Excalibur: You seem to know most about mapping melee maps. I'm most curious and anxious about your feedback. So far I've had other comments, taken most suggestions. What do you think so far?

Third attempt, I looked at pro maps, saw a lot of them were identical on both sides. More space, more open-ness I guess. I hope this is better. I took your advice and read the topics you suggested and pretty much tried to figure out what to do to make it better.

Be harsh if need be

EDIT: Most recent picture updated
EDIT: Most recent picture updated

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Post has been edited 7 time(s), last time on Dec 17 2009, 3:43 am by Marine.

Looks very nice, just one note: It looks just a tad TOO open (there, I said it )

Edit: How about a last batch of minerals and gas in the middle, for late-game resourcing?

Impossible PvZ and TvZ due to openness of natural. Imbalanced ramps. TvP will be pretty hard too, considering you can't wall and Protoss can just 10/15 gate and walk all over your base.

Zero chance of getting a third up if it hits lategame.

Very meh.

Its bland, too open. Lots of wasted space in the main. You need to make the nats closer to the ramp because that will cost zerg. The map is kinda linear. There is a bunch of tank holes in the high grounds, find them and fix them. There is no point in the bottum left and top right. Also, terran push > all on this map.

EDIT: Also, this map lacks depth/concept.
EDIT EDIT: If you need to know how big a main should be, it should only be able to fit 46 command centers.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Dec 9 2009, 9:39 pm by Ciara.

The ramps aren't symmetrical. Top's ramps face diagonally. Bottom's ramps go straight up. I do not claim to be a melee pro, in fact, I suck, but that should inherently create imbalance. http://www.panschk.de/mappage/comments.php?mapid=3793

Open up the middle of the map, and close off the left middle side and right middle side. Or, you could also add an island expo in the middle of the map. Yeah, do that.

No gas in island expo? :C

Make nat easier to defend; 1 choke. Also, put some space between the minerals and the wall in the nat.

Your most open areas are the bottom left area, and top right area. Although, almost all of the battling will be done near the nat or the middle of the map. There is no way late game is going to take place at the third and fourth expoes. As for the third expoes (bottom left middle/top right middle), give them each a single entrance; wall of the area towards the end of the map.

Also, another key thing, you need more expos.

I think I opened it up more? I added bigger and more expos, included an island expo in middle, and made a closer nat with a choke point, symmetrically corrected the ramps. Made it less 'bland' in my opinion, and smoothened out more straight lines to have less of them.

is it worse or better? What else can I do?

EDIT: Found and removed all the tank holes in the highground I could find.

EDIT: I was also thinking of removing the circled expoes. Is that a good idea?


Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 10 2009, 11:32 pm by Marine.

Mains are still too large and the map still lacks depth. First off, the island in the middle is a bad idea. Its tankable and tankable is very bad.
Your map simply does not have enough room for more expansions than it already has, so get the idea of adding more expos out of your head.
Again, it lacks depth/concept. By the looks of things, the naturals are still tankable even with the high ground. I suggest adding some water.
You could try making the mains smaller so you can have more room, that might do something.
The decoration is also pretty bad (No offense). You need to add some more doodads and never have a long continuous type of certain terrain.

Sorry if any of these came across as rude.

More doodads, remove middle.. add water at nats INSTEAD or WITH highground? Make middle smaller..? What goes in place of the space where it was? More highground? Water? Should I remove the top right/bottom left or no?
Define Depth, exactly..?
Thanks for feedback.

EDIT: Is this better progress? Added doodads, removed middle.. added water at nats INSTEAD of highground, made middle smaller and made top right/bottom left expoes islands.


I still need someone to define exactly what depth/concept is. Excalibur kind of explained concept, but I didn't really understand it.

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Dec 11 2009, 12:29 am by Marine.

No, silly. I dont mean replace the water with high ground. I meant have water along the outer edge of the high ground
Depth. What makes your maps different from other maps.
Concept. What makes your map interesting and what says "COME PLAY ME".
Also, perhaps you should add some kind of design in the middle. The choke points look kind of tight, so do other places in the map. Bottle neck = win on this map. Try to make more open space.
You might be kinda mad I said have more open space since we were criticizing you earlier about having open space. Open space in the middle is good. Anywhere else makes your map look ridiculous.
Now, look at your bottum left expansion. See the one above it?
Yeah, all someone would haft to do to take that out is to drop tanks or storm in the ice. I suggest you replace that ice with high ground.
Or you could try making high ground attached to the bottum left or top right expo and make it continue out to the expansion above it. That way, whoever controls the bottum left/top right expansion pretty much controls the one below/above it.

I dont know, maybe you should scrap this. You dont really have anything to work with.
If you decide to continue mapping, all you need to do is have depth/concept and balance. It looks like you have balance down in this map (with a few exceptions) so all you need to add is concept/depth.

Good luck, dont quit mapping

Water along the outside of the highground created a gap between the highground and the water itself, which didn't do anything.

I'm confused about depth; How is this NOT different from other maps? I'm not going to consider scrapping it seeing as how It's much better progress [In my opinion] from this:


AND this:


Finally to this:


I think that's pretty damn good progress for me.

It is, which is why I recommend not quitting mapping.

The last variation I've seen definitely looks playable without forced aggression from any race because of the natural's new design in the latest map.

I recommend making your map as little white as possible as there is a reason there are rarely ice maps used in proleague that are almost entirely snow.
Do whatever you can to darken it because it bothers progamers' eyes.

Edit: Darken the mains mostly, everything else looks fine.

yes definetly, my eyes start crying when i try to play any map that is mostly snow but otherwise nice work, that is some major progress.

I'll darken the mains on monday or whenever I can, busy atm.

Remove gas from middle of nowhere, add gas to islands. I think you need to re-arrange your expo layout and move the current min onlys to the 3 and 9 o'clock positions and thicken the cliffs into where they used to be.

More dirt, less snow, get rid of useless outpost wall outside nats.

Red indicating definite changes if I got what you meant right. Move gas to island, min onlys to 9 and 3.

But thicken cliffs? What do you mean and where? The circled blue cliffs? If so to which line? Orange or Yellow line? And question; once I have more dirt, what about the teal circled gap, should I close it or keep it open?

Thicken the cliffs covering the current red circles, what will become the former positions of those expos. Once you move them to the other side of that cliff, thicken it in the opposite direction is what I'm saying.

The main is all bright white, add dirt to it to break up the monotony and reduce glare. Leave the teal circles.