Jip's maps and others

Maps

Rainmakers

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A survival unlike any other - fight with up to two additional friends in a race against the clock. The map is designed such one needs to expand in order to survive. Due to the behavior of the AI having only point defenses will not take you far - it will try and evade threats while it is on its way towards the artillery stations.

The goal is to keep two artillery installations alive while they make it rain in another operation off-site. Hence, they are nicknamed the Rainmakers. The enemies will be fierce and they'll try to out smart you whenever they can. There are various difficulty settings available in order to tune the map to your rating. By default the map is a fair fit for a team with an average rating of 1100 (ladder).

Other relevant information:

  • Map size: 20x20
  • Play time: 25 - 35 minutes

Link with more information:

Trailers:

Archsimkats Valley

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A map made in collaboration with @archsimkat . The map is designed to have clear primary and secondary expansions and therefore providing a variety of opportunities for other players to raid. It has been in ladder in October 2020 and hope to see it played more competitively 🙂 .

Other relevant information:

  • Map size: 10x10
  • Reclaim on map: 24K (excluding wreckage reclaim)

Links with more information:

Trailers:

Islet

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A map made with naval play in mind. The map is designed to have clear primary expansions in the center and the outskirts of the map to assist people in expanding and making map control more worth it. The map is reduced in size to about 26x17. Players start off with relative little mass the further they are from the center to discourage rushing tech 3 air.

The map was made to bring in more attention to the fact that islands are slowly disappearing throughout the globe due to the raising sea levels.

Other relevant information:

  • Map size: 40x20 (26x17)
  • Reclaim on map: 33K (excluding wreckage reclaim)

Link with more information:

Hardshield Oasis

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A map made with land play in mind. The map is designed to have clear primary expansions along with various paths one can take to harass the other player. The back-side plateau is an example which is key to protect to prevent your base from being shelled from above.

The map as made to bring in more attention to the fact that in some parts of the world nature is lost to a phenomena called 'desertification', where parts of nature that are near deserts are slowly converted to more desert due to climate change.

The map has all kinds of little tweaks, including but not limited to:

  • Wrecks that have fire on them.
  • Various emitters in the center to make the map feel more alive.
  • Various movement by neutrals at the start of a round.
  • Weather is generated on the map.

Other relevant information:

  • Map size: 5x5
  • Reclaim on map: 8K (excluding wreckage reclaim)

Link with more information:

Long John Silver

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A map made for the SC:TA mapping tournament. The idea was to replicate the TA map 'Long Lakes'. In practice the map doesn't quite look like its target.

The map has all kinds of little tweaks, including but not limited to:

  • Weather is generated on the map.
  • An Easter egg where a Colossus is being tortured and you can set him free as a player.

Other relevant information:

  • Map size: 10x10
  • Reclaim on map: 5K (excluding wreckage reclaim)

Link with more information:

Mellow Shallows

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A map made in collaboration with @Eo_Empiran. The idea was to create an alternative map for 'Ozone Islands' because we wanted to see something new. In practice the map plays quite different to target map.

The map heavily relies on navy play but with the current balance in combination with the vast distance on the map one can quite easily rush tech 3 air. Suggestions on how to combat this are welcome 🙂 .

Other relevant information:

  • Map size: 20x20 (20x18)
  • Reclaim on map: 22K (excluding wreckage reclaim)

Link with more information:

Lily Pads

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A map made in request by @LegendSmith where he wanted to see more 3 v 3 v 3 maps. The map is heavily reliant on navy play. There are multiple player layouts possible for the map. The intended layout is to have one member of each team on their corresponding main islands, such that there are various 1v1's breaking out. In practice this turned out to be a horrible layout: as soon as one island is won then that team will generally win as a whole.

Other relevant information:

  • Map size: 20x20
  • Reclaim on map: 62K (excluding wreckage reclaim)

Link with more information:

Battle of the Craters

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A map inspired heavily on the Astro Crater map made by BSR_Astro. The map uses the latest map development techniques such as a map-wide lighting and normal map.

In contradiction to the original there is minor reclaim in the spawn locations and there is quite some reclaim in the center. The center is directly influenced by your neutral civilian settings. You can freely enter and exit the water anywhere outside of the craters to allow your commander to easily get out of a dangerous situation.

Other relevant information:

  • Map size: 10x10
  • Reclaim on map: 8k (excluding wreckage reclaim)

Link with more information:
-https://gitlab.com/supreme-commander-forged-alliance/maps/battle-of-the-craters

Pool of Entropy

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A map inspired heavily on Sludge made by GPG. The map is made with the game mode Phantom in mind. It can accompany up to five players. You can reach both neighbors with tactical missiles, but you can only reach one neighbor with a t2 artillery at any time.

Other relevant information:

  • Map size: 10x10
  • Reclaim on map: 2K

Link with more information:

Springtime

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A map made for one of the developers of LOUD. The map is inspired upon 'Valley Passage'. The idea was to have the layout similar to the original, while giving a major aesthetical boost.

this map is not available in FAF

Other relevant information:

  • Map size: 20x20
  • Reclaim on map: 29K

Link with more information:

Two Step Shuffle

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A map made for one of the people that provided a design in the collaborative design topic. For more information:

This map is the first design but certainly not the last design made from that topic. The aim was to improve the workflow. This was accomplished by removing Photoshop from the equation entirely - this map uses World Machine and Image Magick in a semi-automated workflow. It took roughly 10 hours to get the map in its current state. There is an easter egg in the center.

at the moment of writing this map is not yet in the vault

Other relevant information:

  • Map size: 10x10
  • Reclaim on map: 22K

Link with more information:

Mods

King of the Hill

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A mod made as a replacement for the current featured King of the Hill mod that is part of FAF. At the moment of writing it supports:

  • Tech unlocking when reaching a set amount of points.
  • Mass reduction when being in control of the hill.

