Few map style questions...

[Guest Dragonne{TRIAD}]

OK, since I'm doing the map thing here, I'd like to get some opinions from you guys. Currently only the guys in my clan play my maps and I know they prefer maps that play fast (program speed, not game length) and have a decent amouont of cash that you don't end up screwing yourself stretching out for.

 

Generally, 2 standard supply docks(or 1 dock and 2-3 small piles) and at least one oil rig are what they want. I just keep putting them in different layouts. Things in the middle to get players out of their base are usually Refineries, less than one for every 2 players (4 or less refineries for an 8 play map, etc.). I also like to put little areas with what looks like a defendable position (guard towers and/or those new cannons) but unlevel ground so it's hard to put any other defenses in the area except units. The reward in those ares is a reinforcement drop and repair facility or something of that nature.

 

The layouts are mostly basic in decoration. Too many buildings slows the game down, even though I like building small towns or farming groups. My clan just wants to jump in and fight it out, not beat their way around civilian stuff all the time.

 

I prefer maps with multiple choke points, but ways to get around them as well. A main choke in the front of the bases that are quite wide open is the expected attack point, but slipping in other ways is also possible. For example, one map I'm testing is an 8 player with little rivers between the players who's bases are on plateaus. enemy units can slip along the rivers and into the sides of the bases. Those GLA motorcycles can zip up the river banks and wreak havoc on you... Zoom and BOOM!

 

Wide open maps aren't my thing. Granted, it makes defense more interesting because you never know where the attacks will be coming from, but it has the negative point of making base layout difficult for the players. You don't want to build anything too far out for fear that the GLA explosives general will be swarming you. A wide open map is the domain of the rushing player, which isn't a bad thing, but I like to let all styles of play have a chance on my maps.

 

Anyway, those are my thoughts. What do you guys think??

[Sonic 295]

I like the urban environments, but maps with a tropical setting are cool to.

[Guest MachineDoctor]

I'm impressed! You have put a lot of thought into your work. Right now, I have no suggestions as you look like you have it well in hand.

 

I do have a question and a comment:

 

Do you make them skirmish compatible as well, and if so what AI do you use?

 

I like playing skirmishes. I also like playing them on wide open maps or large map (8 Player) against 1 or 2 AI players.

 

I assumed that your previous maps were for your clans exclusive use, will you releasing them to the general public?

[Guest MachineDoctor]

One more thing came to mind as well. I, like Sonic, like to play in an Urban Environment.

 

Have you ever considered a totally urban map (like a large city) with only Infantry available?

 

I'd like to give that map a try!

[osey 2003 0]

A huge city map could have a massive impact on the game speed and performance of Generals. Usualy well desinged maps will run at a fair speed but to many 3 way blended textures or cars,buildings trees etc can slow the game down alot try to minimise the amount of trees you use in an urban enviornment and also try to minimise your 3 way blended textures to a max of about 100 you could try recreating an urban enviornment like NewYork in USA or make up your own idea ive found it easier to sketch on a piece of paper what your map should look like where verything will go etc. Try it!

[Guest Dragonne{TRIAD}]

Good responses guys! Here we go:

 

Do you make them skirmish compatible as well, and if so what AI do you use?

 

AI compatability is easy. I make all maps AI compatable, and try to give them routes that are unexpected or annoying, mostly because without that, they tend to be pretty easy to beat. For ZH, I'm just using the standard AI. I have used RVMECHS Almost Human AI in Generals, but I'll tell ya, it's REALLY hard on systems. Unless it's a pretty plain map, all the units on the map that have to pass thru his extra conditional checks really bogs a game down with more than 2 AI players. The ZH AI is a bit better, and if you give it enough recources and decent pathing, it plays a much better game.

 

I assumed that your previous maps were for your clans exclusive use, will you releasing them to the general public?

 

Ya, some were just cleaning up other community maps(there were some pretty poorly made maps for Generals, even though the layout was good for gameplay, the visual/technical design was often pretty scary) or adding in the RVMECHS AI. The ones I did myself never really got finished. They were playable and fun for my clan, but the visuals were incomplete. I never went back to finish them because they were really just testing area layouts, map layouts, resource groupings/placement, and stuff like that. Most of those will have their successful pieces put into ZH maps anyway, so there's no need to release them. Besides that, I'd be embarassed to release most of them anyway with the incomplete visuals.

 

A huge city map could have a massive impact on the game speed and performance of Generals. Usualy well desinged maps will run at a fair speed but to many 3 way blended textures or cars,buildings trees etc can slow the game down alot try to minimise the amount of trees you use in an urban enviornment and also try to minimise your 3 way blended textures to a max of about 100 you could try recreating an urban enviornment like NewYork in USA or make up your own idea ive found it easier to sketch on a piece of paper what your map should look like where verything will go etc. Try it!

