Well, if you want to be lazy as me and have barely any see-able brushes. You can use, I forget what it's called but it has by default 100 in mcedit, it's above the hollow option I believe and when you do something it'll pretty much erode for you. I suggest doing 25 or 50 though.
If you're referring to the Chance option, that can kinda look ugly at times, and doesn't do much to change the shape of the brushstroke. Just sayin'.
It's a Rage/Blitz map, so it's going to be small. That picture is of the focal point of the map, a large factory located in sight of both teams' spawns. I'm gonna put a sneak peek thread up on the oc.tc forums soon. :3
Kind-of but i got rid of 3. I wanted the map to be big not in the sence of big areas though. Most area take 20 minutes at most even if your bridging or tunneling.
So you posted pictures from Intersection 8 of your 10 Intersection map that you got rid of 3 Intersections in...
IM was really well balanced. The only unbalanced mob was the thornguard with it's extreme punch at the end. Zistykins are way to easy, just punch a hole in the ground and done. Boomers, you can snipe them easily. Witches are fine as long as you don't get close and use a bow. The invisible cave spiders gave me WAY more trouble.
Have you been marketing DsI as an easy map? I can't remember Yes, I have. It was supposed to be an Easy to Easy-Medium map, but ended up mostly Easy-Medium. but yeah, the fact i've completed both DsI and LoDII makes me agree with you that they are suitable for newcomers. Monstrosity, however... that starting area, to me, doesn't introduce such an easy map, and I don't feel would be suitable for pure beginners. It takes a lot of tactic and concentration, and knowing what the custom mobs are going to throw at you and preparing for it (in my opinion). That's not to say the rest of the map isn't easy (I haven't played it) but I think newbie maps should have easy beginnings and a steady difficulty curve to allow for the player to settle down, rather than have them be thrown straight in to the action. That's my opinion though That does make sense. I haven't played Monstrosity either, so I just threw it in there based off what I had heard from the CTM podcast.
What do you mean with the clay? I meant you could replace each color of wool with the corresponding color of hardened clay. Fairy Land is supposed to be made out of wool for the destructability, and changing it to clay would ruin this entirely. Oh. :/
Also, what did you mean by making it easier for speedrunners? The clay thing specifically would mean we wouldn't have to worry about clearing our inventory of excess wool and accidentally throw away a legit one, but I realized that doesn't really matter if the player takes a full route to all the wool locations so meh.
Replies in bold.
Also, just wondering, but who here would be interested in seeing some pictures of the map I've been working on for Project Ares recently?
@Drago
First of all, I wouldn't classify Monstrosity as an easy map to start out in. It's quite tricky at points and, depending on the person, can get really tough. Especially for the beginners. Even counting it, that's 5 maps that you've listed compared to the dozens of CTM maps that aren't geared to beginners. For every map that's geared to new players, there's 5 or 6 that aren't. That's a lack (albeit massive may have been a slight bit too far)
But here's the thing; are you counting the numerous uber-hard maps that suffer from "first-map" syndrome? Because there are a lot of those, but we wouldn't be suggesting them to anyone as they aren't worth playing.
And really, you don't need a bunch of easy maps for a new player to choose from. It's nice to have variety, sure, but once they've gotten the hang of things they can take on medium/transitional maps (I'd say UT1 is a good example of this), before taking on harder maps. CTM maps, by tradition, have been designed to be difficult, so if you can train players to be ready for the harder things by starting them on a few easier maps, they'll be ready to break into the more difficult ones. Not saying every CTM map has to be uber difficult. I prefer easy-medium maps, but I also find some maps easy because I have experience taking on complicated areas.
Hopefully that made sense and didn't sound like me rambling. >_>
Since there is a massive lack of easier maps in the community...
Uhh, who says there is? There are actually quite a few good, easier maps out there right now, they've just faded from the public eye slightly (not counting RH). There's my map, Dreadsky Isles, which I designed to be accessible for newcomers, and hopefully teach them some new tactics that they could take to other CTM maps. Then there's Lands of Desire II by Draco_Rogue, which uses Rugged Horizon's "Open Branching" style to create a large world with lots of exploration possibilities, and also some stellar dungeon designs. Karrott's To Greener Pastures and CFG's Monstrosity are two other easier maps that are good for beginners (from what I've heard. )
I think it might help to add a list of easy, newb-friendly CTM maps to the OP, so that anyone who stumbles across this thread knows a few good places to start if they want to break into the genre.
