Babel map suggestions

Ace of Spades
1

What kind of babel maps would you like to have in the future? What do you like about the current maps? What do you dislike? Do you feel like there are some map concepts missing in the current map rotation?
I would like to create some new maps for babel but I’m running out of good ideas, especially in terms of originality of themes and terrain designs.

Here are some criteria which should be considered:
-map theme (e.g. summer, trench warfare, swamp…)
-map size (how big? 2 grids? 4 grids? island or non island map?)
-Terrain ( smooth? flat or steep? hills/tunnels/mountains?
-Terrain colors (which colors? smooth color progressions or rather “noisy” colors?)
-Structures (trees/houses/bunkers etc.)

Note: Obviously I can’t consider every single suggestion made in this thread and create a map based on it. Neither can I do anything extraordinarily complex like city maps. I merely would like this thread to be a place where players can give their feedback on current maps and share their own ideas and opinions on possible future maps.

2

Western town, Train station & landscape
non-island
Hills, tunnels, mountains, gorges, maybe a large plain or two.
smooth and transiting color, greens & browns/tans.
In the 2x/4x area: Old western buildings, Saloon, Train Station, Warehouse/Barn, Fences, maybe some farm animals, Barber Shop, other shops, Water Towers, lookout post, Postal office, jail house, i’m sure there is more.
In the next #x (3 or 5 depending on how big you make the town) area: make some obscured homes, a radio tower or two, a few wells, more farm animals, more fences, maybe an abandoned bandit camp or two, campfires, and have the train tracks flowing through all of the terrain, maybe another water tower.
In the farther out areas: some train tunnels, a gorge with a train track bridge over it, maybe some dwellings from Indian natives, an Indian camp maybe, a lively bandit camp (built in defense wall, worthy structure or two, some good tents), more radio towers, some plains and gorges, shacks.

Throughout the whole thing I’d put some dirt roads, train tracks, alive and dead trees and various shrubs, watering holes (which where there is water there is probably going to be more green), a kind of rolling landscape, holes, maybe a few short (NOT CONNECTED) caves. I’m sure there is more you can add and think of.

3

Thank you for the suggestions. The first thing that came to my mind was PAdesert, an already existing map which could also be used on a babel server. I’m sure there is a lot which could be taken from this map as an example in order to create stuff like buildings. Creating the landscape should be possible although I would have to do it in a different way than usually in order to create gorges and tunnels. I am not too keen on creating that many structures but I don’t see anything there which couldn’t be done. In particular I like the idea of trains / train rails on a map since I can only think of one other regular ctf map which has something like this. I can’t say if I am going to create a map like this yet, but the western / train theme is definitely an interesting idea

4

I like maps in which a bridge is more affordable to build than a tower, like this:
(I mean, a high altitude on the tent and the lowest one near the platform)

http://s25.postimg.org/lq4nfv40v/image.png

http://s25.postimg.org/87xr3krvj/image.png

5

+1 with Gabrui.
I generally like maps with not too much things, and preferable a wide hole at center rather than something like a big house that reach up to the platform. A lot of current maps could benefit from removing the center building when there is one imho.
1river2forts is among my favorites.

I hate :

  • the map with the castle at center and you build on a fortified bridge.
  • the one with the tunnel and cars,
  • labyrinth mountain

I find these maps too biased towards attackers and games become arbitrarily long. For me the attackers better has to build these fortifications themselves especially at center.

What I’d like:

  • a map where you must build mostly on water and have powerful pillars to islands. Especially the typical, secure pillar location would be in water.
  • a simple pinpoint-style map which is as a whole quite high (say 50% to the top), a sort of quicker babel match.
  • a map where you must build perpendicular from the platform, but that would need to tweak the protected zones in script to avoid grief
  • permababel. Your tower last 3 rounds or more, on the same map.
  • suspended clouds: there are large clouds in the protected zone, well connected to mountains, that will help you to secure the tower but are at 50% height.

For me the theme or amount of existing things do not matter very much rather that terrain shape.
I like where you have to do some amount of effort to side-attack, not use a pre-built tunnel or bridge.

There is a very interesting brown map where you have to conquer the side islands if you want to side-attack, and build bridges to get there. Very tactical map.

6

Thanks for the suggestions ponce and Gabrui. I am going to work on a new map soon. I imagine the map to be rather simple and small. The tower would have to be build partly on water but the terrain would also include one large pillar on an island which can be used for players to build up or connect it to their tower. Color wise, I imagine something similar to this: http://i.imgur.com/6wVCRr6.png

7

Best goon assault variant I’ve ever seen.

