Player made Maps for STA2 Classic Mod 2013

posted on March 10th, 2014, 1:08 am

I like making maps. I especially like making maps when I have all the cool toys installed. Still learning how to do so in FO and it may take awhile yet. But A2 maps? I'm down with it. Relaxing and enjoyable to come up with an idea and then flesh it out. More fun when others D/L one of these and then go all 'Ooohh!' and 'Aaahh!' over it.

Back in the A2 map making business now that I have rifraf's mod installed. No idea where I'll host them yet. But I'll burn that bridge right before I cross it later. rofl. In the meantime, I am looking for some guinea pi...errr, volunteers. Yeah. That's the word. Volunteers. To test out my new maps on. Mua. ha. ha. ha. ha.

Drop a post here or send me an email and I'll send you a copy of what I'm doing.

posted on March 10th, 2014, 3:24 am

Wow TF, you're jumping right in. I don't think anyone's made a stock A2 map in many years? I'm sure you caught that I edited all the maps to be +/- 250 on the Z-axis? I know you are a far more experienced modder than I, but I just wanted to point that out. I never liked how the devs let you go/build at such height/depths in the map.

I have your map packs from quite a few years ago where you were altering the map lighting and such. Those looked really great.

I'm releasing the next version of the mod momentarily with a new name so sorry about that too.

posted on March 11th, 2014, 1:48 am

Mad Doc did the height and depth thing in A2 to prevent people from doing nothing but turtling online. Which was a very strong tactic in Armada 1 online. Admittedly, they went a little overboard with it but their intentions were good.

Not really jumping back in. I have a whole notebook of ideas for maps I never got 'round to doing anything with which has been laying idle for about three years. I dunno if you ever tried any of the maps I uploaded to MSFC but the little feedback I got about them convinced me the Community was starved for some good quality maps to play on. Maps which weren't so even on both sides and had balance applied on multiple levels rather than everyone having access to identical resources. Maps which had backstories.

Popped into the D/L Section of MSFC and saw most of my work was still there and going strong. Didn't think about grabbing the map packs because I was surprised all the Terran Empire stuff seemed to be deleted. A shame that is. Although I am certain Majestic wouldn't have removed it without having very good reasons. Reckon I'll go 'round tomorrow and D/L all the maps I uploaded over there. They should play well with the mod.

posted on March 11th, 2014, 5:33 am

Mad Doc did the height and depth thing in A2 to prevent people from doing nothing but turtling online. Which was a very strong tactic in Armada 1 online.

That's mostly because the torpedo turrets were very powerful for the cost, only slightly more dilithium than the pulse turrets but twice the DPS. And the destroyers were so worthless that one pulse turret could shred a squad. It's something I'm looking into for Super Classic Advanced.

Popped into the D/L Section of MSFC and saw most of my work was still there and going strong. Didn't think about grabbing the map packs because I was surprised all the Terran Empire stuff seemed to be deleted.

I see them in the Terran section. There's a Lakota, Excelsior class, ISS Exclesior, Sovereign, Akira, Defiant, Nova, Ambuscade, Intrepid, Steamrunner, Galaxy Dreadnaught, and Enterprise-D Dreadnaught, all by you or you and Jetfreak. Some of the links are broken, but I should be able to fix that.

posted on March 11th, 2014, 12:37 pm

Thank you, Cabal. I placed all of my original files on a thumb drive. On it were plans and ideas for a Terran Empire Full Race Mod. Which I find all of a sudden I'd like very much to complete, lol. But the thumb drive has gone missing and I had no other backups. Jetfreak did a stupendous job on those ships and I'd like to use them again. I doubt I'll release a public version since these days I am modding for myself. But I've always enjoyed tinkering with the game more than playing it.

@rifraf - One of the things MadDoc did not do was a very good QA pass on the original files. There are many background and map things missing from the ODF files which improve the stage, scenery, lighting, and sound effects. Please consider checking and adjusting the following two lines in the planet and nebula ODFS. Add them if missing and change the values if they are present. The Stock values are all over the place as usual. I used the sound file provided in Midnight Universe for the mnebula_12 ODF and my own sound files for all the others.

ambientMinimumFactor = 0.35
ambientMaximumFactor = 0.95

These two lines will bring out the sounds effects coded for each of the planets and nebulas. They will also allow them to be background sounds unless you click directly on the item in question. I did an Ambient Sound Effects Mod which is over on MSFC and It works pretty well with your stuff. I did not add it en masse, however. I added the sounds to the sound file and then tweaked the ODFS you used.

posted on March 11th, 2014, 2:15 pm

Thanks TF. I'll give those a try tonite. I would never have thought to mess with stuff like that. I've probably missed out on so much just for being afraid to try something different here and there.

posted on March 11th, 2014, 4:45 pm

Some of the links are broken, but I should be able to fix that.

