ball_anthill

[silent skies]

hä everyone,

Now that chess is mostly done with until I get feedback, I'm going on to a new map. A ball map, this time.

It's about ... ants! And planes flying underground in small anthills! It makes no conceptual sense and I don't care.

Here is a general layout I'm thinking of:


I forgot to put the goals in the picture. They would be located in the big rooms in the middle left and middle right, cradled in those crescent shapes.

Notes:
- Map size is currently 2674x1700
- I drew up a quick soil texture for the objects. Yes they're brown, but it's soil, what do you want from me D:<
- The general idea of the map is a bunch of circular rooms connected by wide ant tunnels. Additionally, there are various 'secondary tunnels' which are narrower, which can make for good escape routes or ambushes unless you're a nub and crash a lot.
- I'm not sure what ball players prefer concerning roughness. Currently the geometry is a little rugged, which might make the ball bounce in awkward directions unexpectedly, putting more emphasis on passing I guess. If this isn't desired, I'll just smooth them out as much as possible.

Once I get good layout feedback I'll get to the graphics, which will include:
- ants! (duh)
- ant larva!
- ant queen!
- grass/topsoil at the top of the map, where players spawn!
- Map geography will probably be outlined with a light, sandy texture
- Various crap scattered throughout the soil, such as bones, coins, explodets, etc.

[silent skies]

--- reserved for future updates ---

[MajorPayne257]

Sounds (and looks) very interesting...I'll be looking forward to trying this one out.

[Boko]

Did you get this idea from me? Because I said this like two days ago on mumble

[Greekjr14]

Originally Posted by Boko

Did you get this idea from me? Because I said this like two days ago on mumble

Lol yea I thought maybe he was a spy and decided to take your idea to the next level.

[elxir]

I personally don't think ball plays well in tight corridors, especially a map full of them.

[nesnl]

Makes me think of Altitude waaaaay back in closed beta when there was this map called tbd_anthill. It was made by Diogenes' Dog, so maybe if he sees this he will have something to say on the topic or maybe have an old screenshot.

Found it! Here is the screenie. Notice the old school bases.



Also, sorry for semi-hijacking your thread with this huge image. But maybe you will find it amusing that the same idea came up except it's like 3 years later!

[silent skies]

Well I'll be D:
And here I thought I was being clever and original.

(anyway, I don't actually use mumble)

Originally Posted by elxir

I personally don't think ball plays well in tight corridors, especially a map full of them.

Okay, I can try opening up the map a bit then. Any thoughts on what specific chunks I should remove? Or maybe I should just drastically widen the tunnels, thereby making the chunks smaller?

[DiogenesDog]

The funny thing was that I was stealing the idea from another user who made an Anthill map like 3 years before me. :P

[silent skies]

Well hooray, it's the circle of... theft.

Here is a rework of the map layout. Size is the same, but I've gutted some of the chunks and widened the tunnels a lot. I also reworked the goal-crescent shape so that it's horizontal, not angled:



Also, here are some busted planes, which (amongst other things I draw up myself) will be scattered around inside the map objects:

[Herodadotus]

Love the busted planes, and I think this would make an interesting ball map, with all of the small passing lanes.

[Mattster]

Like the map its awesome. By the way, what server is it on?

[silent skies]

Originally Posted by Mattster

Like the map its awesome. By the way, what server is it on?

Oh, I'm a long way away from releasing a playable version, still working on the art.

[silent skies]

Well, I learned to use the 'render clouds' function to create better looking soil textures, and if I mix it with transparency brushes like I did when working on the chess pieces in tbd_chess, then I can get semi-3D looking soil chunks for the map objects, like so:

[silent skies]

Okay, applied the texture to all map shapes, and added most of the background texture. (Things are getting complicated, working w/ about 10 layers at the moment).

Here's a screenshot of the direction in which the art is going, for inside the anthill:



(Note the buried explodet on the bottom left)

I'm applying some simple transparency brushes to try and give the tunnels and rooms a more spherical, hollowed out shape, while at the same time keeping what I think is a healthy contrast of color between collidable objects and background. In most of the 'rooms', the more open areas, I applied a very thick black to make what appears to be a gaping hole, which in this case will be more tunnels extending off into the 3d plane that are too dark to see, or at any rate makes the spherical shape of the rooms seem to extend even further back than the rounded out tunnels. All in the eye of the beholder, I guess. If I wanted to actually draw those 3d tunnels, though, I think I'd have to brighten the background significantly in order to get the range of colors, and which point I lose the foreground/background contrast, so I think I'll skip that, at least for now.

Thoughts?

[Herodadotus]

I like the texture of the dirt, and how you're smoothing out the edges of the tunnel. I'd like to see more of the wrecked plane, though. That's just me, though.

[gemigemi]

The art style you are going into looks nice, but the actual game play of the map doesn't seem to be too good. It's really cramped and tight which makes for bad game play.

[silent skies]

Full map w/ textures. Still lacking a sky background for the 'aboveground' part at the top.



I opened up the center a bit as well, deleted some objects there.

The art style you are going into looks nice, but the actual game play of the map doesn't seem to be too good. It's really cramped and tight which makes for bad game play.

Even at this stage of the art it won't take me much effort to rearrange the map objects.

As I've said many times, I really don't have any experience designing ball maps, so... the more criticism, the better. What should I delete? What should I move? What should I widen? Or should I just give up and convert this to TBD? :/

[Mandrad]

Originally Posted by silent skies

(Things are getting complicated, working w/ about 10 layers at the moment).

Dont fear layers - their soooo usefull. Either in Alti editor or photoshop. I assume e were talkin about the photoshop ones.
Excepting typepark, my maps probably have from 200 to 300 layers (maybe much more) - never counted!! If ur using photoshop, organize them inside the briefcases. Use them because they can save u from big disapointments.
If ur using a mac, save ur file as .tiff with layers and choose LZW compression. Ur file will be way lower weight than if u save as .psd

[silent skies]

Originally Posted by Mandrad

Dont fear layers - their soooo usefull. Either in Alti editor or photoshop. I assume e were talkin about the photoshop ones.
Excepting typepark, my maps probably have from 200 to 300 layers (maybe much more) - never counted!! If ur using photoshop, organize them inside the briefcases. Use them because they can save u from big disapointments.
If ur using a mac, save ur file as .tiff with layers and choose LZW compression. Ur file will be way lower weight than if u save as .psd

Haha, that's scary 200? Man. I don't think my art is advanced enough for that many... yet.

I'm using the freeware program paint.net at the moment, on a PC. It has lots of photoshop-esque features and is useful enough for my purposes here.

Though as I understand it, an abundance of layers can affect game performance.


Anyway, Genesis is gonna come up w/ a new map layout for me sometime next weekend. I'll just pluck away at the art objects until then.

[Mandrad]

Originally Posted by silent skies

Haha, that's scary 200? Man. I don't think my art is advanced enough for that many... yet.
I'm using the freeware program paint.net at the moment, on a PC. It has lots of photoshop-esque features and is useful enough for my purposes here.

Though as I understand it, an abundance of layers can affect game performance.
Anyway, Genesis is gonna come up w/ a new map layout for me sometime next weekend. I'll just pluck away at the art objects until then.

Its also not a question of how advanced your art is, but of how many objects ur map has, and how much u keep it safe. If u dont have multiple layers, when u decide to turn back, for example, on some texture aplied, ur gone... if u had that texture in some other layer, u could just delet that layer, not having this way to redo the whole image.

I was talking about layers in the image editor program, not the game map editor. In photoshop i have a bunch of layers but in the end (when exported) images are flat (no layers) so no big weight, no effect in game performance - performance in photoshop is of course affected.