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United States45 Posts
On January 27 2015 18:48 Meavis wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2015 10:16 Psione wrote:On January 27 2015 09:59 Meavis wrote: If thats the case, why are there like 20damn blizzard weather effect doodads on blackfrost, you guys can't even follow your own standard These aren't rules that will prevent a map from being used. These are all tips for situations where performance can be impacted through seemingly innocent map changes. You can take note of these tips and consider them when they might be relevant, or you can ignore them and make maps as you see fit. I offered these points to help map makers that are interested, not to give ammo to those that only look to argue. But it's your choice on how you want to use it. I never said they were rules either, while there is a lot of value in your post, I am a bit confused as to why you ignore the advice you give to others, on a giant map in 4v4, where FPS issues are most critical. A lot of these work in combination. Maybe it wasn't clear enough in this post. If you took any of these points alone, they usually aren't an issue. However, once you start getting a few of these together, you'll find that performance dips. And when we look to help resolve these issues, we often tweak the areas below. If you have a very low doodad/splat count, you can probably get away with a lot more in other areas. I'd say that weather effects are probably one of the easier ones to address, the ones with splats and excessive doodads can be more difficult.
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Best of luck to the contestants! I'm probably going to have to bow out of this one, though; everything I consider fun and interesting about maps doesn't work in the current multiplayer meta. Tough break for me, but I'm excited to see if some of these new mapmakers cropping up recently will get a map on the ladder.
EDIT: Actually... maybe I have a map that can work. :D May as well give 'er a shot!
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United States45 Posts
On January 27 2015 12:05 Uvantak wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2015 11:39 Antares777 wrote: I would definitely be fine with it. I enjoy designing new layouts much more than texturing and decorating a map. The latter is tedious to me. Show nested quote +On January 27 2015 11:32 Arianity wrote: I can't speak for everyone, but i'd assume that most people would be fine with you nuking the doodads/art/whatever , if it means more good maps. btw any doodad that inherits terrain colors/textures can be problematic if used too much just like any other doodad, but how about increasing the size of them? How about if instead of adding 6 Xel torn plates i add 2x300% ? I most of the time tend to go for the later, but it would be nice to know anyways. This caught the eye of one of our Senior Technical Artists who helps address map performance. Being particularly passionate about the work of community map makers, he wanted to offer some details on this. I know you guys really enjoy some of the finer points of this process, so I've offered the unedited and more technical answer that he provided.
This is a really good hypothesis, and actually does sometimes work. In the general case, smaller objects mean you have to draw more of them which can be bad, but larger objects can also be bad because they are less likely to be optimized away as "off screen". So there is optimization that can be done through size, but it is very hard to dial in. Unfortunately, increasing the size of Torn Plates or Ice Cliffs in particular will often make things worse. There is a "sweet spot" to their size. We cache blended terrain textures for "terrain chunks". These are the red lined grid cells seen in the terrain editor. This is an optimization on most hardware, because you only have to do the terrain blending once, and can reuse it between frames. However, on some hardware/settings combinations, there is not enough memory available to cache all the terrain you can see at once. This is especially true in some of the "12-high cliff" tilesets, like Umoja, where deep cliffs north of the current view can cause more terrain chunks to be seen. I believe the "slow" cliff meshes are "Cliff Made13" and "Cliff Natural3" in particular. When a doodad with terrain materials goes to draw itself, it first checks to see if it can use a cached terrain chunk. It can do this if it resides entirely within the borders of a single terrain chunk, and that terrain chunk has a valid cache. If it cannot use an existing chunk, either because the chunk didn't fit in memory, or because the model requires information from multiple terrain chunks, then it will attempt to render its own cached terrain chunk. This can lead to a "death spiral" for performance. The terrain doodad will request its new cache, possibly ejecting another cache, and now both will do their own terrain blending that frame. This leaves an odd situation. If there are too many terrain material doodads crossing chunk boundaries, then it's super slow. If there are lots of small ones, then there might be more crossing overall. If they're too big, then each one is guaranteed to cross a boundary, and that would be quite bad. Also, it's really not reasonable for gameplay or artistry to ask people to dodge red lines constantly when placing doodads. Therefore, the best advisory really is to be sparing with your usage of doodads with terrain materials. Terrain material doodads often help make a map look quite nice, they are in the game to be used, and the system is there to support it. However, the system works quite a lot better under its anticipated loads (i.e. 8-high cliffs, only a few terrain material doodads for accent). Terrain Objects draw like the ground and do not suffer from this performance issue. Regular doodads also do not suffer. This issue is unique to Doodads that use Terrain Materials Hopefully this info helps provide further insight into the complexities of map performance. If this confuses any map makers, it is likely not a scenario that you'll run into and shouldn't be too concerning. We're just offering this as extra info for those interested.
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It's really building up fatigue watching people repetitively fighting each other using only 3 races and their own specialties.
