Intro: Hi, this is a guide for people who have a passion for making maps, but don't really know who to balance their maps to the fullest. Ofcourse, I'm not saying that I'm perfect in any way or sort, I've made maps that aren't balanced aswell so this guide is also something for me to reflect to and practice more in the current maps I'm working on.
Location, location, location: Most of the maps I've published are macro based maps, which is short for somewhat bigger maps. Maps where positioning, simcity, etc. matters. And by having this style of maps in mind, I often look back on SC1 maps and how the main, natural and other expo's are layed out. And bearing in mind the own idea of the mapper, I set up some guidelines that will increase the chance of your map being balanced for all races.
Mains size should vary from 23-35 CC big to ensure every race has enough compability to build every building they need.
The smaller the main is, the bigger the natural should be. The natural should compensate for lack of room in the main if there is any.
Distance between main and natural should be maximum 2 creep tumors in between.
Distance between mains should be 150+ to every other main. This can vary whether you use rotational symetry or reflection symetry.
Chokes and you: like to work with chokes. I enjoy FE builds from which a good wall-in ensures a secure FE or another wall-in that will hold of attacks from which you can tech in secrecy. Because of this, most of my maps will follow these guidelines:
Main-to-Natural choke should be a small choke that's easily to block of with 1 big building (9 hexes) and 2 smaller buildings (4 hexes) when you block off on a ramp and 4/5/6 hexes wide when blocking off on same level ground.
Natural choke should be able to be blocked by 2 big buildings, 1 small building and a unit or 2 big buildings a small building or a unit.
Also because macro-oriented games give FE-builds a better rate of succes. I like to have only 1 entrance to the natural and 1 entrance going from Main-to-Natural. If you choose to go for 2 entrances to the natural, blocking off 1 entrance with destructable rocks will still guarantee a good succes rate for FE-builds. For mains, if you need to have a second entrance, as before, block it off with rocks (For hatin' on Blistering Sands, increase the HP on those rocks to make sure they won't be broken easily).
Expo's galore: In every good map, there's enough expo's to go around for everyone. Today, we're focusing mostly on 1v1 maps so most maps will go vary from 2 to 4 spawning locations.
For 4-player maps most of the time I think having a main, natural and third are enough for 1v1 play. This depends entirely on the positioning of the mains and the size of the map ofcourse. Plus, it's never bad to put neutral expo's on the map.
On 2-player maps however, I think there should be atleast a main, natural, third and fourth for each player.
Additionally expo's should increase in risk as the game progresses, so basically expo's should run towards the opponent instead of away from it.
Gold bases should be very hard to secure especially for terrans.
Get harassed: Harassing is an important factor in macro-based play. Therefor every base should be able to be harassed by muta/banshee/phoenix/voidray but also by ground units. So let's say you've got a main that's hard to harass (mineral lines towards boundries of the map with clear vision of incoming troops), then to compensate for the main, the natural should be easily harassable. Same goes for other expo's, everytime you lay out a new expo, think about the previous one's and compensate for their pro's/cons.
[This will be updated with picture's as soon as possible for me.] [These are all guidelines and not rules, don't follow them if you don't want to.] [Please comment below and state what you think.]
For 4-player maps most of the time I think having a main, natural and third are enough for 1v1 play. This depends entirely on the positioning of the mains and the size of the map ofcourse. Plus, it's never bad to put neutral expo's on the map.
I'd rather have the expos favor one player or another. It gives the player an easier choice when taking an expo. It's not really a bad thing but it's much easier to make a good map that has clear expo choices.
Since, this is a balancing for rookies thread and I am a complete beginner at map making I thought I'd ask my questions here to hopefully get some advice from the community. I have recently just started to make layouts of maps and think Im starting to get the hang of it. I'm going to post 3 different maps that have the same base layout but have 3 different overall layouts. I was wondering if I could get some feedback on them on how you guys think they are when taking about balance issues.
Since I haven't begun to mess around with texturing at all I will just show you all the sc2 map analyzer and hopefully that is good enough to get some feedback on the overall layout!
First Layout: I was thinking of making more of a rectangular map with closer air positions. I wanted the first expansion to be very easy to get then the other ones to start get to harder and harder as you move closer to the map. I was told it seems just waaaay too big to go from main to main when using a ground army. Take a look for yourself and let me know! I also wanted to try something with the xel'naga towers on the bottom corners to make them a lot more useful for offensive use but not so great for defensive use + Show Spoiler +
Second Layout: I decided that maybe the ground distance was too long and maybe the air distance was too short. Also the middle I just wasn't so sure about. So I made this layout a lot smaller with still the same expansion layout. I've been told this map would be bad due to the middle of the map being the choke of all chokes (even though there are the 2 ramps to let you get around) my friend told me that a terran could just bunker/tank/turret up the complete middle where both xel'nagas are and just starve you out. Just wondering your thoughts on this one. + Show Spoiler +
]
Third Layout: Finally I decided why not try to transform it into a 4 player map. Problem with this is now cross positions are just as long as the ground positions were in the first layout I showed you. Maybe it's too big? Maybe the 3rd/4th are way too easy to defend? *ps im on my laptop and don't have a shortest paths for this one, but from 10 o'clock main to 4 o'clock main it takes an scv about 65 in game seconds (on fastest). + Show Spoiler +
Again, I just started off map making and would like to get some community feedback on these layouts so I can slowly start to design better and better layouts for sc2. Please if you could tell me what you like, what you hate, what you think is balanced, what you think isn't, etc etc etc.
Also effects, if you want me to move this to my own thread let me know, I just thought I'm a rookie looking for some balance feedback and didn't want to make my own thread showing some random pieces of work! :D
on the first one: it looks like a mask? was that how you drew it or just how it turned out...? can't wait to see your "coloring inside of the lines" of said mask
the green one (picture) looks like a piece of puzzle thwarted unto itself or something
those are sick long, as long as mine probably, i wouldn't know how to do a 1v1 rectangle map + Show Spoiler +
100% square, 256/256 to boot, still need to look at the last
can we at least get a teaser: texture "base" set used for the map?
@SidianTheBard, those maps are definitely quite big. Rookies tend to create these long paths that are like arms that reach across the map. These are quite unnatural and make the flow very awkward. My greatest advice would be this: Try creating a standard 2-player map first. Start in the editor and create a new map with a playable size of 124x124. Put 5 bases on it for each player (a total of 10 bases). Just going through the challenge of fitting those 10 bases on that size of a map may help you understand how to use each bit of space to it's fullest. Notice that both Steppes of War and Xel'Naga Caverns are 124x124 sized maps with 10 bases, yet one is infinitely better.
EPT![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/dgDd8.png)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/i0XFY.png)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/4BcSH.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/EFhNv.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/cNdQ5.jpg)
