My first RMA map!

[Latino210]

Having finished my static map, I want to try an RMA map. My idea is to defend some refugees holed into a dilapidated WWII fortress in a desert/badlands area. The schematic should be this:

*R*
*M*
***

M: Main area, the fortress proper. Civilians spawn on the center, player spawns on the ruined walls, no aliens.
R: Road tile with some crashed vehicles, some aliens
*: Random desert or ruins tiles, a lot of alien spawns.

Now, I would like to get an hint on dimensions. I was thinking about making a fortress 512X512 big, enough to force the player to divide his forces but not so much to make the map boring. The * and R squares would be the same dimension, obviously. This will make the assembled map 1536 X 1536, 48 squares wide and with 2304 square area! Do you think that it will work? I am thinking about a "fort Alamo" stile battle, with an horde of aliens at the gates!

[ShipIt]

My concern would be the 512 square would make for a somewhat small fortress. But you can try and adjust the size if needed.

In general I'd think if you end up like 2500x2500 it is still medium size.

[H-Hour]

I agree with ShipIt. But check out existing maps -- look at how many tiles their RMA represents. The largest usually have permiters of 11 or 12 (each 11 times 256 grid units). Check out medium and small builds in their .ump files to see how large they are, then go in and play them and try to visualize how your fortress would fit.

[Latino210]

Yes, thanks. So, any size is good as long as it's a multiple of 256. I am experimenting with some 512X512 tiles. Just one question: I am making some ruined walls with the clipper module and some "stone" brushes. The result is pretty good, but the number of polygons is getting high. Is there any risk of gettin an overflow and/or slowness? Take a look at that, for example. It's a small ruined building with some civilians holed in it. Do you think that the engine can handle a map with some buildings in this state?

[Mattn]

please try to not use the carving tool that excessive. it can produce a lot of problems.

[H-Hour]

Yes, you are likely to produce errors making a destroyed building this way. You'll need to try and build one brush at a time.

Take a look at the bridge map to see how mattn made the destroyed buildings on that map. You can also check out the mansion map. ShipIt did a nice medieval wall that is crumbling on one of the tiles.

[ShipIt]

The setup looks really good with the textures are giving the right feeling about the scenario you want to make. Unfortunately, as Mattn and H-Hour said,  you will need to find another way to do the brushwork. The way you did it will result in vertices being out of grid, producing warnings and errors when compiling and also in game.

Also, if making RMA you will have to consider shadows. If you build the house near the border of the tile, the shadow will be cut off. This will make the final map looking strange.

[bayo]

And more than everything else... post a screenshot 

[ShipIt]

[Latino210]

All right, clean it up and start again. Thanks for the quick reply, too bad because the result was quite beautiful. Do you think I can use a lot of "stone" brushes on top of a square wall?

[ShipIt]

Just keep the vertices alligned to the grid.