There probably won't be many updates until after the fourth, but expect 1.3 for Wastelands to feature a host of polish updates, and later in the week 1.1 for Backwater Station. I'll be continuing to drop hints about the Easter egg as well if no one finds it.
What map is the easter egg on? I scoured the second map while playing it...And didn't see anything easter-eggy.
Some odd things I noticed:
- Doodad [Tauren] outhouse next to the impassable gate. (Looks like an odd place to put an outhouse, don't you think? Woudln't guards go inside the complex' washrooms, rather than some outhouse next to a gate?)
- Crashed Nomad next to the cooling tower. (Nomads didn't exist until after SCBW)
- Part of the impassable doors can be blown up.
- The adjutant mentions that there are additional tutorials available for my review...I don't see thim. Nor do I see mission hints like in WoL.
- It just seems odd how they all already know their enemy, that they are "Zerg" and that they have "Hives" (insinuating that they are a Collective or Hive Mind, too). Last I remember, in the original mission, everyone was sort of surprised to see anything Zerg, and the victory screen referred to the Zerg as "Xenomorphs", indicating that no one with you ever knew what these aliens really were, much less had time to study them and what not. Replace "The Zerg" with "These Xenomorphs", and "Hive/Hive Cluster" with "some kind of giant nesting area or base", just to give out the sense that the Zerg are being discovered as we're playing the mission.
- There's a small way around the cliffside next to the main hive. You don't have to blow the rocks and get into the orange Zerg base, you can just go around it. Too bad I saw it after I blew up the orange base...How fail is that?
- There is a lone animal skull next to the mineral line in the red base. I found that it looked quite awkward because of the creep not hiding the doodads or removing them, whereas the other doodads where in corners of the creep, so it still looked right, this one was on top of creep, and it just looked weird...
- Some of the resources are off the beaten path (On a lone road to the east of Backwater Station and on a cliff next to your main base and the path to the read base (some gas inside a large skeleton, wtf? Is that supposed to be the easter egg?)) and aren't worth getting, really. It's like 100 min, 100 gas, and you will likely already be drowning in cash anyways. Maybe up the reward for finding them or move them or replace them with something else?
Though I doubt any of those are the easter egg...
EDIT: Missed the last version! Damn.
EDIT: Wait...So, you're NOT supposed to be able to build bunkers? Why? O_o
Hey Alex, lots of great feedback in there! Yeah there are some polish issues that are not quite ironed out yet. I think I forgot to put this in the known caveat, but none of the tip or tutorial content is in yet. I really put that on the back burner because it's irrelevant to being able to play test the level. They'll be in, in the next major update to the level.
Regarding the Nomad... Is there solid canon that says the Nomad didn't exist 4 years before SC2? From what I understand it was used in harsh conditions, so it seemed appropriate near the dust bowl. It's used as a junker in SC2 during the mercenary level, I figured anything used as a junker is not new tech. From our perspective it was new in SC2, but lore wise I'm not sure that is the case? A lot of units are new, but anyways, I couldn't find a crashed drop ship or anything, and the landing pad felt absolutely naked without anything on it. I can put generic debris there though if you can point me to the canon about the Nomad. The outhouse is also a good call, I wasn't sure what to put there, and they needed something else, I just figured instead of having to have them open that giant gate they might have an outhouse for quick restroom breaks from guard duty. Maybe I'll put something else there though.
The door issue was fixed in the minor patch, unfortunately it sometimes takes long periods of time for a file to be confirmed, so, sorry about that! It had some other hotfixes also. Weird about the animal skull, I'll fix or remove it. The cliffside path was intentional, if you near the destructible rocks at orange's back door, the firebat will mention you can just continue along the path and avoid the hive entirely. It's the safest, quickest option, destroying the base is unnecessary, and I wanted to keep it that way, but am open to feedback.
Regarding the issue of familiarity with the Zerg! First off, good catch! You're right, this was something I was actually aware of, but to be clear, they did start referring to them as Zerg by this point. Though the UI in some cases called them xenomorphs, the actual characters only referred to them as such in the demo campaign. In the Terran campaign they called them Zerg. I was wary of the use of "Hive cluster" and originally having wrote that scratched it out and referred to it as merely a "hive" also at one point the Adjutant refers to it as a "nest" so I wanted to make it ambiguous, in that they are really not sure what to call it. I also made sure when he called it a hive, that the firebat hesitated, the line is....
