Emperor Dracula's, "Real" series maps. Maps based on Earth and fantasy sources. ----- Author's Name: Emperor Dracula E-Mail Address: EmperorDracula@yahoo.com Author's ICQ: 25269716 Name of Map: Real Earth V1 Primary Map Type: Space. Secondary Map Type: Unique. Size of Map: Zipped: 14.8MB Unzipped: 14.8MB Memory Used: 128MB Map Size: 63 X 63 Maximum Number of Players: 10 Tested: Yes, took a darn long time too. Tools Used: Annihilator 1.5, PaintShop Pro 5, enough Wild Cherry Pepsi to drown a whale. Known Bugs: *Tell an airplane to fly across the whole map and he may go backwards. This is apparently a problem with the main game engine. Unit AI was definately not optimized for pathfinding on insanely large maps like this. *Nukes can only target about 40 screens away. Simple flaw with nuke units. *The AI can only effectively target the enemy 40 screens away. Flaw in TA engine. ----- Graphics: This map is a major departure from my previous maps due to my using multiple tilesets. Mr.Fred has spent much of his time merging many of Cavedogs tiles into one set, that all smoothly blend together and with no harsh straight lines. I tried to fill the whole map with a vast variety of eyecandy. Some really neat looking things on this map include the Great Wall of China, the Mushroom Kingdom of China, the Forest Grooves of Russia, the Rock Gardens of Europe, the Gasbag Maze of Africa, the Crystal Canyon of Antartica, the Rain Forests of South America, the Metropolis of America, and many more incrdible sites. There are of coarse many minor items of interest scattered about. Oh yeah, the space stations are pretty cool looking too, ahem. We have RawDeal to thank for the space tileset. I should mention now in my defense that the harsh straight line between space and Earth is intentional. I figure since Earth is a sphere, and TA worlds are flat, I'd make my TA map just like a typical classroom map. Meaning, Earth is streched flat with sharp edges. The reason I made space above and below Earth only is because I wanted to make Earth the full 63 screens wide max the TA engine allows. That left room on the top and bottom so I stuck in space for cool air only wars. With all that in mind I believe "Real Earth V1" has to be worth a 10. ----- Mechanics: Well, as anyone can imagine getting everything working smooth on a map of this size and complexity took a very long time. I spent hours at a time fueled by Wild Cherry Pepsi and a desire to make this beauty perfect. First off getting space to work was a nightmare. I tried a large bridge linked network of space platforms at first, but figured I had plenty of linked areas on Earth. I decided space should be a special air only section. Certainly adds to the stratagy I think. Now I couldn't make space "lava" like everyone else has, because my map has oceans ships needed access to. Thus I voided out all of space as land. Big mistake. My UFO file soared to 79MB. It would seem voided areas are not compressed. So I tried a neat little tricked I'd learned making "Epic Marsh". I made space "water" that was too shallow to build ships in. Then voided off a thin strip across the area where space turns into Earth. Thus navies have no access to space. Yet the water is also a little to deep to send land forces into. Transports can't drop them into space, and the space platforms are surronded by a voided ring. This causes two very minor problems. First, spashes when some planes are shot down. So what. Second, you can build torpedo launchers and a few other useless things in space. So what. Overall this works 99% perfectly. Also, there is the matter of resource placements. I do believe it is quite spread out. Every area has its own strenths and weaknesses. For instance, the space stations have lots of resources, but little room to build. Russia has lots of resources, but it is spread out a lot, making it a lot to defend. America has a ton of metal to suck outta buildings, but little in the way of metal mines for a constant flow. South America and Africa are both about average. The Middle East and Australia have less resources, but are quite defensable. Europe is a hard place to launch a land based assault due to location, but has an array of rock rings in place to prevent being rushed. Antartica has many many resources, but the concentrated areas are hard to defend, and the rest is scattered about so they are hard to find. I also checked all the heights with various tanks. MrFred did a very good job on heights. I think a huge, complex, perfect map like this has to earn the ultimate rating of a perfect 10. ----- Gameplay: This map is a blast to play against other humans. Everyone tends to go after their favorite spot right away. Some go to their home country to defend it from the enemy. While others look for an easily defensible spot. While still others look to take over resource rich areas from which to launch all out attacks. Just like on the real Earth, there are choke points you'll want to grab. The enlarged Panama Canal is a good way to keep certain