OpenRA Resource Center

Description:

Manual conversion of the official Starcraft 2 map Kulas Ravine using only official OpenRA material.

Few considerations (approximative english below this line) :
- This map has been made as a competitive map.
- The right half of the map is a reflection of the left half part and the left most (5-10 cells) part of the map is a reflection of the right most part, in order to ensure homogeneous and symmetrical walkable/buildable areas on the whole map (no one-cell enclaves or corridors).
- There are few tiles errors, like 1,127 (hidden by trees), 140,128 (hidden by trees) and 46,25. It's hard to have a perfectly symmetrical map with Westwood tiles but this one should be.
- The original base locations are represented here by crossroads. It helps to know where to expand/deploy.
- This is originally a 1v1/2v2 (left versus right) map. It could be expanded to 3v3 or even 4v4 by adding new spawn locations where crossroads are but more ore mines would probably be required.
- Unlike Starcraft 2 Red Alert has no heightmap so both cliffs and trees are used to replace the original cliffs. It's just a matter of walkable/buildable / not walkable/buildable areas.
- Unlike Starcraft 2 Red Alert has water buildings and units so all water areas have been extended by one cell to ensure sub pens and naval yards can be built in every water area.
- If you consider that, in Starcraft 2, the water has a height of 0, the ground a height of 1 and cliffs a height greater than 1 then on this map only "1" areas have a beach access to water.
- Destructible rocks have been replaced by neutral walls. Unlike Starcraft 2 you can "dig into", destroy them or even rebuild them.
- The trees hiding vision in the original map have been replaced by gap generators, as they cover approximately the same area and have approximately the same behavior. Unlike Starcraft 2 you can hide around them, capture them or even disable them by destroying the neutral advanced power plants.
- Xel'Naga Towers have been replaced by "Xel'Naga Lighthouses". These lighthouses have a ProximityCapturable Range of 2 and a RevealShroud Range of 22 like the original Xel'Naga Towers (22 seems to be a bit HUGE but it's the original behavior).
- The only modification I made is the four ore mines in the center of the map. They have been added to make players more interested in these big mid top and bottom areas as these areas have originally only two Xel'Naga Towers (and absolutely nothing else).
- Don't worry if you think there is not much ore on the map, you should be floating.
- This map can also help new players as they are forced to learn few game mechanics like expansions, build orders and money management.
- Starcraft 2 and the Galaxy Editor (the Starcraft 2 map editor) are not required to convert a Starcraft 2 map. I used SC2 Map Analyzer 1.4.8 (few megabytes) on Kulas Ravine.s2ma (few megabytes, found on Nibbits.com), then I recreated the KulasRavine-summary.png picture cell by cell in the OpenRA Map Editor. As SC2 Map Analyzer and OpenRA are both open source a "s2ma/SC2Map to oramap Converter" would be quite easy to write but I have not investigated it. Converted maps would require manual adjustments, way better than recreating everything manually from scratch.

Feel free to modify (or correct) this map !
Stex / Noob