Hello guys, long time no see!
It's been a long time that I made a map. At some point, I just got demotivated because none of my maps ever got played. But the recent hype around SC:R and great success of JungleTerrain with Uzi Sara being part of a korean tournament gave me a motivation boost.
So here I am, getting my hands dirty once again on Barzak. I've read all the good advice of the other versions and I try to realize them in this version. I hope you can give me good and constructive feedback once again.

So far, just the top half is mostly fleshed out, to give the basic idea of the map. Of course its still undecorated and full of tank holes and stuff, I want to get the concept right first before I have to change everything multiple times.

My personal opinion so far:
- The middle island should be removed, because it makes the center very tight and hard to move around. also it increases the cross distance between bases, while the short distances stay uneffected.
- I tried my best to make perfect symmetry with the new cool features of ScmDraft 0.9, but then I realized that the naturals and gas expensions have to be adjusted, due to irregular gas and mineral size and taking into account CCs with scans. I had to make all nats and gas expos on the left / right edge a bit wider then their equals on the top / bottom.
modified by PhilipJayFry

What I really liked about the concept of the original Barzak was the focus on bridges and the interesting regular pattern and symmetry that imposed on the centre. I think you should stick with that (you could use lots of asphalt and asphalt to water transitions to emphasize the artificial look. I think the real challenge is to optimize the position of bridges, paths and obstacles in a way that creates good auto-pathfinding from each main to any other (ideally funneling units through a tight bridge) without making the map too tight overall.

I agree that you should get rid of the central island. It's doing nothing for the concept and is not a good feature for a 4 player map to begin with because it restricts and splits cross pathing too much.

I actually started on a remake of Barzak myself some time ago, but never came beyond a basic layout. Maybe it can give you some ideas.

The new rotational symmetry tool in ScmDraft won't help you so much with this kind of concepts, as bridges restrict angles a lot and thus add a lot of asymmetry. There are lots of other new features in ScmDraft which you will find far more crucial and helpful (like overlays for the complete range of preset and game-generated tile flags, pathfinding nodes & regions and improved palettes)
modified by Freakling

Hey philipjayfry! Good to have you.

Aren't the mains a bit small?

I feel that this map is different enough from the old barzak that you could possibly name it something else. The older version and this new one don't seem related and are different concept-wise.

I like what Freakling said about the bridges and what they added to the older version of the map.

Hey guys,
thanks for your feedback! :)

from the earlier comments on the other versions somebody mentioned a missing mineral only. I thought its a good idea, and thats why I added it to this ridge between gas expo and natural. this again, took a lot of space and resulted in less bridges :D

Also, people usually hate bridges, because of bugging Dragoon / Goliath pathfinding and SiegeTank abuse. I'm really surprised that you guys liked that about the former map versions.

@Freakling: I saw that you had a concept of Neo Barzak, but its 3 years old and you never started to realize it! Go Do It! :P If you need help, just give me a shout.

@JungleTerrain: I oriented the main-size on Fighting Spirit, I think it should be somewhat the same. but I can test it by building up a terran base in it (I guess terran is the most space consuming race). Is it possible to rename a map here? For me, the main concept about Barzak was always the ridge between natural and 3rd gas base, thats why I focused on it here. The bridges was just a bonus to me in the older iterations.

Is there some way to communicate with you and other active mapmakers in a more interactive way? Is there an IRC channel / Skype group / Discord group to directly chat? If not, do we want to make one? I think it would help a lot, because communicating everything via this forum is very slow and maybe tend to write less. Also it would help new people to ask basic questions about map making and also help to form a strong community around it. What do you think?

I think most of us where on skype at some point... in principle. That is to say: None of us seemed to have actually used skype that much...

So I guess the only hurdle is to agree on a common platform... Discord or IRC are probably best; I haven't actually used discord yet...

I haven't used discord but that would be cool. I see a ton of people use it. We could make one fasho.

I would say bridges are very strategic, I don't think they are a huge deal in terms of pathing. If you use them "right" it definitely adds value to the map and makes pathing more interesting.

Are you sure the mains are the same size as fighting spirit's? Looking at the picture they look smaller.

This map is so gay that it has 5 cucumbers up its ass at any given point in time

you should call this map

ballzack because it looks as ugly as a shrivelly scrotum

Hey, sorry for the late reply. My computer died few days ago, and I had a hard time trying to repair it... I'm on an old notebook now.

@JungleTerrain:
Maybe the mains arent equally sized than FS, maybe it was like that at the start and starting to work on the map shrinked them. I'll check once my new PC arrives and everything is set up again.

I'll have to think about the bridges in this version. Maybe it makes more sense to rework one of the older versions in this regard :)

About Discord:
I personally use it from time to time but I hate it... Maybe its a good service, but using it in the browser is big pain... It asks me for verification from "new location" every time I log in. This means, I have to open my email account and wait for their email, click on "verify" and then I can log into discord. really annoying.

I use skype and IRC on a daily basis, but I'd use the app the most of you would be ok with to use. On IRC, #OpenBW could be a good meeting place maybe?

Well, since #openbw pretty much means I'd only have to start hexchat, I am in for that...

Terrible map. There's unscooped poop at 12. There are monkeys dancing at 6 o clock. How are you supposed to ride the donkeys at 3 o clock with all that poop everywhere.

Terrible map!

if moofasa pees, how are there cheese its.