buildings and not others may make the map look a little disjointed.

Well, the grass is in there, give it a try and see if you're right. It won't take long for me to remove if people hate it.

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OK 6 maps checked and certified for map pack... /fingers crossed I didnt miss anything but probably did.

2 clarify - I have added 2 prop fields to pack, random 50pc, random structure and wood house to the pack. Did I miss anything?

I had to move some buildings 1/2 squares because of valkyrie spawn leading to half chopped houses. On 2 maps.

I found a prop hedge error on 1 map and fixed it.

I had to replace a lot of 5x5grass tiles with 10x10 because there is a bug in game and it meant the map sometimes spawned with no 5x 5 farm grass squares. On map 6 light scout, I was trapped in chinook because of it. Had to fix one of my maps as well because of this.

Map 6, I had to switch top and top right fields and spawns because I had to move the xeno spawn points due to valkyrie killing everything.

On one map- map2 I think, added xenonauts spawns as they were missing.

One one map- 3 i think, I had to switch the shrike direction because it spawned with the ramp facing south and vehicles were stuck.

2 longer term issues I couldn't fix.

1) we need to persuade Chris to add a glass barn window. - I am testing solutions to try and find a bodge fix.

2) That blue industrial roof doesnt sit on the wood properly, there is a little gap and the colour is striking against the green. I think we need to work on more subtle roof options. But its not urgent.

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Wow, thanks for cleaning up my mess! Is it alright if I put your neater versions in Stinky Maps 2? I'll include a note of thanks\credit in the .zip as well, naturally. If I update my .zip with more maps during the week, I don't want people who've DLed the compack to accidently replace these farm maps with my worse version.

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You have my sympathies, two of my nephews have been staying this bank holiday weekend and the younger one came with some sort of virus. Poor kid.

I'm trying to get the feel for placing spawns. Too many and you can get weird cases where you encounter an alien every ten minutes, too few and you get areas of the map unused and/or they're predictable. We need more people giving feedback on how the maps play, really. I'm going to start my first game of 18.51 once I have chez Stinky to myself again, using only com pack maps.

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Because their is a set number of spawns from a ship the number of spawn points in itself shouldnt be a real issue. If you encounter 2/3 aliens in a row then the rest of the map will be empty. It also offers variation because pot luck could put a cluster together, or they could all be isolated. I have played my industrial map and I put about 4x times the number of spawn points vs spawns. i have yest to meet the aliens in the same place.

So long as you dont put them all on top of each other you wont walk into a wall of plasma.

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Wow. Lots of maps. Thanks for doing these, it's always good to see the community trying out the editor and posting up their work and it must have taken a while to do them all.

I've not had a chance to look at all of them because you made so many, but here's my general thoughts on what I viewed (about 1/3 of them):

- You need to be more careful lining up the edges of the ground tiles. The 10x10 ones and 5x5 ones are meant to have edges that line up with one another, if you don't do that then it looks weird. It seems you know this is an area to work on already, but having the floor join up in a sensible way (for example on the Farm maps) is half the battle when it comes to creating a realistic-looking map. I find it quite a chore sometimes but it has to be done.

- Your arctic maps are densely packed with props, which doesn't look as bad as I thought it would, but you've gone a bit too far. Having two or three mesas touching one another works fairly well, actually - as does having a lot of rocks in a small area. But having a solid wall of them doesn't quite look right and can be a bit repetitive.

- It seems this goes for all of the tilesets, actually. You've a tendency to re-use the same prop / building a lot in close proximity, which looks a bit unnatural.

Overall I don't think they slot into the Goldhawk style particularly well, but I'm sure the community is happy to have more maps to play though!

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Fixed the alignment issues with the farm tilesets in the CMP. They were my fault at 2am :P

There is a bug with 5x5 farm tiles not loading. Need to report it :P

I had to use 10x10 squares instead to put them in the CMP. I believe I have re-alligned all the squares now. and re-uploaded the maps

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Stinky I mailed Chris about the windows and we ended up with a possible farm house solution. It uses the soviet wood tiles!

zu1aqh.jpg

I did a quick mock up to see what it would look like

BTW having seen your cool houses I think you should do a Town terror map next :)

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