Hi, this is my first serious (or at least semi-serious ) attempt at melee mapmaking that I put together today. I wanted this to be a fast-paced map with plenty strategical possibilities for each race. I did this mainly by limiting the open space to move around, making it somewhat difficult to quickly maneuver ground troops, therefore making scouting and proper placement of your forces vital.

I'm not too experienced in map balance, but I tried to follow the guidelines from the sticky. What I've given most thought is Terran balance. There's some space for setting up containment on the cliffs, which I balanced by making starting bases without tight chokepoints and with two entrances. As I see it, the battle on this map would focus on the middle expos - the double mineral on the top and the mineral-gas at the bottom. Holding the first one can lead to a great economical advantage, but it is difficult to secure properly, with three ramps and two passages from the main bases leading directly to it.

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The map is T > All. You didn't give terran balance, you gave them complete dominance. Main to main distance is way too short, and if Z doesn't 4pool and win, then T auto-wins due to tanks > everything in every place on this map. A single ramp, or three normal sized ramps do not make an area open. Large, custom ramps and lack of high ground make an area open. Your multiple routes are all thin and easily T dominated. The map is extremely tight and linear, avoid straight lines in the future. Also, there are reverse ramps to use over at broodwarmaps.net. Download them and use them.

Looks nice, but y, T overpowerd.
You can camp with tanks at the outpost so the enemy can't escape.

Thanks, guys, I'll be looking into it some more. Probably will have to rework most of it completely :]

How about something in this direction? It's ugly like hell (no doodads yet), but I'm still working on it :]. I took Excalibur's advice and downloaded some neat backwards ramps and even modified them to make those wide ones in the middle.
I'm sort of stuck here. There's still room for adding some interesting terrain, but I'm not yet sure what would work well. I'll probably put it off for a while until inspiration and/or some good advice from you folks come.
I think this version would give more hard time for a Terran player than the first one, as there's more space to harass and less to fortify with tanks/turrets. But, from what I've seen on these forums, professional opinion is valued here, so I'll gladly accept any feedback you might have.

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Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 27 2008, 12:28 pm by Szgk.

The high dirt behind the natural must be made smaller, because tanks can be dropped there and that's generally considered T imbalance. Make it so thin that tanks can't fit on it. The width is fine.

IMO it'd look better if the corner expoes (the ones with gas) were moved to the sides. Also I think that they should be made mineral onllys and the ones in the middle made gas expos. The mains should be less "square" and more natural looking.

Also, T needs room behind their mineral lines (nat too) to place turrets, which your nat doesn't have. Muta harrass would be made too dangerous.

Yes. But the map itself is awesome.
Even the costum ramps are nice.
BUT the ramp at the -> base has a wall-tile in front. It blocks.

I noticed it not long after posting the last picture and fixed it. I've yet to develop a steady hand for making a mess-free terrain ;x

Still tight and linear. Come up with a better concept if possible. What I'd try and do is open paint and using only the pencil, curve, and elliptical tools, design a map. Also, try to do (4)s instead of (2)s. 128x128 (4) maps are a good place to start. You can make them X/Y/XY symmetrical or XY symmetrical if you do rotational symmetry.

Listen, I watch games but don't play, so I don't know melee balance that well, so I'll suggest in the form of questions and uncertainty:

*I do like the general concept of the map -- having a weird central expansion for each while blocking it off. However, I'm not sure it's worth them taking it with it seeming so open. See how close the wide ramps are? The mineral blockade is nice but easily taken out (0 min, < 8 min, or > 8 each?) leaving this expansion like the corner expansions: very vulnerable from all angles, right? I figure Terran has a pretty easy time at guarding barriers and abusing them near important things with siege tho. Just a thought. Perhaps making it a terrain barrier instead might be interesting? Or a much thinner path between them, with mineral or building barrier (or buildings with a mineral patch for workers to latch on to for passing through like on Plasma)?
[pressed some key combo and managed to accidentally post early, sorry.]

*I do agree that the center should have a gas to make it worth it, but keep in mind there aren't a lot of (gas) expansions on this map. I'm guessing you'd never see any late zerg games on this map? Kinda important.

*The terrain itself is too plain. There's wide open and then there's vulnerable bases. Would it be better to consider making the center expansions smaller and the corner expansions closed off a bit more? I think there's more than enough building space at each base currently... And perhaps use some thin cliff mess to make the open space more interesting... like a jut-out or something. What I mean by cliff mess is when you have cliff, but it has swiss cheese holes to make it basically unusable for things like tanks.

...
*takes another look* Yeah I guess it's a bit tight still in terms of paths. I think making the central expansions tighter themselves might help with that, especially since they can be used to shell easily. I'd just like to see less base openings mainly, or at least some tighter and one open on each or whatnot.

Comments?

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jan 8 2009, 8:36 pm by StrikerX22.

Its alright, but it is not very well thought out. For instance you built the map to either last very short or ridiculously long. Because you have so much area to go to that someone could easily start a cat and mouse game, or hold off on the ridges.
What i would do would be to take the ridges near the base and shorted them so a base could send units around the top of the ice as well as the bottom
Then i would add more gas, since you have two...