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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/fQxOa.jpg)
Back to Back
등을 맞대고
version 1.37
Published on the European and North-American servers
152*168
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/A0VXE.jpg)
I completely reworked Back to Back. This is not a special or anniversary edition, this is the way it should have been from the beginning. I made a new thread because I couldn't edit the former thread.
Distances between bases are now tighter and the 3rd expansion is easier to take. The path to the main and natural is wider so it's easier to attack from the ground. Check the changelog for the full list of changes.
The concept of the map is the vertical distance is short for ground harass but the distance to attack is longer since you have to go through the 3rd base. Because of the grass the Xelnaga tower is essential to the attacker, but is exposed to the short middle path.
The main and natural are back to back. Defending two bases is easier when they're close to each other. Quickly the mineral lines become an enclave and the production buildings become more exposed, so it's harder to do tons of damage to the workers and favors softer harass to buildings.
Good luck and have fun !
Analyzer : + Show Spoiler +
Pictures : + Show Spoiler +
Changelog : + Show Spoiler +--- v1.37 - Added water near the grass and between the gold and the 5th
- Added a custom minimap
- Minor tweaks of textures, doodads and the pathing layer
--- v1.34 - Grass patches are now hollow except small ones
- Fixed water and removed unused squares
- Fixed textures
--- v1.33 - The lighting has been remade
- The main and natural are further on the sides (the vertical distance remains the same)
- The natural is smaller
- The 3rd expansion is closer (closer than Dual Sight now)
- The path to the main is wider
- The path alongside the main is shorter and wider
- The gold is easier to attack
- Destructible rocks in the gold
- More rocks to show you can't drop behind the gold expansion
- More room between the 4th and the back of the main
- Less obstacles in the middle of the map
- Small path to blink through the lakes in the middle
- More space to wall the ramp
- Different rocks placement for the forge fast expand
- Neutral depot
--- v1.22 - I Made the corridor along the main wider
- The middle route is now a bit shorter
- I tweaked the lighting
--- v1.16 - Changed the high grass
- Made the natural smaller
- Lighting is less bright
--- v1.14 - Lighting changes and tone mapping
- Fixed a column in the middle
--- v1.11 - Switched back the Gold and 3rd expansion like it was before
- Reduced the cliff behind the 3rd expansion.
- Made the 4th a bit larger and with a larger ramp
- There's a better preview picture in the custom map list
--- v1.6 - Switched the Gold and 3rd expansion
- Cosmetic changes
--- v1.5 - I reduced the area to blink to the main from backdoor
- You can't blink from the 4th expansion to the main without an observer
- Cosmetic changes
--- v1.4 - The Main is bigger
- There's less water in the middle so the middle path is a bit shorter
- The 4th expansion on the side of the main now has 1 ramp and is smaller
- Main and Natural have 8 minerals, other expansions have 7
- Cosmetic changes
- I fixed the Xel Naga and rich minerals to work with the retail version
--- Beta Phase 1 - I fixed the gas in the golden expansion
--- - I removed several cliffs or made them unpathable.
- I moved the main ramp a bit closer to the natural.
- The choke is narrower.
- The main has a bit more space but not too much.
- The 3rd expansion's entrance is wider.
- The gold expansions ramps are narrower.
- I removed the 2 useless towers.
Previous versions : + Show Spoiler +
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This map reminds me of BW for some reason. I'll be definitely trying this.
Off-topic, but how did you get the color saturation so high in game? I love how the colors don't look so faded out.
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United States10627 Posts
the third seems very awkwardly placed... the gold is in too small of an area, making pfs way to OP.
map is also way too open.
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Yeah I don't like the desaturated colors nor playing on dark maps. I like when you can play in the afternoon and you're not forced to draw the curtains.
By default, lighting is desaturated but textures are actually saturated. In the lighting window->colorization untick Colorize, put Hue, Saturation and lightness to 0.0, and contrast to 0.0 too.
Then the goal is too have saturated light colors in Global, Key, Fill and Back and bright enough so you can lower Tone Mapping->Exposure as close to 1.0 as possible.
Since the game desaturates maps by default, Blizzard cheats and oversaturates the units and building textures to make them stand out. So if you leave a high exposure value it will overburn units and buildings colors.
Also having an exposure of 1.0 makes you map look the same in Low graphics and Medium/High/Ultra/Extreme.
Also up the bloom threshold so the bright parts don't bleed or look greasy.
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On February 10 2012 05:59 chuky500 wrote:
Yeah I don't like the desaturated colors nor playing on dark maps. I like when you can play in the afternoon and you're not forced to draw the curtains.
By default, lighting is desaturated but textures are actually saturated. In the lighting window->colorization untick Colorize, put Hue, Saturation and lightness to 0.0, and contrast to 0.0 too.
Then the goal is too have saturated light colors in Global, Key, Fill and Back and bright enough so you can lower Tone Mapping->Exposure as close to 1.0 as possible.
Since the game desaturates maps by default, Blizzard cheats and oversaturates the units and building textures to make them stand out. So if you leave a high exposure value it will overburn units and buildings colors.
Also having an exposure of 1.0 makes you map look the same in Low graphics and Medium/High/Ultra/Extreme.
Also up the bloom threshold so the bright parts don't bleed or look greasy.
