On The Ground 3 - Single Player Map

[Secg]

It seems that, for some unknown reason, I cannot kill "Your Captain Unit". Thank you.

Because the Captain's ArmourType is "hero", non-existent in the vanilla, so he's unkillable.

To make him killable,

Change these lines of code from:

Code: Select all

    //ArmourClass("infantry"); // vanilla
    ArmourClass("hero"); // modded, only in Heroic

to:

Code: Select all

    ArmourClass("infantry"); // vanilla
    //ArmourClass("hero"); // modded, only in Heroic

[{RaheeXF}]

Please do not mind but I don't have enough time to do it today. I'll do it tomorrow or later. For now, I am using Sarge as Captain Alpha. I hope you understand. Thank you.

Also, did you finish the map? If yes, how much time did it take you to win? Please let me know.

[Secg]

Please do not mind but I don't have enough time to do it today. I'll do it tomorrow or later. For now, I am using Sarge as Captain Alpha. I hope you understand. Thank you.

Also, did you finish the map? If yes, how much time did it take you to win? Please let me know.

Yes.

In my Heroic mod, it took me ~35mins.

The Captain is a pain even for me to take down because I purposefully clad him in hero armor (like Sarge, meaning that only the Captain & Sarge can deal full dmg to each other, while non-Hero units from both sides shall only 40% of their normal dmg to them both); yet the Captain's DPS (32 / 0.3 = 106.67) is much higher than Sarge (51), allowing the Captain to always defeat Sarge in a duel and making him, the map's Final Boss, much more threatening .

[TommyCD1]

I've played this map on stream and a little bit off stream and I'll leave my thoughts here. Hopefully this helps.
I'll split my individual thoughts into four concepts, and give an overall final thoughts.

Concept / Idea
Who are these Captains? Why are they here? Why have they betrayed the Green? They kind of just show up and do things, but whatever. I guess it's an excuse to have a enemy that isn't Tan. Anyway, I think the idea of having a continuous story between missions can be interesting. Individual missions with a standard base kill objective can be boring, so having some incentive to continue going can be nice. I also recommend trying to create a campaign out of these or future missions. Anyway, as for this map specifically, it could be interesting to be forced to search several bases / key areas for a VIP target. Maybe the red Sarge could be randomly placed, or he could move from area to area? I'm thinking of something like Mission 5 from Army Men II.

Visual Design
Not great in this department, if I'm honest. I'm not sure what the map is supposed to be, aside from just a big circle of dirt texture. It's good that you are coloring the terrain, but I would suggest some diversity. If coloring doesn't come naturally, then you can take advantage and use props or terrain paint / textures instead! Try, for example, only using dirt textures where unit paths are, or to guide the player where they may want to walk / follow. Use the asphalt to draw little streets or pavement around things such as facilities. Also, instead of leaving the out of bounds part as the base texture, try using a hill or rock texture to help convey where units shouldn't be. As for props used, they feel placed rather haphazardly, such as with the bug jar, or the temple stelae. There's a concept in the middle near the garden lamp, with a small town type of thing going on, but elsewhere it feels like simply random tree and bush props are placed to break up the terrain. That is fine, but I recommend using terrain texturing more often to break up large patches of terrain, then placing props more towards the out of bounds places.

Difficulty & Balance
I understand difficulty, let alone balance is very hard to do, but this one starts to fall apart in this regard. On the one hand, the map can be too easy at times, as you go long stretches of time without enemies attacking. On the other hand, when enemies do attack, they tend to attack all at once in huge groups, which can be especially overwhelming due to the resources and unit limit available.
Firstly, trying to accost the bases can be very expensive and difficult. This is mostly due to the fact that the base facilities are all lined up right next to each other and do not utilize rally points. This means that the extremely high number of units being produced all end up crowded around right in front of the facilities, and attacking will draw aggro of nearly half the swarm. And that's only assuming you survive, because the second half as well as the facilities will still be waiting. There's also crates only located next to the HQs, and only jerry cans at that, so nothing short of a bombing run can take on the large clump of units. On top of all this, as you destroy more and more facilities, the remaining ones will start producing more and more units in order to keep up with the demand of the global base.
Second, when enemies come to attack you instead, they come after long intervals, but in large groups. If you try to attack a base, you'll need to amass a large army or spend a lot of resources on air strikes in order to actually destroy a facility or group of units. This leaves you vulnerable to the Blue waves, since they don't have to be concerned with unit limit or resources. It's better off to only care about destroying the HQ's for a gold medal, or only attacking the north base since the red Sarge is always located there once you know he is.
Lastly, this map makes use of air strikes for the enemy. The north base drops paratroopers when you approach, which is fine. But the game will also drop a bombing run on your base three times after some time has passed. The first time they drop a bomb directly where you spawn, which is most likely where your HQ and Depot will be. The next two times they drop bombs off so the sides, which at best could take out some towers or so. The problem is that these air strikes are guaranteed to happen after a set period of time, no matter what. You WILL be bombed, no matter where your units are, or whether the Blue has a radio operator, or whether the Blue can even see the area they are dropping a bomb on. It is extremely cheap and unfair, especially the HQ bomb when you don't know it is coming. I could understand if the Blue was required to have a spotter in order to drop bombs, but as it is, you can be playing just fine and doing nothing wrong, until suddenly your Depot is randomly destroyed instantly by a bomb that you could not prevent or know was going to happen.

