(6p) Valinograd Harbor

[bountyhunter571]

Changelogs

(the files are packed into sga archives. so the map cannot simply be downloaded and played on anymore without packaging it into an sga archive.)

Version 1.5 - 25.05.2015
- Hotfixed pathing issues around the chemistry factory (natural req point south east)

Version 1.4. - 19.05.2015
- Hotfixed lighting and fog in the factory (contested vp)

Version 1.3 - 10.04.2015
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6eBIh ... sp=sharing
- added and changed some details (loading screens)
- adjusted fog colours

Version 1.2 - 03.04.2015
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6eBIh ... sp=sharing
- added and changed some details
- adjusted athmosphere settings

Version 1.1 - 26.03.2015
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6eBIh ... sp=sharing
- added some details
- changed base turrets locations
- added new loading screen pictures

Version 1.0
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6eBIh ... sp=sharing
Initial version


Hi folks

When I first came into touch with WH40k, I discouvered a painting thread in a german forum that is about painting a valhallan ice army. The thread opener created an urban city fighting scenario, which inspired me to create a map akin to it. And here it is. Since its my first map - after a few shots that backfired so I gave up on them - I'd like to receive feedback as I will take it into account for sure.

Background:

After the valhallan planet was struck by a massive asteroid and knocked out of its orbit, turning the planet into an ice planet. The inhabitants were now forced to settle underground, and all they had left to eat is nutrient-rich slime which they cultivate underground as well. Just after food supply was restored and the threat of starvation was over, they were attacked by an ork spacehulk fleet. And this is where this map comes into play.

After some desperate fighting in the fall, where the valhallans were able to hold Valinograd Harbor, winter turned in, mostly disabling Orks vehicles and halting their advance. However, they continued battle on foot. Commissar Gorbiniov reinforced an existing building and was able to hold it for almost the entire fighting period. This building is now known as "the commisars house". The most furious battle however took place in the Tractor Factory "Emperors barrikady", where the valhallans were forced to use the heavy melting ovens as garrisons to protect themselfs from orbal bombardement. These buildings withstood all emeny bombardement by now, which forced the orks to retreat. While the refinery was overrun in the first few weeks of fighting, the chemistry factory was not attacked in the first place. But as spring is coming, the Orks have reassembled their troops and are now striving to regain the city to bring their WAAAAAAAGH to a good end. A huge Ork spacehulk landed in the north, launching a new Ork attack. But the valhallan troops are prepared. They took their HQ in the former main station of Valinograd and set up some defences in the premath of the fighting. Will Commissar Gorbiniov be able to insprie his troops by new and hold the Commisars house? Will the "Emperors Barrikady" finally fall?

Some previews:
Athmosphere:


View from Ork attack side. (the red square is the playable area).


View from Valinograd Main Station.


Valinograd Main Station: Super natural Power Point and natural VP.


The Tractor Factory "Emperors Barrikady".Contested VP and on the right hand side, 2 natural power points and 1 contested req point.


The Commisars House and the reffinery. Natural VP and supernatural Power point for Ork side.


Chemistry factory and the Commisars House. In between the contested power point.


Civilian Area with Ork spacehulk (nonplayable are, so you won't see it most of the time). On the right hand side, the silo.


View to the east. (Sightblocking such that sight does not drop off the map).

View to the west (also sightblocking).


And overall map. Again, the red square indicates the playable area, also explaining the less detailed area on top and on left hand side.


And the overhead layout.


Thoughts, impressions, advices? I am still thinking that removing the water and replacing it with an ice tile would be more better, so I'm going to do this in the next few days. A further thing is the camera options, which I have not been able to adjust in a satisfying manner yet, so I will have to go over that as well. And the lightings need to be reworked I think, as you can see in picture 9, one can see the wall behind the tunnel. Clearly, I don't want this. What can I do about it?

Thanks in advance for all your responses. I'll attach the necessary files for the world builder if you would like them.

[MaxPower]

Use more splats, better usage of textures and well some objects don't fit the snowy nature of the map. Also don't use "vis" objects in the actual playable area, because they tend to have a low texture resolution. The map also looks a wee bit small for a 3on3 map and I'd say that you should move the supernatural power points to a more natural place (meaning, not as close to the base of the players).

And those train carts look mighty familiar.