 

Ya, I hear ya. There's also a 600 object limit in maps, so you have to be careful there. I made a few maps in Generals that went overboard and ran like a 3 legged dog in molasses... so I'm always careful to avoid that. Maps that are urban are usually based with the players outside of the town, and all the resources in the town besides some basic stuff by the bases. That allows for smaller towns that don't kill the engine, and still make players feel like they are in an urban combat sitution. I'd like to try finding a setting that has large open fields in the edges of the town that make sense for a battleground. Yes, it has to make sense to me that a battle would be fought "there", where ever "there" happens to be. I'm wierd like that. Anyway, then the actual urban setting could fill more of the map and keep the players in that situation all the time.

 

Oh, and I do draw up my layouts first. It keeps me from making stuff up as I go that overloads the map and kills the engine speed.

[Guest Dragonne{TRIAD}]

One more thing came to mind as well. I, like Sonic, like to play in an Urban Environment.

 

Have you ever considered a totally urban map (like a large city) with only Infantry available?

 

I'd like to give that map a try!

 

I'd have to script out the non-infantry units to do that, and then don't you think the China Infantry General would rule the map easily? Those mini-gunners kick some serious booty!

[chillin 0]

very true, that would have been good for generals

[Guest MachineDoctor]

I'm just using the standard AI. I have used RVMECHS Almost Human AI in Generals, but I'll tell ya, it's REALLY hard on systems. Unless it's a pretty plain map, all the units on the map that have to pass thru his extra conditional checks really bogs a game down with more than 2 AI players. The ZH AI is a bit better, and if you give it enough recources and decent pathing, it plays a much better game.

 

This is very interesting! While you come off as a Map Maker, you seem to have a very good insight on how the game fully works!

 

Prior to the site crash were were discussing Modding/Maps/AI Scripts (Disposable Hero wrote his own AI). While I've been very busy lately, I've still been learning a little here and there and I have some questions as to how the scripts work:

 

Do you you feel that the ZH AI should be the starting point for anyone wanting to make their own AI?

 

In your tests, what was the average PC Config for the group? Mainly I'm curious as to CPU Speed and RAM(I know you all have good Graphics cards!!) :lol: ?

 

Is it safe to assume that with a faster PC the AI will execute the AI faster?

 

I think you mentioned something about "cycles", do you have any information on consumption of cycles by a True or False condition, or setting a variable (carrying this over from my real job)?

 

Is there a way to know how many cycles per second are executed by ZH (again from work)?

 

I know I'm groping here, but do you know of any scripting guide (even if it was from Generals) that shows what is available to use?

 

Has the Sage Engine been optimized in ZH (I thought I saw someone post that here)?

 

I'm just getting started understanding what makes this game tick and any help you could provide would be appreciated!

 

 

Thanks for your help and insight!

[Guest MachineDoctor]

I'd have to script out the non-infantry units to do that, and then don't you think the China Infantry General would rule the map easily? Those mini-gunners kick some serious booty!

 

Actually, I haven't faced the Mini-Gunners yet (I JUST read about them last night, after I posted!), so that never crossed my mind!

 

Good point!

 

I'm playing through the campaigns and also am currently playing the laser General against the China Tank General.

 

BTW, I saw your Web-Sites. You've been doing this for a while, haven't you?

[Guest Dragonne{TRIAD}]

Hehe ya, I've been doing public development for online games since Doom2. I'm 33 years old myself. Never done anything commercial yet, but I've only been with Silicon Ice for a little over a year and that's the direction we're heading.

 

Anyway, I am a Systems Admin/Programmer in real life so I'm also a coder/scripter. I know some C, C+, C++, VB, Java, HTML, and several older languages (cobol, pascal, fortran). I've even tinkered with assembler on more than one occasion. I have a background in archetectural drafting/design, so the mapping thing is my focus, no matter what game type it is (FPS or RTS). I tend to learn more than just that one aspect of developing for whatever game I'm messing with at the time. I dont' like making a map/level and hitting a design wall because the code doesn't support some function I need. I'll learn to build that function myself, through tutorials or just ripping apart what someone else has done.

 

So let's see what I can help you with on your questions:

 

I've found that the way the AI scripting for Generals/ZH is, it's hard to do modular enhancement without loading the entire AI script into the map. This seems to cause more of a system hit than if you could throw in an additional piece of code. When you try that, the AI just stops working. It's a bit of a pain in the butt.

 

Personally, I think the ZH AI is pretty tight. It does do a lot of things the original was lacking. If it were given just the bonus resources from RVMECHS Generals AI, it would be extremely difficult to beat. It does combination attacks, diversions, suppression, and prevention, and also doesn't leave itself undefended at the base. after 30 minutes or so, it takes a significantly overwhelming force to get a good dent into a ZH Hard AI base. You really have to combo your own attacks, SW with AF, or AF with a swarm on the ground, that kind of thing. If I were to start modding the AI, I'd definitely start with ZH AI. It will also help that it includes AI for the specific generals and the units that are available to them.

