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Author |
File Description |
Jecon |
Posted on 08/20/10 @ 08:15 PM
File Details |
Version: |
The Conquerors 1.0c |
This map is my entry for the Totally Terrain Contest. It has almost no units on it since it is for terrain not units. This map is intended to be used as a template for a scenario, if you want to use it as a template for your scenario, please contact me, email's in profile.
Please read the history before playing.
Enjoy and comment. |
Author | Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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Cataphract887
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 08/02/17 @ 12:47 PM
"Ruins of Anvard" portrays the desolate shamble of a kingdom which suffered a great calamity in the past. The scenario itself recommends to use marco polo instead of exploring manually, and indeed that would take a great deal of time as this map is quite ambitious in scope. Multiple towns are presented, there are forests and countrysides, mountain ranges, lakes and rivers with some bridges, a desert with an oasis. The problem with this is that for the most part the detail work is of an extremely low caliber. For example, the countryside town has not a single tree or inhabitant within a screenshots distance from it. The other two major towns suffer from the exact same problem. There is a mysterious tower with a ruined forest which is quite interesting, but a great deal of fleshing out is required with more use of gaia objects and a smoother transition into nearby terrain. The entire map really suffers from a blank looking terrain, with one of the highlights being a small island with vegetation and plants. But the entire map needs to look like this island in order to earn a high rated review.
How about the highlight, the namesake Ruins of Anvard? Its a decent try at a broken down fortress city, with rubble overgrown by numerous plants and deer grazing where kings once ruled. The remaining walls have a nice broken down look one would expect in such a situation. Unfortunately the author made the map in an era before off grid placement was easily available, and had to map copy around many plants to make this happen. This results in a quite symmetrical, neon green look to the affair. The plants are numbering in the thousands and are simply too overpowering. Some normal trees and bushes would go well but the reliance was entirely placed on the green plant item.
There was no type of ambience attempted with a musical score or sound effects, dialogues and the like. This is not a negative on the score per say but rather a missed opportunity to score points. The game story presented is a good idea but the grammar is quite poor with many errors, and it is presented in the History section, which makes for an unpleasant read in its small window.
In summary "Ruins of Anvard" is a decent attempt, but its over ambitious nature surely prevented its designer from bring out its full potential. [Edited on 08/03/17 @ 10:28 AM]
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Possidon
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 05/13/21 @ 04:58 AM
Rating: 3.0
The Ruins of Anvard showcase a large and diverse landscape, central to which are the titular ruins of an old city or castle. There’s plenty to see in the map with its large sense of diversity. To the north you will discover lush farmlands and a nicely designed, albeit seemingly abandoned town, whereas to the south you will encounter a vast desert full of tall dunes and a larger city, which is also seemingly abandoned. Separating these two different climates is a nicely designed mountain range and large lake, as well as a more rocky stone mine to the west. The overall design of the map is quite pretty in many areas. The forests and mountain range were particular highlights for me and I also liked the water mixing in the lakes. The use of elevation was also used to great effect in the desert to create dunes. I also liked the design of the oasis and some of the farmland.
However, there is plenty of room for improvement as many areas fall flat in its design. My first complaint is in the blandness of the map. While diverse and full of different climates, there is little terrain mixing to see and what attempts there are seem to be quite weak. Thats to say that there isn’t really much fluid mixing and blending of the terrains. For example the blending between the desert and grassy plain next to it is a line a Dirt 1 followed by a line of Dirt 2 and then a line of Grass 1. It makes the terrain seem quite blocky and patchy. There are many areas of the map which are quite barren and some additional terrain mixing or extra eye-candy would have worked wonders here to give the player more to see rather than a screen full of a single terrain and some elevation, as is the case in some areas of the desert. The towns are fairly well designed are the are some nice overlapped buildings which shows some skill with the map copy trick. However, the complete lack of any people is quite weird and makes the map lack any form of realism.
Finally, looking at the map’s central feature - the titular Ruins of Anvard - one can clearly see the author’s clear knowledge of some advanced editing tricks. The ruins showcase a decent attempt at the leftovers of an ancient castle city with damaged walls and towers, plenty of rubble and ruined buildings, all overgrown by the years of neglect. The author has used thousands of off-grid plants to form long grass that grows all over the ruins. While these days this trick is easy with Userpatch’s off-grid placement tool, back in 2010 this wasn’t so simple and required hours of work with Trigger Studio. This shows that Jecon has a clear knowledge of the editor and additional tools to create some more complex design tricks. However, the insane mass of neon-green plants can be quite sore of the eyes as they are too overpowering and bright. A couple normals trees, bushes and flowers mixing in around the plants would have been a great way to break up the mass of plants.
Additional Comments:
Overall I must praise the ambition of Jecon as this is a large showcase scenario with much to seen, yet much more work would be needed to make it more of a pleasant design. There plenty to see and some interesting ideas and with a little more detail it could be great.
Thanks
Possidon |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
Statistics |
Downloads: | 706 |
Favorites: [] | 1 |
Size: | 309.90 KB |
Added: | 08/20/10 |
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