I designed this single player map for Ground Control in the spring of 2002, with the ambition to make it a distinct illustration of semi-linear design principles. It differs in several ways from the missions in the original game. I wrote the text below when I originally spread the map as a work sample.
First, if you don't have access to a copy of Ground Control, you can download the entire game for free here.
Download the map here. Save it to your GC/data/maps folder. Play it in Ground Control by selecting single player and custom game.
Thank you Kevx, for the SDF file! And thank you Destroy for teaching me how to make one myself!
Now that you're here, you may as well enjoy an article on level design, linearity and learing curves that I wrote some time after I made Pieces of Hope.
Pieces of Hope is a single player map for Ground Control. These are the special thoughts I had for guidance for the design.
I'm happy with the looks of the map, apart from one aspect of the heightmap. The player has to follow obvious tracks and sticks almost exlusively to the same altitude all the time. The gameplay is two-dimensional, the player may experience a lack of freedom, and it would simply look better if it used different altitudes.
A minor detail is that the map is possibly too detailed. When the terrain is LOD:ed depending on the distance, the mountains change their shape in ways that might be striking.
Oh, and one more thing on the looks: Everybody tells me the grass on the hills hover in mid-air on some places. Sorry.
I don't regret the in-game briefing, but I admit that it required quite a lot of work, and it would still be possible to make additional polishing. Furthermore, it would have been a lot better (and yet a bit more demanding) if I could have completed it with sound files.
The basic gameplay ideas - superior recon and reinforcements that affect the gameplay style in the attacks against the camps - still feel all right. A detail that doesn't look that good is that one of the available strategies turns the units in a camp to sitting ducks. You'll see what I mean.
The player controls a small number of units, which makes the balancing easier, but also makes the player feel a little poor. By now, I'm still really grateful that I made it this way. It was possible only to give the player two additional squads for reinforcements. It has been explained to me that the number of drop ships limits the possible number of squads even if they are intoduced as reinforcements later on in the mission. Anyway, these additional troops make more difference if you start out with a small number of squads.
The decision to connect the story to Sarah Parker's background appeared late in the design. Because of this, the continuity didn't get completely satisfying. Honestly, the scenario feels like a patchwork. Also, the troops talk to the player like he or she is a major, and in the statistics after play, the APC is described as Sarah Parker. Not really good-looking.
On the whole, I'm still happy with the map. It does the essential things it was supposed to do, and it looks really nice.
/Daniel Bernhoff, 20020528, 20031101, 20040402
Article on linearity, learing curves and campaign design.
