I received a bunch of compliments for my elite maps, as well as a bunch of complaints from people who want elite maps to be random rather than pre-saved. So I figured I'd share my secrets, so that everybody can make a good elite map at the spot and play on an entirely new map each game.
There's 4 steps to take.
1) Select a nice random map to work with. The easiest ones to use are high island maps (either from box 1, 2 or 4; you can also use an inverted cave or even a double layer cave, but that's for later). For now we will use a high island map. Try to pick one that looks complicated and preferably one that reaches near the top. The more elaborate the map, the less need for editing later on.
In this tutorial I will use this one:
2) Rough editing. Select brushsize
5 and fill up any large gaps, and at the same time open up the huge land masses by drawing rudimentary caves into them (finetuning will come later, don't worry about this for now).
Note how I've added some land on the top right and left, as well as in the huge opening between the islands. I've also drawn a cave in the bottom right to open up the great land mass there. As you can see, it still looks really crude and basic.NB: Try to prevent the creation of closed off spaces: always try to find a way to connect a cave with the open air. Nevertheless, a real danger lies in the creation of too many vertical shafts. As for example happened in my elitemap #2. As you can see below, it consists almost entirely of shafts that reach pretty much all the way down.. it's playable, but definitely not the best map I've made.. Try to incorporate horizontal layers, so that a nice balance exists between horizontal, vertical and diagonal layers.
3) Finetune the map. Use brushsize
4 (or 3, but not 1 or 2!!) and fix the parts that don't quite look natural. The original map surface tends to look just fine (apart from missing a few hides here and there), it's just the added parts that generally need finetuning.
This step seems hard, but it's really pretty easy. Right click with the brush to carve out hides in the terrain. When you're done, use left click-brush to fix the surface into a more natural state (as opposed to a Fabrousse-type roper map). Slighly drag the brush to create natural slopes.
Keep on carving at the map until you are satisfied with the result.
Here you can see what I did to the cave in the bottom right. It looked really basic at first, but became every more complicated as I kept carving at its surface. The 1st stage is the original cave after completing step 2. In the 2nd stage you can see how I added terrain by left click brush. In the 3rd stage I further finetuned the cave by alternating between left click and right click brush. This was definitely the part of the map that took most fixing, but nevertheless it took me no more than half a minute.After finetuning the rest of the map, it looked like this:
As you can see, the number of hides in the map has increased tenfold. All of the added parts have been made to look natural.
Also note how I've added some extra land at the top in the middle (the back of the grasshoppers' head). It's never too late to make changes you know.
A little dot at the bottom of the middle part is a random, fancy addition.4) Now it's time for the final check. Click on preview map:
What you want to look at is:
A) the spread of the objects across the map (make sure the object count is set to 10 and bridges to 1). Are there any 'missing'? (e.g. some larger holes could really need an object to fill it up; or sometimes the distribution is just crap).
B) the balance between space and terrain. I often make the mistake of making too many wide, open spaces. There needs to be enough land to torch into.
In this case I had problems with both. The fruits weren't exactly where I wanted them to be (somewhere in the middle to fill up the large gaps) and some caves were too wide:
Thus I fixed the map by adding some terrain in the caves.
In the middle part of the map, I furthermore managed to get a leaf in there by actually removing a chunk of land.. big objects need some space you know. After these tiny fixes I was satisfied with the result. Elitemap27.BIT was done and ready for game!
I have not used a timer, but I think it should be possible to make a map like this in two to three minutes (depending on how perfectionist you are
). It should be no problem to make a new one each time you host a game. Make sure you save it though. A lot of times rehosting is necessary.. the map will be gone then if you don't save it.
Same technique can be used to make roper maps (like this:
https://www.tus-wa.com/maps/map-487/).
Feel free to post your creations here, I'd like to see what people can come up with
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