ball_crystallized

[Polio]

ball_crystallized
For your balling pleasure

V2.1


V1

Who's ready for a new map? This one is kind of cave-esque, and I won't lie to you gentlemen, there are some tight fits in there . But give it a try and leave me some feedback.

I've left the old version screenshot up so you can see the difference.

Download

Edit:V2

[elxir]

holy sick!

[tgleaf]

Polio's back!

[Polio]

Originally Posted by tgleaf

Polio's back!

Just visiting.

[Tekn0]

Holy hell, this map looks sick!

I wonder how the long shot from mid-map is going to work....

[Polio]

Originally Posted by Tekn0

Holy hell, this map looks sick!

I wonder how the long shot from mid-map is going to work....

Can you show me which shot you mean? I'm not sure I follow you.

[Tekn0]

Nevermind took a closer look at it from Photoshop looks okay.

I want to play it and see, seems to have a lot of potential.

[Dyno]

I like this map a lot! Great job. Just wondering, Why do the objects look so low-res? Especially on the edges or the pieces.

[Polio]

Originally Posted by Dyno

I like this map a lot! Great job. Just wondering, Why do the objects look so low-res? Especially on the edges or the pieces.

So I usually work at the same resolution as the finished map which I realize is not such a good idea, and I do a lot of rotating and selection editing etc. and the edges often end up being fairly jagged, so I tried to fix the jaggedness by blurring it (I've tried anti-aliasing and a number of blurring methods). But it doesn't look good, I'm working on a way to make it look sharper and I'll post an update when I can get it looking right.

swarm2 also looks a little jagged around the edges, working on a fix for that as well.

Thanks for the feedback =D.

[Nikon]

Looks sick!

[Dyno]

Originally Posted by Polio

So I usually work at the same resolution as the finished map which I realize is not such a good idea, and I do a lot of rotating and selection editing etc. and the edges often end up being fairly jagged, so I tried to fix the jaggedness by blurring it (I've tried anti-aliasing and a number of blurring methods). But it doesn't look good, I'm working on a way to make it look sharper and I'll post an update when I can get it looking right.

swarm2 also looks a little jagged around the edges, working on a fix for that as well.

Thanks for the feedback =D.

Right on! I hope it becomes official. I'm getting tired of all of the same maps.

[XX1]

Great work, but a few things could be moved around :3

I played against some bots and flew around in an explodet. Explodet cause your maps have always "leaned" toward thermo and i wanted so to see what i could abuse/exploit from its perspective ;D

So far the map is pretty tightly packed in the mid and not so much right outside of it ( beneath the spawns a bit )

The small Diamonds along the bottom of the map...... op._.
the smaller ones near the goals are especially thermo OP

beneath the goals there is like a gap that is lower than the rest of the map where the ball can get stuck/trapped. Kinda annoying when the ball gets stuck down there >_>
the edges of objects/ black outline looks kinda "dull" or blurry, Not sure how to edit that though.

[Polio]

Originally Posted by XX1

Great work, but a few things could be moved around :3

I played against some bots and flew around in an explodet. Explodet cause your maps have always "leaned" toward thermo and i wanted so to see what i could abuse/exploit from its perspective ;D

So far the map is pretty tightly packed in the mid and not so much right outside of it ( beneath the spawns a bit )

The small Diamonds along the bottom of the map...... op._.
the smaller ones near the goals are especially thermo OP

beneath the goals there is like a gap that is lower than the rest of the map where the ball can get stuck/trapped. Kinda annoying when the ball gets stuck down there >_>
the edges of objects/ black outline looks kinda "dull" or blurry, Not sure how to edit that though.

Thanks for the feedback, yeah I'll probably remove those small diamonds on the goal sides at least, and I may move the one in the middle up a little bit or shrink it so it's not such a problem. Also I planned on fixing that gap you're talking about, because I agree it is annoying. Also still working on a fix for the blurry edges. Will post an update soon.

