Height problems... It looks like you are looking at it from the top yet from a diagonal at the same time...

The crater doesn't look like a crater... Perhaps adding a hole, and then slapping sprites on it? There is also a(n understandable) lack of transition between the Ash World sprites and the Jungle terrain. Perhaps having the clouds start "ahead" of the rockiness (and maybe narrowing the top) could give the illusion of a better transition?

I must say, however, that the mountain scene Falk reviewed is infinitely more beast than anything I could ever piece together in SCMD.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 8 2010, 3:20 am by DavidJCobb. Reason: Beast comment added.

Lol, that's what I did XD.


Hmm, I'ma see if I can work on it...

What is with this "slap sprites on it" mentality? I'm not singling you out david, but seriously guys.

Well, it's a volcano, and I don't know of any jungle tiles that give the impression of being ashes, charred ground, lava, etc. If there was a high dirt to mud to rocky ground to high dirt blend that might spice it up a bit, but I don't know of any such blend.

that's why you have to experiment with new blends.

Ok, I tried to spice up the volcano a bit, and this is what I came up with...



A bit of a spritefest, but the action I have planned for the area should make up for it (in other words, most people don't really care what the terrain looks like when they're having to dodge lava being shot at them ).

I still don't particularly like the piece, however, I think you've managed to hit the atmosphere, and if you can actually get creep there, it's a good effect, the ground just didn't look good enough

What do you mean "actually get creep there"? I've got spore colonies all around (not only do they decorate the ground, they also attack air units that spawn over the hero, and when the air unit dies, a couple wraits spawn and shoot the player. It's based off of the Tombstone thing from spellsword ). Are you saying that the creep may look different ingame than it does in scmdraft?

Oh, didn't even see the spore colonies behind the sprites, I thought you had just placed them and removed them for the picture

Er, important question: Will the sprites appear ingame exactly as they do in scmdraft, or will they be in a different order (that is, is it possibe the the sprites stick out over the dark swarm inside of being covered by it)?

I think that in this case they'll be covered by the Dark Swarm, although, and make sure those dark swarms are UNITS, not sprites, there's no reason to make them a sprite, and they'll only take up preplaced sprite space.

Er, they're sprites. Don't dark swarm units disappear after a minute or so? And plus one of the heroes casts spells with dark swarm, and if the dark swarms were units, it might mess it up.

If you place them for a player, not P12, they stay indefinitely, there honestly is no difference between a Unit Sprite dark swarm and a normal one, although, normal ones need to have their own open terrain, or they're implaceable in game, have you tested this piece out in-game yet? Because I'm not sure if that's also true with unit sprites.

I don't get how mass of swarms = volcano o_o

The Dark swarms are supposed to represent puffs of smoke or ash perhaps?

Do you see orange puffs of smoke floating around volcanoes forever anywhere?

Also, since when is the ground pink? O_O

You should be a little more imaginative. It is Starcraft after all, our transition from real world to the Starcraft world cannot always be so concrete.

It's as good as it's gonna get unless someone miraculously discovers a high dirt to rocky dirt or mud blend XD.

Anyways, I'ma attach what I've got of the map so far... this is primarily in case I have to transmit the map across computers, but you guys can look to see what I have so far if you want... PM me or post on this thead if you're wondering what something is...

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