Oil water makes F2 pathing vision sad
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I had no idea this was possible and doesn't seem all that intuitive in-game:
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I guess it shows up on the pathing vision minimap at least
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Agree with the above and have noted all of these issues. Anyone is more than welcome to alter the brightness/water variables and re-submit the map to Aqua for alteration to the pool. I'm still in poor health and the 2020 map update gave me map burnout on a heavy level, which is one of two reasons why I'm not rushing to update this map. The other, less relevant to the aesthetic, reason is that I think the map is fundamentally flawed from a gameplay and factory balancing point of view.

I made a sun and water override: https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/commit/60c44f90f9ac93ae413d553e8776a7563ec97b30

it is possible to see units underwater and the shallow ripples reveal the shallow parts. The river looks a bit worse, but I did what I could with the parameters.

This map still has serious visualization problems though. The black water makes it impossible to see the borders of the map and to judge depth.

Yes. Not seeing the borders suck, specially because the width of the water surrounding the map has wild variances. It suddenly becomes really thin in some spots.

Not seeing depth or the water surface makes it difficult to tell when amphibious bots are exposed to surface fire or not

That isn't what it looks like for me, for me most of the water was solid darkness, and there was no visible distinction between the border and not-border. I suppose it may be the fault of the graphical settings, mine tend towards the lower end.

I think it would improve visualization if the space outside the map was a different color as is the case in most other maps (not sure how mappers decide that). Bottom visualization is hard to say since it might be dependent on graphical settings. I guess it would be nice if it were more visible. Even in your screenshot which has more detail, you still can't see the bottom in some spots.

quote: If you can show me a replay where the conditions you're speaking about unquestionably interfered with the outcome of the game, we can review some changes.

In the first and I think only game I played on this map, I wasn't sure at first if the water even *existed*, in the sense of being cross-able. I thought it might be intended to be void-space in most places, or acidic. I started the game with an amphibious factory just to investigate that. After determining that the water indeed was meant to be entered, I still didn't know how deep it was anywhere and therefore how battles would turn out in terms of depth.

Saying that it "unquestionably interfered with the outcome of the game" is a high and to be frank unnecessary bar to clear. Its hard to gauge exactly the extend to which someone's performance was affected by visualization problems. Fact is, I found the map uncomfortable to play, and don't intend to vote for it again in its current state. And I think this is the first time I decide I don't want to play a map again solely due to visualization problems.

(although to be fair a lot of other maps have problems with water that isn't obvious or whose cross-ability/depth is difficult to gauge. This one just stuck out as being rather extreme to me)

I guess I will get back to you if I still feel the same way after playing the map a few more times.

Ok, this is what the map looks like for me (focusing on the water). I set the graphical presets to "low" before this so this is theoretically what it looks like on low graphical settings:

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Indeed, basically the water has no visible surface, whereas in your screenshot it has one. That makes all the difference.

To be fair, when I first commented on the map I thought it looked like that for everyone. I guess its not unreasonable for maps to not look ideal if you're playing with low graphical settings or lowest.

I think my machine can probably do better most of the time, but I like to leave it on low because I don't wanna risk unnecessary chugging and having to fiddle with graphical settings ingame when a lobsterpot game decides to get huge and last really long.