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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/dOUmAYl.png) DF Phoenix Cluster - version 1.1Published - NA![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ZZ4dENS.jpg)
Map Data:
-138x142 Playable
-10 Expansions - 8 normal, 2 half
-1 Xel'Naga tower
-Nat-nat rush distance ~ 170
-Over 3000 doodads
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The map, at the core, is what you see here: http://sc2melee.net/maps/cerberus/
However, there is a laundry list of changes, aside from the obvious different-look-and-different-name-and-also-published-on-hots-and-not-wol thing. They're roughly as follows:
-Backdoor path to the natural
-Additional pathway leading between the 3rd and corner 4th bases
-A general adjustment of various proportions throughout the map
That last one's vague as hell, but I stopped caring at that point. Also of note is the spiritual successor, in HotS, to the Bel'Shir cliche - the mixing of the Korhal Platform with other shit. That's right, I did it after it was cool, the infamous reverse-hipster, or whatever. Again, me and stopping caring, we get along great.
Before I hit you with the mind-blowingly mind-numbing aesthetics, I found a special new way to indicate them rich geysers - using the Zerus Pool Sparkles doodad. Combined with the green Omni Light it should be immediately more identifiable on sight. But again, I'm not the first here, apparently the fabulous Electra has been doing this for quite some time.*
And not a single shit was given that day.
Oh, and before you say "well, it's hard to see what's going on in the overview!", just look at the sand. Seriously.
Anyway...
+ Show Spoiler [spoiler] +
Oh and btw, I've wanted to call a map Phoenix Cluster for like 2 months. GETTIN' IT DONE.
*source: + Show Spoiler +
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wow its so pretty and the layout looks really cool (:
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And not a single shit was given that day.
Why I never!!! Badmap.
<3
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On February 26 2013 18:57 eTcetRa wrote:
Badmap.
+ Show Spoiler +
orly?
Oh man, just noticed how contrived that conversation looks, against my awesome paragraphs of amazingness. Good thing I don't care. <3
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I was obviously only talking about aesthetics :3
Well played sir, well played.
Edit: Not sure those Zerus sparkles are showing in the screenshot of the half base.
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I will be the one to say that I really dislike the aesthetics. Poor choise and use of textures makes the map look really messy. You need a more relaxed grass texture and it has an unnatural transition between sand and grass. A good transitiontexture between the sand and grass will make the map look so much better.
The layout however is great. It has good position and mobility around the map and a diverse baselayout. Clean up your aesthetic mess and you have a good candidate at any future map contests.
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I'm a big fan of late game expo's with small ramps and bases towards the middle. My practice partner needs to get back into town. :S
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Personally I love the textures. I sort of avoided Cerberus because of the textures (isn't that terrible of me?) But I'm totally going to play on this.
You might consider a rock/pebble texture as a transition between the sand and grass, to make Archvil3 happy 
You also might consider using a slightly darker sand texture for the lowest terrain level so as to separate it from the middle level.
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On February 27 2013 03:42 ArcticRaven wrote:
I approve of this name.
This might actually be more valuable than the Ragoo "good map" award.
On February 27 2013 00:12 Archvil3 wrote:
I will be the one to say that I really dislike the aesthetics.
:S
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I like the grass interface. Also, lol electra. And lol your dismissive op style.
But, the sand should be in the low places, and the bare rock higher up. Swap those and maybe meld and mottle them a bit. Like overlay some rock and dirt on the sand so it's not so bright (if that bothers you in the low places). Anyway, plates and incongruous surroundings, lol.
Layout is fine I guess, a little bland. Nat backdoor is only a vulnerability it seems, which is kind of random but whatev. I suppose it might be used in tvz to take an aggressive position and the vertical third. The endgame army sitting spots are pretty well balanced and not too base tradey, especially with the small ramp denying a-move antics. Seems to be a growing trend. Mid level hipsterism, a new thing?
Only layout thing i would change is a small proportions thing. Between the two ramps leading down from the highground forward of the tree clump at the 4th, you have some small deadspace cutting in to the openness. Imo that should be pathable, because that will be a big area for lategame max supply engagements, and anyway forward of the tree clump controls the ramps, which should be harder to hold passively.