Melee maps are literally just a good looking container that you drop 2 aggressive spiders inside it then close the cap, and maybe some food inside there, too so they can spend as long as possible trying to knock each other out.
Making new maps visually and geologically only means you get to use different routes and quote different scenarios from the war in the history.
What is new? Nothing. We've had all these glorious players expanding their tactics based on how the maps are geologically designed. And if you are confined to only geological changes, there will be quickly nothing left for anyone to expand.
Not more and more boredom, get something new and fun. Competitive doesn't mean it has to be always structurally the same.
Seasons of seasons of same fight happened again and again. No wonder why MOBA is popular, they have millions of team combinations, and each fight is different and possibly always unique.
When can StarCraft officially support alternative side goals inside the melee maps? Like what warcraft 3 did. I especially liked the blockade stone and watch tower inside sc2, it's very well designed, but that's it? really?
Get some map specific features and unique "fun stuff" out, like a neutral defensive tower that can be powered by mineral or something. Letting pro players pick a unique unit type from a unit pool in their match up, you know, just to become more stylized and unique...
That's all I wanted to say for SC2.
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On January 23 2015 19:05 Plexa wrote:I present to you "MOTM + a few!" http://imgur.com/a/JaDpGMaps since MotM in June plus a few I grabbed from the top of the map section. These maps are generally very high quality and hopefully most of them will be submitted this season!
wow, a lot of those look amazing! to everyone with the patience to finish such a piece of art, you guys/girls are heroes and i salute you!
thank you very very much! i may not play much sc2, but when i do, i don't wanna do it on secret spring or inferno pools...
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Canada8157 Posts
On January 28 2015 15:07 Remotecrab131 wrote: It's really building up fatigue watching people repetitively fighting each other using only 3 races and their own specialties.
Melee maps are literally just a good looking container that you drop 2 aggressive spiders inside it then close the cap, and maybe some food inside there, too so they can spend as long as possible trying to knock each other out.
Making new maps visually and geologically only means you get to use different routes and quote different scenarios from the war in the history.
What is new? Nothing. We've had all these glorious players expanding their tactics based on how the maps are geologically designed. And if you are confined to only geological changes, there will be quickly nothing left for anyone to expand.
Not more and more boredom, get something new and fun. Competitive doesn't mean it has to be always structurally the same.
Seasons of seasons of same fight happened again and again. No wonder why MOBA is popular, they have millions of team combinations, and each fight is different and possibly always unique.
When can StarCraft officially support alternative side goals inside the melee maps? Like what warcraft 3 did. I especially liked the blockade stone and watch tower inside sc2, it's very well designed, but that's it? really?
Get some map specific features and unique "fun stuff" out, like a neutral defensive tower that can be powered by mineral or something. Letting pro players pick a unique unit type from a unit pool in their match up, you know, just to become more stylized and unique...
That's all I wanted to say for SC2.
I guess you didn't see how successful new Polaris rhapsody was
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I have a question. when the result come though????
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
Finalists will be announced approximately on 22nd February (EST)
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Number 1:
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On January 28 2015 10:12 Psione wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2015 12:05 Uvantak wrote:On January 27 2015 11:39 Antares777 wrote: I would definitely be fine with it. I enjoy designing new layouts much more than texturing and decorating a map. The latter is tedious to me. On January 27 2015 11:32 Arianity wrote: I can't speak for everyone, but i'd assume that most people would be fine with you nuking the doodads/art/whatever , if it means more good maps. btw any doodad that inherits terrain colors/textures can be problematic if used too much just like any other doodad, but how about increasing the size of them? How about if instead of adding 6 Xel torn plates i add 2x300% ? I most of the time tend to go for the later, but it would be nice to know anyways. This caught the eye of one of our Senior Technical Artists who helps address map performance. Being particularly passionate about the work of community map makers, he wanted to offer some details on this. I know you guys really enjoy some of the finer points of this process, so I've offered the unedited and more technical answer that he provided. Show nested quote +This is a really good hypothesis, and actually does sometimes work. In the general case, smaller objects mean you have to draw more of them which can be bad, but larger objects can also be bad because they are less likely to be optimized away as "off screen". So there is optimization that can be done through size, but it is very hard to dial in. Unfortunately, increasing the size of Torn Plates or Ice Cliffs in particular will often make things worse. There is a "sweet spot" to their size. We cache blended terrain textures for "terrain chunks". These are the red lined grid cells seen in the terrain editor. This is an optimization on most hardware, because you only have to do the terrain blending once, and can reuse it between frames. However, on some hardware/settings combinations, there is not enough memory available to cache all the terrain you can see at once. This is especially true in some of the "12-high cliff" tilesets, like Umoja, where deep cliffs