Hey howdy Muck.. 10B here
I suppose you want to first go over the rules of mapmaking.. here you go:
um.... er.... I must of misplaced the rules... actually there ain’t no rules.. a bunch of suggestions though.
Many players smoke in Ace’s High... I know, terrible habit but that’s the reality.. an average cigarette lasts about 6 minutes or... 25-30 miles so that’s about how far you want to place bases/strat.
Be careful placing too many ground objects in high traffic areas.. You’ll be able to see the main furball areas as your map develops.
Diversify!.. flat plains over here.. mountains over there.. keeps the map fresh, cuts down on the sameness..
Keep the cloud file simple.. There’s no rule in the helpme but I’m here to tell ya there IS one.. 8x8.. or 12x12 tops.. no 16x16 or gosh 32x32!!.. Players WILL complain about frame rates if you get too fancy. (they not crazy about storm clouds BTW)
Don’t place the HQ’s just yet.. start laying veh spawn points.. Now the map kinda starts to develop itself.. It starts to tell you where she wants the spawn points.. Sundog.. (CM terrain team leader) suggests 5 miles.. I kind of go with 8 miles myself but that depends on the roughness of the terrain. When you set spawn points.. look at the clock.. Ah geese.. this takes more time than laying the bases.. The gv folk will appreciate your work, they like the ground battle field detailed.. Again.. keep this away from main traffic areas for frame rate reasons.
HQ’s are the last thing you set.. You will have a pretty good idea where they should go at this point.. In fact.. the map is telling you where she wants them.
Muck, meet your art crew.. a buncha wild eyed long haired.. (if they had any hair).. bearded yahoos.. Sqrl and Nuttz do terrain art.. Ramzey, Kawssawa, Gatso, airplane skins.. Sqrl, Dux and you are on object skins and clipboard map.. I like this art crew.. they send their art exactly the day they say they’re going to. Don’t be afraid to send art back.. they won’t be offended they used to it from us.. Artwork might go back and forth 10 times.. send a note back.. a lil’ more green here.. Can you bring up the brown over there?
Some days the zips come at you hot an’ heavy make sure your artists identify themselves clearly on the header.. It’s easy to delete messages with attachments thinking it’s spam. I have an idea who I want to skin what, so as a convenience, I load up a zip file with all kinds of objects for each of them to work on.. makes it easier to compile when they send their work back.. In the message body, be very clear what your visualizing.. For example, I wrote back to Sqrl needing more pukas on the Henderson field tile.. He wrote back needing clarification.
Don’t forget to credit your art crew on the clipboard map somewhere..
Skuzzy is our liaison officer.. He’s the guy you send your draft jpg. It doesn’t have to be that big 512x is fine your just giving them an idea what your looking at.. Send them two or three if you can.. (shows your serious) If they don’t reply right away, I don’t think they’re ignoring us.. they got other projects going on and get a million emails every day... Go ahead and bug Skuzzy but be polite, yet business like and firm. They’ll get back to you.. All you need is a nod.. a shoulder shrug.. that means yes in HTCnise..
Post production is the least fun... You gonna have to get your squad guys to help on this.. 80 million spawn points runways, hangers, ships, weapon selection screen.. all have to be tested. You oughta farm this work out why?.. Well Muck your prolly on hour 200 at this point.. it’s time for a beer eh?. Just let em’ send you a list of errors..
Of course you know not to send a 3.5 MB source zip direct to HTC.. When the time comes I’ll show you how to use the FTP tool and where we upload all our stuff.
Oh btw.. CM Team screaming for Po Valley.. Weazel’s on it but it’s up in the air if he’s going to start working on it again. You might hook up w/ him and see what’s going on with that.. I tell ya what it’s only 20 or 30 bases as opposed to... say 255 bases.. what your thinking of doing. And Po valley is central Italy eh.. you get to use lots of olive greens and that.. That would be a fun project.
