My First Map (in quite a while)

It has been a long time since I've worked in the map editor, and there was plenty of dust to blow off to get this going. For this project, I am looking for an 8 player map which meets in the center only. I do not want the players to be able to interact with each other, as I intend to have the computer take control of units before they are able to meet in glorious combat (to allow the player to focus solely on their macro). I was thinking each player would have 4 bases available to them, and would have to follow a path to the center hill.

Here is my first attempt at the map, using a tileset which may make it look a bit like a medieval arena:

The map has my main interests, but there are many things I did not like about the map. First off, I tried to use the pathing blocker to prevent flying units, as well as line of sight blocker, to get the different bases isolated from each other (this would be the red coloring). This did not work in any of my tests. I'm guessing it either only works for ground units or has other subtleties I have not worked out. Second, the bases aren't actually equal, and they do not have an equal distance to the hill. It may not really be too big of a deal, but I figured I could do better! I do like the hills that players should not have access to, as I was thinking of adding spectators and the like there, but that is purely cosmetic.

With what I've learned from my first map, I decided it would be easier to start from scratch and try a slightly different approach. Here I changed to a space station tileset, and turned on the 8-fold symmetry:

Instead of relying on regions I did not understand to limit vision, I simply made the bases far enough apart that one could not get a unit with enough vision to see the neighbors. Scratch that one off the list! It took quite a bit of doing, but here is the general approach I took to make this map:

• Using the symmetry (or more precisely, the playable map area), find the center point, and mark it with a center point.
• Draw a circular region, with the center at the center point, to mark the size of the battle grounds (here I wanted it big enough for large battles to take place, not sure about adding features such as choke points or line of sight blockers to add more dynamic, that will come later).
• Using the symmetry, cut out the separations between the paths, starting at the inner corner (by the center region).
• Play with the base size to determine how far out from the center to go until you can both have a large enough base and the bases cannot interact.
• Define the outer bases fairly roughly, and clear away the empty space from the map
• Turn to 4-fold symmetry to clean up the rough edges which arise from the difference between the on-axis and off-axis bases
• Make the computer control region such that it just touches the edge of every base.

This gave the general shape of the map, the next task was to add the mineral patches and a few other helpful objects:

In this image you can see an outline of NoFly zones surrounding the base. This is the manner in which we can prevent the pathing from allowing flying units to leave the base. It is quite crude (a region would be much more helpful in this case, but is not available, to my knowledge), but gets the job done. It is important to make sure they overlap sufficiently and are as even as possible. The AI can get confused if there is a slight gap and it tries to fit through, but may not. Not too big of a deal here as we just don't want them to escape, but depending on what you are trying to do, it could be. Other details would be the 8 mineral and 2 gas for each of the 4 bases, arranged somewhat like many melee maps, and a smoke-screen to show the line where the computer takes control. I may also add some destructible rocks to make two of the bases more difficult to take, but that will come with testing.