[Indrid]

You will never use enough splats for old Maxy, and using less will actually make your map run better for those that have ancient PCs. Many complain that Max's and my own's maps run poorly, and it's because we don't adhere to any of the asset limitations that Relic did when they made maps because of performance concerns.

Anyway, I do agree that you shouldn't use non-snowy objects or splats on a snowy map, they just look out of place. Also be careful of creating enclosed areas of objects, because hormagaunts will no doubt jump into them and get stuck. Make sure everything has a clear path in and out.

The map does seem small, but it's better than being too big IMO and it might be fun to play. Yes, manticores are a thing but they alone make it so difficult to size a map. You don't want it too big because people don't like long travel times, but you don't want manticores to be able to fire on everything from their HQ. If it's too small, it'd just be a clusterf--- and people will probably not like it. Hard to tell without trying it out though.

Either way, it's good to see people make maps, and don't be disheartened by criticism as you'll always get it. People have wildly varying map tastes and are generally very whiney when it comes to what map they play. I always say if you can make a map that about half the players will play, you've done well.

[bountyhunter571]

Well, thanks a lot for the thoughts. I've had had some problems with finding the right objects to be honest. The urban objects for snowy maps are rather limited imo, and so I just placed everything I thought could fit well into it. With time going on, I found some snowy objects that fit better and replaced it bit by bit. I've also used some rationality to explain why some things might be covered with snow while others do not. For example the large rusty chimney in the chemistry factory is still active, hence the steam coming out of it. The piles leading to the chimney are also hot, this is why I put a little less snow around it. The only ice power generators i found yet are the vista ones, which bug out because you can walk through them. But the urban ones are still producing electricity, which is shown by animation, hence the same explication might apply here too. But if you don't like it, I will replace them.

However, to construct the trains, I had simply not the tools to do so - or I didn't find them yet. Maybe I can adjust the lighting around it to make it more black. I will think of it. But I really would like to see them, as they contribute much to the atmosphere of an abandoned train station. I will see to replace some of the urban things that are not covered with snow though with some other things. I already did so with the sandbags - rationality was that the defense forces put them in the premath of the fight, but I always found it quite unnatural. For the splats, I'm suffering the problem that they are above the tiling. But again, I will see what I can do about it. I will definetly add some more craters.

The idea with the supernatural power point is to make it really difficult to bash both powers at the time. I mean, you still can, since I put some sightblockers to make sure that the powers are not covered by the base turrets.

The map is not as small as it looks like, the manticore must be moved out of base to reach the contested and the enemy natural vp iirc. The playable area is 320 W 480 H.

I uploaded the 3 world builder files (info, scenariomaker and wb-scenario as I do not know how to pack them).

http://we.tl/rsgryPvJ9t

[Indrid]

Just Save & Bake the map, this will put the game files into GameAssets\Data\maps\pvp. Post those.

[bountyhunter571]

Here we go: http://we.tl/d7FZ4UDLVO

Thanks in advance!

[Swift]

Looks pretty fun actually, I've been working on a 2v2 map for the past two weeks now, still getting it balanced, but my splat usage is very strange and out of place, so don't worry, yours looks fine

[Batpimp]

first thanks for taking the time for doing this!

second, more splats more cover!
With big heroes like the Warboss, CL, HT, BC most of the cover gets destroyed pretty quickly.

[Swift]

first thanks for taking the time for doing this!

second, more splats more cover!
With big heroes like the Warboss, CL, HT, BC most of the cover gets destroyed pretty quickly.

That, or change the cover crush to something that those heroes can't crush, e.g. make yellow cover medium crush and green cover heavy crush. I didn't put too much green cover on my map so I need it to last.

[MaxPower]

Its actually okay if medium crushers (like cl and ht) actually crush some of the cover. But you don't wanna plaster your map only with heavy crush objects because they can, if placed in small area, cause pathing issues (like blocking chims, which are also only medium crushers iirc).

And more splats doesn't mean more cover, well some splats grant cover iirc, but most dont, they are just there to make the map look more beautiful, detailed and whatnot.

@Swift how could you change the crush type of on object, I know that it is possible with the CoH 1 + 2 worldbuilder, but i thought that this option was greyed out with the DoW 2 worldbuilder.

Anyways I'll have a look at the map and give you a more in depth analysis (mainly focusing on aesthetics) come satur- or sunday.