So I was building some creeper fountains, because EFFEESHANCY. Anyway, I was wondering... is it too evil to make the creepers have water breathing?
Nah, that's not too evil at all. I actually did that in Trickleflood Hollow in DsD, but I added a low Wither effect to the creepers, so they'd be reverse ticking timebombs of sorts. If you can avoid them for long enough, they'll die off.
Yeah, I'll definitely play it, provided my computer decides to behave and can handle it. I've been very much looking forward to the day when you finally release a completed map project.
Open world means the whole map is open to the sky. (Of course there can be dungeons underground, but the map itself is open, no roof.)
Well, generally "Open-World" refers to an open, non-linear layout of the map/game. Generally, open-world takes the form of an open-air map, but it doesn't have to.
Edit: Actually, there's something I wanted to ask everyone.
*mega snipe*
tl;dr Wanna make a "sequel" to RH further defining "open branching" and a difficulty curve, wondering if there's a way I can do this in the existing RH as well or whether it'd be pointless after all this time. Also, I like cookies.
I'd say you should feel free to do what you want, but I feel like RH has been polished and adjusted enough times to warrant you retiring from updating it. If you had ideas of adding attributes to weapons, or really making noticable use of 1.6 features, that would be cool (a weapon that gives you a huge speed boost pls :3). Something I can think of that would greatly help speedrunners (or just derpy people in general, I know you've said you don't pander to speedrunners) is to remove the wool from the map, and replace it with stained clay. I know you made Fairy Land out of wool to give it a whimsical feel, but I felt that feel was more accomplished by the colors, not the material.
What was your progression as a map maker? ie(failed projects etc)
Oh goodie!
So, my very first mapping project was a map about a group of miners who were locked in a house and forced to mine out a cave. I was going to have them discover this huge, long-lost civilization underground, but that project hardly went anywhere and I dropped it after a day or two.
Next project got a bit farther; I called it Towers of Aesmora. Basically, it would be a huge continent that people used to live on, and they all lived in towers. There would be about 10-14 towers scattered around, and each one would be a parkour puzzle to climb up (this was back when climbable vines had just been added.) This project lasted a while, but I kinda lost interest, in favor of starting to play CTM maps.
Towards the end of last October, I started working on Dreadsky Isles, which I never stopped working on and completed in February. That's about all I can say about it; it seems like I'm much more dedicated to my CTM projects than my older adventure map projects.
In all honesty I wish people would update their maps more, all too often people just leave their maps alone after release, particularly if something is broken in an update or such. I think that even if the update seems insignificant if you think it has a place then go for it!
And then there are people like me, who want to update, but also want to wait to group up as many little changes as they can into one giga-update.
Seriously though, I think I might finally get around to updating DsI soon. With 1.6 coming out, I really want to try and use some of the new effects and attributes. I was thinking of giving S'venjal a very small slowness debuff, as it seems to be the primary bow people use for the entire map, giving Shadowscythe a slight speed and health boost buff, and Hiiya'lex a large speed and slight knockback resistance buff.
My question is, why would you list Monstrosity on a list containing Ragecraft and Pantheon? It is not even in the BALLPARK of those maps. It's not even that bad, probably the easiest of the recent big-name CTM maps. Also, Ragecraft is insanely difficult unless you're good at tackling large areas, in which case it's alright.
Going with Fang. Seriously. Fang and progress don't mix.
Yeah, you're probably right. Thing is, I've been fighting technical issues and lag the whole way through making DsD. Right now, I can hardly work on this current area because of how bad the lag is. I've resorted to doing the majority of the work in MCedit, as it somehow runs faster than Minecraft... >_>
@Witty's video, I agreed with it up to the point where he mentioned Warframe. SHIFT + CTRL + W + E IS A PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE COMBINATION! >:U Joking aside, I've played a lot of Warframe (75 hours, about as much as I've played of Project Ares) and I never had an issue with the button combinations. Oh... and the video was good too..... >_>
@Rock's video, I agree with all of what you said, and it actually gave me some ideas that I can work into current and future areas of DsD. What you said had a particular weight, seeing as you're a professional game designer.
Fighting hordes are always so much more fun then fighting a few uber-buffed mobs
I'd tend to agree with this, but I find adding a few powerful mobs to the mix makes things much more interesting. Fighting a large group of lightly-armed melee skellies with a single wither skellie acting as their "leader" makes for some fun gameplay.