 

Most of my clan has better than 1.8gig CPUs, and video cards that are less than 2 years old (GF3 Ultra or newer or equivalent Radeon) with minimum 64mb DDR, but more often 128mb DDR. My laptop is probably the best of the group (P4 3.06g, 512mb DDR333, GEForceFX 5200 go 64mb DDR) even though I more often use my desktop which is only a 2.26 P4 with a gig of DDR400 and a GEForce TI4400 128mb DDR.

 

Ya, the AI executes faster with a better CPU naturally, but it doesn't really suffer unless you have a PC in the group playing that is running less than 128mb ram.

 

I use "cycles" as a generic term to mean one game code cycle. Most of the time a game will run in either frame cycles or time cycles. Frame cycles means every # frames = 1 cycle, the # differing by game. An FPS usually runs 1 cycle per frame, where an RTS can run up to 10 frames(or more) per cycle as specific checks on every location point for every entity in the game isn't as critical in an RTS. Timed cycles are based on time obviously. This can be real time or game time. C&C uses frame cycles, and each cycle consists of all the checks that the scripts request be made in that cycle. It's likely a dual segment cycle, with a housekeeping segment (organizing what needs to be done in this cycle) followed by an action segment which consists of executing those checks and the results of each. It's possible that each script is checked for activity, then for relevence as the cycle runs, and only the relevent active scripts get executed. Either way it achieves the same result, though the latter is a little more process intensive.

 

I don't know what the cycles per second are for ZH, but I think it's frame based, so it might be relative to your FPS, but lag causes pauses because the game must stay in sync for all clients in the game, not unlike any other multiplayer game. The difference here is a RTS has no reason to execute dead action cycles, collision and input checks only without extra world updates like you see in most FPS games.

 

The only scripting guide I've found so far is pulling apart the game with a .big file extractor and actually looking at what is done in the game scripts. I've done a bit of this for ZH, since RVMECHS AI was basically the original Generals AI extracted and highly modified so I dind't have to for that, I jsut looked at his.

 

As far as I know, and by how it plays compared to Generals, it seems that at least the script processing has been optimized for ZH.

 

My first release for ZH will be this weekend, and you'll see some of the simple scripting I do when I see a need for it. The map is 8 player and gives lots of base area to build in, with the type of central areas I talked about in earlier posts in this thread (small urban spots, resource areas with possible, but difficult defense and little area to build due to lack of level ground, etc). It's turning out to be a very tough map 4 human vs 4 AI, and we often lose one of the human players before we can get ahead of the AI. Part of this is because just when you think you are getting ahead because the AI was running out of resources, a tertiary recource location appears for each team. Of course, the random team matchups can make it easier or more difficult, but get a China Tank General and a US Air Force General on the AI team and cover your butt, cause it's gonna get raped.

 

Whew!!! This became a bit of a novel didn't it? It's 12:35am here... I think I hear my bed calling.

[Guest Dragonne{TRIAD}]

FYI: I've uploaded my map. It's called Fate's Ridge Final.

 

As soon as they approve it, grab it and have some fun. AI is pretty tough on it, and it's a lot of frustrating fun 4v4 with humans.

 

I'll probably be entering it or the next one in the contest over at genmaps.com for the $100 prize (if you haven't heard, go check it out!).

[Guest MachineDoctor]

Dragonne-Thanks for your reply and also your bio!

 

I'm a 42 Automation Engineer. I specialize in automating Pharmaceutical Packaging Lines.

 

My language of choice (nowadays) is Ladder. It's an advanced Boolean System used primarily by PLCs (Programmable Logic Controller). These prcoess input and set outputs to make machinery run.

 

I got my start on the C-128 doing programming in Compiled Basic with M/L underlying code (I authored a BBS Program for the 128 before teh Internet became popular AND accessible by the general public.

 

I have a bunch of Copyrights for Dragonfire BBS 128 (many moons ago).

 

As you have, I made my way through the rote of original programming languages (M/L, Assembly, Basic, Fortran, Pascal, C etc.).

 

I have always been interested in modding the games BUT have no desire to do any of the graphical work. Don't know why but I always left that part to others.

 

Thanks for your dissertation on cycles. The only thing that I am a little unsure of is the FPS affect, but your explanation about the game keeping things in sync makes sense.

 

The limit of performance will be based on the weak link of the system it's running on (ie: Ghz, Ram Video Capabilities).

 

Right now I have a 3 GHZ Laptop with 1Gb Ram and ATI Radeon Video (64 MB) and a 3 Ghz Desktop w/ 512 Mb Ram and ATI Radeon (128 MB).

 

If I use my systems as benchmark systems (for my own development purposes) there really shouldn't be any issues with performance by editing the scripts and making them more complex.

 

Would you agree with that?

 

By the time I finish anything for release, my systems will be old!!!

 

I just want to play with the game right now and see what I can do with it.

 

Thanks for your help!