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![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/5tY8k.jpg)
Wuthering Heights
This is a port of the Brood War map Wuthering Heights. The objective was to port over a favorite map no one else was likely to port, and experiment with some stuff while doing it.
Size considerations inspired, and then were settled by this thread about the size of maps compared to Brood War maps. Playable size ended up being 152x152. The larger size and openness is intended to help with flanking. The mains and naturals are surrounded by F*** Reaper fences, though reapers shouldn't be completely useless as they can still come in the front door and kite things (and they can play around int he middle all they want). The middle expansions contain two high yield gas geysers (the original had two geysers). Unlike the original I went for full rotational symmetry. For grins, each of the naturals is labeled (via decals) with its position.
Original Map
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Top View:
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/emCK4.jpg)
Simple Lighting
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Angle View:
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/XxT0I.jpg)
The Rich Geysers:
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/x3KNk.jpg)
These emit puffs of purple Terrazine gas to differentiate them visually from regular geysers.
Some Cliff Doodads:
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e-cookie for identifying the ground texture there 
Analyzer Images:
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Map Specifics:
- Shakuras Wasteland
- 152x152 playable
- 4 players (2, 5, 7, 11)
- like the original, main wallable with depot or pylon, nats wallable with 1 rax + 2 depots
- 16 bases total. Mains 9 mineral & Nats have 7 minerals both with 2 gas each.
- Rich Mineral Only has 6 rich minerals
- Center expansions with 12 mineral and 2 rich geysers
- Unbuildable middle plateau
- Reaper safe mains and naturals (shown visually with security fences)
- Natural CC and worker line untankable from outside the walls
- Wide paths around the outside or through the middle
Changelog
- 0.5 initial announcement
- 0.6 some resources moved
- 0.7 rich geysers no longer need movement blockers (thanks to patch 1.1)
Notes
Rich Geysers are bugged. Workers circle them before going in. There is an easy fix by changing their collision properties, but that would make the map non-melee. To keep it melee, I use a minimal amount of pathing blockers to force the workers into line. All the geysers can be saturated with 3 workers. They look a little spastic getting into the geysers sometimes, but it works. I also tried to add some visual identifiers to the geyers, again limited a little by the constraints of keeping this a melee map.
view of the pathing (note the blockers by the rich geysers in the middle)
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BW was balanced at the end through maps. I don't claim this map will balance TvZ in SC2, but it tries a few things that might, and would in the best case help figure out what sort of things (perhaps more in moderation) could be useful for balance. On the other hand, attempting to do this on a port (with porting's attendant size and scale concerns) might not be the best idea.
Concerns
- Mineral counts and positioning are subject to change.
- As discussed in the size thread, scaling is different in SC2. Tanks range is much greater compared to a factory footprint for instance. In maintaining more or less the same layout proportions, the mains end up a little over large.
- unknown (to me) how the small main choke, ported directly from BW, will play out in SC2. Lowerable depots make it an incredibly easy terran wall off, and I wonder about manner pylons blocking it. Somehow that wasn't really an issue in BW..
- (DONE) The blockers around the rich geysers slightly reduce the number of melee units that can attack extractors at once. If Blizzard fixes rich geysers, the blockers will be removed (DONE)
To Play:
Map is currently uploaded on NA. Search for wuthering
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nice thinking with the pathing blockers, i'll definitely try this out
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.......Wuthering?
Looks neat. But the word Wuthering scares me.
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I dont like the naturals, they are too close to be wuthering highs.
Also, I think the walls are pilon-abusable, and I would add xel-naga towers around the center, maybe next to the wall, in that little corner behind the rich gasses.
Also I would make no fences in the natural and no fences from natural to main. You cant cut off reaper of the game and spect this will be a playable map. Maps shouldnt cut out units, just balance them in or out the game.
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Thanks for the reminder..need to read that novel :p
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Messing with minerals and gysers isn't a bad thing, but it'll take A LOT more effort to balance. Some builds/races can utilize increased amounts of minerals and gas more than others. Having more mineral patches in the main changes the timing of the game, making fast expanding less important.
Choking at the natural is just as easy as the main, so holding that natural from ground looks too easy, while holding off reapers/air attacks too hard.