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Hey I want to report a bug, you can't see the debris in the nat through the fog of war, I think you made it on the "hostile" air instead of the "natural" or something like that. Another thing is that you can't hide air units behind the main, only tested for queens so I dunno if 6 range units can hit units that hide in the corners but it might have been something intended so I dunno, I think it should be possible to hide units there and in the area between the main and the 3rd, especially since Zerg is not strong in HotS as of now, I think it should be done by simply increasing the bounds of the map by 1 or 2 to the south and north.
Besides this, I would like to hear your thought about why you made the 9 and 3 bases with a 1 width ramp? With a 1 width ramp its hard to defend versus heavy drop play to there since you can't really charge up into a 1 width ramp, which is kinda frustrating. Also imo this kind of base heavily favors Protoss because its the race with the most tools to bypass a ramp (blink / colossus / recall if its your base) and they can use the 1 width ramp the most for easy defense (1 sentry can delay the push, or 4 sentries can delay it forever), which means that a Protoss that take this base as his 3rd can defend things like ling runbys or 3base roach very easily. In fact I would say that this base is pretty imbalanced since it is so close to the nat.
Of course that by taking that base you make defending mutas or drops harder than by taking the standard 3rd, but you can scout that ahead of the time most of the time, or if you take that base very fast you will simply have enough resources to stop it most likely. I think making it a 2 width ramp or a ramp with rocks is the best way. I can understand if you keep it as a 1 width ramp until actual test results, even though I feel it will turn out to be too strong in favor of Protoss.
Not related to balance of the map, I really love the looks of the map, the sparkly high yield gas looks fitting to the theme and overall the in-game feel of the map is very nice, I am really a fan of Terran in a jungle theme and you nailed it. Anyways besides the things I mentioned it looks like an awesome map and I would love to play it or watch games on it, if I do I will be sure to give you the replays if you want.
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Mengsk / dominion tarmacs or whatever they're called seem out of place. I know it's a Terran-installation-in-the-jungle theme but they still seem odd to me. Maybe it's just the placement. Otherwise the aesthetics are pretty cool.
Layout isn't groundbreaking but seems solid, I can't immediately find any faults with it. XNT in middle is good here I think because if it wasn't there then too much of the game would be played just using the central path (which is a problem that Silver Sands seems to be having)
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i like the layout. asthetics are decent too.
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On February 27 2013 05:08 moskonia wrote:
I can understand if you keep it as a 1 width ramp until actual test results, even though I feel it will turn out to be too strong in favor of Protoss.
Another alternative fix would be to "turn off" forcefields at that ramp, like with burrowed ultralisks or something permanent even.
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I might at one point look into a change that addresses, in addition to potentially the aesthetic, this as well:
On February 27 2013 04:16 EatThePath wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Only layout thing i would change is a small proportions thing. Between the two ramps leading down from the highground forward of the tree clump at the 4th, you have some small deadspace cutting in to the openness. Imo that should be pathable, because that will be a big area for lategame max supply engagements, and anyway forward of the tree clump controls the ramps, which should be harder to hold passively.
On February 27 2013 05:08 moskonia wrote:
Besides this, I would like to hear your thought about why you made the 9 and 3 bases with a 1 width ramp? With a 1 width ramp its hard to defend versus heavy drop play to there since you can't really charge up into a 1 width ramp, which is kinda frustrating. Also imo this kind of base heavily favors Protoss because its the race with the most tools to bypass a ramp (blink / colossus / recall if its your base) and they can use the 1 width ramp the most for easy defense (1 sentry can delay the push, or 4 sentries can delay it forever), which means that a Protoss that take this base as his 3rd can defend things like ling runbys or 3base roach very easily. In fact I would say that this base is pretty imbalanced since it is so close to the nat.
The strength of air-based harassment on this expansion is intentional, though as you said if results(if any) come back that suggest it's a problem it can be adjusted.
On February 27 2013 05:08 moskonia wrote:Not related to balance of the map, I really love the looks of the map, the sparkly high yield gas looks fitting to the theme and overall the in-game feel of the map is very nice, I am really a fan of Terran in a jungle theme and you nailed it. Anyways besides the things I mentioned it looks like an awesome map and I would love to play it or watch games on it, if I do I will be sure to give you the replays if you want.