north of the current view can cause more terrain chunks to be seen. I believe the "slow" cliff meshes are "Cliff Made13" and "Cliff Natural3" in particular. When a doodad with terrain materials goes to draw itself, it first checks to see if it can use a cached terrain chunk. It can do this if it resides entirely within the borders of a single terrain chunk, and that terrain chunk has a valid cache. If it cannot use an existing chunk, either because the chunk didn't fit in memory, or because the model requires information from multiple terrain chunks, then it will attempt to render its own cached terrain chunk. This can lead to a "death spiral" for performance. The terrain doodad will request its new cache, possibly ejecting another cache, and now both will do their own terrain blending that frame. This leaves an odd situation. If there are too many terrain material doodads crossing chunk boundaries, then it's super slow. If there are lots of small ones, then there might be more crossing overall. If they're too big, then each one is guaranteed to cross a boundary, and that would be quite bad. Also, it's really not reasonable for gameplay or artistry to ask people to dodge red lines constantly when placing doodads. Therefore, the best advisory really is to be sparing with your usage of doodads with terrain materials. Terrain material doodads often help make a map look quite nice, they are in the game to be used, and the system is there to support it. However, the system works quite a lot better under its anticipated loads (i.e. 8-high cliffs, only a few terrain material doodads for accent). Terrain Objects draw like the ground and do not suffer from this performance issue. Regular doodads also do not suffer. This issue is unique to Doodads that use Terrain Materials Hopefully this info helps provide further insight into the complexities of map performance. If this confuses any map makers, it is likely not a scenario that you'll run into and shouldn't be too concerning. We're just offering this as extra info for those interested. This is very insightful information, thanks for sharing.
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[08:59:51 p.m.] Meerel: your turn guys
Ok.
Can't post layout coz nothing final yet.
On January 29 2015 07:18 NewSunshine wrote: This is gonna get hot.
Almost forgot, thanks psione for posting the full answer, i love reading the more technical side of things!
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Gonna submit this one 'cause why not.
Edit: Updated picture, out of date pic.
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On January 29 2015 08:29 Uvantak wrote:Ok.+ Show Spoiler +Can't post layout coz nothing final yet.
Almost forgot, thanks psione for posting the full answer, i love reading the more technical side of things! Beautiful ! The second one reminds me of KTV Neo Gobi layout-wise, update coming or new map?
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On January 29 2015 16:01 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2015 08:29 Uvantak wrote: [08:59:51 p.m.] Meerel: your turn guys Ok.+ Show Spoiler +Can't post layout coz nothing final yet. On January 29 2015 07:18 NewSunshine wrote: This is gonna get hot.
Almost forgot, thanks psione for posting the full answer, i love reading the more technical side of things! Beautiful ! The second one reminds me of KTV Neo Gobi layout-wise, update coming or new map? I usually make maps in "litters", specially for things such as the TLMC's where i make several different or sightly different layouts/maps and test them in tandem so any possible idea gets even a little testing or know how it would change the flow of the map. Lately (december/jan) i have been toying around quite a bit with what ended up becoming Neo Gobi, the layout of the Protoss map is one of those maps that shares lots of similarities with Neo Gobi, but most likely than not it will be scrapped since i have already published a map that uses the layout, it would be redundant to publish two similar maps.
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On January 30 2015 02:01 Uvantak wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2015 16:01 OtherWorld wrote:On January 29 2015 08:29 Uvantak wrote: [08:59:51 p.m.] Meerel: your turn guys Ok.+ Show Spoiler +Can't post layout coz nothing final yet. On January 29 2015 07:18 NewSunshine wrote: This is gonna get hot.
Almost forgot, thanks psione for posting the full answer, i love reading the more technical side of things! Beautiful ! The second one reminds me of KTV Neo Gobi layout-wise, update coming or new map? I usually make maps in "litters", specially for things such as the TLMC's where i make several different or sightly different layouts/maps and test them in tandem so any possible idea gets even a little testing or know how it would change the flow of the map. Lately (december/jan) i have been toying around quite a bit with what ended up becoming Neo Gobi, the layout of the Protoss map is one of those maps that shares lots of similarities with Neo Gobi, but most likely than not it will be scrapped since i have already published a map that uses the layout, it would be redundant to publish two similar maps. Oh ok, interesting to know how you proceed. I have to say I love the color scheme you used in that second map as well.
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Seeing as many people have shown some of their entries, I might as well then. :-)
Will probably also be my only entry. Haven't got any good ideas for different layouts.
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Entry #1:
Not sure if I should even enter two other maps. Maybe I'll make something new; it's been a while...
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On January 31 2015 01:13 And G wrote:Entry #1: + Show Spoiler +Not sure if I should even enter two other maps. Maybe I'll make something new; it's been a while...
I think every map maker needs to add little quips about stuff like this. 10/10 map just for that.
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The Browder icon made me crackle. Good stuff. Also, let's be frank. Terran will lift CC every game. :-)
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