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Aetherian Void 1

By TheMooseIsLoose
Rating:

Don't stare into the darkness
Size: 20 x 20

PLAY ON THIS MAP


Downloads: 1
Manual downloads:
http://zero-k.info/autoregistrator/maps/aetherian_void_1.sd7
http://api.springfiles.com/files/maps/aetherian_void_1.sd7


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6 years ago
[placeholder for when I feel like doing a write-up about this map]




+4 / -0
Skasi
6 years ago
Everyone please stop making such visually annoying maps. :(

I'm not saying this looks ugly or bad, but 90% of the recently featured maps are extremely heavy on the eyes. They're nowhere near as comfortable as older good maps.

Compare:
Titan, DSD, Tangerine, Tabula
vs
This, all of Sprung's bright sand+grass maps, Onyx Cauldron, Iced Coffee
+1 / -0

6 years ago
Disjoint boxes! <3
+0 / -0
[q]Disjoint boxes! <3[/q]

Thanks for that API and editor btw
+1 / -0
6 years ago
I like the concept and terrain of it, but it does look ugly as hell...
+0 / -0
Screenshots look gorgeous. I know the best looking map might not be the best for play, but beautiful maps are central to making the game feel polished and well designed.

Anyway I'm looking forward to playing this one and adding some feedback.
+1 / -0
Skasi Why? I get that readability issues might be a concern (though in that case I would put Titan Duel on the bad side), but otherwise this is the way to go. All the maps you listed as good (except Tabula) aren't that visually interesting, and even the dead new RTS games (like Grey Goo) look way better.

The only (minor) issue I have with the newer map aesthetics is that they are tending towards increasing levels of fractal terrain generation combined with rather noisy ground detail textures, and it's pretty much just more of what's always been. I guess natural looking maps are historically the norm with Spring engine games, but I would think the best showcase for SSMF would be something a bit more artificial, something with metal squares or hexes on plastic or carved stone. No need for noise there, as well-applied specular mapping to distinguish metals from plastics/rocks and limited normal/detail maps to emphasize pieces of something larger would be a way to go.
+1 / -0
I think what I'd ask for (in the line of the previous statements about this map) is more subtlety. I think a map can be pretty without it getting in your face.
+0 / -0
There's too little contrast. The purple ground needs to be much darker and less saturated.


+1 / -0
It was darker and less saturated in the past, however in practice this resulted in terrain that was difficult to decipher outside of los.

Some people say too much contrast, some people say too little. I'm waiting for feedback from ingame testing personally.
+0 / -0
Skasi
6 years ago
CArankAdminShadowfury333 like I said, it's extremely heavy on the eyes. I want to focus on the game, not on reading the map right and not on spotting units. I don't want to be distracted by super shiny or noisy textures, I don't want to be distracted by annoyance caused by extremely crazy hightmaps around the map that don't play well with unit AI and other engine/game quirks or UI limitations.

I really just want to be able to focus on and enjoy the gameplay in the most comfortable and enjoyable way. Stress caused by brilliant or quick, overwhelming moves by my opponent is fine and fun, but stress caused by the map, UI or game mechanics is not.
+0 / -0
Skasi play it with /advmapshading turned off:
+0 / -0


6 years ago
Can't see color-coded slopes in heightmap view. /advmapshading off may be of more use to anyone with those preferences.
+0 / -0


6 years ago
I can't see any of the terrain and the minimap is too dark.
+1 / -0

No normal/parallax map on those crystals :(
Unplayable
+0 / -0
Can't do any fancy mapping on grounddecals unfortunately. But they have the advantage of being entirely lua, so metalmap is completely open to change.

I can make out the different terrain types in AUrankAdminGoogleFrog s screenshot and I'm posting from my phone. But it does show the map is definitely not too bright, as some people are suggesting.
+0 / -0
quote:
No normal/parallax map on those crystals :(

I remember jK showing off decals with bump maps (for craters) quite a while ago, go and prod him to release!

Also get specular and emissive while at it plz.

---

I think the people complain that the terrain has too many edges. The way people recognize shaps is by constructing edges from raster data; and if the terrain has features that can be construed into edges, they will trick the detection of unit shapes into malfunction.

So, the texture should be more bland, easier to tell apart from units, less intensive, a backdrop. If talking about this in terms of brightness/contrast and hsv, i'd suggest low contrast, low saturation; the low-frequency texture variation to be tied to terrain properties, while high-frequency detail being of a scale much smaller than units.

Resist the temptation of a white snow or black volcanic ash. You can only have gray dusted snow and gray volcanic ash - but you can also add large-scale features that will hint at blackness or whiteness. This way the edges represented by those intense features can be quickly eliminated by unit-pattern finder.

As the showcase for both all of the above - the the lightness, contrast, the saturation, and large-scale intensive features outscaling units so that they don't impede their detection, i would use the Titan maps. Some GRTS maps also have large-scale intense diffuse detail (like hydraulic erosion patterns) which are also of sufficiently non-unitlike scale to work.
+1 / -0
6 years ago
Nice map but LOS makes it very dark.
+0 / -0
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