areas of the sea to yourself. Also the numerous paths in the Forest Grooves of Russia make for good defensive positions with plenty of cover to hide a devision and some radar jammers in. Also the Great Wall of China is an exellent thing to hide behind. As anyone can plainly see the possiblities are absolutly endless. Every battle turns out diffrent. And with so much space to hide in you'll have to finish each battle with a little Vietnam style search and destroy. And just for the fun of it, try nuking the great city of the USA. It should be noted that the AI can be a bit sluggish at times. I put in the (in)famous BAI "Blood Thirty" AI. That improved it, but the TA engine is pretty sad when it comes to pathfinding on a map this insanely large. Warning, the AI is extremely effective at holding ground. Thus imagine an AI game as "Free Occupied Europe" or something like that. All in all, there really is an infinate array of tactics to try out here. Thus I would think infinate possibilities would equal a rating of 10. ----- Overall: I really am impressed with this map. It's flat out the best of the maps I've made, and in fact the best map ever made(IMHO). Everything about it just screams with intensity. The entire map is nothing but eyecandy. That's not easy when the map is 63X63 screens huge. And the mechanics are perfect. Again, not easy with such a huge, complex, and groundbreaking map. And due to the tactical brillance of the layout we can all fight endless wars on just this one map. Though I must give credit to God himself who created the world that inspired these incredible landmasses. Futhermore, I must give credit to Mr.Fred for the tilesets of Earth, RawDeal for the space tilesets, and Brave Sir Robin for the "Blood Thirty AI". Also I should thank my co-workers for not wringing my neck during my numerous speeches about the glorious maps I'm always making. Sure, they've never been TA players, but I had to have somebody to yack away at about my TA maps all day long, every single day, for the past few months. I mean my speeches are so breathtaking they sometimes actually run away screaming for joy, or agony, I always get them mixed up. Anyways, I do believe that a map that has all this greatness, and causes such strong emotional outbursts from my co-workers, can only be worty of a perfect rating of 10. ----- Story: The story of Earth in its current state dates back to December 1999. During what would later become know as "The Balkin Conflict", a force known as NATO bombed the embassy to a country called Russia. This lead to full blown war among these two factions that spread across the world as everyone took sides for a winner takes all total war. This conflict lasted for 200 years at various levels of intensity. It was this hopeless situation that caused many people to reach for the stars so that they might leave war behind them, forever. Thus the greatest minds created means to travel to other worlds and the entire galaxy was eventually colozined. Finally the space colonists broke into two distinct factions, the Arm and the Core. The Core ordered all humans to be patterned as the new technique was called. But the Arm refused for spiritual reasons. Those on Earth were too mistrusting of any others to allow themselves to be patterned. Thus was the "Great Galactic War" started. It is unknown who struck first, but the Arm, Core, NATO, and USSR were finally at war. The first planet the Core tried to force into patterning was Earth. It was after all the humans homeworld. But when all patterning teams were killed on sight the Core ordered the extermination of the "vermin". Thus the Core sent thousands of nukes to Earth. And thus, if only for a few hours, the Solar System had two suns. For the Earth became a massive fireball as the surface was blasted away and the atmosphere fried. Only America wasn't atomized. For they had a top secret nuclear shield in place. But it was little use against the furious winds that tore the land apart. When the fires burnt out the Earth was a very diffrent place. However, it has been ignored all these centuries because only now is it radiation free. And thus the Arm and the Core battle for control of the ultimate prize, their homeworld. Arm plans to reintroduce all the animals of Earth from their DNA files. Core plans to cover the Earth in metal to finally exterminate all biological life as we know it. ----- Website: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Castle/6642/ Please visit my website. I plan on turning into an information site about Earth and other maps. ----- My current PC: InWin Full Tower Case/300WT 3 extra high speed case fans Abit BH6 mainboard Pentium II 400MHz 256MB PC100 RAM Diamond Monster Fusion 16MB AGP Sound Blaster Live Full Diamond SupraExpress 56i Sp IBM 10GB 7200RPM Hard Drive Acer 36X CD Drive 21" Sony 500PS Monitor Altec Lansing 48's Speakers And a bunch of other little kick ass things. Anybody wanna buy me a fully equiped Cray? My machine barely plays this map at full speed with 10 players...