Map Name: Ante Portas
Author: General Aurum
Community: CnC Source Forums
Players: 2
| Map Overview |
Map Name: Ante Portas Author: General Aurum Community: CnC Source Forums Players: 2 |
| Ratings |
| Original Concept: 15.8/20 Ballance: 10/15 Eye Candy: 19/30 Fun Factor: 11.6/20 Scripts: 9.6/15 Overall Score: 66 (7th) Valid Score: 67 (7th) Hexetic: 70 (4th) Clazzy: 66 (9th) Bhones: 70 (4th) spyVspy: 65 (13th) Assassin: 59 (14th) Final Position: 7th |
| Organizer Comments (For Judges) |
| -> 2 players -> Starting units in the center are defined by scripts. |
| Judge: Hexetic |
| Original Concept: 16/20 -->Map Layout Realism: 5/5 -->Starting Positions: 4/5 -->Tactical Concept: 7/10 Ballance: 12/15 -->Economic Overview: 5/5 -->Base Overview: 3/5 -->Expansion Overview: 4/5 -->Umballanced Civilian Units: 0/-10 Eye Candy: 17/30 -->Texture Usage: 6/10 -->Cliffs And Elevations: 4/5 -->Water and Bridges: 3/5 -->Additional Details: 4/5 -->Lighting And Fog: 0/5 -->Error Checking: 0/-20 -->Problematic Tiberium Fields: 0/-5 Fun Factor: 17/20 -->Personal Gameplay Experience.: 8/10 -->AI Performance: 4/5 -->Tactical Performance: 5/5 -->Missing Minimap: 0/-5 -->Problematic Camera Settings: 0/-5 Scripts: 8/15 -->Quantity Of Scripts: 2/5 -->Quality Of Scripts: 6/10 -->Broken Scripts: 0/-5 Overall Score: 70 (4th) Comments: City siege with line of defense A very well-done "city siege" map, but balance issues and limited texturing drag it down. The defensive line and free starting units are a cool idea, but represent a fundamental imbalance in the map. The besieged player in the city has a fairly easy-to-defend position while the besieger is stuck with a wide-open plain and no better access to resources than the player in the city. Some kind of chokepoints leading into the besieger's base would have helped propel this to an 80-percenter, as well as better texturing work, particularly around the edges of Tiberium fields and the large "Tiberium canyon" on the top of the map. A battle this long usually also calls for Tiberium spikes, though the EMP for the defender is a nice touch and came in handy when I battled the AI, who performs well but tended to attack along two lines running around the small hill near the middle. |
| Judge: Clazzy |
| Original Concept 14/20 Ballance 12/15 Eye Candy 19/30 Fun Factor 13/20 Scripts 8/15 Overall Score: 66 (9th) Comments: This map is a nice concept, but a bit too flat in layout. The starting units in the middle are strange but interesting, I'm guessing it was an attempt to make the map like an entrenched city. The bottom left mountainous area was completely pointless and could've been made into something more exciting. Finally, parts of the city seemed out of place, in particular the graveyard and the medina (which seemed a bit silly almost completely surrounding the main city). Otherwise, fairly interesting. |
| Judge: Bhones |
| Original Concept: 14/20 -->Map Layout Realism: 4/5 -->Starting Positions: 4/5 -->Tactical Concept: 6/10 Ballance: 14/15 -->Economic Overview: 5/5 -->Base Overview: 4/5 -->Expansion Overview: 5/5 -->Umballanced Civilian Units: 0/-10 Eye Candy: 14/30 -->Texture Usage: 6/10 -->Cliffs And Elevations: 3/5 -->Water and Bridges: 3/5 -->Additional Details: 3/5 -->Lighting And Fog: 3/5 -->Error Checking: -4/-20 -->Problematic Tiberium Fields: 0/-5 Fun Factor: 13/20 -->Personal Gameplay Experience.: 7/10 -->AI Performance: 3/5 -->Tactical Performance: 3/5 -->Missing Minimap: 0/-5 -->Problematic Camera Settings: 0/-5 Scripts: 15/15 -->Quantity Of Scripts: 5/5 -->Quality Of Scripts: 10/10 -->Broken Scripts: 0/-5 Overall Score: 70 (4th) Comments: Original Concept -->Map Layout Realism: The map is a depiction of a desert port city in decline. The city is mostly battle damaged, not Tiberium infected, though, Tiberium does indeed grow within city limits. There are many cars and roads. With the exception of one road on the west side, roads are undamaged, be it next to a crater or damaged building, though, there are a few large craters that should have deposited a large amount of dirt on the streets beside them. Desert areas look ok, with some variation of texture. -->Starting Positions: Starting bases were large enough, and close enough to starting resources. The southern player had no access at the start to any tech buildings, as they are all in the northern cty area. -->Tactical Concept: There is a city, one large one in the north, and the buildings provide a myriad of choke points, while