After much playtesting and tweaking I present you all with Dustbound, version 3.0! Look at the bottom to see all the changes I've done since this was first released. Changed up all the pictures in this thread to show how the map looks now. Some feedback and/or playtesting on the map would be appreciated.
Summary: This says the gold is the third, and either the gold can be the third or the other close normal mineral patch can be the third. + Show Spoiler +
Also, Typical (the terran) hasn't been playing much at all where as Blackout (the zerg) plays a lot, so even though it is kind of one sided it still shows how the map can be played.
Feedback:
Any suggestions and/or feedback on the game play would be appreciated.
Got rid of the back doors. Changed lighting. Changed water to make it look dirty. Added more dusty look. Shrunk the natural choke size a bit. Got rid of the green viney plants by the naturals and added brambles. Worked with the blending of textures.
I love how easy it seems to flank and how open it is. Unfortunately, Zerg may have an advantage due to openness, the only tight choke point is the ramp into the main. The other thing I noticed is that the mains seem HUGE. But that's only from looking at the top-down view, so without seeing it in game I cant say much Another thing I noticed is that a run by seems really easy because of 1.) the naturals wide 'choke' 2.) the naturals proximity and 3.) the main's ramp's proximity to the naturals choke.
All in all i would HATE to play against zerg in this map =)
Yes the map does have quite some open space, my ideas on that is that the zerg will want to take over the middle of the map, it's the most open, doesn't have any cliffs in the middle, and with their mobility they are able to choose which ever path they want on the outside to flank you from. Thing is, you can get around the map by walking the outside paths which are must more choked and have plenty of cliffs to walk up and down which will favor terran & toss. , I suggest everybody play this map with a friend or throw in a computer to test it out, there are a lot of points on this map which benefit the zerg, the terran and the protoss all individually.
Thanks for the feedback, Cuddles!
On January 22 2011 16:33 WniO wrote: Love the name! while the water looks pretty i think it doesnt fit the theme. maybe less saturated or a different hue imo.
I agree actually. When I was putting it together all I was thinking was "if you find an oasis in a desert it's going to look beautiful haha"
But yeah, I probably should mess with the water color. I'm on my laptop at the moment and won't be able to edit anything but I think what I'll do is lower the water level very low and turn it into a browish color like it's very muddy. (suprised I didnt think of this when I was brainstorming a look, tileset & name for the map...haha)
I like the concept of the map. The wide open spaces, a large number of expansions in close proximity, and the backdoor rocks with the route between the main ramp and backdoor being short for the defender and long for the attacker.
However, I would suggest trying to switch it to the vertical and horizontal symmetry. Rotational symmetry tends to create positional imbalances when spawning anything besides cross positions. Most notably in this map if the players spawn horizontal or vertical positions, one player would be able to push out of his natural and directly attack the opposing back rocks, while the other player would either have to go around the map to attack the back rocks or, if he/she wanted a direct route, would have to take out their own back rocks and attack the enemy natural.
Yeah, despite all the comments about this map looking good for zerg, it has some serious potential issues with positional imbalances since sometimes the only way for zerg to take a third with some spawn positions is to take down rocks, and zerg has the hardest time of taking down rocks.
Even the natural is pretty horribly to take if your opponent decides to break the rocks quickly and open up a fast path to your base if they spawn anti-clockwise of you as a zerg, so they get easy access to your base, and 3 easy expos of their own, while you are stuck with your natural which you expanded to towards your opponent.
(Zerg spawns bottom left, terran bottom right. Terran takes natural, then makes a CC in his base, breaks the back rocks, floats it to the bottom middle expo, makes it into a PF, bam, PF right outside your natural, the only way to expand is up, and the terran can take an easy gold as well after breaking those rocks, while the zerg is a bit stuck. Even if he doesn't, he could, forcing you to go up the map, breaking with the rocks at the gold, or the rocks out of your base at the back, both of which take time, since those are the only viable thirds, and your natural is still exposed no matter what from both the regular path, and your opponent breaking his rocks).
It's a problem of rotational symmetry and destructible rocks really, they don't really work on their own all that well, and they are even worse when combined IMO.
I like the location of the thirds and golds, but I'm concerned about the backdoor rocks. On rotational maps, I do not put backdoors because it would favor one player just because they have easy access to their opponent's backdoor.
Otherwise, I'd definitely play on this map. The way that the thirds and golds are set up makes this design very unique.
I think I might just take out the backdoor rocks in the mains and just remove the path completely since it seems most people think it is imbalanced, which even before I published it kind of thought that way but decided to publish it anyway to see if many others agreed.
Got rid of the back doors. Changed lighting. Changed water to make it look dirty. Added more dusty look. Shrunk the natural choke size a bit. Got rid of the green viney plants by the naturals and added brambles. Worked with the blending of textures.
*Replay added in the main post as well of 2 friends playing it, even though the zerg player plays much more then the terran player you can see how the game can pan out, the choke & bases sizes and how enjoyable of a macro game it can be when it's cross positions*
EPT![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/GERK3.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/kTqzU.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/ItOEA.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/WPxfs.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/Z9LsD.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/fIj5V.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/IFrWO.jpg)
Another thing I noticed is that a run by seems really easy because of 1.) the naturals wide 'choke' 2.) the naturals proximity and 3.) the main's ramp's proximity to the naturals choke.
