Dire Straits

[Biz]

Dire Straits is an open land map with some water (mostly shallows). The resources on land are pretty normal and symmetrical for all players, but the truly randomized map generation should provide a wide variety of experiences that encourage scouting and adapting. It’s designed to be fair, but not completely predictable.

Team 1 = Blue . Team 2 = Red​

It requires DE and the following settings:

• 1v1 on Tiny (2-Player)
• 2v2 on Medium (4-Player)
• 3v3 on Normal (6-Player)
• 4v4 on Large (8-Player)

Key features include:

• Varied maps and player positions. Exploration is key, as players aren't always placed in a circle.
• Only one fast fish and some shore fish per lake. Fishing doesn't overpower all other strategies.
• Primarily land-based gameplay. Warships can be used tactically instead of just for fire galley rushes.
• 150 wood trees. Fewer trees keeps the land more open for offensive options.

A more detailed description (with more images) is available here.

Dire Straits is built using a different process than a typical AoE2 map in order to generate unpredictable geography while validating each map with a computer program to keep things fair for both teams. For more information about how to create maps like this, including the source code for all the programs used, see this guide.

The AoE2:DE mod for this map is available here.

 

[simonsan]

Awesome documentation!

 

[MaSmOrRa]

Just out of curiosity, are you the same Biz that made the unofficial 1.0e patch for AoC? With some pretty radical balance changes?

 

[Poxo]

And I thought we were about to learn about some great music, and it's just AoE 11

 

[IvIaximus]

And I thought we were about to learn about some great music, and it's just AoE 11

For a moment, I thought I was the only one who made such assumption.

 

[Breakfast]

Cheat Codes:

Love Over Gold
- Players can only train trash units

Alchemy
- All resources become gold piles

Brothers in Arms
- Instant Allied Victory for all living players

Industrial Disease
- Any unit within ten tiles of a blacksmith dies instantly

Making Movies
- All players become AI-controlled

Romeo and Juliet
- All male and female villagers pair up and commit suicide

Once Upon a Time in the West
- All villagers turn into hand cannoneers, but hand cannoneers with cool ponchos

Money for Nothing
- Just the robin hood cheat by a different name

Incidentally, the map looks really nice. Would be cool if we saw it competitively at some point soon!

 

[Lot]

Cheat Codes:

Love Over Gold
- Players can only train trash units

Alchemy
- All resources become gold piles

Brothers in Arms
- Instant Allied Victory for all living players

Industrial Disease
- Any unit within ten tiles of a blacksmith dies instantly

Making Movies
- All players become AI-controlled

Romeo and Juliet
- All male and female villagers pair up and commit suicide

Once Upon a Time in the West
- All villagers turn into hand cannoneers, but hand cannoneers with cool ponchos

Money for Nothing
- Just the robin hood cheat by a different name

Incidentally, the map looks really nice. Would be cool if we saw it competitively at some point soon!

Where is walk of life-cheatcode?

 

[Breakfast]

Where is walk of life-cheatcode?

Walk of Life plays automatically at the end of each match, of course, because it's the perfect song with which to end anything.

 

[Biz]

Just out of curiosity, are you the same Biz that made the unofficial 1.0e patch for AoC? With some pretty radical balance changes?

I am that Biz.
I did not make 1.0e (that was an anticheat patch during the Zone days).

I did submit a call for beta testing for an unofficial 1.0f balance patch a long time ago (options were limited since we didn't really have multiplayer mods back then), but it never left the beta stage. The intent of the public beta was to try stuff, fine-tune the values for the useful changes and discard other changes. That never happened because nobody really wanted to test anything (lots of people telling me 1.0c balance was perfect though, lmao), so I just released the changelog and let people download the unfinished beta if anyone wanted an alternative to 1.0c.

I remember some people thinking it was radical, but even if 100% of the proposals were incorporated into the game (without tuning or discarding any of them), the changes would be minor compared to what all the official expansions and patches have done. There was a lot of "don't change the game. the balance is fine" mentality back then when you didn't even need a hotkey for house. If you want to wade through 10-year-old forum archives, I'm sure it'll be a trip.

I mostly stopped playing the game for the last decade because of poor civ balance & netcode. I only came back for DE because Microsoft+Partners (I'm not really sure who works on what these days) have done some good work with the server-based netcode and because the "radical" official balance changes nerfed all the overpowered civs. There's still room for improvement since the weaker civs still seem too weak, but the nerfs have been long overdue.

They also added some new commands for map scripting, so I made one to demonstrate what we can do with them.

 

[MaSmOrRa]

I am that Biz.
I did not make 1.0e (that was an anticheat patch during the Zone days).

I did submit a call for beta testing for an unofficial 1.0f balance patch a long time ago (options were limited since we didn't really have multiplayer mods back then), but it never left the beta stage. The intent of the public beta was to try stuff, fine-tune the values for the useful changes and discard other changes. That never happened because nobody really wanted to test anything (lots of people telling me 1.0c balance was perfect though, lmao), so I just released the changelog and let people download the unfinished beta if anyone wanted an alternative to 1.0c.

I remember some people thinking it was radical, but even if 100% of the proposals were incorporated into the game (without tuning or discarding any of them), the changes would be minor compared to what all the official expansions and patches have done. There was a lot of "don't change the game. the balance is fine" mentality back then when you didn't even need a hotkey for house. If you want to wade through 10-year-old forum archives, I'm sure it'll be a trip.

I mostly stopped playing the game for the last decade because of poor civ balance & netcode. I only came back for DE because Microsoft+Partners (I'm not really sure who works on what these days) have done some good work with the server-based netcode and because the "radical" official balance changes nerfed all the overpowered civs. There's still room for improvement since the weaker civs still seem too weak, but the nerfs have been long overdue.

They also added some new commands for map scripting, so I made one to demonstrate what we can do with them.

Ah yeah, my bad, 1.0f it was.

I remember thinking you could be a bit of a jer...erm... a bit outspoken in forums, but I always thought your posts made a lot of sense and your changes too, once you actually took the time to explain them.

Glad you’re back!

 

[simonsan]

That brought me to an idea: We could recommend special map seeds/maps to people that maybe like more e.g. closed maps/more open ones. For this we would need to design a "scale of point values". We could develop kind of a recommendation algorithm based on these values and sort/categorize maps on e.g. aoe2maps like this. Or on other platforms that support the developed schematics.

We could also discuss here about that, wrote something on that topic under other projects - #aoe2map (although that might be still a bit offtopic there :-/ )

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