8

alright, so after a few failed attempts to create the map in blender, I decided to put something together in GIMP (the colormap is, of course, subject to change).

Since it is now possible to modify player and tent spawns I would like to set the player spawns into a cave in the large mountain. The big rock would serve builders as a giant support pillar for their tower or even as a tower itself. I would also like to put the tent on top of the mountain over the player spawns to encourage builders to build bridges from the rock/tower directly to their tent for faster block refills, but I'm not sure if griefers would allow them to do so  :-
What do you guys think about the layout? What should be added/modified? Would something like this even work as a babel map?

map.vxl (2.16 MB)

9

Me gusta. How can i load the file, for a quick run test?

10

i like the spawn/tent locations + support pillar idea because i believe that would encourage building of the tower and reverse bridge as you mentioned.

there may not be enough support for attackers though. more surface cover and additional tunneling options would be more helpful… maybe another rock tower in the center with just a small moat around it and low-lying mountains alongside both edges of each walkway (so that players have little valleys for cover rather being sitting-ducks on the flat and open space)?

11

you can load the map with voxed (an editor which can be found in your Ace of Spades folder. Run it and press ALT + F2 to select and load the map).
you can also download pysnip here Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting. put the map into the “maps” folder, start the run file, type “/map map” and “/advance” into the console and connect via to your server with the localhost connect address: aos://16777343

Thanks for the feedback! I wasn’t sure what to add in the middle so I’ll probably go with your suggestion. I am also going to add a bit more cover on both walkways. I don’t really want to give players cover all the way along those two passages, but it’s true that there is definitely need for more cover here.I am also going to add rocks on and next to both walkways. I am sure people would love to build bunkers inside these (I always like it when players are using the pillars in the middle of the ellipsis map to build small hideouts inside them. Maybe it would also work for this map).

12

I think it’s awesome. Go with izzy’s suggestions and add just a little bit of cover in the center so it’s not such a killing field.

Once you get a mapname.txt up we can try it out.

13

The map should be finished so far and ready for testing. I borrowed the aloha logo from one of Danke's maps. I hope that's ok, if not, I'm gonna remove it. I still need a name for the map so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated (as well as suggestions on what stuff should be added to the map in addition).
Edit: looking at the map again, the gap between the rock and the heaven seems quite large. I might need to shrink to map or add more land so that a tower could be extended with pillars on the ground far beyond the rock.

map.txt (1.13 KB)

map.vxl (2.35 MB)

14

I loved that, I really have fun building that kind of bridges I’ve shown before, they really require a lot of planning to be built, let’s play and see what the others players think. For me, it seems to be excellent. ;D

15

After several minutes flying around with voxed ‘spectator mode’, i must say >as a builder< it looks awesome. So many possibilities.

some names:

-Mirage
-Badlands
-Desert Storm

16

How would Desert Island sound?

17

Just played it.

It needs shrunk. A LOT. the water should start at the base of heavens and the middle pillar should be halfway between the tent and the heavens edge. The tent should spawn roughly where it usually does.

Otherwise lots of potential, I think it’d be great.

EDIT: I use this as a layer (usually transparent) in Photoshop when doing babel maps so I can see what’s where:

h2RbuoK.png
h2RbuoK.png512×512 4.29 KB

18
the water should start at the base of heavens

I think the idea is to build a bridge/tower using the pillar as a solid base, if the pillar is halfway, it would be very easy as the pillar is very high.
So having water before the heaven is good. Though, we should all play first, to have a good idea of the scale.

19

I agree with ei8thx, although i had fun building this laaarge bridge. and blues tent spawned on top of the cave :/, we had to take it down.

20

ok I updated the map a bit:
-made the map considerably smaller
-added a smaller rock right under where the heaven starts (I suspect, players won’t use it anyways)
-replaced the water (though, arguably the old one was better :’()
-made hilltops look sexier
-added overall more cacti
-added the mapname “Mirage”, thanks to Nope

Download: Dropbox - Error

yeah that was my intention when I started to plan this map, but I believe it’s much better to have a gap with water in between the range where you build your tower (firestorm, icecraft) not just at the end. I hope I can do that on another map.

So the tent on top idea doesn’t work well? I still have it in the map.txt file to spawn there right now but I guess it should be taken down to the ground then :’( (although that wouldn’t be much of an issue since builders could put it back on top again of course).

One thing that might still need to be added are larger spawn areas, although I don’t expect that there will be too much spawnkilling so I’m not sure about that yet.

Oh btw, what do you guys think about these two variations?

Click for details

http://i.imgur.com/bVswAAe.png

http://i.imgur.com/0F7SjaD.png

removed.png