Staredit Network

The map is nearly complete; however, due to filesize, it's completely impractical to distribute it through battle.net because of its large filesize (over three megabytes ) due to two horn sounds, The Two Towers music, the nuclear missile explosion, and the "combeep" sound. Are there any methods I could use to cut down on the heavy size of the non-SC sounds I'm adding to this map? This map is so huge, in fact, that I can't even put the screenshot on the web or attach it.

Map Name: Helm's Deep v. Omni 2.0.scx

You cound decrease the quality of the sounds in the map. As for the combeep, while small, you can use the sizeless sound technique on it, but that's still a small sound, so don't expect to save much.

Well you can compress the non-sc wavs to reduce size, however, the quality will reduce along with the size.

Save as many sounds as you can through sizeless. It can save a few seconds of downloading time on Battle.net, and ultimately save hours of waiting for people in the end.

Is this using the terrain by LotR-Haldir? Jungle, straight temple for deeping wall etc? If so, you should make a new one. I'm doing a pretty nice minas tirith for a later map. Better then the terrain for those other ones that were out around the time rotk came out.

It's using the tileset, but no, it uses mostly non-isometric terrain to the fullest extent, laid out to look like the actual fortress in the movie, taking great pains to make it as similar as possible (This means that there are teleports as opposed to walking directly through so that one can take advantage of walls- similar to the map "Battle of Helms Deep", except deeper, lasts longer, and does not have a battle whose victor is solely determined by an SCV.). The map was worked on only by me, and copies nobody's terrain. In addition, upgrades and a ban are present, and in the edition I will (hopefully) upload to staredit.net, it will have music and sounds. Once again, though, it is not practical for B.net distribution unless the map is made smaller.

I really dont think after this anyone should make a "new" helms deep. There wasn't anything wrong with that old ones and plus no one plays Helms Deep anymore =/

There are plenty of Helm's Deepers out there; the problem is, they use mostly the REALLY old ones or some of the not-so-good new ones (and you don't see them that often. People just play New Sunken Defense now and bounds. Lame.). The old ones, (even Haldir), had problems; Haldir's allowed the Rohan and Elves to use an unbeatable defensive technique that newbies could use but expert Uruk-Hai could not beat. Not to mention that 95% of all Helm's Deep maps just plain suck anyway.

Doesnt anyone rember the FIRST Helms Deep map
It wasnt even Helms Deep
There was a town
Gimli
Legolas
and Argorn
Mutas attacked every 5 minutes and u had to kill the overmind
WHat a great game lol.
Haldir was suppose to look like Helms deep which was a failure because helms deep did not take 7 miles of land it was barely 1 mile
Helms deep was small and had 3 walls sort of which is hard to recreate ons tarcraft thats why they shouldnt have been made
hmph

Damn you Blizzard for only having wave's in maps! Could you image how small huge maps due to sounds would be if we could put midi's in them?

What you could do is to have a huge map 256x 256. But this is how is works. You would play through it by stages. So for example, have a relaly giagntic wall wiht tons of little details (ie. torches, barrels, catapults firing from below the walls *yes i know thats only in the game, but still). And then when that "stage" is done, move to the next stage. could be more interesting potentially. I personally think that the map should be somehting like 192x192 or 192x128, longer wall and shorter for the tower. This could be interesting, maybe I should redo helm's deep as well. I have one thats like 99% done which uses HAldir's terrain, but I could just save trigs, save unit names with starfroge, and build a new one. HUZZAH!

You know... since it's 95% done, maybe we can see it?

Okay, in response to a few of your comments:

-Lots of people still play Helm's Deep, as much as it sucks (the perfect example of the stereotypical stupidity in the Battle.net community)
-The old Haldir terrain is about as bad as terrain goes
-I've seen the "new" terrain where idiots use the SF palette to make square terrain things (sorry no screenshot of what I speak of) and the teleport crap
-Oh yeah, in those maps there is a universal "ahhh, cool" by the b.net n00blets
-The teleport crap is awful; at most use it for ladders, caves, etc. In this one map there must have been at least 50 teleporting zones. Not only was this confusing, but it was unrealistic and impractical
-Of course, it sounds like this map will be for the b.net community; therefore, terrain won't matter that much
-Are you making this map realistic to the movie or the book *note to n00blets, the book Helm's and the movie Helm's are different; don't be a n00blet*
-Make it possible for the army of the White Hand to win
-Get rid of that music in the map, open it up in Sound Recorder, set it to at most 16000 kHz 16-bit mono (1/2 the size of stereo for about the same quality, this isn't a movie) and then set compression to highest. I never see a huge difference, and my sound system is pretty darn nice (you just need to know this - 6.1 sound system) If there is heavy bass I'd recommend setting it to 22050-24000 kHz 16-bit mono. *Note* Set the music to 16-bit mono -OR- stereo as you need that to compress (Highest compression will make music about 1/4 the size)
-Once you're done use ProEdit to compress the strings (I must say this again: recycling the unit stats for me completely SCREWED the names and such around, i.e. my marine "archer" was now vespene geyser and the such) On average for myself this takes away anywhere from 150 to around 400k of space, which is a big improvement.
-Add many special effects (the main one will be the drain) for the coolest experience possible
-Kill Op MM-Guild (the *ahem* map-making guild supporting such n00blet map makers as Glaurung... sorry bud... and that idiot Dark_Lunatic_K) j/k! Rommel is the pwnage!
-Make a MUCH better map than Op MM-Guild's new map
-Once you're done making that better map, laugh at White-Rune and Vlad-Vampire for this n00bishness map making skillZ, when they claim to be the best
-Stop reading this post because after this I figured everything would just be MM-Guild bashing idiocy. Thanks!

All the helm's deeps are always like that... and by the way, who the fricking hell is Haramir?

In helms deep games no one wants to be uruk-hai, I mean no one, I suggest you take out the heros and replace it with more Uruk-hai/Rohan forces. Make sure you don't have heros they're stupid and impractical, if you must make the heros in an army not by it's self. Hero's tend to bs a lot, well accually that's what I do in helms deep games.

Lol... no heroes? Blasphemy. 'Ye should be wary of the dark road which thee travels young master. It leads only to demise. Oh yeah, ummm... "Haramir"....

Perhaps you mean Haldir?



--Robert Foster, The Complete Guide to Middle Earth, Tolkien's World From A to Z

Of course, you'd be looking at the second one. Oh yes, in the movie, Peter Jackson made him the commander of the Elvish forces at Helm's Deep. That is NOT in the books. Books = no elves at Helm's Deep, unless memory has failed me. But that has been known to happen from time to time...

Pfft, bsing with heros in helms deep games is so @#$% fun.