First off, however, a few thank yous:
- Durokan, for starting off this map in your request thread. Basically 99% of the work was done by you. Thank you! I highly recommend checking out Durokan's workshop: viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4748
- Masterdutch, Hazza54321, Cometk, diarouga for play-testing the map with me and giving me good ideas to adjust things so that thing are better. Garja as well, for having a quick look at the map (though it got changed since). Thanks to the feedback, I was able to mess around with the .xml file and edit the map a bit. I learned quite a bit about RMS whilst doing so.
Now, the map itself is named Guinea, the setting would be in the corresponding region in Africa. It does not have Trade-post lines, only native sites. Those sites are Jesuit, which I feel like are very interesting since they fit into that region and they are also interesting units (namely, Age 2 ranged cav). There are a lot of hunts on the map, it's actually quite a food heavy map. There is a Gold mine in each players starting base and the rest of the mines are spread out over the map. There are a number of small but very dense forests spread out over the map: units cannot pass through them. Yes, this is to try out an AoC'ish vibe.
Now, what separates this map from other maps is that everything is coded so that it's perfectly symmetrical. This is both the forte and weakness of the map: there is no randomness in how resources are distributed. The only randomness are the treasures (though their location is not) and the individual tree spawns. Everything else is set so that it spawns at a very specific location. Hunts and mines are allocated very evenly and the map is as "fair" as you can get. Another feature of this map is that it has ONLY small treasures. Though, there are still quite a few of them so you should still take the time to pick those up.
The goal of this map is to see how much people are interested in static maps, with very little randomness in it. This is a Starcraft'ish approach to map-making and I want to see how that plays out in actual games. This is where you, potential play-tester, come in. I would like to ask people to download this "beta" map and play a few games on it with friends. Please record your games and post the replays in this thread (or the replays section if it was a nice game), so I can watch them as well. Naturally, please give feedback in this thread, I am very interested in hearing what people have to say about this map. I'm ready to adjust it in any way which makes it better and more interesting.
This is an experiment from me, and a personal one (not associated with esoc or anything). I want to learn more things about what makes a good map and what doesn't. I want to see if there are interesting map features which we don't often see (e.g. impassable forests, non-random resource spawns, etc.). If things go well enough with this map, perhaps I'll look into making other maps made with the community ("beta" -> changes -> test -> final version).
To install the map, please copy these two files into the following folder:
[spoiler=Download]
[/spoiler]
Code: Select all
C:\Users\Paul\Documents\My Games\Age of Empires 3\RMF
If you've ever helped me play-test the map, or if you download the map for play-testing from here, please be sure to delete the map with "E_X" in it after "beta testing" is finished. That way we don't have lots of crappy versions of the map floating around. All of my "beta" maps will have "E_X" in it, so they'll be easy to identify in your RMF folder. "Released" maps, should I ever get around to a "final" version, will have no suffix.
Here are some replays on the map (note that some version of the map are older).