RA3 Developer Blog Series - Designing a Map

[Sonic 296]

The first of the new Red Alert 3 Developer Blog Series has been posted on the Official Red Alert 3 Site. And to kick things off we have "Designing a map...just right", written by multiplayer map designer, Jeremy Feasel. Some previews of the maps can been seen as well. Here is some of the developer blog.

 

"Designing a map...just right"

by Jeremy Feasel - Multiplayer Map Designer

 

Hello and welcome to the inaugural Red Alert 3 Developer Blog Series! I'm Jeremy Feasel, your friendly multiplayer map designer and a member of the In-House Hardcores of multiplayer. We've spent quite a bit of time focusing on the base unit-and-structure aspects of multiplayer in order to get RA3 to a level of polish that feels intuitive from many different angles. The goal was to hit every aspect of the multilayer experience, from individual unit interactions to relative expansion risk level, until it all "just feels right." When I see people lining up to be a part of the in-house multiplayer tournaments, I feel like we're headed in the right direction - of course, you guys will be the ultimate judge of that. Today I'd like to share some of our MP map features and strategies, and explain how we arrived at them after many, many iterations.

 

In order to begin designing the maps for RA3, we had to come to a consensus about a lot of unit-specific interactions. Unit speed is a major early focus point: How fast should the fastest/slowest units move? How long would the average user want his units to take to reach a base-expansion site or navigate the entire map? How long a distance feels "just too long" and when does a unit's speed hit that "it's too fast!" tipping point? There are a lot of questions to answer and it poses a daunting challenge, ultimately setting up a dynamic relationship between map elements and the units themselves. Once you've figured out those distances that cause your players to start yawning, you can nail down map sizes and other relative in-game distances.

Check out the full developer blog for more.

[Saracen 16]

As I have read, a lot of work goes into these maps, and many are well thought out for the sake of balance. But I hate to say that I hold no appreciation for purely symmetrical maps.

 

Such maps as A Path Beyond, were perfect.... a huge map that was not entirely symmetrical, and it had trees, rivers, a couple of bridges etc... all such features were well spaced out, and the balance was poised beautifully... In fact there were loads of damn good maps in the original Red Alert, and even some in Red Alert 2 which were perfect for MP, and tournament play and didn't need to be like what's been previewed here.

 

I just hope this trend doesn't continue across the whole Multiplayer map range, because it even means comp stomp Skirmishes become huge yawn fests. I just hope the RA3 single player campaign has maps which are crafted as well as those in both BfME games, they we're really well done, those are the maps I like... Loads of balanced randomly, well crafted maps in all game modes will score huge points in my book.

[TheBlackOut 7]

Oh hey, symmetrical maps. Like we don't have enough of those.

[Mighty BOB! 5]

But I hate to say that I hold no appreciation for purely symmetrical maps.

 

Such maps as A Path Beyond, were perfect.... a huge map that was not entirely symmetrical, and it had trees, rivers, a couple of bridges etc... all such features were well spaced out, and the balance was poised beautifully... In fact there were loads of damn good maps in the original Red Alert, and even some in Red Alert 2 which were perfect for MP, and tournament play and didn't need to be like what's been previewed here.

 

I just hope this trend doesn't continue across the whole Multiplayer map range, because it even means comp stomp Skirmishes become huge yawn fests. I just hope the RA3 single player campaign has maps which are crafted as well as those in both BfME games, they we're really well done, those are the maps I like... Loads of balanced randomly, well crafted maps in all game modes will score huge points in my book.

 

Amen. Where's the love for the large asymmetrical maps?

[TheBlackOut 7]

Amen. Where's the love for the large asymmetrical maps?

Apparently not at EA