Fairyland v0.3 map

sort

Aquanim

9 years ago
(edited 9 years ago)

Changelog from 0.2 to 0.3:

- LoS fog practically removed. The map is a lot cleaner visually with this change.
- Volumetric fog replaced with dualfog and lowered a bit. If volfog performance no longer becomes a problem I would like to revert this, all the settings are still there.
- Skybox tweaked.

---//---

Previous changelogs:
[Spoiler]
---//---

Preview images:
[Spoiler]
---//---

Box setup:
!addbox 75 0 25 25 1
!addbox 0 75 25 25 2
!clearbox 3
!clearbox 4

+1 / -0

GoogleFrog

9 years ago

Looks much clearer. The minimap is still too dark but the shape of the terrain can now be seen. The new fog is problematic because it is drawn in front of unit selection circles and structure ghosts. Fly a plane to the edge of the map and its selection becomes hard to see.

+0 / -0

Aquanim

9 years ago
(edited 9 years ago)

The trouble with the minimap is that if I make it much lighter, it becomes difficult to see anything when the map is revealed. At the moment it is a balance between the two.

There is very little reason to put buildings in the water (I suppose you could hide a Singu or something). Air is a bit of a problem.

+0 / -0

Aquanim

9 years ago

So this map's been played in a few high-level games now. Are the problems below with fog a sufficient impediment to featuring that I should try to fix them?

Does anybody else have any problems with the map? (Beyond general layout. I appreciate that it may not feel totally comfortable to play on the map with this mex layout, but being a bit challenging is part of the point.)

Outside of altering the fog when and if volfog is optimised or what have you, or other bugfixes as requested, I don't think I'll be making any more changes in the immediate future.

+0 / -0

Anarchid

9 years ago
(edited 9 years ago)

I failed to notice the fog. Ignore the people who complain about it, or extract dualfog into a widget so they can disable it.

All my complaints are aesthetic: it seems to have artificial color (kind of like Geyser), but doesn't have sufficient execution to make it work (like Zed).

Though i guess the reason the diffuse looks artificial in this case is brush size, existence of distinct layers, and artificialness/non-ruggedness of heightmap.

Maybe splatting some detail textures along edges would diminish that.

+0 / -0

[Fx]Drone

9 years ago

I also think the color is a bit dull, the map is called fairy land so the concept seems clear but the execution is not entirely there. The land needs to be shiny/sparkly and look magical somehow. It currently looks murky.

Another concern is that the cliffs seem to appear much steeper than they are, I definitely would not have guessed vehicles were playable here until you mentioned it on cast. Maps which are hard to read terrain-wise are quite annoying to play with, though admittedly it's not really a big issue.

In general I think it is a good map and will make for fun gameplay, similar to Badlands most likely. I would be in favor of featuring it.

Regarding dualfog widget, it has never worked properly in ZK, that is the reason great maps like Seths Ravine and Xenolithic_v4 never see any play because nobody bothered to fix them.

+0 / -0

Aquanim

9 years ago
(edited 9 years ago)

quote:
All my complaints are aesthetic: it seems to have artificial color (kind of like Geyser), but doesn't have sufficient execution to make it work (like Zed).

Though i guess the reason the diffuse looks artificial in this case is brush size, existence of distinct layers, and artificialness/non-ruggedness of heightmap.

Maybe splatting some detail textures along edges would diminish that.

Okay, I'll have a look into that.

I do feel that Zed lies at least partly in the "pretty-at-the-expense-of-utility" direction though which I would prefer to avoid.

quote:
Another concern is that the cliffs seem to appear much steeper than they are, I definitely would not have guessed vehicles were playable here until you mentioned it on cast.

It is harder for me to tell since I know exactly what steepness the ramps were intended to be. Perhaps I'll dial it back some more.

quote:

Regarding dualfog widget, it has never worked properly in ZK, that is the reason great maps like Seths Ravine and Xenolithic_v4 never see any play because nobody bothered to fix them.

The hope here is that since the fog only obscures (mostly) useless areas it should not affect gameplay much. I would prefer volfog but it has nasty performance issues for enough people that I am loath to use it.

+0 / -0

[Fx]Drone

9 years ago
(edited 9 years ago)

The surface of the land on Zed seems to reflect the skybox giving it a sort of shimmery look. If you did the same thing and had a sparkly skybox for this map, it might look quite good.

You could try increasing the saturation or contrast of the texturemap too to see if it makes it look more lively.

I personally don't have an issue with dualfog but I remember it would nuke the fps of some other people. Even if you obscure it, it would still be there, being rendered and ruining certain people's FPS, not sure I'd recommend bothering with it tbh.

+0 / -0

Anarchid

9 years ago

quote:
Regarding dualfog widget, it has never worked properly in ZK

The problem with the dualfog gadget is that it is not the dualfog widget.

+0 / -0

[Fx]Drone

9 years ago

you realize I have no idea what the difference between gadget and widget is right

not my area of expertise

+0 / -0

Fairyland v0.3

PLAY ON THIS MAP

Last battles