It works on any map and there are a few options available:

  • The number of points in order to win
  • The size of the hill (relative to the map)

A point is given for every 30 seconds of control. The hill can be controlled by either having your commander on the hill or reaching a mass threshold with (land or naval) units. A hill can be contested by having your commander on the hill or reaching a lower mass threshold with (land or naval) units.

Link with more information:

Tutorials

A series on water

A series on how water works in Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. Includes all the information one needs to get started on not only using water more creatively but also understanding various concepts surrounding water more thoroughly.

Link with more information:

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

wow ... all the maps I have seen today are very impressive.

@SupCom_16-12-20 Thank you for your compliment!

An update of an old map of mine: Battle of the Craters! Changes include:

  • Added a map-wide light map
  • Added a map-wide normal map
  • Removal and adding of decals to concur with the map-wide normal map
  • Minor scripting bug removed (in case Nomad plays with pre-built units on)
  • Proper AI markup with actual connections - this map was originally made when I wasn't aware there was an Ozone editor 🙂 .

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A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

Archsimkat's valley is quite a nice map to play on, lots of options and paths to take. Someone even named himself after the map, so I think it's catching on pretty well. The naval maps look fun too!

The map was named after the person in question 🙂 . I did it in collab with him! Thanks for your compliment - I appreciate it!

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

Lol yeah I know, just kidding around.

I know it's not easy to make such nice and shiny maps. Thanks for uploading them.

A new map enters the arena! Welcome to Root of Beta that attempts to experiment with the latest techniques in making maps. Including but not limited to the following:

There is a timelapse of the first 8 hours of the process in the make. You can expect it next year 🙂 .

The mass values in the last screenshot is not as much as it seems - I've taken two times the square root of their original values. E.g., the Monkey Lord is not worth 15K but only ~300.

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A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

Finally i see who knows what he is trying to do. Nice work Jip but i don't think so it's a good idea to using a over +80Mb decals files over the map, also i don't think so that it's the correct way to make maps. Every time when unit's shoot the ground etc..... it will draw a new decal over your ''masked decal'', later or sooner the decals start blink..... and in worst case it will crash the game, other wise great work. Also some terrain fixes could fix these shadows in some area and gives a better picture while zooming

I understand what you are saying! I agree that 80mb decals may not be the approach to take - it is viable on a 5x5 map (20mb decals), experiment-worthy on a 10x10 but not applicable to 20x20 or larger maps.

About the decal blinking - that is only applicable once you reach the decal limit. This map has about ~100 decals on it. I only experience the blinking when I have 3000+ decals (Long John Silver gets pretty close). I'm not afraid of blinking! Svenni did found some bugs when you use the cheat window that can cause the map-wide decals to disappear. But that is a very niche situation and I'm okay with that 🙂 .

Some mountains do look indeed a tee-bit strange of the shadowing! At some point the experiment was over for me and therefore I did not fix that. The goal was to experiment with what you can achieve with such decals and I personally think it can be quite impressive if used wisely! I am not experimenting with local decals, e.g., generated specifically for this map but then only 2048x2048 resolution wise and only used in some area. Much like other decals are - but then specific to the map.

Thank you for your feedback!

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

Decal limit have nothing to do with blinking decals 😉 You can also try to change the sun direction, power to fix that shadow issue

Then I'm not sure what you are talking about - do you have a replay or a video that shows the problem? Edit: then I can add in a note / disclaimer for the guides on map-wide decals 🙂 .

I may update the shadow map in the future - when I'm ready for a next iteration 🙂 . For now I first want to setup the repository that holds the map along with the timelapse that shows the first ~6 hours of progress.

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

Try search over map vault

I'm not entirely sure what you are after - searched for replays, for the map itself, etc. Can't find it 🙂

Edit: the decals do blink slightly when I am in cam_Free mode - unusual angles are poorly taken care of by the engine.

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

A remaster of an old map made for a friend at that time - Mellow Shallows V11 is in the vault!

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I'd love to hear your feedback on the aesthetics of the map. Make sure to add in your graphics settings as they can heavily influence how the map is perceived.

Edit: After making the screenshots I'd say the map is a tee-bit on the dark side 🙂 .

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

Hey Jip, I had a look. For starters its really cool to see some innovation after all of these years with new techniques applied to a 13 year old game. Overall I think the level of detail is fantastic but the variety in detail is not. To me I just see the same river-delta thing over and over with maybe the same crack thing over and over. It would be nice if we had this level of detail but with more diversity in appearance of "decals".

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when you are zoomed out a bit it looks GREAT
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these mountains look fake - the lines are too vertical? too uniform? too repetitious?
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This shoreline looks lovely and more realistic.
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Do you think there is a tradeoff with realism? As things become more realistic they might become less at-a-glance clear. Like where exactly can the ACU walk underwater on this shoreline, is there any where he is blocked? Etc.

Lets compare that to eye of the storm, which looks more cartoony and less realistic, but is very clear. In a complex RTS at-a-glance-understanding is important because everything is already too hard without having to decipher the map.

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I'm not trying to say that the realism approach is bad -> im just wondering if there is a trade off? Do you have to pick one or is it possible to do both.