Minigame Robot Christmas -|Map of the Week #6|

[Strilanc]

In this Christmas themed map you control which units are trained, and where factories go. That's it. Everything else is handled by the surprisingly-fun-to-watch bot AI.

The reason the AI is fun to watch is because the individual bots follow very simple rules, but work together to get tasks done. Bots never look further than 600 distance away, but still need to find their way to trees, enemies, and back to base. A lone bot rarely finds it's way back to base, and dies in the wilderness.

Luckily, you aren't dealing with a single bot. Bots will blink certain colors to alert nearby bots of things they can't see. For example, when a bot can't find the base, it will blink blue. Nearby bots will then also blink blue, unless they are near the base, in which case they blink yellow, and other bots will see that yellow blink and blink yellow. When a lost bot sees a yellow blink, it heads towards it.

Just be careful: if you expand too much into a single area, you'll clear-cut the whole thing, and trees only grow by other trees.

The map also showcases me abusing the hell out of Decal, and can support up to 150 bots per player [but that can be quite hard on the cpu].

[edit: the author box is set to DGriff, I adapted this from a map of his, but there's really next to nothing left of it.]

 

[Joker(Div)]

The map crashes Warcraft when I just click on the name at the list of maps.

 

[MurderMode]

The map crashes Warcraft when I just click on the name at the list of maps.

I was going to try it but then this made me lawl

 

[Oninuva]

The map crashes Warcraft when I just click on the name at the list of maps.

It's just you. Plays fine for me.

 

[Joker(Div)]

How could my Warcraft be any different than yours?

 

[Oninuva]

Dunno but it worked for me.

 

[DrEvil]

How could my Warcraft be any different than yours?

Weird computer...
- I made a map , most of my friends could play it , but when my other friend did , he got fatal errors .

But i told him its his , WE because it doesnt give anybody else fatal errors.

 

[Strilanc]

I played it before posting it, so I know it doesn't crash everyone. It's not protected or anything, which makes it all the stranger.

 

[WolSHaman]

It worked fine for me too. Maybe it doesn't work for Macs, I've heard things like that before?

 

[Strilanc]

In any case I'm more interested in discussion about the map itself, not errors leading to it.

 

[WolSHaman]

In any case I'm more interested in discussion about the map itself, not errors leading to it.

I thought the trees grew to fast, it got really annoying having to chop down so many trees to reach an enemy.

 

[Flare]

Amusing - the blinking effect was very interesting. Not really something I'd play much more than once or twice, but was fun to watch the units interacting so nicely Could be a nice starting point for a good AI system (well, a less situational AI, can't imagine many maps having practically blind units )

 

[Strilanc]

I thought the trees grew to fast, it got really annoying having to chop down so many trees to reach an enemy.

Getting the rate right is actually quite hard. If it's too low you raze the whole map in no time at all. I always win because my opponent has clear-cut their entire section and I still have my corner feeding me.

 

[WolSHaman]

Getting the rate right is actually quite hard. If it's too low you raze the whole map in no time at all. I always win because my opponent has clear-cut their entire section and I still have my corner feeding me.

Nobody said it would be easy, but I thought it was to high... maybe have it so that host can choose the growth rate at the start?

 

[WindexIsBack]

Wow, an amazenly easy to understand and play game, yet fun.
No errors (vista 64bit, 6gigs of ram, 6800graphics)

This game could be unnatually fun if expanded upon; however more AI would have to be added (an agressive AI that hunts down enemy units, for example. Maybe this is in it)

I highly recommend expanding upon this map if you had any reconsiderations. If action was put up a speck, I would definetly host this on bnet.

 

[vypur85]

A fun game to play with . Nice one. But at least make it win-able...

 

[Joker(Div)]

Here's the error I get with I click over the map and when I try to open it.

Not enought storage is available to process this command.

Program: My worldedit.exe
File: .\SFile.cpp
Line: 4072

 

[Andrewgosu]

I absolutely love these kind of witty maps!

Controlling your economy and leaving the dirty job to the machines is fun...


Congratulations, this is the Map of the Week #6!

 

[Jolly chap*]

Intriguing. I wasted half an hour just watching these bots. Funny guys. Good job.

 

[Daskunk]

Recycle and Elfbot have same hotkey. This annoyed me when I was trying to SELL elfbots, and instead I made more! The computer AI sucks (the one controls building units for enemies) =(. Also, I didn't win when all the comps died!

I think it’s a little too slow going. It advanced quickly at the start, then got too a little bit of a stand still. Then, I quickly got max units so I couldn't build anymore, and the game couldn't advance AT ALL, because I had everything I could get! There needs to be more types of units, upgrades, and buildings to fix that.

I also think the map should be bigger (Not by tons, but some) but you should still start the same amount close together.

Btw, how to you make firebots destroy trees?


It seems like it is suppose to just be a simulation, where you watch the robots. But it has a great potential to be a strategy map at the same time, which I think you should do. Also, since there were only a few units, the simulation got boring pretty fast. This was because there wasn't enough different types of units with different uses, so once you saw how the robots worked together it was boring.

As for the units AI, they seemed to blink when they didn't need to, respond slowly to blinks (or not at all) some times. Still, they worked often enough to be fun.

I might have criticized your map a lot, but that doesn't mean I thought it was bad, it just could improve a lot!

EDIT: Some unit suggestions..

The Jockbot is a good base defender, but I think you should add a more aggressive bot that looks for other players to attack. I think it would be good to have a zeppelin that carries units over trees, too, but that might be too hard to make right..

There should be more buildings for sure, I think.

It would be cool if there was a bot that automatically made a much weaker lumber drop-off point that could heal a small amount like an engineer. As long as it built far enough away from other bases, and wasn't too strong. That would probably only work on a bigger map like I said, though.