[bountyhunter571]

Thank you.

Well, I had a chat with swiftsabre yesterday concerning the crush type changing and he's using the ruler mode to change objects crushability. I thought this was bugged too, since I tried that out, but I will give it another shot because working with the impass tool is not the most satisfying way to go. I also replaced Max' train karts ( ) with the more snowy mining carts and put on the more snowy metal sidewalk splines as well. I further removed the red factory lanterns since they were rusty as well. For the chemistry factory, I will add some steam to make the green cans look like some still glowing uranium or something similar. I also replaced the huge reffinery chimney since indeed it had a low resolution. Also did and will do a slight tiling rework in some areas, especially the snow transition zones around objects.

Train carts outside the station.


Ressource line with the new traincarts, and the new sidewalk splines.


Factory - removed the sandbags with some more appropriate covers (tanktraps, dragon teeth).

[Swift]

Have to say it looks really good and well made, I'd love to know how you made those railway tracks, and also how to use Splines and make natural looking ramps.

[Indrid]

You can't change the crush or cover value of objects afaik. If someone has figured out how I'd love to know.

The Ruler tool just allows you to see pathing for each type of crush unit of various sizes.

[Indrid]

Gave the initial version you posted a very, very quick look. You might have fixed them already.

- The camera is completely screwed, I don't know what you did; just let the WorldBuilder generate the camera mesh.
- The ramps leading to the middle VP I think are too narrow for big T3 army pushes. Also seems to be a bit too much "stuff" in the middle.
- Size seems ok to me.
- I still think all of the non-snowy assets are out of place, you can always justify it with lore but it just looks odd and makes the map look unpolished.
- Not sure if it's the lighting or fog but the units seem to be washed out in the whiteness of the map.

[bountyhunter571]

Thanks for the flowers.

The railwaytracks are made with splines. You select the spline tool. Then you have 3 different modes, textures, objects and deform. The texture mode is to place multiple splats, the object tool to place a line of objects and the deform tool to create some deformations. The railway tracks are splats, so you use the texture tool, choose the railway tracks and place it. I had some issues with using it as well since London Duncan didn't explain it very properly. I then watched some CoH World Builder tutorials on youtube since their world builder is almost the same, which helped me a lot. The object tool I used to place walls. However, it did not seem to work with every object since some were placed in the wrong way (90° too much) and I haven't figured out yet how to change their orientation. Random rotation ofc does not help here. The deform tool is to make height changes, I used that to create the craters height deformation and the ramps. They have an "edit profile" button which allows you to adjust the form of the height change to make it look more natural, make it not pathblock roads or to simply adjust it how you would like to look it.



However, splines might be a bit bitchy sometimes, so you wanna might use the export height option to draw your heightmap in gimp or photoshop. But make sure the height numbers are equal when exporting and importing, otherwise it will distort all objects placements.


@indrid:

Thanks for feedback. I will go over that. In that case I will increase the size of the 3 main ramps. I will go over the camera settings as well, the problem I had was that the default camera was so distant that there was fog in between the camera and the actual playing area. I thought I could fix that by using the camera mesh, but it didn't work out yet.
I will also see to further replace non snowy objects. Its such a pity there is no colorize option for objects.
What do you mean by "washed out"? Are they becoming invisible in the distance?

edit: ok the camera settings are fixed. I dunno what happened back then.

[MaxPower]

So If you wanna fix the camera just do the following:


=> uncheck the "override global camera settings" box
=> bam, should be okay now

Anyways, now back to some stuff that you should improve on, like using the water option in the terrain prop option.
Using more splines and splats, I did a small overhaul of a little part of the map just to show you the difference.


Before


After


And you really have to work on the VP position + the objects around them:


Look at this VP, the desgin of this vp means that there is like only 1 way in and 1 way out which means that you created a bottleneck which is something you should avoid at all costs.


Look at this VP, I guess you can see the shotblockers which basically give the top team an advantage because they can cap the point and the bottom team won't be able to deny that cap (like using pdevs or something) due to the shotblockers.

Btw. if using splats, try to use the optimum size for the splat, maybe smaller, but don't go higher then the optimum size.