The middle is too open, making any fight taking place there a pure brawn war where the larger army always wins. There's not enough of the "playing the map to your advantage" factor, like LOS blockers, Xel'Naga towers, chokes, high ground ect.
Altogether this map looks off in a lot of ways. I'm not saying the map needs to be standard by any means, experimenting is good, but it looks like this map would give huge advantages to certain units/races.
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On September 16 2010 22:31 DamageInq wrote:
Messing with minerals and gysers isn't a bad thing, but it'll take A LOT more effort to balance. Some builds/races can utilize increased amounts of minerals and gas more than others. Having more mineral patches in the main changes the timing of the game, making fast expanding less important.
Choking at the natural is just as easy as the main, so holding that natural from ground looks too easy, while holding off reapers/air attacks too hard.
The middle is too open, making any fight taking place there a pure brawn war where the larger army always wins. There's not enough of the "playing the map to your advantage" factor, like LOS blockers, Xel'Naga towers, chokes, high ground ect.
Altogether this map looks off in a lot of ways. I'm not saying the map needs to be standard by any means, experimenting is good, but it looks like this map would give huge advantages to certain units/races.
the BW version was surprisingly sort of balanced, even while holding the same critics as yours:
TvZ: 22-17 (56.4%)
ZvP: 11-13 (45.8%)
PvT: 47-42 (52.8%)
A funny thing is that the openness of the map made it hard for zerg to get the third base running up, but I have the impression that on sc2 the opennes is a factor that help zerg mpst.
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symmetry question: other than tradition, is there any reason for the bottom mains to have their gas towards the middle, and the top two mains to have it towards the edge? Is there any reason not to?
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On September 17 2010 00:56 coltrane wrote:
the BW version was surprisingly sort of balanced, even while holding the same critics as yours:
TvZ: 22-17 (56.4%)
ZvP: 11-13 (45.8%)
PvT: 47-42 (52.8%)
The map's use was short-lived due to tremendous imbalance - out of the 150 times a player was sent to play on this map in Proleague, the teams opted for a Zerg only 5 times while a Terran was sent 113 times. ( Wuthering Heights)
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patch 1.1 fixed rich geysers. Map updated to not use the pathing blockers that were necessary before. Still using the added purple clouds as rich geysers still don't look any different. Also moved around some minerals. Each of the three bases in the middle can now be walled with three forcefields (some needed 4 before). All the mains have their gasses to the outside of the map instead of the bottom two having them towards the middle.
On September 17 2010 19:39 butterbrain wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2010 00:56 coltrane wrote:
the BW version was surprisingly sort of balanced, even while holding the same critics as yours:
TvZ: 22-17 (56.4%)
ZvP: 11-13 (45.8%)
PvT: 47-42 (52.8%)
The map's use was short-lived due to tremendous imbalance - out of the 150 times a player was sent to play on this map in Proleague, the teams opted for a Zerg only 5 times while a Terran was sent 113 times. ( Wuthering Heights)
and yet when a Zerg was forced to play on it (single leagues) the percentage states that they didn't do so bad. Seems like more of a perceived imbalance. But who knows who cares, it's irrelevant to SC2, which has quite different balance concerns 
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This is awesome! Is there any other BW maps for SC2 besides lost temple? I miss Destination, Blue Storm, Othello, Heartbreak Ridge, Peaks of Baekdu.
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On September 24 2010 08:31 DyEnasTy wrote:
This is awesome! Is there any other BW maps for SC2 besides lost temple? I miss Destination, Blue Storm, Othello, Heartbreak Ridge, Peaks of Baekdu.
Heartbreak Ridge is on B.net, there are like three or four versions of Destination, Snausages remade Blue Storm, not sure about Othello, but Peaks of Baekdu IS Crossfire. Blizzard remade it.
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Ahh i see. Where can I get these? Sorry if it seems ive been living under a rock, but its had working full time and not having internet unil right after SC2 launch.
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On September 24 2010 08:47 DyEnasTy wrote:
Ahh i see. Where can I get these? Sorry if it seems ive been living under a rock, but its had working full time and not having internet unil right after SC2 launch.
Crossfire is in the Blizzard map pack. It is a great remake of Peaks of Beakdu.
This thread has the rest of them:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=122171
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/images/maps/174_Wuthering%20Heights.jpg)
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