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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Aug 31, 2014 1:52:18 GMT
1. Thou shalt not mix cliffs and elevation in such a way as to leave weird gaps. 2. Thou shalt cover up the bases of green mountains because they are unseemly. The bases of brown mountains may be left uncovered if blended into the surrounding terrain. 3. Outlines are an abomination unto my sight and must be avoided wherever possible. 4. Thou shalt not use blue pines unless thou really knows what thou is doing. 5. Thou shalt keep the leafless forest trees for winter maps and not use them elsewhere. 6. Honour thy roman ruins and thy dark jungle bush. 7. Thou shalt not mix shoreless water with normal water, unless using bridge pieces to remove the weird transition. 8. Thou shalt not have palm trees with oak. 9. Worship not the false god of terrain mixing. 10. Thou shalt nearly always start with a map of grass3.
Feel free to add your own, or even - gasp! - disagree.
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Post by HockeySam18 on Sept 2, 2014 13:41:55 GMT
11. Thou shalt not use TWAL unless thou findeth a way to conceal the ugly shadow or use said shadow in some utilitarian fashion. 12. Covereth not indiscriminately your map with excessive amounts of eyecandy, for it shalt look sloppy. 13. Piles of [resource] objects are always aesthetically preferable to their more substantial counterparts, unless in a B&D setting. 14. Maketh wise use of the dead farm terrain in your cities and roads. 15. Thy towns and cities must be active and look the part. 16. Lush green forests with proper eyecandy, terrain, and general spice are works of art. 17. Honor the memory of Ingo by searching for new and novel ways to achieve the desired effect. 18. Thou shalt generally use shoreless shallows to avoid large patches of beach in odd locations. 19. Shoreless water is a gift from the heavens, though it is imperative that TS is used to achieve water depth mixing. 20. Mixeth not multiple architectural sets unless thou art well-versed in such methodology.
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Post by Basse on Sept 2, 2014 15:19:19 GMT
21. Thou shalt not make prologues. 22. Thou shalt not place farms within city walls. 23. Thou shalt not use Path 1-4 to make paths. 24. Thou shalt not use a larger brush than the Small brush, lest thou subsequently smoothen all edges with a Tiny brush. 25. Thou shalt not give thine player a Kill The Boar quest, lest thou do so for humorous effect. 26. Thou shalt not make invisible barriers for no goddamn reason, lest they be introduced with a satisfactory explanation. 27. Thou shalt generally try to make they map design realistic. 28. Thou shalt, in the absense of mods, make they waterfall using snow on water, not water, cliffs and sea rocks. 29. Honor thy playtesters by giving them silly cameos in your scenario. 30. Thou shalt always fill thy scenario with uneccesary easter eggs, the amount of which shall be relative to thy scenario's scope and size.
Also, I disagree on your point 5, Julius; dead trees can be used elsewhere, but they should be kept to a minimum in non-winter maps as most forests are generally alive and green this time of year.
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Sept 2, 2014 20:58:07 GMT
I can't recall a single time when I've seen it and liked it. Of course, the odd leafless tree in a slab of forest can slip by unnoticed so it isn't really a problem. I may also have used them once or twice in wasteland areas where things are supposed to be dead.
The realism point is interesting. I've come to the view that AoK isn't realistic enough for the pursuit of realism to have a very high priority. There's a degree of suspension of disbelief that means I often prefer to make the scenery more like a story book illustration rather than be realistic as possible. For example, mixing pine and forest trees in woodland isn't really very realistic, but I find it to be a good way of having green woods with decent variety. The main reason I dislike the spamming of Gaia objects all over the place is not because it looks unrealistic but because it just creates a terrible mess which is hard to make any visual sense of. Similarly, the mud like effect of paths 1-4 might be realistic but I almost always find them glaringly ugly because they're so difficult to combine nicely with terrain. Of course, you did say 'generally' so I don't think we really disagree.
I can never understand why people praise Boosh's map design. To my eyes it is hideous, 'realistic' or not.
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Post by Basse on Sept 3, 2014 20:29:53 GMT
I agree that AoK isn't the most suiting game to create close-to-life design (all the bushes are the size of small trees, "mountains" are the size of small hills and siege engines move of their own volition), but, up to a point, I think it's important to have a sense of realism in mind if you are to bring the player into the world you're creating. Most of time, though, I apply this on the macro level, and only on larger projects like Gwyndlegard, RoA and The Jaguar Gold: the scenario should be an open world, not strictly linear; the people you can talk to shouldn't just have things to say about the task at hand, but should to some extent appear to have a life of their own; villages and small towns should feel more organic in the outlay, while larger towns, which are under control of wealthy warlords, should feel more planned; towns and other places shouldn't feel as if they were designed solely for the purpose of having a cool (boss)battle there, etc. Often, particularly with B&D maps, these principles can often be woven in prety naturally into the design; but if you have to decide between making a design more realistic or more fun to play, you should still go with the latter. I keep breaking these principles myself, by the way, perhaps most obviously in the final battle of RoA, which pretty obviously was set up for the sole purpose of having a big boss battle there. The thing about Boosh's use of paths is that, I can see what he's trying to accomplish and up to a certain point appreciate it (I overudes paths myself all the time in 2006-07), but after a while it becomes too much for the eye, too much of a suspension of disbelief to accept. When I played "The Fall of Port Mirne" in 2006 I thought the map design was great and innovative; now I just see the clutter it creates, and how badly it transitions into regular terrains. And even then, Boosh was probably the designer who used paths as dirt the most seamlessly!
