Final Alert2 Map Making Tips

The map making tips you find on this section are provided by various map makers in the community. If you'd like to add your tip to this section, please send an email to me and your tip, if not already posted, will be placed in this section...lion

by Almyghty  added 4/24/01
For those who've had questions about or problems with bridges, I hope the following information will help. I've discovered these facts through experimentation to fix problems in my own maps.

Bridge building tips:
1) While you CAN have bridges longer than 30 [diagonal] tiles, anything longer than that cannot be repaired. This is because a bridge repair hut will not repair a span longer than 30 (possibly more than 30, but definitely less than 40) tiles, regardless of how many bridge supports you place in between. If the overall span is longer than the maximum, the bridge repair hut will repair as far as the most distant bridge support that is closer than the maximum. (In other words, if the span is 70 tiles, and you have a bridge support 25 tiles away and another support 50 tiles away, the bridge repair hut will repair as far as the support that is 25 tiles away.) Thus, if you wish to create a longer bridge and still have it repairable, you need to break it up with an island/cliff 30 or fewer tiles away from each end.

2) If you find a bridge tile appearing "in the air" when trying to place a bridge support, or you can't seem to place a bridge end properly, this means that you're overlapping the bridge end or support with a bridge overlay tile. I've found that the best solution for this is to run bridge overlay to the approximate location of the bridge end or support, but leave a space or two, then place the support or end, and then finish the overlay. Another easy method works well if you're using something to divide the map to create a symmetrical map, in which case you can simply locate ends and supports relative to your dividing "line," and then use the simple overlay tool to place the rest of the bridge.

3) If a bridge is segmented with bridge supports, using Tanya, Ivan, etc., to blow up the bridge repair hut will only destroy the uppermost segment of the bridge. Of course, this still accomplishes the objective of making the bridge uncrossable, but it means you cannot drop enemy units into the water if they're "below" the uppermost segment.

4) Finally, to the best of my knowledge, there is no way to make a bridge indestructible.

by Cannis  added 4/14/01
Placement near blue and red borders and other tips:
The top of the map requires more leeway than the bottom, and the sides require the least leeway of all. At the top of the map there are cells you can see but units can't reach - ever see a load of gems at the top of the map that miners can't harvest? The moral of the story is, don't build near the top of the map, leave some breathing space there.

The borders are just rough guides, and shouldn't be taken as absolute markers. They're pretty good when map elevation at the top and bottom edges are 0, but as elevation at those edges increases the borders become very inaccurate. In extreme cases (elevation 8+), the visible area of the map may have to be manually changed to avoid graphical errors in the game [an aside:
this is an intermediate technique that can be covered in a later tutorial]. When in doubt, place trees, temporary pavement tiles, or other markers near the borders so you can see what units can reach and what they can't in the game.

The greatest range of elevation from the lowest to the highest point on the map is 14. In other words, if the bottom of the map is at elevation=0, then the highest point in the map cannot exceed elevation=14. Otherwise all cells at elevation=14+ will exhibit hall-of-mirrors (HOM) graphical errors in the game.

Decide from the outset if the map is to be used as a multiplayer map only,
or if skirmish games will also be supported. If skirmish games are to be
supported, the map will have to be constructed so that the computer AI
doesn't get confounded by the map. And the computer AI can get confounded
pretty damned easily, so if it's a skirmish map you're after, playtest
playtest playtest.

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