Ball_Astro

[Oyster]

Ball_Astro

NEW 1/17/15


Download link:
http://s000.tinyupload.com/download....87106792964431

OLD 1/14/15



This time around I wanted to do something in space without just reusing old sprites, so I drew some new stuff and hit it with photoshop. It's pretty simple design-wise, but that's kind of what I was going for.

Enjoy

[Moon]

Looks cool I'll give it that.. lets see how well it plays.

[Slender]

You're assuming that it already plays well. Smh.

Anyways, what are those blue surfaces supposed to be?

[Oyster]

Originally Posted by Slender

You're assuming that it already plays well. Smh.

Anyways, what are those blue surfaces supposed to be?

alien space monster tentacles

[VAN1SH1NG]

You keep making your maps too wide. It may seem better testing it out with bots or whatever, but it won't work in ladder. If it feels to cluttered, you need to compensate in some other way than increasing map size. The actual width from border to border is a bit less important than the distance from goal to goal.

Astro's goals are about 3400 pixels apart which is too much. For this to be played competitively you either reduce the map width or pull the goals away from the back border. There are some good maps around 3600 pixels wide, but in general the goals still need to be closer to 2700-3100 pixels away from each other.

3400 goal-to-goal distance is actually doable as well, but it would require significant changes to your map. Snow and cutesy are probably the widest maps on ladder. They work because the spawns are pushed up against each other in the middle. This significantly reduces time it takes attackers to get from spawn to goal and makes it take longer for defenders to get back, allowing a wider map to be successful.

Astro's spawns are not in the middle of the map and there is no way that this map can be played within a reasonable amount of time. I've mostly considered goal-to-goal distance when making maps but another factor that is probably just as useful is spawn-to-goal distance. As goal-to-goal distance increases, spawns must be moved closer to center.

One other factor comes into play as well... how easy is it to keep the ball near the goal / how easy is it to clear. If it is harder to move get the ball out (map extends behind goal so attackers can dump it in, such as cave/snow/asteroids/etc, or obstacles prevent simple clears), this also affects the ideal goal-to-goal or spawn-to-goal distances.

You also like tend to put objects too close together where a plane can barely fit through. Specifically on this map the top middle objects are way too close to the top border and each other. Also if you are trying to put objects close together for cosmetic reasons and not to fly through, such as bottom corner objects on Astro, they should share one collision outline. Otherwise objects hitting the opening between these objects at just the right angle will cause problems. Change one of them to non-collidable and edit the other's collision outline to include both objects.

[Oyster]

Thanks for the input - I'll rework this map soon. Right now I'm going through all my worthy past maps and retouching them based on what input I've gathered from the public.

[Oyster]

Alright, here's what I came up with:


http://s000.tinyupload.com/download....87106792964431

I moved the goals much closer and added a quick-spawning team healthpack behind the goals, shifted/deleted some asteroids to clean up the bottom and top lanes and redid the start area closer to the center of the map.
I did a lot of testing for rev/rubber slipping through and I'm 99.9% sure it is now impossible anywhere on the map.

Oh, and also created a new sprite to hold the goal.