What do you guys think? I hopefully will be able to test them with my friend later on. In the meantime I've only been able to do the test document feature, which does crap for testing balance. Anyway, one is a large 2v2 map (prolly too large) and the other is an average sized 1v1 map. Also, has anyone found a picture generator on the editor? I thought I came across one but haven't been able to find it.

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Since I'm on my laptop, I can't check out your maps

But, if you want a picture for your map, just fly over your map in the terrain screen and press the print screen button on your keyboard (Prnt Scrn). Then go to paint or whatever and paste the image.

Best view that can be got in the method provided. Not sure how useful it is to you.

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Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 25 2010, 2:05 am by phlemhacker.

Huh? Was there supposed to be a picture or something? There's nothing showing up.

It's up. I just forgot to attach the picture. My bad.

Funny that I'm saying this.

We need Ex here to help commenting this

Can you use ImageShack or some other image uploader next time please?

EDIT: Personally, I find it really nice looking, but since none of us know enough about SC2 melee.... bleh
BTW, where are the mains? Are they the four corners? If yes, they it's kinda strange we start off with high yield mineral fields. Moreover, there won't be a fixed natural (which may actually be okay for sc2 now ... )

However, if it's the Mid Top/bot/left/right ... then there may be too many entrances to the base... and also no fixed naturals ... Maybe

In the editor, you can go into Data -> Export Map Image, it will save as tga, but you can convert it with a program like gimp. I did it for you for these 2, the settings I used were: 1200x1200 size, bounds: full, camera angle: 60, view options: custom with background unchecked. There is surely a better way to do it, but I just looked for/found this option today.



As far as the maps:

Temple Guardian
There should really only be one entrance into the main, if you insist on a 2nd, put some destructible rocks on one of the ramps. There is no natural to expand to, and the attack paths are generally very narrow. If you were to pursue this map, id try to open up the mid more (highground is not needed, the paths leading to the mid could be wider/different) and open up all the corners a bit more. As far as which ramp to close up, I'd think the better answer would be the one leading to mid, but then you would need to connect the corners to mid so you can actually attack people. Sorry to say, but this map in general is going to be a pain to make balanced, the setup is just not a great setup.

No Smoking
(I assume 10 and 5 are the mains), the expansions at 12 and 6, the gas should generally not be on the opposite side as the nexus, it just causes problems when you move units and such though the workers mining gas. I think the gold expansions are generally too easy to get as well, especially the mid ones as terran, the gold expansions should be in easily contestable areas so the person taking it doesn't get it for free. Again, there should only be one entrance into the main, but the problem is, if you got rid of one ramp, then there is only one attack path and its very narrow, or if you removed opposite ramps (such as the 1/7 ramps) then the map becomes an air map.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 27 2010, 2:07 pm by Valug.

Why should there be only one ramp? Half the maps on battle.net have more than one ramp into a base. As far a no smoking goes, I actually fixed the minerals when I realized they were so easy to protect. I swapped em with the normal yield at 9 and 3. You have a good point about the gas as well, I didn't even think of that.

With temple guardian, the starts are at 12,3,6, and 9. The naturals are at the 1 o'clock position at each base. This is actually a really big map too, I didn't actually realize how big it was until I clicked on the 'test document' button. Which is good to be honest, first, it is a lot more open than it looks so there is plenty of room for fighting, and second, it makes it good for late game matches, which I seldom get too. While the high yields are easy to get to, they are also far enough away from the mains that they can be hard to react to if they get hit. Since high yields only last five minutes anyway, I was thinking of putting two patches in the middle just to encourage people to use the middle of the map more and provide a good spot of contention. There are rocks blocking the back doors in all the entrances so it's not like its impossible to defend. I personally think that most of these maps don't have enough ramps anyway, but welcome to SCII I guess. Yes I do know that the left path is shorter than the right. By the time I noticed that though, it was already to a stage of completeness where I didn't want to jick with it at the time. These are WIPs, and of course, still subject to change.

It's going to be interesting to see how the melee formula develops, since there really isn't one yet. Hooray for trial and error.

Edit: Thanks for letting me know where that image export was. I wasted a lot of time looking for it.

In SCII, not a single map blizzard released has 2 entrances into the main, a few have a backdoor with destructible rocks, but none have 2 open entrances at the start. If you don't understand why you need one entrance, imagine this scenario: You are protoss trying to defend from a zerg thats going all-in speedlings. The zerg can easily jump back and forth between entrances and harass you from 2 sides very early in the game before protoss has a viable way to counter it. Or, for your 4 player map, think of the long distances between mains and imagine getting attacked from both sides at once in a 2v2, your teammate is too far to get there in time and theres no way to hold them at your ramp if you have to defend 2.

Also, something I didn't really notice last night, it is really awkward that the corner areas do not connect to the middle besides going through the mains, cutting off huge areas of the map to the other players.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 27 2010, 2:08 pm by Valug.

That thing about the corners not connecting to the main is something else I'll be looking at, first I want to do some play testing though. On the four player map, if your getting double teamed and your ally isn't there to help, that is just bad intelligence on your teams part for not seeing it coming. Unless you are talking about early game. Either way someone has to get through rocks first before they can get to your side entrances. About zerglings, just build in a condensed manner around your nexus with a few cannons and your fine until you can get a better wall with sentries or otherwise. That way you also defend from reaper rushes. Walling isn't always the solution.

