Custom Map #3166: CSM 3: Unabridged. By: Fireswamp

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This topic is for discussion of map #3166: CSM 3: Unabridged


Author: Fireswamp
Size: 256x128

[buttRcaT]

This has to be one of the first CSM maps I've actually enjoyed, thanks for the map!

[Durikkan]

A fun map.  Also a note to anyone that thinks the map has too many things for you to fiddle with, you can get well under an hour with minimal usage of the blockers and no usage of the stargate changers, so those are basically optional things you can use to speed up your run, and never required. 

I played a bit too lazy and ended with like 50 orbitals and started using land to make shortcuts to take out the final area, and noticed I could stack multiple suppressions to keep halving the enemy emitters and effectively just turn off the two final boss emitters.  Or multiple boost emitters to keep multiplying and quickly raise the friendly emitters to the point where they produce too much anti-creeper and start overflowing to creeper a bit.  I wonder if that stacking was unintended or if it's just a case of 'use your powers wisely'

[Fireswamp]

A fun map.  Also a note to anyone that thinks the map has too many things for you to fiddle with, you can get well under an hour with minimal usage of the blockers and no usage of the stargate changers, so those are basically optional things you can use to speed up your run, and never required. 

I played a bit too lazy and ended with like 50 orbitals and started using land to make shortcuts to take out the final area, and noticed I could stack multiple suppressions to keep halving the enemy emitters and effectively just turn off the two final boss emitters.  Or multiple boost emitters to keep multiplying and quickly raise the friendly emitters to the point where they produce too much anti-creeper and start overflowing to creeper a bit.  I wonder if that stacking was unintended or if it's just a case of 'use your powers wisely'

Stacking orbitals was intended, I put a lower bound on enemy emitters, they should be limited to go no lower than 20% of their base production.  Stacking the augmenter was intended, but I made it stack linearly to make it less powerful to stack even without the overflow.  I knew it could happen, I just tried to keep the numbers low enough that it wouldn't happen for most players.

I have a lot to say about the map; for anyone interested I made a walkthrough of the white & yellow areas designed for people entirely new to CSM and followed that up with a discussion about the future of CSM.  Video:

The discussion starts around the 35 minute mark, but I will summarize here for anyone who doesn't want to watch the video:

Short version is I need feedback for a lot of stuff.

Right now I am happy with the orbitals, excluding the range indicator which was a last minute addition, doesn't render properly, and I think isn't exactly accurate.
The bridges work fine, I didn't have an opportunity to show off the different sized bridges, and the controllers are missing a feature that isn't relevant to the current map.
The absorbers actually worked better than I thought they were going to, I was worried it would just add slog but now I think I undertuned them in the level and they just gave their reward with little issue.  Though that might have just been my playstyle.
These also the problem with feature creep; with CW3, CSM grew to this massive mode with so many features new players had no hope of getting into it without an hour of research.
I think I want to limit the number of features in each map (maybe CSM as a whole) so new players aren't completely overwhelmed.
With this in mind, I want to know how many features I should limit myself to, and which features to implement under those restrictions.
I am curious what other people thought of those mechanics; which mechanics should be changed/removed/kept.

In terms of level design I tried to make CSM less linear by letting the player chose which areas to take first, between white/yellow, black/pink and to a lesser extent, green/blue.  I don't think it worked out to well; this made the first section you tackled way too hard, and the second section way too easy; basically between white/yellow whatever you attacked first was too hard, but once you cleared one the other fell very easily.  My current best idea is to not bother with intended non-linearity and just let the terrain orbital be an option for players who want to progress in different directions.  If anyone has any ideas how map progression could be less linear, or if people think that CSM doesn't need it, I would love some feedback in that regard.

The in-game documentation on the other hand does need some discussion. Firstly I called it tutorial, I should have named it in game documentation, that will be fixed.  Into the discussion part though, as much as I love the ADA log for this, it isn't something that I know how to easily transfer between maps.  What I want to know is how should I do the in-game documentation and how should I give a proper tutorial, I don't know an easy way to implement everything cleanly.  As with the other stuff, feedback is appreciated.

There were some other minor issues but most of them were not much of a discussion, I just need to clean up some a lot of poorly written code.

[Durikkan]

Since you're specifically looking for feedback, I'll go into a bit more detail, though keep in mind I played a lot of cw3 csm. 

The boss emitter, it felt a little bit weird not being able to see its range. 

I didn't have any trouble with progression, though to me it felt like there was an obvious best choice at every level.  I think the orbitals were interesting and had a variety of utility.  The land orbital is interesting as it has other uses beyond attacking and a few times I used to to make more space for rockets. 

I'd say the start feels slightly overwhelming, I'm not sure if that's a function of getting 4 blockers right off the bat, and the other 4 that you can also kind of use as blockers or just to make shortcuts, or something else.  Also I wasn't sure it was mentioned somewhere in the help that the map was on a 1:100 terrain override ratio. 

Also a strange thing for me was that clicking on the info buttons once opens it, but if you want to open it a second time you have to go through the ada as the button does nothing and says nothing.  At the least it should be like 'open the ADA to read the message again'. 

As for as tutorializing, I think moving as much to the wiki as you can, as well as potentially updating the start screen to have something like 'Check the wiki for more information' or perhaps 'Check map #xxxx if you're not sure how to play' 

[hbarudi]

Finally more of this we need for CW4.

[ButterySkank]

Really enjoyed this map, I think this one has really high replay value.

Hope you make more maps like this in the future!!!