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Guide To Building Maps
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MasterYoda

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Joined: Jan 02, 2016,
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MasterYoda

Messages: 48,
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Map Makers Guide
Hello Uniwarriors. I thought I would make my first and own forum, to share my own personal knowledge on building maps!

1. I would like to start off by saying there is no secret formula to making maps (it’s all about your own personal relative view or preferences. Every Uniwarrior has their own opinion on what is a good map. There is a more popular majority view also.
2. So when building maps don’t get disheartened! It’s easily done, once you start putting a lot of time and effort into bringing Uniwar well balanced and even fun maps, and then you test them with friends and high level players. You finally get the required votes to hit the random ranked level, and then BOOM! The negative votes start flooding in! So make your peace with it now! All modern maps made in the time of the latest ranking system will eventually fail. The requirements for ranked maps are 25 total votes and I think it has to keep at least 60% positive votes (the % may be higher than that) the more votes you get the harder it is to keep the % up. At the beginning you will get a lot of friendly votes (its normal) once the initial votes come in. there are not many others that vote at all (I’m talking like less than 1% of players vote at all. And you will get a lot of players who vote down blindly!
3. So once you have made your peace with these facts, you can begin focusing on the real goal of map making. (That is if your desire is to make random ranked maps) there are other desires like making purely fun maps or quests. The real goal of the map maker is to focus on what the Uniwar players want, finding out what Uniwarriors want from a map can take time. You can learn what others want from maps in a few ways. One asking yourself, would I want to find myself in a random ranked game on this map I’m making? If no, that’s most defiantly the first clue it’s not going to be popular. You can also ask your friends or more importantly global chat. Players on Uniwar always enjoy throwing in their opinions. But the most effective way to know what Uniwar players want is the hardest and longest way! Just working hard on maps and then stalk your maps watching how fast the negative votes come in. the slower the negative votes come the better the map is. Eventually you will find a Goldilocks zone for making maps. A place where the negative votes appear to be the slowest.
4. Once you have learned what the average Uniwarror likes or the global demand is for maps, you’re in good shape! Build maps, test them with your friends, and gather votes to get it into random ranked circulation! Let your map face on the brutal public! Getting it into circulation may seem like hard work, but its watching your map slowly get slaughtered until it gets unranked that really tires you out. Just remember when it is unranked, try not to stress, all maps are imbalanced one way or another, and therefore all maps have a reason for being unranked eventually. Its more about making a map that players are happy to put up with for some time
5. So now it’s time for me to share my tips, hints and suggestions to help you build a good map! (remembering what I say is not the only way to make a map, or even necessarily the right way to build a map, like I said before everyone has their own style and opinions on what a good map looks like or plays like) I’m only sharing my own experiences on building maps and what I personally have learned from the public from what their votes tell me and what they actually tell me. Also the higher my level or rank has gotten, my idea of a good map has dramatically changed! This is due to a better understanding of the units and the map tiles and how the effect EVERYTHING.
6. So the first thing I like to do when starting on a map, is putting a random tile right in the very most right bottom corner of the map or the very most south east corner of the map, this locks the map grid into a 30 x 30 grid. Then I set the map to symmetry and find the center of the grid. This helps weather your wanting to make symmetrical maps, none symmetrical maps or crazy weird shaped maps. Simply finding the center of the grid helps me feel less trapped by the edges of the grid. There’s nothing worse than spending many days building a map only to find that you can add tiles to the west because you’ve hit the edge of the grid. So find the center and play there.
7. There are many factors and thoughts you need to keep in mind before building maps, during your map build, and finalizing your maps. I will list many as I can here in simple form and move onto a more detailed description of them all. (1) You need to think about what sort of size you want your map to be. (2) You need to think about how many credits per turn you want coming out of the game, in other words how many credits per base. Also thinking about the starting credits too. (3) You need to think about what kind of units you want being played on your map, all of them, or specific units? (4) You need to think about all races, are all races equally balanced? (5) You need to think about units and base starting positions. You need to check whether it’s a rush, defence or build up map.
8. (1) So when considering what size map you want to build, the real trick is to simply start small and simple and slowly build up in size until you reach a size you enjoy. This will support you to not have loads of unnecessary tiles that serve no purpose. If you start swiping the whole grid with plain tiles and then wonder when you’re going to place other tiles afterwards you’re going to find yourself working extra hard to make the map look fun and balanced. So start small and slowly build out until its looks good! (2) You need to think about your starting credits and how many credits you want per turn, this is so very important. No matter how good your map is, if you don’t get the starting credits and credits per turn right, you could ruin all your hard work. With starting credits I find that people don’t like a 0 credit start, and most of the time don’t like starting credits over 200. As player one you generally get a starting move advantage, so don’t also give them 250 or more so they can pump out marauders (or something alike) and start destroying the enemy before they can even get their own units off their base much less capture their own bases. You also need to consider with starting credits what player two will get on round one. Generally no more than 450 credits as the reverse can happen, allowing player two to build two marauders (or something alike) and start crushing player one who couldn’t even build one marauder (or something alike) on his first turn. This is only one example of a good starting credit balance. There are many others, but this is an easy safe bet. Sometimes player one could have 700 starting credits and player two could have 1400 on turn one. This does not necessarily mean it’s unbalanced, it’s all about weather player one and player two both have fair advantages in some way. There are too many examples to really get into them. (3) you need to think about what kind of units you want to be played on the board, whether it be all of them or specific units, this all defends on the kind of map you have built, depending on the size, location of bases, amount of bases as well as the tiles you have placed down on your map. All these factors will decide what units you will end up being seen played on your map. If for any reason there’s a unit that is doing really well, but you don’t want that unit being played on the map, maybe you need to think about editing the above mentioned factors. For example if you have a lot of mountain tiles and forest tiles, you can expect marines (or something alike) start removing these tiles and put another tile there, like plains or swamps. There are many other examples, but I hope you get the point. (4) You need to think about all races, are they balanced? Main points of the three races are, Khraleans are quick so make sure you have not placed an underling too close to enemy in a way that it can stop them from capturing their own starting bases, or if there are uncontested bases in centre of map, make sure Khralean underling can rush the centre and win purely out of capping a centre base that no other race even had a chance to capture (personally I avoid building maps with an uneven amount of bases on the board or even a central uncontested base, those kind of maps usually turn into a who can capture the base first, and there are quests for that, so maybe your more of a quest map maker! (5) You need to think about where your bases are going to be located, owned and unowned bases. Usually it’s a good idea to have some bases unowned in order to have the correct starting credits for a game, depending on the amount of bases and your settings for starting credits will determine how many bases probably should be uncaptured. Where your bases are located can dramatically change the dynamics and tactics of a game. So many examples that it’s probably best I don’t cover them all. Generally its challenging to balance a map if opposing bases are within a few hexes from each other, generally the player with race advantage will trample all over the disadvantaged player, Titans – Khraleans / Khraleans – Sapiens / Sapiens – Titans … but bases should not be too far either. Titans generally rule the far away base maps (assuming that all players’ bases are in one area) bases spread out generally helps out Sapiens. Lots of bases generally will help Khraleans
9. Lastly there are so many different things you need to keep in mind that I couldn’t possibly cover them all, and even if I could, I wouldn’t be able to remember them all at once! Everyone and a while I would think to myself “oh yeah, that’s something to remember about building maps” I can always add extra information at a later date or edit this forum. Also I can edit this forum, to keep up to date with all the extra tips. Please feel free to comment on any factors I did miss while handing out these tips.