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Sept 4, 2014 16:45:51 GMT
I think I know what you're getting at, but I think what underpins these things is less about 'realism' and more about what is aesthetically pleasing. I don't actually care at all whether a village is realistic provided that it feels right. Sometimes that means deliberately doing things in an unrealistic way, because sometimes realism feels wrong. Almost all food systems feel wrong (despite being more realistic than not having any food system, in any story which stretches over more than a day) because the characters' meals are rarely important to me. One good exception is Marko Crnigoj's 100 Years War - in that scenario the food system really helped create that feeling of an army in an unfriendly land that needs to pillage to survive, and needs to plunge into the fight and suffer losses rather than hit-and-run to tediously chip away at the enemy. For a map design example, the disproportionately short distances between major settlements in virtually every scenario are unrealistic but feel right compared to the alternative.
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Post by HockeySam18 on Sept 6, 2014 12:54:06 GMT
There's also definitely something to be said for the base mechanics of AoK. Also, I think you can still create brilliant landscapes in AoK (our work on Merchant speaks to that!) but it takes a lot of time! Sometimes realism should be prioritized, other times it should get the shaft. I know I sound like an equivocator here, but I think that speaks to the situationalism that is fairly ubiquitous when it comes to decisions in designing.
100 Years War was brilliant. There have definitely been some food systems that have worked well, but they seem unnecessary to me and can really ruin a scenario if not done well. I think it was you or Matt that said to me about a year ago to stick with base mechanics for the most part, as AoK is an awesome game in itself after all, and I think it helped me vastly improve as a designer. On a different front, timewise it's just inconvenient to spend tons of time on tricks that don't pay off in the end. That said, there have been a lot of cool systems that make scenarios more interesting (battlefield mechanics in ACtA, for example, to make the player play strategically and not stack their units in a small clump and win). It's certainly a judgment call.
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Post by HockeySam18 on Aug 1, 2015 17:25:08 GMT
In honor of our recent discussions:
31. Thou shalt not use the Abominable Rock Rotation unless thou art able to reasonably disguise it with other objects. 32. Thou shalt not use the Three Unforgivable Tree Rotations except in very limited cases. 33. Thou shalt assure that thy implementation of ice on beaches to simulate waves is such that thou avoideth ugly sharp edges. 34. Furthermore, thou shalt assure that thy modest terrain mixing is such that sharp edges due to poor blending in the data are not created. 35. Thou shalt use overlapping bridge ends to create realistic arches, and avoid the use of bridge middles for this purpose, for their arches are unsightly. 36. Thou shalt not mingle crass modern humor with thy scenario unless thy scenario's atmosphere is constructed in a way that makes such quips acceptable. 37. Thou shalt not use food systems. 38. Thou shalt not use bandits or wolves as enemies except in severely limited cases. 39. Honor thy building stacking, but take care that thy combinations art well-crafted. 40. Thou shalt not use Tree H, Tree G, or any of the other Bad Trees unless thou really knowst what thou is doing.
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Matt
Stormwind Member
The Come And Go Man
Monsieur Mercredi
Posts: 1,812
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Post by Matt on Aug 1, 2015 20:56:05 GMT
That looks terrible. There are no shadows, and therefore it looks fake and the effect falls flat. I'll stick with the standard middle pieces.
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Post by Basse on Aug 1, 2015 21:05:02 GMT
The overlapping bridge ends are, unless I'm completely mistaken, one of few design tricks I've personally come up with. First used in RoA, although first shown to others in my parts of the map in The Merchant. Now hand me your royalties. The shadows on the standard middles don't look all that good to begin with, though, as they're pitch black. I usually simulate shadows by putting deep water underneath the bridge, which I think works pretty well.
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Post by HockeySam18 on Aug 1, 2015 22:51:31 GMT
Royalties paid with pleasure. Well worth the permission to use the trick I tend to do this too. Perhaps my commandment was a little harsh. Bridge middles definitely have niches, and they looked perfectly good in Matt's PTC. It's probably a point of personal preference, honestly. I'd never dock a map points on a review for using bridge middles instead of the overlapping ends trick, of course.
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Post by Basse on Aug 1, 2015 23:12:13 GMT
Aye, same here. Bridge middles can look good, I just prefer map-copied arches.
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Post by HockeySam18 on Aug 1, 2015 23:22:32 GMT
Pulling off nice object and building combinations is too easy now with the free placement feature in UserPatch and AoE2HD. I remember the frustration back in the day of having to negotiate every little overlap through map copy. Thankfully those days are done
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