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Snow Spawn v.01
Published Americas
by a176
Misc Shots
+ Show Spoiler +
Some time ago I started this map for kicks and didn't bother to do anything with it. With the TLMC announcement, I decided to make it into a full fledged map. The map was originally heavily Daybreak inspired, but with the evolving HotS metagame, there were certain design goals I set for myself.
- Minimize open-air areas. Nothing annoyed me more than seeing Tempests sitting in the middle of nowhere pummeling a base. Not a complaint about it being OP, but more of a complaint of it looking ridiculously boring and stupid. But for other units, it obviously gives them less chance to escape unharmed.
- Institute wider use of low/raised terrain, to try to bring some terrain-vision based gameplay back to SC2.
- Raise base count and counter-attack options. Daybreak suffered from limited pathing options in combination with a base layout that promoted splitmap games. I usually have winding paths in my maps, but most of you will have seen the effect of this in Neo Planet S.
Some specific features of the map.
- Double Collapsible Rocks. Blizzard designed these rocks, by default, to act as one rock when within a certain proximity. Destroying the rocks will block both a ramp and a small counter attack path, which effects both attack and defender at the same time.
- Large raised terrain near 11/5oclock bases. I wanted to minimize the power of air but not completely eliminate its effectiveness, so these fairly wide areas give these units some place to be safe from ground units, and to attack bases that will be taken later in the game.
- Further, the raised terrain around the map will also provide vision-safety escape options for air units.
- Reaper backdoor into Main
- Corner bases connected by cliff (reaper, proxy pylon options)
- No middle Watchtower. You must be proactive to scout attacks. There is a small overlord pod outside the nat but it has limited vision spread
- Note, none of the raised terrain with trees can be dropped and serve strictly for overlords and air units
Enjoy!
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There are things I like and dislike about it. Overall, I think the concept could have been executed on a smaller scale, and I'm not sure about so many 1 entrance bases, though the middle ones are kind neat. Not sure why they need rocks. The aesthetics are plain and readable, which is good, but too plain IMO.
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retexture and modified bottom 3rd/4th terrain
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/nG6sUmT.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/nnv0Jd0.jpg)
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Russian Federation4295 Posts
Woah, now thats really good design, like BroodWar winter 
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The reflectivity of the snow really hurts my eyes. Mabye it's better in game, but if not change the lighting. It is incredibly painful to look at these images.
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On June 07 2013 05:24 Timetwister22 wrote:
The reflectivity of the snow really hurts my eyes. Mabye it's better in game, but if not change the lighting. It is incredibly painful to look at these images.
its the default niflheim lighting
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Rqkt9OJ.jpg)
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Russian Federation4295 Posts
Niflheim lighting is very contrast by default. Try other lighting sets, like standard night or something like this. Standard night would be nice to see.
Stop use default lightings with texture presets, use custom ones to make map more unique and better.
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At the moment your map features some really harsh contrasts, imo, that can distract from gameplay because the units don't set themselves apart enough from the terrain. When both players take all their expansions, their "area of interest" get very close to each other. That might cause some intense fighting or cause the players to never take those expansions. You could fix this by removing one of the expos (which leaves 6 expos for either player, which is fine, or put them in the middle, so they don't belong to a player and are neutral instead, and they have to fight over these in the late game.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/SMb3cEQ.jpg)
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On June 07 2013 06:19 Existor wrote:
Niflheim lighting is very contrast by default. Try other lighting sets, like standard night or something like this. Standard night would be nice to see.
Stop use default lightings with texture presets, use custom ones to make map more unique and better.
believe me ive tried many combinations. the snow textures are very finicky. any slight modification in light color is enhanced 10x over by these textures, in comparison to other tilesets, and especially so with lighter colors.
so then you think to kill some specular or hdr to ease it on the eyes, but then that kills the definition of the snow textures (i use the "cracked" textures alot). so in the end i always end back with something looking similar like niflheim.
since i just added the grass, green color armies and darker units do take a visibility hit because of the contrast, so ill have to figure something out for that.
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On June 07 2013 06:20 spinnaker wrote:At the moment your map features some really harsh contrasts, imo, that can distract from gameplay because the units don't set themselves apart enough from the terrain. When both players take all their expansions, their "area of interest" get very close to each other. That might cause some intense fighting or cause the players to never take those expansions. You could fix this by removing one of the expos (which leaves 6 expos for either player, which is fine, or put them in the middle, so they don't belong to a player and are neutral instead, and they have to fight over these in the late game.
the idea behind this is that with people becoming more and more balanced in their matchups, i wanted an extra base so they could extend the game just a bit longer instead of mining out on six. i balance this with these two extra bases being extremely exposed. it also acts as a mineral dump for the static defense you'll need to build to help defend these bases since they are so far from your spawn.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/q4V7zDF.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/6VzdGEc.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/WnNyOf4.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/E32x7mX.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/0BJ9ldP.jpg)
