Is anyone aware of how to access the older Black Forest map generation before this previous 141935 update?
It being such a drastic difference for casual players of Black Forest I don’t understand why they wouldn’t have included another option for those to use it in non-ranked games. Give us a little tick box that uses previous map generation or something.
For context on why I hate the new version - I play Black Forest to turtle for 3 hour long games with treaties on and gather hordes of stone to make 15+ castles. Now I’m forced into the style of short play and it is awful. While the ranked community or speed players might be happier this sucks for the more casual crowd out there and we don’t even have an alternative map that was given to try. I don’t want to play with 4 units with high apm I just want to crap out 50 units at a time and run through AI.
I don’t play black forest (tree tunnels/funnels aren’t my fav), so I don’t know what changed yet. Will try to look later.(Maybe I would enjoy it now?) But, yeah, if it is a drastic change, it would’ve been good to keep the old and just made the new one be Black Forest 2 or something.
I wonder if DE’s old Black Forest map was just a copy/paste of the old AoE2:HD .rms file? If so, if you have HD, you can probably copy/paste that file into DE’s random-map-scripts folder, I’m thinking (and access via the “Custom” map drop-down)?
If the new BF map is lacking stone or gold or something, you might also consider just copying the current BF file and adding more stone and gold deposits to your liking, or larger deposit sizes. It’s pretty easy to do that, imo
I agree that the new version of Black Forest is very different – it feels more like it’s designed for standard competitive play. I was able to back up the old version before I updated my game, and I have made it available as a mod:
New map should have been just that, A NEW MAP. BF has been the way it has for TWENTY SEVEN YEARS. They drop this drastic of a change on us and expect compliance and praise. Bring back Old BF, this pale mockery is just Oasis without the water. No neutral resources, no Central pathways, homogenized relic spawns to 2 at each base. It’s bland, it’s awful, it’s predictable.
Did they put all stone and gold next to each player? Image seems to indicate yes. I hate that sort of thing and feel it has become “a thing” for new maps. Completely inorganic, unnatural, unrealistic simply to create postage stamps of resources in equal distributions for each player, or put some central repository in the middle to fight over, as if we are all eSport tournamenent players
New BF is terrible. It looks like Amazonian tunnel but with more tunnels… Every one has strictly 4 boars (2 close, 2 far away), 2 relics. No need anymore to fight for additional random ressources. Just wall your tunnel and boom.
The lakes are so small that if you make fishing ships, you are out of fish at feudal age and need overinvest in wood.
This is a totally different map
I fully agree, the new BF lost it’s charme. I don’t know why it was necessary to remodel resource, pond and woodline generation this drastically. The lake size and extra boars/golds/no hidden pockets, and the in my opinion bigger passages make it a different map. On top of that also the roads are missing (having roads was nice, so one could see who is teamed with who) and the new terrains that make the minimap look weird (old BF was always green, well it’s BF after all, we dont have snowy arabia either).
Overall I don’t buy the argument of making the map more competitive. In a few hours there will be the finals of Rageforest (a BF teamgame only tournament) between GL and Amigos, who play on a BF version that is very close to the old BF, but just with a bit improved lake and slightly better extra boar/elephant generation. If there are tournaments with big prizepools played on a BF map that still has the charme of the old one, but just a tiny bit fairer, why was there the need to reinvent the wheel? Wouldn’t it have been easier to copy that map to some extend?
Thank you for posting this! I don’t use mods too often so I didn’t even think to look there. I’ll give this a shot next time I play with my friends. Hopefully others looking for a classic BF can use this as well and it’ll be similar to what they’re looking for as well.
And you would copy/paste it to DE here (or wherever your DE install folder is). You maybe should rename the file here to “Black_Forest_HD” or something, too.
And, wow, yeah – the new version lacks a lot of the character and charm of the old version. Here is new version, as you know, but putting it here for comparison to HD’s version above:
Agreed! I don’t like the tan terrain and mini-map that sometimes happens, even with the terrain is still grassy. Even the DE’s map thumbnail on the selection screen before map begins rightfully shows ‘green’, ‘roads’, and ‘water’ that the new map sometimes lacks.
Note: I’ve seen the tan color used in mini-map for mostly greenish grass maps and filed bug report the other day: Arabia mini-map ground color not matching grassy terrain color. The BF map itself should always have lush green grass in the viewport, imo, but even if it sometimes has yellowy grass, it should still be green mini-map and not sand tan. If BF now has rotating biomes like they did Arabia and it is deserty sometimes, then that’s when it should be tan. (I like that Arabia is sometimes grass, for example.)
I had a look at the map script and it’s been completely rewritten – it’s a completely new map! I don’t get it. Black Forest has some really hardcore fans, and I’ve never seen them ask for anything like this. What was the motivation for replacing it like this?
If so, it’s another case of map simplification and making it look less organic and real, in favor of perfectly equal distributions of resources for Ranked MP and eSports. After all, a gold pile 5 pixels farther away for you than your foe is the difference between win and loss.
In SP, I seek out organic, aesthetically pleasing, natural looking maps with uneven resource distributions for my enjoyment over perfect symmetry and fairness. I try my best to avoid mirror world maps and maps that are clearly designed for competitive play. In that vein, @Zetnus has some cool maps, like:
