Eve of the Apocalypse: Twilight

It's not done yet but putting the basic info out there for initial comments/concerns.

4 lane map, lanes are generally fairly wide open (not necessarily as open as stormwail but only slightly less so). All lanes have visible roads so people won't complain about getting lost. No lane intersections. Transition between lanes should be fairly easy. My goal was a lane setup more like Verdant but with lots more space.

There's currently only one layer of outpost halls, but with multiple tower layers, but this could change if it doesn't work out well (initially it was due to a lack of space, but now its clear that space exists, however I want to see how games go with only single layers of bases). The biggest problem I'm anticipating with this will be difficulty in reaching the front lines, so I'm considering adding capturable portal stones if necessary.

Gloomite remains but excavating it will work differently. Gloom is suppose to be Stormwail-lite, so I'm aiming for a simpler obelisk mechanic. There are 4 dig sites (currently), all in the lanes. There will be a circle of power that you can click on and pay 250 to summon a digmaster. The digmaster functions somewhat like the obelisk towers in that he represents control of the site (he's a unit not a tower fyi). Digmaster himself doesn't harvest the gloomite, but he'll regularly summon the old miners to get it, which means a site's productivity goes up the longer it is held. Killing miners also results in a partial loss of productivity without necessarily capturing the entire site.

The two far corners are currently unused, so I MIGHT add some other feature to the map to make them useful, but odds of that are fairly low since it's most likely unnecessary. Having an unclaimed outpost or two would be kind of interesting but might just turn into a rush for who claims it first to win.

DarnYak

Sounds awesome can you post an ariel view picture of the map layout?

Sounds awesome can you post an ariel view picture of the map layout?

Word.

I'll post a pic when it's more complete. Right now it's fairly barren aside from roads, and stuff is still getting moved around.

DarnYak

Is there a max limit on the amount of miners summoned?
Also, what would be the life of the dig master? Would he be treated as magic-immune? Does he get summoned instantly? Does he just stand there idly or does he attack?
It does look like a better replacement than the passive miner excavation.

There's a max but i'm undecided on how long it should take to reach max. 5m seems too short but 10m too long, so probably 7-8m.

Digmaster's will probably be a hero unit that sits at your team's average level. Undecided on magic immunity but likely would die too fast without it. Definiately attacks and moves around in the vacinity.

DarnYak

Work in progress still but stable enough to show it: Notes:
- It doesn't look as swamplike/gloomy as it ought to, in part because I had to remove water to make the lanes clearer, but also in part becaus its got blue water in the editor instead of the brown water in game
- A strange 'coincidence' resulted in an inn being located in the lower middle lane, and some giant rocks appearing on the upper middle lane, making it strangely convinent to use inn/rock lanes to refer to these lanes
- As you can see, everything's different aside from the corner islands
- Still no real plans for the corners. I am planning to add waygates (near turn in the lanes) but that won't take up much space. Alternatively I might put them near the fountains, but that kind of bothers me for being almost behind front lines

DarnYak

Currently toying with the idea of adding another lane of sorts that paths through the corners, however this one will be a branch off top/bottom lane and will have a command tower like switch of sorts to steer which way your spawns are headed. This would result in additional gloomite patches in the corners. I'm not 100% sold on the idea yet, although I'm leaning towards adding new things just to see how it plays out (disabling it would be easy if it turns out bad after all)

DarnYak

Sounds interesting. I say go for it.

The Gloom revamp looks good btw (new lanes, that is). My only concern is this:

Notes:
- It doesn't look as swamplike/gloomy as it ought to, in part because I had to remove water to make the lanes clearer, but also in part becaus its got blue water in the editor instead of the brown water in game

The aesthetic appeal is why I liked Gloom so much. Completely fresh and different from some of the other maps...Really, really hope you can keep as much of that swampy/gloom shit in there as much as possible.

I forgot it's easy to enable the different colored water in the editor, so here's a random shot with it on. This still doesn't have gloom's fog enabled, which is another big part of the effect, but you can see how much different water color changes the atmosphere.
DarnYak

Looks good so far.
Siege and AoE heroes look like they'll do pretty well here with the tower layers.

Looks good so far.
Siege and AoE heroes look like they'll do pretty well here with the tower layers.

Yeah, loving the layering. Looks great.

FYI I've opted against the branching lane idea, in part because the map wasn't really designed with it in mind to properly make use of it and in part because there's not really enough space to pull it off.

DarnYak

Finalized map screenshots.

DarnYak

Pathing looks good. Where you able to keep most/all of the old gloomy effects in? Hard to tell from the pic, and I won't be playing until after Christmas break....