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I understand that creating these maps (and btw., job well done! Most maps look great) is a hard piece of work. And I also understand that we do not get completely autogenerated maps.
Yet, there may be an middle-ground, we can take: From playing Forest Colony I got the idea that maps may vary a little in some discrete points (i.e. the blocked canyon in winter mode). Very few variations would suffice, just ~5 per map (e.g. wreckage present in frozen city or not, destroyed buildings, dry vs. flooded canyons, etc.). By picking a combination of these features, we could get 32 variations per map! Note however, that every single modification can be tested on its own, so you need only 5 tests for 32 variations!
Additionally, I think that most of the assets of every map are not reused (although I think the ship at crimson is the same as in river city), so as a second step, I propose to reuse them more to reduce the development time of new maps. AFAIK most maps are only 50% of the maximum map size (at least they leave some space at every edge). So how about a "shifted" view of each map? As far as I can see, no map is "closed" in every direction (while some are by water or mountains). So there could easily be more than 2 additional variants per map.
What do you think?
Edited by Ted The Prussian Striker, 28 November 2013 - 04:55 AM.
