Map Name: Wildefire's Amusement Park v1.0
Theater: temperate
Number of Players: 2-4
Size: 120x120
Resources: high 
Author: Wildefire
Editor Used: Final Alert2 Beta

Contents:

  Short description (mainly for Web site blurbs if desired)
  More detailed description (features and mods)
  Installation
  Note to reviewers (FA2 vs. game appearance)
  Credits

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Short Description (for Web site blurbs): Map is full of cheap, sleazy ways to promote units. Complete day/night lighting cycles. Randomly-timed Iron Curtain effects. Easily defendable bases. Two tech airports. Oil derricks. Surprises for capturing usually uncapturable buildings. "Old school" gameplay where civilian units aren't your real enemy, but players who take full advantage of various "promotion toys" and other tactical options are. Play it as a "skirmish toy" where you can amuse yourself for hours using various features or for grueling, multiplayer slugfests. Readme contains many more details.

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More Detailed Description:

Features and mods: 

Automatic map transfer is enabled. However due to the large file size, there is no guarantee that it will transfer before timeout, especially if a player doesn't have a broadband connection.

Complete, repeating day/night lighting cycles. Hey folks, please don't tell me that the map is either too dark at night or not dark enough. ;) I've had reports of both from beta testers of the same version. While I tried to strike a happy medium, it is impossible to account for the brightness settings on hundreds of monitors.

Certain structures give off light (a few "turning on" when captured). All units give off more light than usual so they can be more easily seen during "map night" periods.

Mr. Yummy's Hot Dog stands are capturable and can be built off of and used as hospitals. You may find the strategic positioning of some much more important than their usefulness as hospitals. <hint> 

Gas stations are capturable (not garrisonable) and can repair your vehicles. Click on the gas station with a vehicle selected and you'll get an entry cursor. You can also build off of them. (Be careful. Exploding trucks on the race tracks surrounding them can totally destroy units and buildings.) 

Garrison the Light House to "light up" both the radar and tactical maps.

Race trucks give high experience toward promotion if you destroy them. Be careful. Not all of them deliver crates when destroyed. They also make "pit stops" in uncaptured gas stations when badly damaged.

"Winner's circles" in the grass near base entrances contain promotion (veteran) crates every so often.

Two types of practice targets are on the map (identical in appearance) give higher than normal experience. Some targets are worth using to promote even expensive units like costly tanks and Chrono Legionnaires.

Mega derricks are worth defending. Though there are ore/gem fields within base areas, it's not a huge amount and miners soon venture out. The map is designed to encourage "spidering" and building forward bases (which I've seen people do in multiplayer beta tests on this map).

Randomly-timed Iron Curtain effects occur at the ends of bridges leading to the central island. (Don't station infantry right at the ends of the bridges.) Luck can therefore influence holding or seizing control of that island. I've never seen a heavily armored IC'ed unit make it's way into a base because the travel time is too long for them. But I was quite surprised once to find an IC'ed Flak Trak attacking my CY. (Fortunately, it wasn't loaded with engineers.) You have been warned.

All buildings, including bunkers, hot dog stands, and gas stations are click-repairable. Note: the AI does capture hot dog stands and repairs them (and bunkers) under attack. Hot dog stands btw do not change color as other buildings do when captured. So, if you're playing on "short game" and it doesn't end, the AI or your human opponent probably has a hot dog stand somewhere.

Area-effect crate powerups (veteran, speed and armor upgrades, etc.) have a larger radius of effect. OTOH, the incredible number of crates that spawn on this map is due to a RA2 quirk, not due to anything I've done. RA2 always spawns a lot of crates if crates are generated by triggers (like the promotion crates) or loaded trucks. If you hate crates, either turn off crates in the game settings (which may work) or don't play this map. ;) BTW, the huge number of crates that appear as the game progresses leads to many surprises, such as Soviets with Mirage tanks, veteran or elite AI units, etc.

Unfortunately, I had to remove the bird and cricket sound triggers from the beta versions. The trigger action for disabling sounds at waypoints is unreliable, especially with the continuing day/night transitions. When the map first went only from day to night, there were a few places where you heard birds chirping at night despite my best efforts. That was bad enough. When I added the complete day/night cycles, the sound transitioning totally broke down. Also, the map was starting to get laggy. Something had to go, so why not triggers that didn't work well in the first place? :) River sounds remain.

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Installation: Unzip the zip archive with WinZip or something similar and install the .mpr file in your RA2 folder.

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Note to reviewers: Because some Webmasters and map reviewers open maps in FA2 before playing them, I must add this note. Shoreline tiles at water bridges and one enormous shore piece (south edge of central island) appear to contain tiling errors in FA2. These are FA2-rendering bugs, not tiling errors. These tiles look fine in the game.

For Web sites requiring proof of extensive beta testing, please visit the following URLs:

http://messagebrd.westwood.ea.com/boards/ra2/english/Forum7/HTML/000829.html

http://messagebrd.westwood.ea.com/boards/ra2/english/Forum7/HTML/000915.html

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Credits and Acknowledgements:

Thanks to the many people who playtested the two beta versions of this map and gave a lot of constructive feedback!

The "gas station as repair depot" idea was previously used on a very good map called City Stomp by Waraddict. I didn't know this until beta testers told me about it, but I wish to give credit for this idea where credit is due. :)

Constructive comments and feedback is welcome at:

wildefire@pacbell.net