Or not. There doesn't seem to be Terran anything on the server except for the stuff that was just recently uploaded. All of your other stuff (like your map packs) is still there and works and the download entries for the Terran ships are there, but the files themselves are missing. I'll PM Jetfreak and see if he still has them.

posted on March 12th, 2014, 2:44 am

Always liked the FO map backgrounds. Classy, elegant and above all understated. So today before I went to work I tried something. Renamed them. Well the first part. Changed out the "env_" part for "mbg" and left the rest of the mapname alone. They work perfectly this way except for one thing. When you click on them in the Map Editor Environment Settings, you get a blank grey screen where the preview is. The FO backgrounds show up on the map, just not in the Preview screen. I can live with this. Ash released some ZH backgrounds over on A2Files which he wasn't going to use and these are very very good as well. Terradhyne has released some excellent backgrounds as well over the years.

Think for a start, I'll bring my old BSG HRM mods across to this. Had a lot of fun making those. The FO backgrounds should make them look much nicer.

EDIT: Just got done trying out a map I made for a contest over on A2Files long ago. It is called Romulan Redoubt. I was a little concerned the Map Editor would perform a crash to Desktop because there are some elements in the map which are not Stock. I shouldn't have worried.. swapped out the old planets for the new ones and the map loaded and played.

Whew! I was worried I had forgotten how to do this, lol. Should be able to post some pics later during the weekend.

posted on March 15th, 2014, 1:58 pm

Thanks TF. I'll give those a try tonite. I would never have thought to mess with stuff like that. I've probably missed out on so much just for being afraid to try something different here and there.

The values I posted previously are too high.

Spending the weekend working on map stuff. Yacuzza included some spectacular planet textures which I have decided are too pretty not to use in place of the Stock ones. I have a whole set worked up for the Stock planets.

don_quijote did a cloud texture awhile back which with proper adjustment, is much nicer than the Stock one as well.

Sadly, I may not be able to send you either one of these due to their being derivatives of someone else's work. I've no idea about how to get in contact with either one for release permissions. And I am most definitely not going to get into any arguments or problems about release permissions.

What I can do is send you all the other planet stuff, asteroid stuff, sound stuff and maps I've worked up. The sound effect files have been a humongous PITA over the last three days. I couldn't quite figure out how they interacted with each other. Some of the ambient sounds could be heard clear across the map and never attenuated properly. The Asteroid fields were a particularly bad offender. They would cover up everything else and never diminish.

I never liked the Stock Asteroid fields. So I tweaked them and they now look and act more..."asteroidy"?

I've redone my mod, Robert Stein's Planets, so it works well with your mod. Haven't gotten the latest version yet but this should work with that one too. Ditto for my Colonies of Cobol mod. Ditto for my Gas Giants mod.

I am going to redo all of the maps I've released anywhere and send these off to you. This will include the maps I did for the BSG HRM mod. These are based upon an official poster map released by the production company. So players can actually move and fight throughout the Twelve Colonies.

The only map I cannot do the above with is my Klingon Glacis map. Which is one of my favorites. I neglectd to keep a copy for myself somehow :-(. If anyone reading this has a copy, I'd really appreciate it if you could send me one as well.

Thank you rifraf. For caring enough about a very old game to spend the time and effort it takes to keep it alive. The old girl was a lot of fun back in the day and thanks to you a lot of people can still enjoy a classic.

posted on March 15th, 2014, 11:02 pm

Hi TF. Did you have new values for me to try if the first one's you posted were too high. The values you gave me went into the v1.1 mod and sounded great though.

I used Don_Quijote's planets and I believe the cloud texture on them is his cloud fix. I did use your suggestions for turbulence=0 and they look so much better and not warped when moving. He let Freyr use them in his unreleased Upgrade Project and since I took over I kept them in. Actually he had free use on the planets part. Anyway, I'd love to see your other works whenever you have them ready.

posted on March 16th, 2014, 1:59 pm

@rifraf - If those values worked, then great! Was working on the Doppler shift and attenuation values. With those values, I found the ambient noise from the asteroid fields followed me all over the map.

As promised, pics of my BSG HRM maps. Along with pic of Hades Verdant, anopther map I made. Haven't gotten around to changing out the asteroid fields yet but they are next







Oooops! How'd that get in there? lol

posted on March 16th, 2014, 8:27 pm

@Thunderfoot - Those planets sure do look great. When you talk about the ambient sound issue is this in the UP 2014 mod or your own in FO? Reason I ask is because the stock audio.odf values caused that issue with me. I could hear ambient sounds, warp and weapons fire from across the map plus weird audio anomalies like screeches and such . The FO team uses different settings so copy over their audio.odf into yours and see if that works.

I've used their settings for all versions of the mod so not sure why you may be having issues if this is the mod you're using as it cured it for me?

posted on August 13th, 2016, 8:29 pm

Back in the day I made quite a few maps for classic Armada II. I took full advantage of the height in the maps makes awesome attacks right down there throats.

posted on August 13th, 2016, 9:45 pm

You, sir, receive the monthly award for "best thread necro"

posted on August 15th, 2016, 2:12 am

lmao yeah I see that now... Was not wearing my glasses. Oh well.