I've only tested this in the CnC Mod, but I don't see why it shouldn't work everywhere.
Maps being made by hand without sophisticated tools risk being imperfect. Most people wouldn't notice and wouldn't be bothered by it. I am, because in some circumstances the issues are very big, even for very frequently played maps. And, if it was possible to make near-perfect symmetry-maps, why wouldn't you want to?
This is a gallery of my symmetry-analysis of some well-known CnC maps. It did surprise me how some well-known maps aren't completely symmetric (e.g. Haos Ridges) Download the files, open in Paint, and zoom in so you can see the pixels:
http://imgur.com/a/oeDGK
The first time I did this was for my re-touch of Psydev's Manufacturing Consent, which you can find here:
http://resource.openra.net/maps/5942/
Top: Manufacturing Consent. Cliffs are cyan, tiberium is red
Middle: Same as before, plus super-imposed flipped-versions (light grey), and my hand-drawn average (black)
Final: Manufacturing Consent 2.0 (black hand-drawn average from Middle).
As always, I prefer balance and fairness over prettiness. I feel the selection of tiles is quite limited (the original assets ARE pretty dated), meaning there can be lots of pressure to break symmetry because you're missing the right shape of tile.
I've attached my instructions on analysing map symmetries, and how to copy over the coordinates of the different pixels into OpenRA: [see attached How_To_Map.txt file]
I could easily hard-code a bash script dependent on the specific colors people pick. I'm using Paint.net defaults, so I'll get around to that at some point.
JAW0M's Map Symmetry
Average all Symmetries.then Convert .png to .oramap via YAML
JAW0M's Map Symmetry
- Attachments
-
- How_To_Map.txt
- Instructions for using Paint.net to process map thumbnails, and using Bash scripts to import coordinates from the final image into OpenRA. Each color pixel defines a different category of actor, located according to the pixel coordinates. Then just paint
- (6.75 KiB) Downloaded 275 times
Last edited by JAW0M on Sat Sep 26, 2015 1:00 am, edited 2 times in total.
Here are the Paint.net .pdn files which were flattened to create that gallery.
Thankfully these images are so low-resolution, its quite easy to upload/download them!
Thankfully these images are so low-resolution, its quite easy to upload/download them!
- Attachments
-
- Common_Map_Symmetries.zip
- The Paint.net .pdn files which were flattened to create that gallery.
- (159.95 KiB) Downloaded 276 times
@ddd
Bright red is the normal Haos
Grey is Haos, rotated 180 degrees
Dark red is where the normal, and the rotated, actually match up
Now, I've just rotated 180 degrees, maybe I should only rotate like 175, since it seems the big ore fields both have the same offset
But look at the low-ground near B, that totally doesn't match up
Also, the spawns don't quite overlap
It may be balanced, but it sure isn't perfectly symmetric
Bright red is the normal Haos
Grey is Haos, rotated 180 degrees
Dark red is where the normal, and the rotated, actually match up
Now, I've just rotated 180 degrees, maybe I should only rotate like 175, since it seems the big ore fields both have the same offset
But look at the low-ground near B, that totally doesn't match up
Also, the spawns don't quite overlap
It may be balanced, but it sure isn't perfectly symmetric