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In case you missed it on the MariusNet or OoH forums...

A Very Idiot Christmas - Anywhere
Remember the Anywhere plugins are multiplayer unless they specifically say "Solo Anywhere"...

*** Happy Holidays!***

Here's a snapshot of AVIC-A CTF played on the included Snowy Maps plugin version of Proving Grounds (those are all Snowball Dorfs plus one Killer Snowman):

Man, that looks awesome. Can't wait for Saturday's games!

Hey, we should do some more where we open up our game for part of the night, let the masses in on our secret of having fun.

Great plugin. The only thing i miss is the Snow on the ground. It would be great if you change the mesh of the ground into snow, so all the multiplayer maps are covered with snow, that would be awesome.

Bou wrote:Great plugin.

Thanks! Feel free to rate it on The Tain as well. Good ratings help keep plugin makers motivated to make more.

Remember the original conversion is not my creation, but that of Demosthenes and the Idiot Mapmaking Collective. I've just tweaked/expanded it and made it playable "Anywhere".

Bou wrote:The only thing i miss is the Snow on the ground. It would be great if you change the mesh of the ground into snow, so all the multiplayer maps are covered with snow, that would be awesome.

Aye, the way they look now is like the very first snow is starting to fall.

For the maps: Volunteers (such as yourself) are welcome.

Dividing the work load among multiple people is the way to go for something like this. Each person could do one map. I would look at the original A Very Idiot Christmas map to see how they did theirs. You need some Photoshop skeels (not just painting the ground white), water needs to look and act like ice, etc.

I spent a whole day (not counting the hours of groundwork for the Anywhere plugins themselves) to make the unit tagset. It'd be neat to have a group of people come together to do the multi-maps side, as I doubt I will be able to devote any time to it.

Basically if the transformed (into snow/ice) maps meet OoH "standards", I would include them in an upgrade to the currently very simple Snowy Maps plugin.

Baak wrote:

Bou wrote:The only thing i miss is the Snow on the ground. It would be great if you change the mesh of the ground into snow, so all the multiplayer maps are covered with snow, that would be awesome.

Aye, the way they look now is like the very first snow is starting to fall.

For the maps: Volunteers (such as yourself) are welcome.

Dividing the work load among multiple people is the way to go for something like this. Each person could do one map. I would look at the original A Very Idiot Christmas map to see how they did theirs. You need some Photoshop skeels (not just painting the ground white), water needs to look and act like ice, etc.

IF there were such a project I'd volunteer to convert the Venice map (I already have a rough draft that needs a lot more visual polishing).

Besides the obvious visual changes needed to convert a map to be more wintery, a couple of things (that probably more than obvious to most anyone making maps) that should be changed for any map with water that you want to convert to ice are:

1) Change the displacement/height map so that all media (water) is the same height (the height of the ground at the edge of the water). If you don't do this you'll end up with a bowl of ice instead of a flat surface you can walk 'across' - and only thrall and wights will be able to traverse the deepest sections of your ice bowl.

2) Change the terrain type of the water you converted to ice to something hard (like rocky) so that bottles will blow up and other projectiles will bounce appropriately.

3) Remove the reflection map (or make it all white) so your ice won't appear to 'ripple' and you won't have fish jumping out of your ice, or precipitation making splashes in your 'ice'.

And one more cosmetic thing to change for _any_ winter map depending on the look and feel you are wanting is to change the scenery items to their wintery equivalents (if there are any). If you want the 'OMG Global Warming in the Myth Universe is causing such extreme weather that this desert is suddenly covered in snow' look you can of course leave cacti and green plants sticking up from the snow and even leave trees as they were on the original map. If you want a more consistently traditional wintery look and feel then I think bare trees or snowy trees and plants (or no plants) looks more wintery.

Of course _ideally_ one might like to see a light coating of snow on castle walls and other models, but that's probably more work than anyone wants to do for something with such a short shelf life.

Nice job, one of my favorite memories was testing the original =-).