[elxir]

leave the gap, good place to "kill" the ball - always leads to an amusing 30 seconds before cipso picks it up by accident

unless he meant a glitch then gdi polio lrn 2 mapmake

[Polio]

Originally Posted by elxir

leave the gap, good place to "kill" the ball - always leads to an amusing 30 seconds before cipso picks it up by accident

unless he meant a glitch then gdi polio lrn 2 mapmake

I think I found a good compromise, I smoothed that area down there just a bit and put an obstacle protecting it a bit so you can try and kill the ball there, or if you're the opposing team try and wait for a clear etc.

Also I removed the black outline from the obstacles, I don't think it's necessary and without it the obstacles look much cleaner. Also it adds some negligible amount of room to the map .

I've left the older collapsed SS of the map up so you guys can see the difference.

[Tekn0]

I played v1 of this map on the test server yesterday.

But only against sky (who was cussing all the time cuz i was winning) and a bot. So I can't tell how well it plays in a 6v6 situation.

I like the changes to v2, I'll try to test it out.

Also as Dyno said the graphics seem a bit weird when in-game, i.e. pixelized/blurred a lot on edges. Would be great if you could update this especially since this map has a lot of potential to become ladder-ready!

Great work Polio!

[Demuyt]

Looks incredible.

[Flexio]

Symmetry error in V2 screen, I'm assuming this is unintentional

[elxir]

I normally forget to mirror between 4 and 20 object when I make a map, so we should give him a round of applause for only missing one.

[Polio]

Originally Posted by Flexio

Symmetry error in V2 screen, I'm assuming this is unintentional

Consider it a feature.



Seriously though, not sure how I missed this, fix incoming.

[Tekn0]

We played this map yesterday, i think it was in {arr} #1.

t'was pretty fun, the bottom route seems to be difficult to navigate, esp. since bounce prediction becomes a bit difficult other than that seems to play somewhat smoothly.

Needs a lot more play, rest assured i'll be voting to test this map as often as possible. Nice work Polio, hopefully we can polish this map into ladder or tourneys.

[Tekn0]

We need more people to vote/test this map... I really like it so far.

[Aki1024]

Originally Posted by Tekn0

We need more people to vote/test this map... I really like it so far.

This is an agreeable statement.

[CmdrNoval]

Great looking map... can't wait to play it.

[SPeciaL]

download link broken.

[Polio]

Originally Posted by SPeciaL

download link broken.

Fixed.

chars

[General Gee]

Most people seemed to hate this one, with the bounces being a pain in the ar$e, but imo its fine. Its just a different / new type of map and just needs to be played more.

[Princess Squirtle]

This map is overall good. A bit too easy for a whale to defend the low-middle area, though. The lack of self-passes and trickshots possibilies can suck, but one can live without it.

[trendy11one]

I played only one game there. And while "trickshots" and "bounces" is not viable, they are only part which makes ball ball. This map is very tight, i dont remember score, 6-5 or 6-4, but most part of goals was after hard team push, not single pass. Enemy just overkill us, since map of obstacles, where you can hide.
Its maybe not that critical, but this leave no chance for teams, who have good ball handlers and miss strong killers.
Also, lot of angles not only leads to random bounces, but since shape of whole map pieces same, this force players hold ball, which slow down game.

[Tekn0]

Yes lack of bounce and quick movements and lack of tight obstacles in a largish map makes for pretty long games as we had yesterday in the Captain's game.

This is not a problem as such if the obstacles are more tight meaning more randa control but it's not, it's quite open in places and this means TBD style pushes which I'm sure the TBD folks will appreciate. It's not a bad map, it just flows differently that requires more focus on outkilling a LOT of the enemies to score and not just a few, which is more than what is usually required in ball. Loopy is pretty effective on this map.

I don't think this can be "fixed" very easily without some significant rework of the layout and surfaces but I don't think it needs to be fixed too much. It -is- possible for a Randa to adapt to this map but it will no longer be the most effective ball carrier, loopies will fair far better in this map which is fine.

I can't yet suggest how this can be made better, need to think about it more.

Pros:
- Very easy on the eyes, nice contrast and choice of colours & graphics.
- Powerups and location seem good
- Goal position doesn't require much "searching" on first few tries which means it 'feels' like it's in the right position

Cons:
- Jagged edges causes less predictable bounces in EVERY surface of the map
- Transition from middle to low-bottom is too open with direct access to spawners of opposition, probably could be reworked.