Criticize this Helm's Deep Work in Progress Please

Need some constructive criticism on my Helm's Deep map.

Please bear in mind that in these early shots below the textures are just placeholder textures, and many of the terrain features are not in yet.

Thanks for any advice!

Shot showing Helm's Deep, the Keep, the Deep, and the Wall.


Closer shot of the Keep. Do the battlements look ok? The tower?


View of the gateway to the Keep. Forth Eorlingas! :)


You'll be able to garrison troops in the tower when all is said and done. I'm gonna' try and get it so when you eject them it'll put them on the walls around the tower, since if you didn't notice there's no other way up there. :)

Thanks and take care.

Looks pretty good, the tower shot looks cool.

I like the look of it. Although I'd rather see the Rohirrim in green or brown. Maybe the tower could be larger, more keep-esque?

As far as the garrison, it'd be pretty easy to modify the Orc Burrow ability so that it works.

Is there a unit-leaves-container event that you can use to detect when the tower is unloaded?

How do you do a cliff like those that you did?:bgrun:

you raise the terrain up high...

Nice, and don't forget the secret door....

You could raise the main gate higher (screenshot 3), a tall knight would bump his head entering/exiting it. (Seems soft of small compared to the big gates of the LOTR movie)

WHAT KIND OF CASTLE IS THAT...

Make a realistic castle with "regions" that take you inside "barracks", or "living quarters", or "black smith" areas.

What are they trying to defend, and oversized guard tower with a few bricks around it?

Make the front lines where the archers are standing places real archer players can walk around in(useing ramps), and alot of detail to the castle would be nice.

Try to keep it more interesting then all the other Helms deeps
"maybe add a bribe for alliance" thingy, to get aid from other kingdoms. (higher the cost, better the kingdom, the better the help"

Man, I love the way you think, if he added these I would definitly play this map, although I will probably play it anyway because I'm a fan of LOTR.

im makin a way better 1 , you can probably expect it next week , tthen ill release finished terrain shots , and i used the same way to make the walls , only better and realistic , to c another wall go to this post : http://www.wc3campaigns.com/forums/s...threadid=29470 :ggani: :ggani:

Azta, special thanks for your constructive comments.

Panto, I got it figgered out. I gave it the ship's cargo hold and a modified load ability for extra range. The bridges (see below) allow units to get right up next to the tower.

Mech_1000 wrote: A highly unfinished one. Keep watching. Hopefully it'll get better.

Some new shots:





Take care.

It looks like you're using pathing blockers a lot to make the walls impassable, so that you can use the white marble texture.

If that's so, aren't you going to run into the destructables limit pretty soon? It's normally 6441 dest. doodads allowed, if I remember right. While you can rig it to permit more, that could get laggy.

As an alternative, why not re-skin a wall texture to be something more appropriate?

I am using path blockers, but not in any way because of the texture. I'm using path blockers because when you raise terrain like I did, it doesn't block. I'm not using the cliff tool, but the raise terrain and plateau tools.

In the past I would use Zepir's editor to paint blocking around the cliffs and other no-walk areas, but either the new TFT:WE allows you to use these path blocking doodads or I'm blind and never noticed them in the old editor.

It did occur to me that my doodad count would be inflated by using all the blockers, but do you know how much easier it is to do the pathing inside the WE? I figured I'd go with the doodads for now and if it becomes a problem, I'll use Zepir's editor and just paint the pathing manually.

Just out of curiousity, why did you think the texture and path blockers were somehow related?

Take care.

I think we're thinking of the same thing here. I noticed you weren't using cliffs, but just changing the terrain height drastically.
Since the cliffs would do pathing-blocking on their own, I thought you might not be using the cliffs because you liked the look of the white marble for wall facings, and thus needed to use the pathing blockers to make them behave in a wall-ular fashion.
I didn't realize you could actually force pathing where you wanted it using Zepir's. That's pretty cool.

So, how do you control where the units unload to, when they exit the keep?

I've .... Said it B4 and I will say it again :

WOAH !!!

Panto, ahh. Yah, you're right. I despise cliffs, and always use terrain for them when I have to. The only use I have for the default cliffs is for walls.

If you click on their icon while they're garrisoned, you don't have control over where they go. But if you select Unload you get to place where they go, just like with a ship. It works good.

Several new shots of my progress here:

www.bellsouthpwp.net/n/i/ninquenor/newhdpics.htm

Here are a few...

Top-down of the Hornburg:


Bird's eye of the Hornburg:


Take care.