MasterYoda
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uw-sandman

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uw-sandman

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Protip:

-Go to UW-sandman's profile.
-"favorite" the map: TemplateLRG
-Open the map editor
-Press the 3 line button at the top left (where you can choose map properties or clear map)
-Choose "download online map"
-Change the "Player number" selector at the top left until it goes past 8 and the "house" icon until you see it showing the "heart" icon (favorites). 6 presses.
-Unless you have other favorites, TemplateLRG will be the only one there. Even if you have other favorites the list will likely be short.
-Choose "TemplateLRG"
-Hit the "check" button to begin
-Modify the map at will
-Save the map to file so you dont lose your changes

This map was made specifically to get a head start on building a map. The layout is designed to give the author "spacial awareness" while making the map.
Looking at the map it is possible to notice all of the different map "center" types. (single tile center, symmetrical 2 tile center, 3 tile center where the tile corners meet at a central point)
Once a map is made it doesnt matter where it is actually located in the editor. All maps are center viewed when someone plays them. This means that you can only use a corner of the template for your map and as long as no other tiles are present somewhere else when you publish it, the map will automatically become centered when people play.

Happy map making!
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Jeffph79

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Joined: Feb 26, 2017,
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Jeffph79

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Thanks for taking the time to give some good advice
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killermax636

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Joined: Aug 19, 2012,
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killermax636

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About the number of votes:
Actually, the number of votes doesn't equal to the number of TIME of votes. For example, a vote(time) by a 2500+ player worths 10 votes(number) and the number of votes reduces by 1 per vote for every 100 reduction of the threshold of the score, which means a vote by a 2400+ player worths 9 votes, 2300+ for 8 votes and so on. So the preferences of high level players apply much effect to the rating of your map.
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wookieontheweb

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Joined: Jan 27, 2016,
Location: Southampton, UK
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wookieontheweb

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Joined: Jan 27, 2016,
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  killermax636 wrote:About the number of votes:
Actually, the number of votes doesn't equal to the number of TIME of votes. For example, a vote(time) by a 2500+ player worths 10 votes(number) and the number of votes reduces by 1 per vote for every 100 reduction of the threshold of the score, which means a vote by a 2400+ player worths 9 votes, 2300+ for 8 votes and so on. So the preferences of high level players apply much effect to the rating of your map.


This doesn't seem right. Are you saying that a 2500+ player would get their map rated with just 3 up votes? I fluctuate between 1600 and 1800, but all my votes always affect the maps rated score by 1. And even when others have played my maps their votes only affect my map by +/- 1 irrespective of their player rating.

As a proposal though it seems like a good idea, though you'd have to change the 25 up votes to get a map rated as that seems far to easy if an average player like me is getting 3 to 4 votes per game.

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