I like this snapshot update, and the mob eggs are a really nice addition. However, I feel that the "sheep eat grass to regain wool" is a bit overpowered. I'm not complaining, I use wool for carpeting a lot, but it seems kinda unrealistic for the sheep to regain their wool so easily. It might work better to have them eat the wheat grass to regain their wool, and only after a timer of like five minutes. Still, nice snapshot. :smile.gif:
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It's a Rage/Blitz map, so it's going to be small. That picture is of the focal point of the map, a large factory located in sight of both teams' spawns. I'm gonna put a sneak peek thread up on the oc.tc forums soon. :3
So you posted pictures from Intersection 8 of your 10 Intersection map that you got rid of 3 Intersections in...
10 - 3 = 8, sure.
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Also, just wondering, but who here would be interested in seeing some pictures of the map I've been working on for Project Ares recently?
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And really, you don't need a bunch of easy maps for a new player to choose from. It's nice to have variety, sure, but once they've gotten the hang of things they can take on medium/transitional maps (I'd say UT1 is a good example of this), before taking on harder maps. CTM maps, by tradition, have been designed to be difficult, so if you can train players to be ready for the harder things by starting them on a few easier maps, they'll be ready to break into the more difficult ones. Not saying every CTM map has to be uber difficult. I prefer easy-medium maps, but I also find some maps easy because I have experience taking on complicated areas.
Hopefully that made sense and didn't sound like me rambling. >_>
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Uhh, who says there is? There are actually quite a few good, easier maps out there right now, they've just faded from the public eye slightly (not counting RH). There's my map, Dreadsky Isles, which I designed to be accessible for newcomers, and hopefully teach them some new tactics that they could take to other CTM maps. Then there's Lands of Desire II by Draco_Rogue, which uses Rugged Horizon's "Open Branching" style to create a large world with lots of exploration possibilities, and also some stellar dungeon designs. Karrott's To Greener Pastures and CFG's Monstrosity are two other easier maps that are good for beginners (from what I've heard.
I think it might help to add a list of easy, newb-friendly CTM maps to the OP, so that anyone who stumbles across this thread knows a few good places to start if they want to break into the genre.
Nah, that's not too evil at all.
Yeah, I'll definitely play it, provided my computer decides to behave and can handle it.
Well, generally "Open-World" refers to an open, non-linear layout of the map/game. Generally, open-world takes the form of an open-air map, but it doesn't have to.
I'd say you should feel free to do what you want, but I feel like RH has been polished and adjusted enough times to warrant you retiring from updating it. If you had ideas of adding attributes to weapons, or really making noticable use of 1.6 features, that would be cool (a weapon that gives you a huge speed boost pls :3). Something I can think of that would greatly help speedrunners (or just derpy people in general, I know you've said you don't pander to speedrunners) is to remove the wool from the map, and replace it with stained clay. I know you made Fairy Land out of wool to give it a whimsical feel, but I felt that feel was more accomplished by the colors, not the material.
Oh goodie!
So, my very first mapping project was a map about a group of miners who were locked in a house and forced to mine out a cave. I was going to have them discover this huge, long-lost civilization underground, but that project hardly went anywhere and I dropped it after a day or two.
Next project got a bit farther; I called it Towers of Aesmora. Basically, it would be a huge continent that people used to live on, and they all lived in towers. There would be about 10-14 towers scattered around, and each one would be a parkour puzzle to climb up (this was back when climbable vines had just been added.) This project lasted a while, but I kinda lost interest, in favor of starting to play CTM maps.
Towards the end of last October, I started working on Dreadsky Isles, which I never stopped working on and completed in February. That's about all I can say about it; it seems like I'm much more dedicated to my CTM projects than my older adventure map projects.
And then there are people like me, who want to update, but also want to wait to group up as many little changes as they can into one giga-update.
Seriously though, I think I might finally get around to updating DsI soon. With 1.6 coming out, I really want to try and use some of the new effects and attributes. I was thinking of giving S'venjal a very small slowness debuff, as it seems to be the primary bow people use for the entire map, giving Shadowscythe a slight speed and health boost buff, and Hiiya'lex a large speed and slight knockback resistance buff.
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Or leaves as vines.
Or sponges as vines.
So basically, no, there's no way you can get away from vines. :3
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@Rock's video, I agree with all of what you said, and it actually gave me some ideas that I can work into current and future areas of DsD. What you said had a particular weight, seeing as you're a professional game designer.
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EDIT: 1400.