I wasn't talking about walling, I assume you have never been on blistering sands as protoss and had to face speedlings. I have, and I always build my buildings around my nexus, and once they are in your base, they can run circles around you all day and pick off workers and stray units if you try to split your forces. If you can't chase them to a ramp and then hold the ramp, they are free to harass you while they expand and tech. This has happened to me in the platinum league (I'm not super pro or anything, 14th was the highest I got before the most recent reset) and I have seen replays where top protoss players have had the same problem.

As for the 4 player map, how could your ally get to your base to help if the opponent is attacking through the middle? The only way to get to your allies base is through the middle, since destructible rocks are in the way if you happen to be next to each other. Also, you can't always see it coming, you can't expect the defending team to have control of the watchtowers, and if they do, whats stopping the attacking team from taking the middle/watchtowers, and then you would be clueless to which base they attack.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 27 2010, 2:08 pm by Valug.

I've played on all the maps. I'll admit, if I don't prepare for a ling or reaper rush I get screwed, But most of the time I prepare for it and build a few photon cannons. Problem solved. I also never said anything about watch towers. At minimum, unit here or there on the map is all you need to know what is coming at you, otherwise it is late enough in the game where you should have some kind of detection out. Also, what's wrong with coming through the middle to help out? It's not that much longer through the middle.

Opening one base forge is not a viable strategy in platinum, sorry to say. All your opponent has to do is scout it and hes at a huge advantage, since you wasted 600 minerals on a forge and a few cannons. Plus, even if your opponent was dumb enough to send lings/reapers to their doom into your cannons and they somehow managed to pay for themselves, (this is impossible btw) how does that even attempt to prove that having 2 entrances (and a third eventually in your case) is fair?

As for the issue of coming through the middle, I'm wondering if you even play starcraft II, the bad guys are attacking through the middle, with both their forces, and you want to run up behind them? So they slaughter your forces then attack your buddy, a big force can take out a smaller force without many casualties. 1 + 1 does not equal 2 in starcraft, you will not take out half their army if you try to fight them 2v1. And since the attacking force will likely have the watchtowers, they will see you coming, and will be able to meet you in the middle without you knowing, making it too late for your buddy to come out and help.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 27 2010, 2:08 pm by Valug.

Wonder all you want, but I've probably been playing longer than you. A forge and cannons are almost never a waste, you need one at some point for upgrades and cannons at minimum are good for detection. How do the platinum players defend from reaper rushes then? Blocking the ramp? If the enemy's army is that big it isn't going to matter where you come through to help out anyway then is it?

Ive been playing starcraft 2 since day 1 of beta, and as toss, you defend a reaper rush by getting a zealot then chronoboosting a stalker. The zealot can't do shit, but it limits the reaper to killing like 2-3 probes, which still leaves the toss ahead worker wise since the terran had to cut so many scv's to make a 9 or 10 barracks. If the terran player makes his reaper later, the stalker is out in time. (at the moment, with the terran proxying the barracks at 9, or the terran being next to you on LT/metropolis, the stalker ends up coming out around ~15sec after the reaper arrives. Ive tested this myself and seen others test it.)

And yes, you eventually make cannons, sure, but you don't open with a forge before gateway, if you make a few cannons like you said, thats putting you 600 minerals behind, and even if you make one, which is more logical, 300 minerals behind pretty much gives your opponent the ability to expand and have no worries that you will be able to take it out, since at most, your army will only be one unit better then his, and with travel distance, meaningless.

If you want, we could play some PvP and we can see how well your forge first works. A immortal timing push would destroy it, or I could just FE and macro up.

And as far as blocking the ramp, I and many other platinum players never block the ramp, and instead build around the nexus. A sentry gives you all the ramp blocking power you need, and blocking the ramp just leads to units killing your buildings instead.

Edit: I think this has gone far enough, we are way off topic now. In SEN v4 I was one of the mods of the melee section, and I'd like to think I know at least the basics of map balance. There is a reason there has never been a map used professionally that included 2 open ramps at the main. (again, one ramp and a back door is not unheard of, and SC2 makes this easier with the rock mechanic) If you think I am wrong, please prove it, show me a map used in a professional tournament that has 3 ramps into the main. And if you are not concerned with your map ever being the quality of being used in a tournament, why even make a thread about it if you don't want it to be balanced?

Edit 2: I did the work for you, I looked at the 4 major active leagues for SC1 (OSL, MSL, Proleague, & TSL) and guess what, every single map they use has one entrance into the main and only one map has a back door (Destination), which is actually very difficult for the enemy to mine out because of its position.

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Apr 27 2010, 5:41 pm by Valug.

Basically, all I am saying is that since the editor has been out for less than a week and the beta out for less than three months, and nobody is an authority on Starcraft 2 maps. It doesn't matter how long you have been making Starcraft 1 maps because it is a different game, and as such has different mechanics and rules for balance.

I'd argue the game has not change enough that an idea like 3 entrances into the main will ever be fair, but feel free to believe it will work. This forum was always used for discussing balance, so I gave my input. I did not even get close to getting into small details of balance, as you would for a SC1 map, but I gave very broad advice about the maps that I have experienced first hand and second hand that are unfair in all leagues of play.

I think it has. Units like the colossus, reaper, stalker, baneling, and the various forms of drop ships almost make ramps a moot point as it is. Not to mention, high ground doesn't give any bonus to the units up top other than vision.

Well obviously you got it all figured out, I'm done trying to help someone as stubborn as you.

You gave one post with help, which I took into consideration and made changes. The rest you were ranting about how awesome you were.