11 replies to this topic

[Retharias]

Ok, i was wondering if anyone could tell me how high a mountain can be before it starts causing problems.

EA's "Map Design and Beautification Tips" tutorial basically says tha the maximum mountain height without camera constraints is about 250, yet when i looked at their mount doom map, they didn't place camera constrains until around the 400-450 mark, with the volcano itself reaching a height of around 800.

Personally, i've found that a very mountainous map doesn't really look that good unless its HIGHER than 250, sometimes higher than 300-400. Any thoughts on this?

Edited by Rokqua Shadowkin, 17 September 2010 - 02:50 AM.

[_Haldir_]

Nice question

There isn't a specific "maximum height" as such (well there is, but it's like 3000 ft, so it's too tall to see anyway). The EA tips are more talking about not having massive mountains, which can cause annoying camera issues if there's too much height difference between the mountain and the average height.

I agree that 250 seems quite small, and i often build up mountains to 300-500 like you said. Keep in mind that it's relative to your starting map height though. I usually start at around 50 for my map, so it's still only a difference of 250 ish. If you look at EA's maps, you'll probably find that although the mountains are at 800 feet, the rest of the map is around 200-300 already

Having a massively tall mountains disrupts the camera, makes it hard to see units, and creates lag when forcing the camera to view larger areas of the map. Similarly, having lots of mountains close together, will elevate the camera to higher than what seems normal ingame. Chances are you won't be spending your game time looking at blank mountains (as you should be looking at your units instead ). You might not be able to see the top of it either, so the question is why build something bigger - with more issues - when you can build something smaller, and acheive the same visual effect.

That said, there's no right or wrong answer There can be very good reasons to build taller mountains in your map, and it can look great if you get it right. The EA tips are more just a caution for ambitious young mappers who think bigger=better. The best thing to do is to keep testing your map in-game, so you can get a sense of scale, and make changes if you need to

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

Also when making mountain maps it's always good to have a higher starting height and do ravines as well as mountains.

[Retharias]

Is having REALLY high (about 500-600 above the average height) cliff-like mountains ok around the extreme edges of the map? (with camera constraints to cut off the corner[s]?) Because i've been planning on making a map that relies on the mountains being extremely tall and rather sheer to give it a rather dark and oppressive atmosphere. And how narrow can a choke point be before it actually starts causing pathing problems. EA says about 2.5 hordes wide, but their gates create choke points about 1 horde or less in size (and, of course, pathing along walls). Is the length of the choke point at least partially an issue here?

(off-topic): Speaking of pathing, i was trying to make a 2-level gondolin map out of minas tirith walls, but the structures i used to create the staircases (which were SUPPOSED to be pathable) glitched and wouldn't allow units to walk on them.

Edited by Rokqua Shadowkin, 17 September 2010 - 10:22 PM.

[_Haldir_]

Is having REALLY high (about 500-600 above the average height) cliff-like mountains ok around the extreme edges of the map? (with camera constraints to cut off the corner[s]?) Because i've been planning on making a map that relies on the mountains being extremely tall and rather sheer to give it a rather dark and oppressive atmosphere

Absolutely. Like i said, there's no strict rules on this stuff, you just have to play the game and decide whether you think it's okay.

And how narrow can a choke point be before it actually starts causing pathing problems. EA says about 2.5 hordes wide, but their gates create choke points about 1 horde or less in size (and, of course, pathing along walls). Is the length of the choke point at least partially an issue here?

It really depends on your map, and the amount of chokepoints. 1 horde wide is fine. Though only having winding trails on your map doesn't give your armies much room to swing their swords. Make sure you've atleast got a couple of wider areas for larger battles. Essentially, the pathfinding has to work harder in smaller areas, so the length can affect that. But i've never seen any problems with pathing in small chokepoints, it might cause a little bit of lag, but that's probably about it.

Speaking of pathing, i was trying to make a 2-level gondolin map out of minas tirith walls, but the structures i used to create the staircases (which were SUPPOSED to be pathable) glitched and wouldn't allow units to walk on them.

Were your units able to get onto the walls at all? It might be that you need a stair object to get them on the wall, or a different object if the one you have isn't working. Adjusting things like scale and z-height can mess up the geometry a bit too, so you might have to play around with those a bit before it starts to work.

[m@tt]

A lot depends on how steep the mountains are. Steep mountains are bad for the camera.

[Retharias]

Ok, thanks.

@_Haldir_: The staircases weren't for getting up on the walls. Those worked fine. The problem was when i tried using stair models to get units up to the second level. The stairs worked fine... Until they reached the top. They weren't able to walk off of the stairs onto the second level. But thanks anyways. I'll probably redesign the map so it doesn't use the stairs.

[_Haldir_]

That's probably due to the stair object not meeting the second level right. Try putting another stair object (like the small Minas Tirith one, i forget what it's called) in between the stairs and the second level wall, so units can walk off of the staircase.

The geometry can be quite a pain. Without another stair object, units won't walk off objects, even if it's only a gap of 1-2 feet Atleast give it a try before you redesign everything.

[Retharias]

Right, i'll give it a try. But the current version just doesn't seem right to me. It seems too flat, with a weird, flattened-looking tower jutting up in the middle, and a really small palace sitting on top of that. So, yeah, i'm gonna redesign it to look more like the hill-top city-fortress it is.

EDIT: And i don't know what's wrong with the geometry. The stair model i'm using actually has a small pathable slope on the top of its upper landing to allow units to walk off of it.

Edited by Rokqua Shadowkin, 19 September 2010 - 03:25 AM.

[JUS_SAURON]

One trick I used when I started mapping and could not undestand the Object and pathing issues :

Use the terrain to create the Paths , then texturize it to look like walls and Roads

Mixing in the usual Wall / Stair objects with some passable terrain may help with Pathing

If you want an example of what I mean take a look at this .. made looong ago .

A mordor Fortress made of Terrain ??!!! Yeah I know its crap

Mordor Fortress

[Retharias]

ha. That's really all EA's Dol Guldur is. Terrain with the sides hidden by objects.

Thanks for the tip though. I'll give it a try.

Edited by Rokqua Shadowkin, 20 September 2010 - 05:51 AM.

[Puzzler33]

Is having REALLY high (about 500-600 above the average height) cliff-like mountains ok around the extreme edges of the map? (with camera constraints to cut off the corner[s]?) Because i've been planning on making a map that relies on the mountains being extremely tall and rather sheer to give it a rather dark and oppressive atmosphere.

The camera in its default settings probably will try to scale the edges when you place it there. Which is probably going to be problematic. The good news is that you can just edit those settings (Edit > Map settings) and there should be something like camera smoothing. I think how it works is that at a low value, the camera's position above the map will be more specific to the local area of map, so in a small but deep ditch you might have your camera drop suddenly in that place, whereas at a high value the height of the map is more smoothed out and so the camera will more glide over ditches (this might be the other way round in terms of high/low value). Anyway it should be obvious from the description of it.

You might also have a problem with the edge closest to the camera and it might block your view, but you can deal with that as you wish.