[Wise Windu]

It should be easy enough to change the cover values of objects. Not from within the World Builder though, afaik. I did it for the earlier iteration of the Chimera ability, and when I checked in the World Builder, the objects were there to place. So if you guys want, I could add in some new pieces of cover with altered cover or crush values.

[bountyhunter571]

That would be extremely cool. Because the issue with the impassable VP Max pointed out stems from the fact that these ruined walls are light crushable objects, meaning that a sentinel or a crushable commander can crush them and after T1 they are most probably gone.

Thanks at Max for the advices. I will consider them all and post the results of my maps rework.

[Swift]

Ok I think I got it wrong earlier, but I think I know how to change it, you might have to individually change the passibility type of each object, it worked when I did it on individual rocks, I'm sure. I'll try it again and see if I am completely wrong.

EDIT: Nope I'm a liar, I must have been imagining it, you can't change anything.

[Wise Windu]

Okay, well I guess let me know which objects any of you would like altered, and how, and I can try to add them in.

[Indrid]

It would probably be a very long list, there are so many objects. I've learned to just live with what they give you.

[Roey]

The only mapmaker experience I have is from Timesplitters 2/3 haha, so im not here to pass usefull coments like everyone else. But as a general player I appreciate you taking the time to make a very good looking map and bit of lore behind it.

[bountyhunter571]

Thank you. Well, there is still a long way to go as Max indicated.

However, I made some adjustments.


First, I opened the bottleneck vp to some extents. The overall thoughts behind this vp were, that it shouldn't be possible or at least difficult to put a baneblade up there and just camp it. But you should still be able to shoot with your Baneblade or similar directly into the vp to attack cappers or deny it. So thats why I put some impassability up there. However, I can still just erase the height deformation splines allowing for complete passability if you think that the current layout would severly influence the gameplay in a non-desired matter. But that would make all the walls crushable by light crushers.


I also changed the chemistry factory, by removing and changing some of the sight and shoot blockers.


And I have widened the main ramps that lead to the factory. For comparison, you can now put up two baneblades next to each other (see the wreck that I've put there to highlight the size of the ramp).

I also started to put a mass of splats into the map, but this will take some time until its finished.

Thoughts and inputs concerning the two natural VPs are highly appreciated!

[Swift]

Looks like there are still too many shot blockers on that side, you replaced the tanks with a huge pipeline, which looks nice, but means nothing on that side can shoot down the middle.

[Dark Riku]

Yeuy for more map(-makers)! Looks promising so far.

You might want to consider more recourse points. ~6-7 is the usual amount of req/power points for 3v3 maps.
5-5 could set your map apart, for better or worse . Some play testing and other people's opinion would be useful here.

[Superhooper01]

Nice to see, makes me want to try. Good luck and hopefully see it played on 1 day

[bountyhunter571]

Thanks for appreciation.

You might want to consider more recourse points. ~6-7 is the usual amount of req/power points for 3v3 maps.
5-5 could set your map apart, for better or worse

Oops, that wasn't intended. I put an additional, contested req point in between the two VPs. Also reworked the chemistry factory once again, balancing the cover and shot blockers a little bit more.



I also started with splatting



If someone could explain me, whether there exists a more automatic texture generator tool than the manual brush with strength settings I would be very grateful.

If you want to test the map, ofc you can. I've uploaded the necessary files here: http://we.tl/MxhrDH8aAd. Store them under retribution -> GameAssets -> Data -> Maps -> pvp. However, you must open the wb-scenario file in your world builder (make sure that you are using Myrdals fixed version because the original relic one is broken), then file -> save and bake. Then you can test it ingame.

[MaxPower]

Get rid of the shotblockin pipes, otherwise the bottom team has an advantage in takin that req point, albeit still having a disadvantage if they wanna cap that vp.

[bountyhunter571]

So, did a rework of the splining and splatting and also the texture a little bit. Still a lot of work to do though.



main road with fountain and snow wedges



harbor (kind of) unloading and docking place



chemistry factory


As for the steel factory, I'm facing the problem that although I set the health value for the bunkers to zero (tested ingame), they still can be entered. They will be destroyed at the first shot though. Does someone know how I can fix this? I mean I want them to be destroyed at start of the game, not an unholy khorne death trap...

[egewithin]

I'm gonna play Techmarine on this map like a mad man dude. Great work. And please, if you are able too, destroy useless objects so my PC run it faster.