If you get some games in on the map and have the replays to shoot my way, that would be awesome.
I'm curious about the bug you mention though, can you elaborate exactly what's going on?
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I'm curious about the bug you mention though, can you elaborate exactly what's going on?
Well the backdoor to the nat has rocks on it, but you can't see that they have ones until you reach them, its not huge and will only affect people who have never seen games on the map, or played it themselves, but if its possible to fix I don't see why not. Basically when I entered the game to check the map out I was like "wut?! a backdoor without rocks?" but then my worker got to it and I saw it actually had debris on it, so again not huge and will only affect people who play it on their first time with a very limited affect, but still.
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All maps are that way, at least in HOTS (maybe someone can load Ohana in WOL and see if it's like that there too.. I don't remember).
Unbuildable plates and rocks won't show up under fog of war until you scout them.
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It might be because it uses the rocks that appear when a tower falls instead of regular rocks. It makes sense that those wouldn't show up until you scout them.
But I've personally not seen that at all in any hots map.
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On February 27 2013 10:19 Fatam wrote:
All maps are that way, at least in HOTS (maybe someone can load Ohana in WOL and see if it's like that there too.. I don't remember).
Unbuildable plates and rocks won't show up under fog of war until you scout them.
I am sorry but that is just wrong, I just checked to be 100% sure and unbuildable plates and normal rocks are visible through the fog of war on normal maps in HotS and in WoL. I guess the rocks on this map don't show because of the reason Gfire mentioned, that the model that is used is the one that you get from the rock tower falling, although it might the reason I mentioned before (that they are set on something else but natural AI).
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I seem to remember pretty clearly unbuildable plates not showing up until you got down your ramp. Oh well. Good to know, thanks for checking.
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This issue is that in the Beta editor there were different unbuildable plates and they wouldn't show up. The standard ones do. It was just an editor issue.
I did play this map though and I really don't like the position of the destructable rocks. They seem to be really hard to defend. The other issue is that the map map feels like a one direction "tug-of-war" map where the players just fight in the middle. I'm not really a fan of long skinny maps other than Ohana (which has a lot of action on the sides). It could be that there would be a better reason to leave the middle but right now there isn't unless the game goes beyond three base (which I admit doesn't happen often with me in PvZ, (I like my three base pushes ))
I will try to play more on it though.
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Why did you choose the lava? Its sand, grass, pavement and all sorts of greenery...
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I think map looks good and can be pretty competitive. Downvote as Protoss, don't wanna do two base timings/all-ins in PvZ, PvP would be blink/msc/no-robo (blame pvp mu not the map here though)
Thanks!
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On February 28 2013 00:30 ihasaKAROT wrote:
Why did you choose the lava? Its sand, grass, pavement and all sorts of greenery...
...and lava.
<3
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holy incredible map batman
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The tileset's legit now, I saw it used in the campaign <3
Anyway, small aesthetic update:
+ Show Spoiler [spoiler] +
Mostly just using the new Skygeirr stuff.
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looks awesome, but fourth is waaay to easy to take, even if its a partial base its a bit too rewarding. would put 4 minerals, but otherwise, really clever and cool layout and well designed.
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my comment will address aesthetics, which is what stood out to me at first glance.
my general suggestion would be to spend more time closely observing already successful maps, particularly in the area of blending textures. each 'area' in your map appears to be very starkly defined by texture, which gives a feel somewhat reminiscent of an advanced line drawing. my preference is for maps that more closely 'emulate reality'. i also suggest you take a very close look at maps like akilon flats and ohana to observe how the textures are blended to create a 'non-uniform' and more naturalistic feel. notice how areas of texture flow from one space to another, easing the spatial transition. a second example would be shakuras plateau, where in and around the mains, the textures are blended to give the appearance of the high traffic footpaths that the units would actually travel, which gives the subtle impression that this battlefield has been used for centuries of endless war. check out the mains in daybreak, where 3 tile-sets are used to create separate areas of differing visual granularity, BUT they are seamlessly integrated. this level of attention to detail is one factor which separates the 'average' map from the 'excellent' map and unless one is carefully looking for it, falls below the player's immediate consciousness.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/QJqCb3S.jpg)
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