Release: Semois-2

This map has been a while in the making - it's gone through progressively larger and larger sized groups of players. I'm still not convinced the resources are at a competitive level yet, so I'm opening it up to a larger audience. My hope is more exposure, more testing, more feedback.

The core tenant behind Semois-2 is to deliver on similar gameplay as Semois; that is terrain separated into three major areas with a fair number of cut-offs. In addition, I wanted to keep it to a similar 'feel' - Semois was a labour of love, and I wanted this one to be as well.

Download link is Here.

Resource map link can be viewed Here.

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March 2nd
- Major update:
- Added the two additional crossings from the Semois-2_Alt map.
- Hope is to allow more ways to flank and bypass the center, promote more gameplay on the two player sides.
- Additionally, should give more ways to break the center if its' locked down.
- All other crossings have been left intact.
- Main road no longer gives negative cover
- To counter this, all crossings now grant negative cover (Helps balance the shallows crossings a bit; don't stand on the bridges too long!
- Two main cutoffs are longer blocked from the player bases
- In addition, they've been moved closer to the crossings and heavy cover placed on the opposite sides
- Hope is to make capturing them still possible, but allowing the defending player to more easily defend it.
- Allies base area has been increased to prevent running out of space

Looks very promising, you should arrange new Custom map Tournament MVGame

Looks fun. I will download it and hopefully stream a couple of games on it soon. =)

NEAT! I'll want to play this with you Hans. It looks sweet.

It has 5 water markers, which i remember is not good for performance. But that aside, looks really cool! =)

It has 5 water markers, which i remember is not good for performance. But that aside, looks really cool! =)

there was a guideline for watermarkers in one of the map contests, because basicly the mem-stats button was/is broken and it is hardly possible to measure the map performance.
If you know what you're doing, you can break those rules here and there, but need to be careful. The rules were just enforced on us to be 100% sure about map performance in this contest, leaving no room to fuck up for the contenders.

The problem with water markers is, each of them creates a water surface which is used for the calculation of reflections individually. So, if you have multiple of them on one screen, the performance will drop significantly, cause all of them have to be calculated at the same time. If you make sure that individual water surface are separated so you don't have more than 2 on a screen at a time, the influence on performance controlable. Just save some resources by keeping the render count in that area low, don't use more than 1-2 textures, don't pile splats and splines, and you are ok.

Don't worry, I know what I'm doing - I've been using this map editor for 8 years now, I know a few tricks .

There are actually 4 markers - 3 for the main river (two crossings are shallows) an one in the 'dry river bed' on te other side of the map. Semois technically had 5.

(The church yard is actually the worst offender for render right now, I'm working on getting it down)

Well interesting map, so far i gave it a quick whirl against an AI just to get a feel for it. It has the Semois feel, but a bit more roomy, interesting points and cutoffs and not so easy to lock down the other player.

I think we should organise a small tournament to put it through its paces

Don't worry, I know what I'm doing - I've been using this map editor for 8 years now, I know a few tricks

I am sure you are, mate! Was just answering Spanky, didnt really want to teach you. Who am i to do that

@Onkel No problem

@Imperial Thanks - one of my goals was to 'mitigate' the 'Semois pin'. I wanted it to still be possible, but not as punishing (hence why buildings near the choke points have LOS flanking routes)

Yeah, i think you did that well. Plus you ensured that in case of brits. they can't easily camp the fuel right next to the base since you can now cut it off.

Overall nice design, liked the way buildings were spaced out.

Looks to be pretty interesting in terms of play. Though i'd have to see real humans play on it rather than just beating up a dummy ai

@AE: Sounds like a plan. Unless relic wants to add it to the automatch pool ;D

I haven't tested the map enough yet, but thus far it seems that there are too many med/high resource points. I'd replace some with low points.

@AE: Sounds like a plan. Unless relic wants to add it to the automatch pool ;D

How awesome would that be along with Argentan and Bois? Although, no offense to the mappers, but both Argentan and Bois, imo, need some fine tuning to be truly ready for competitive play.

The plan is to petition the highers up to get Semois-2 added to automatch, but only after it's had some tuning/balancing done. The last thing I want is to add a map in that's not ready for competitive play.

Well i am pretty sure you can get the community to help you with that

I think you should consider a 'non bridge' access to the mainland, preferably quite far away from the spawn, but still on the same side of the river. Something like the north of Semois.

The plan is to petition the highers up to get Semois-2 added to automatch, but only after it's had some tuning/balancing done. The last thing I want is to add a map in that's not ready for competitive play.

That would be great. Perhaps, one of the Coh2.org mods could recreate a news post to raise awareness and get the community more involved.

Also, I know that Relic is hard at work on Coh2, and so it would be imprudent to allocate valuable resources into coh1. However, if the community were willing to fix some of the glaring bugs of coh1 (retreat bug, m10 misfire, running cloaked, etc), would Relic be willing to incorporate the fixes in the patch that would introduce this map to automatch?
I'm no modder, but considering the interest that is shown in this thread: http://www.coh2.org/topic/1463/balance-vcoh-trolololo/page/5#post_id24779, I'm sure it won't be hard to find some that would be willing to do so.

I am sure you are, mate! Was just answering Spanky, didnt really want to teach you. Who am i to do that

Making me feel like a n00b now.

Making me feel like a n00b now.

btw, you can't name map as you did "semois-2" because it looks stupid. I suggest to name it Bartsdorf or Bartsville