How would I do all of this ingame, but not on the map editor? Would I have to something in "Variables.txt"?
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Published on NA server! - ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/hHvLO.jpg)
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Thanks godly-cheese for publishing it on the NA server !
And now the map has a korean name ! How cool is that 
FlaShFTW, what's awkward about the 3rd ? The idea is it's placed at an equal distance between the main choke and the far end of the Xel naga tower vision. This way when you see the opponent coming you have just the right amount of time to move your army and defend your 3rd. And this distance is also roughly equal to the distance from the end of the Xel naga tower vision to the edge of the main base, so the attacker can choose to siege/harass the side of the base instead.
Regarding the gold, I've just fixed it so you can't build 2 planetary fortresses in the gold. But actually PFs aren't OP because you can attack the gold from the low ground with most ranged units. The purpose of such a gold base is if the defender isn't already on the high ground when the gold is attacked, it's hard for him to climb up the ramp and he has to fight from the low ground. The way the attacker's units focus in priority the PF over the defender's units makes it hard to attack a PF so this design helps keeping the PF and the defender's army at different places, making it easier to tell your units which one to attack. If the defender were easily between the PF and the opponent's army it'd be too easy to defend.
regarding the lighting settings, well the desaturation and tone mapping only happen in medium settings and up so if you're in low it's not desaturated. But lighting is usually fixed with settings like exposure and color correction so it's darker in low mode. I'm afraid you can't change the lighting settings of any map in the game other than picking the low graphics mode or editing it.
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I do not like the fact that you have a gold as standard 4th.
Golds are never nice in my opinion, but if they are in, they should be there as a more risky, but more rewarding option, not as a forced expo.
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I've chosen to keep the golden expansion because after the game MMA vs Feast it was pretty obvious mules would be fixed on gold. The change is now announced for patch 1.4.3.
There's a trend in most macro games where there's a pause in the flow of the expansions after 3 bases. Players stay on 3 bases, max their armies at 200/200, make units and upgrades for a while and then they make a 4th and a 5th at the same time. Once armies have fought there's a big downtime where players recover and there's nothing special to watch as a spectator. Having a gold as a standard 4th helps smoothing the expansion timings because you gain something if you keep expanding. And you defend it along with the 3rd so it stays in the flow of the game. If the gold was risky the player taking it would usually be the one already in the lead so I don't want to mechanically help accentuate a lead.
Also keep in mind there are only 5 mineral lines per player on Back to Back while most 2-player maps have 6. On a 5-base map, players would likely make their last but one expansion on a gold anyways, chosing to have the edge now rather than taking it when there's nothing else left to mine.
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I decided to tweak the map a bit more. Grass patches are now hollow except small ones. I know it doesn't change how it works but it was different for the sake of being different and actually hampered vision.
I also removed unused squares of water and fixed the textures around the natural's gases. I hope you enjoy.
I'll update the picture when I get time.
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Hollow grass patches ? What do you mean ?
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That gif is tripping me out Can you include some analyzerpics?
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United Kingdom10823 Posts
The name is throwing me off tbh. It should be the Plains of Krydon or something
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i stared at that gif for minutes...
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Here are few mapanalyzer pictures + Show Spoiler +
Grass patches are all in range of the Xelnaga towers' vision and there are a few obstacles in the open areas that weren't computed by the map analyzer.
Hollow grass patches is the standard in starcraft 2, it's when you have a closed line of sight blockers instead of a full patch. Now I just have the outline of the big patch.
I also corrected a part of the pathing layer that got deleted and a few textures.
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Oh i see. Isn't the map veeeeery open ?
Edit : use the pathing brush for obstacle doodads to be recognized by the analyser.
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I don't really care about the map analyzer pictures, the global openness value doesn't really mean anything. The only value that means something is the local openness, the openness of where you fight. If you fight in an open area it's just open, "very open" doesn't correspond to anything. Overall the map isn't very open because most fights occur near bases and that's where the map is tighter.
Also the open areas have grass patches that act as obstacles in the middle of a battle, it is an element of gameplay like ramps. There are also doodads that mapanalyzer didn't consider. If I painted the few doodads of the open areas it would mess with the colors and remove a big part of the pink parts. That would break the use of the colors.
ihasaKAROT asked for these pictures so I posted them but honestly in my opinion mapanalyzer would need to have the complete set of basic features to be useful, like unpathable doodads and sight blockers.
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your Country52798 Posts
For some reason I think the golds would be a more comfortable 4th (as they are the only 4th) if they were on the lower ground.
Beautiful map.
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The good thing about the gold base layout in my opinion is you can't make a CC or a macro hatch next to the rocks and start mining before you break them. So protoss are not unfavored.
Also the base on the opposite side as the 3rd can also act as a 4th, depending on if you're attacking or defending. In the same way as on Taldarim Altar close positions where you may want to take the base that doesn't have rocks.
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I updated the map, now there are small water ponds between the gold and the 5th. It should make army placement more interresting in the middle and near the xel naga tower. I painted the doodads for the map analyzer and the openness value jumped from 4.76 to 3.81 ! It just show how reliable this value is.
I also added a custom minimap that's a lot prettier than the default one.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/m9nZJ.jpg)
Analyzer pictures : + Show Spoiler +
The OP is now updated to reflect the changes.
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