Strategus City Improvement Project

[Warcat]

In order to make cities playable for Strategus we expanded all of the cities in Calradia. Minor touchups and fixes may still be needed, but every city was worked on.
Current Town Situation:
Town 1 Sargoth: (Peasant_Woman) Done*
Town 2 Tihr: (Ozin) Done*
Town 3 Veluca:(Mustikki) Done*
Town 4 Suno: (Jacko) Done*
Town 5 Jelkala: (Warcat) Done*
Town 6 Praven: (Warcat) Done*
Town 7 Uxkhal: (Peasant_Woman) Done
Town 8 Reyvadin: (Jacko) Done
Town 9 Khudan: (Jacko) Done*
Town 10 Tulga: (Jacko) Done*
Town 11 Curaw: (Warcat)Done
Town 12 Wercheg: (Aelfwine) Done*
Town 13 Rivacheg: (Mustikki) Done*
Town 14 Halmar: (Peasant_Woman) Done*
Town 15 Yalen: (Mustikki)Done
Town 16 Dhirim: (Mustikki) Done*
Town 17 Ichamur: (Warcat) Done*
Town 18 Narra: (Jacko) Done
Town 19 Shariz: (Ozin) Done
Town 20 Durquba (Aelfwine) Done*
Town 21 Ahmerrad (Mustikki) Done*
Town 22 Bariyye: (Warcat) Done*

Proper Spawn Point Placing:[0-9 Attackers, equips spawns 1 meter behind point 0][10-63 Defenders][65 Defense Equipment]
*May need testing

Go to the bottom of this list to find a city you might want to work on.

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I can't help but notice we are continuing strategus with the same scenes as last time. Thats fine for castles and villages, but the cities are not meant to, and do not work properly in multiplayer battles. It's one thing in cRPG maps, but Strategus battles should not need invisible barriers everywhere. Also the cities need more space around them and more depth to them. Places like Ichamur have no ability for use of catapults because the defenders are right on top of the attacking spawn from the beginning with a very small battle area and zero cover because the defenders can shoot from both sides of the attackers. And if someone does manage to bring down a wall on one of these maps, there is nowhere for the defenders to regroup and fight within the city. I like the basic walls of most all the maps. But they all need large expansions for proper playability.

[Warcat]

Any comments on this?

[chadz]

I've been desperately trying to find someone to take care of the town maps for a year, but alas, no one is willing to take up the (admittedly painful) task of polishing them.

[Bobthehero]

I think there are some OSP you could use.

[Warcat]

I've been desperately trying to find someone to take care of the town maps for a year, but alas, no one is willing to take up the (admittedly painful) task of polishing them.

Obviously I can't do them all by myself, but I'm more than willing to do some work on some of them. Would need to know how spawn points differ from normal and if there is any particular things you want in them, but I can send you a sample of how I would expand a current map in a few days or less. Even OSP maps aren't meant for something quite like strategus.

Edit: I notice Town 6 appears to already have some work on it. However before any fighting happens on it, someone needs to remove the extra spawn point inside the city. There are two entry point 0's and its only using the wrong one.

[Gnjus]

I've been desperately trying to find someone to take care of the town maps for a year, but alas, no one is willing to take up the (admittedly painful) task of polishing them.

I might have a man for the job. He is a cRPG player, a Bandit. His name is John Mocker. Currently he is doing a project of fixing the 110 village maps + 10 or so Native maps for battle servers so we finally get some balanced maps and proper battles, unlike the current "battles". I marked everything that needs to be fixed and he is doing the technical part of the job. Punisher knows the details (it should be finished by the time he returns from holidays, at least a big part of it).

The only problem is that i don't know if he (Mocker) has the time & will to get involved in editing towns. He mights ask for some kind of reward or benefits in exchange for such a big effort. 

Edit: he has the will to do it but unfortunately (as it stands now) he wont have the time. Bad luck, but if the situation changes i will let you know. Additional problem is that we never played those maps, its easy with villages, I know them inside-out but towns are enigma, from the pictures in map-explorer i cant see what parts are bugged, glitched, unreachable, etc, etc.

[Jacko]

Throw a bone to the scene editing part of the forum. Assign a dev that can make maps and make him in charge of the "remodelling department". He then "hires" sceners to edit em, and checks them over before adding them to the official game.

Y/Y?

...And give him a server which we can test maps on before submitting em to the official servers.

[Warcat]

Extended the walls and put a keep in the city so I can show what kind of extensions I'm suggesting. This particular city is Ichamur, you may recognize it if you ever had to take it in SP
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To keep in style with the original cities I think the areas behind the walls should be based strongly on what the alley and center scenes for each city look like.

[Nasturtium]

I am experienced mapper willing to tweak maps for pats on the head and praise, shoot me a pm on how I can help.

[Warcat]

It still has a bit of work to do (decor, roads, spawn points, invisible border walls) But this I've finished the building layout for town17, Ichamur. I did it based on a few guidelines that I think every strategus map should have. (Flying carpet not part of map, just for previews)

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The main things I tried to do when making it-
*Make it feel like a city
     Currently cities are the smallest battlefields in Strategus, and always have the biggest numbers. By expanding the map it opens up offensive and defensive tactics as opposed to the current meatgrinder battles. I also added some additional fake background buildings to add to the feeling that this is one of the major population centers in Calradia, taking it is a great achievement and will be a key asset to the growth of any major faction.

* Make it playable
     One of the big contributions cRPG makes to the game is the inclusion of catapults, ladders, siege shields, etc. This map will make it possible to use those while avoiding exploiting them (i.e. using ladders to go over the invisible walls and around the city wall as was so frequent in last Strategus. With this map catapults may be used to take down the walls, but there will still be hope for the defenders to fight through the streets. Defensive spawn points will be put at all the closed entrances to other parts of the city, as well as a point in the courtyard of the main keep. Also, everywhere within the battle areas are completely unrestricted. Anywhere outside (fake building area) will be blocked by invisible barriers from the ground up.

*Keep it's personality
     While I'm adding a lot to it, I still want this to be a representation of Ichamur. I made very few elevation changes to the natural map, kept a similar style to the walls in terms of approach and having areas of crossfire that have always been such a problem for attackers at that map. The keep and the alley leading directly up to it are modeled directly after center and alley scenes. Some cities may even want to include the city arena within the map.

[Overdriven]

Looks fantastic...great work  One of my major complaints with Warband has been that the cities feel like minor outposts when you're attacking them. Expanding them a bit helps.

[Wookimonsta]

well yeh, it'd be cool if the fight for a city was more than just walls. Of course that whole conquest thing has been on everyones minds.
If i was any good at mapping I would try my hand at this.

[Jacko]

Really nice Warcat! This should definitely be made for all the cities! Time consuming work for sure, where is that Strategus Map Developer (SMD aka "the slave") when you need him?

[Warcat]

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Here's what it looks like with invisible barriers now placed.

A few more things to note

- All the barriers around the edges start from the ground. Even if a catapult destroys the buildings on the edges, access to the rest of the city is still restricted.
- All of the spawn points are on the ground, don't want problems to occur from a building top catapult
- The defenders naturally have some roof access, including a large group of central buildings. This wasn't specifically planned, but I found it out as I was moving around the city with the scene viewer.

[Wookimonsta]

i dont mean to be negative, but i've noticed that the more complex maps hurt fps even on powerful machines. How will these cities hold up with 120 players?