still having areas for expansion. There is a sea in the north, which it is inconsquential to the gameplay. There are cliffs in the south-east, and the north-west. In the NW hills is a valley filled with Tiberium, and the valley has a couple entrances. Southern mountain range is simply impassible. While the elements were present, they were not much of an influence to game-play. Ballance -->Economic Overview: Initial resources are almost the same distance to each conyard. -->Base Overview: The base in the north is within a city, and the buildings create varied avenues of ingress. The southern base has no choke points to speak of, and thus, has plenty of ways to approach their base, as well. That being said, I felt the map was a bit too wide. -->Expansion Overview: Strategically, the two bases are very different: one starts in a city surrounded by buildings with a line of troops along the center trench and access to a pulse generator and a subway. The other player starts with the ability to expand early, to build without much limitation due to structures or terrain, and have no bonus structures to capture close by. The northern conyard is 100 cells closer to a secondary Tiberium field than the southern player. Having the expansion units made up for it, allowing the player to extend their reach from the start to be closer to secondary resources. Yeah, I'd say they were different. -->Umballanced Civilian Units: Eye Candy -->Texture Usage: Textures variations are, well, varied. In the desert areas, textures are placed in fairly large patches and swaths, with some smaller patches with a higher concentration of textures within a small area. The city is concrete and asphalt, with a central park area, all in decline. Potholes and craters scar the city, but roads were mostly intact, with the exception of the occasional Pavement Scorch. -->Cliffs And Elevations: Mountains to the south-west get to be extemely high, and do not enter the game-play other than to provide a border. The mountains to the north-east has a valley that is full of Tiberium. There are three narrow entrances to it, and are quite some distance from the start positions. In between the north range, and the center of the map is a large butte, and it is inaccessible. This butte is too far away from the direct path to either base to impact game-play. -->Water and Bridges: Large sea port at the north end of the map which serves as the northern border of the map. No bridges were used. -->Additional Details: There are details, but they repeat too often. The roads are miraculously untouched by craters, though they have pavement scorch marks. Some attention to the mountains, their erosion patterns, and their fallen rocks is needed. -->Lighting And Fog: Fog (dust) used. Works well with the theme. No changes to lighting. -->Error Checking: Most of the smaller patches have blending errors, as if the author had a texture in place, made some changes to the map that called fro a change in texture, and instead of changing the texture, they textured over the old, blended texture, inaccuratly, leaving the blended edge from the old texture, but a hard line seperating it from the current one. Some areas have long edges that are not not blended. Texturing is not well done in the mountains, and their shape is not believable. -->Problematic Tiberium Fields: Fun Factor -->Personal Gameplay Experience.: Starting as the player within the city, I was given a line of a squad of units at the start that were along the center diagonal. Next to them are garrisonable structures, and so, they were garrisoned with those starting squads. Game-play was alright, when the AI was aggressive, and not taking a nap. Some height variations would have made a difference, as well as at least one path to each base that was a little narrower than the rest, say, through the huge southern mountain, with perhaps some tech building or Tiberium field? -->AI Performance: The AI during my testing of this map was inconsistant. At times, it played well, and at other times, it played as if someone told them to take a nap. -->Tactical Performance: Expanding to the tiberium valley on the right side of the map was the most fun. The AI was always there, and sending units to after mine. Fighting agressively, I was able to complete the map in a short time, not expanding much at all, really. If the map was not as wide, it would play much faster, and not lose any of the abillity to have large conflicts. -->Missing Minimap: Mini-map included. -->Problematic Camera Settings: Map set to 170/450. Alright. Scripts -->Quantity Of Scripts: Tested each script to make sure they performed as described within the scripting in Worldbuilder. They do. -->Quality Of Scripts: Having these units available at the start was cool. The scripts had different effects on both players. I enjoyed the simple, yet effective way they added to the game play. For me, this also fit the theme of the map, as there could already be units in an area that has been under siege. -->Broken Scripts: Nothing broken. Well done. Overall Comments: Bhones wrote no overall comments for this map. |