Overall
Overall I'd consider this a good attempt for a novice, and especially for only the fourth map. I would say you have a decent grasp of using objective based code, as well as creating a functional map. The part of balance and making your map look nice is an experience based skill set, so I definitely recommend you keep at it, you're on a good pace as it is. I mean, there's a huge reason my first group of maps were all multiplayer only maps, and even then look how they turned out.
Some improvements I can suggest:

• If you have multiple facilities, try assigning them to unique bases.
• Try adding random time variance to your random waves, to make game play a bit more dynamic and unpredictable.
• Your assault squads are extremely large. Small squads not only build and get recruited faster, but are also much more flexible with path finding and more forgiving to defend against.
• Some sign props have move::block regions surrounding them. Having large obstructions like this is okay, but should be done with a prop that visually matches the restricted cells. Especially since the signs can normally be traveled through.
• Your normal and heavy waves are setup in a way that they don't have an initial timer. Instead, they have a very long timer which loops itself each wave. This is fine for light, but this means normal waves only happen every 15 minutes, and heavy waves only happen every 30 minutes! Obviously this will likely only happen once during an average play through.
• The out of bounds area using base textures and move::block regions at the edges of the map permit units to scale very high up the hills before being blocked. This is especially noticeable since Pillboxes have very poor vertical visibility, and are nearly useless when placed too close to the edges of the map where the AI trails seem to be.

I will give this map a 3 out of 6. It does not have a lot of replay value, and can be rather easily cheesed thanks to the Garden Lamp in the middle permitting some rather degen strats, such as DumDum spam, but it is a fully functional single player map with not much competition, and the concept of trying to assassinate a VIP target is something that is not utilized very much outside of Multiplayer. There is obvious room for improvement, but the only egregious offense to me is the random bombing run that is manually dropped on your spawn area.

[{RaheeXF}]

@TommyCD1
Thank you so much for your suggestions and feedback. I'm happy that you played my map.
I'll make sure that I don't make these mistakes next time.

Also, next Single-Player map "Abandoned Area" is coming soon!
Be ready to face some challenges!

[JuLY.LION]

I have some nitpicks:
• AI should be unable to bomb your base without being able to see it. (if you need help in figuring that out, there's code in story/S15.x you can study that prevents the tan from dropping paratroopers if they can't see the area)
• The dark blue and dark red army colors look ugly once it's rendered in-game. Might I recommend Color(73, 110, 246); and Color(242, 65, 65); instead?
• Danger signs prevent movement in an overly large area. (3x2 when 1x1 is enough)
• Mission objective is title case.
• Radio operators don't flee when attacked?

Otherwise a very fun and challenging mission! Cleared it in 40 minutes flat on my first attempt. Went 158/58 on hard, bronze.

[{RaheeXF}]

Hello July!

Thank you very much for the suggestions! I'll fix the map and stuff as soon as I can. I'm very happy that you enjoyed the map.

Also, as far as I know, radio operators are dumb and they do not run away when they are attacked. By the way, what did you want to say by "Mission objective is title case"? Please, let me know.

Thank you once again.

[{RaheeXF}]

I'm specially requesting @TommyCD1 @Secg and @JuLY.LION to check out the map again. I've fixed a lotta things. Thank you to all of you for pointing out the bugs and problems. I've tried my best to fix them.

Edit: Tommy, can you play it in your stream?

[Secg]

Keep doing the good work!