| Judge: spyVspy |
| Original Concept 18/20 Ballance 7/15 Eye Candy 20/30 Fun Factor 10/20 Scripts 10/15 Overall Score: 65 (13th) Comments: spyVspy wrote no overall comments for this map. |
| Judge: Assassin |
| Original Concept 17/20 Ballance 5/15 Eye Candy 25/30 Fun Factor 5/20 Scripts 7/15 Overall Score: 59 (14th) Comments: Original Concept: The map design is not symmetrical and nicely detailed it paints the picture of a quite realistic dockside city and invaders coming in from the outskirts of the city, player at the top is clearly in a defending point of the city. this map could easily be created into an assault objective based skirmish map which would be intresting. Nice map design quite original.and a really nicely populated city. Ballance: The map is somewhat balanced, the player at the top has 4 tiberium fields, while the one at the bottom has 2 big green fields and one small one closer to its base this seems a little unfair, there is also a huge amount of green and blue tiberum in the top right corner which is equal distance for both players, the first player starting off with infantry to garrison all the bunkers surrounding the city also provides a slight advantage to player one, and tech buildings are mostly located within the city. Eye Candy: Visually this map is very nice, texture variation is great and looks really nice, fog I feel doesnt quite suit the map moreso its color should be changed, nice amounts of props and excellent detailing on the city, some really nicely detailed mountains and rough terrain in areas of the map, has a nicely made dock area on the city. Fun Factor: This map is just way too big for a 1 vs 1 player map and tends to run a little slow paced the AI performs pretty average on this map lengths should be taken to make the AI more challenging on this map. I think this map would make a really great assault/objective based skirmish map that would really suit what the author has done with the map too. I also took off some points as this map is just way too big and overwhelming which takes away from the fun a little. Scripts: Points for functionality its a nice feature having all the infantry to garrison the bunkers around the city, though id like it better if they were already garrisoned to save the player some time. the correct infantry starts for each faction though the Scrin ismost disadvantaged starting with Buzzers to garrison. Overall Comments: This map has alot of detail, thought and effort put into it, its not symmetrical and is quite a realistic design, balancing could use some work and needs revising a little on this map, visually its very nice but the fog colour doesnt suit the map I think if the color was changed and using slightly different lighting the look and feel of the map could be increased alot by simply that. AI could be a bit more challenging on this map I think it functioned poorly due to the sheer size of the map as this map is way too big for two players it really needs to be scaled down I found it a little overwhelming as the player. Great effort but Id suggest keeping the same map design on a smaller scale for a smaller map *move everything in tighter remove some things and shrink the map, Id suggest to the author to create a script to make player 1 defend the city and player 2 to destroy the city and make it an assault style objective based map I think it would be alot of fun and would suit the theme of the map completly. |
| Author Submission Email |
| Hello honored judges of the C&C Open Map Competition. I am General Aurum, and I hereby present my map, Ante Portas, for your perusal. The map's name is in Latin, and roughly means "before the gates" or "at the gates." You may either contact me at CNC Source, where my screen-name is also General Aurum, or through e-mail at generalaurum@ironriver.tv. Kinda repetitive, I know. |