SCLAoF02Firebat00023 Firebat We haven't heard back, and it doesn't look good. Seems the zerg have set up some sort of... hive nearby.
At some point they had to start calling them hives, but if this feels unnatural for some people, it's probably too early, I was on the fence about it. I may adjust the line to merely say nest as well.
As far as the hidden resources go, you're right to assume that those are not the Easter eggs. The gas inside the large skeleton, well, where does vespene gas come from? I have no idea honestly, I suppose I should've looked into that, but I assumed it may have been a natural gas of some kind, so putting it near some fossils, ah I was just trying to put a natural gas item somewhere that would make sense (lol.) Was it really odd for you? As far as them all being off the beaten path, yeah that's intentional, they're just little rewards for the player going off the beaten path and exploring. They don't do much, but it's a consolation prize. Nothing worse than leaving your players room to explore and giving them nothing for doing so. (There will very likely be an achievement for collecting all of them, or something in that vein.)
As far as bunkers go, the reason I wanted to avoid using them is that they are a major part of the gameplay in Mission 03 "Desperate Alliances," which is, if you happen to remember from SC1, a holdout mission. This is something I'm still debating on myself, whether or not to allow bunkers, they're not allowed in the original game during this mission, but the Zerg also do not attack. (You do actually, rescue bunkers at Backwater though.) The mission is very easy even without constructing bunkers on casual and normal, and on hard and brutal, not being able to construct bunkers makes the mission more challenging. There is something inherently awkward about letting the player rescue bunkers and not build them though... I will see how everyone feels about this, and consider adding bunkers back in!
Last but not least, the Easter egg! I'm glad that you took some time to look for it, sorry you didn't find it! Keep looking everyone! I wasn't planning to give out a hint this early, but it's only fair as it's a rather difficult one to find.
Easter Egg Hint #1
It's not underneath creep! With this in mind, you now know you won't need to kill any Zerg bases to find it.
I have a few things:
- Leave bunkers unbuildable, then, but you should then maybe put an achievement about keeping them alive or above 75% health on hard or brutal. I do remember them not being buildable originally, but since there are zerglings attacking your main base, I had built some and they seemed to hold quite well for a while. After you get the station, there's no need to keep the bunkers in your base, however, so I guess you kinda made a good call by not making them buildable, after all. They aren't that necessary and do make the mission more challenging. I was on hard and could've easily managed without bunkers.
- The additional resources are fine, but you could add a few more, like on that fossil, you can put 3 gas instead of just 1, and on the road, also add a decoration, like a crashed truck or something. (They do that in the SC2 campaign, to make the dropped resource pallets/canisters look natural)
- Just checked the SC wikia...It turns out that the Nomad's lore is ambiguous enough that it allows for a crashed one in this mission. So yeah, it's fine after all.
- Another odd thing I forgot to mention was the use of tech labs instead of academies. But I can understand as this is meant to use SC2 mechanics.
Excellent suggestion for the achievement, I guarantee that will be one of the three. Bunkers will be introduced in earnest in the next level, where they will be a necessary tool to survive. (There's already some great ways to defend your primary base from the red zerg should you choose to tackle the bonus objective! And the primary Zerg threat isn't a huge issue because you can push forward and capture the much more easily defensible station early on. There will be prods in the final version of the level to keep players from waiting too long to do so also.)
The resource pick-ups were hastily placed, so your feedback is appreciated, I noticed this also watching someone playthrough, given their location they're relatively insignificant by the time someone picks them up. I may boost some of them to give more resources, and place a few more. I was planning to add a truck on the road, I must have forgotten, so thanks for the reminder. :)
As for tech labs vs academies. Yes, I've made the decision to keep some of the SC2 tech the same. What is kept the same and what isn't is still under some deliberation, but suffice to say at the very least, the tech lab will be replacing the academy. A lot of what will be kept are things that are not in conflict with the canon, just things that help to further differentiate the play styles of each race. (Creep spread, addons and lowerable supply depots, warping units in, etc.) The goal is for the campaign to feel like StarCraft 1, while still managing to retain some of the functionality that we love in SC2.
A quick development update, I largely took the weekend and the fourth off from working on the project, but I'm now back at it. You can expect beta version 1.3 of Wastelands to be up soon, I'm also aiming to have some polish features added to Backwater Station by the end of this week, with the major update coming next week. And now, time for another Easter egg hint for intrepid players!
Easter Egg Hint #2
It's not in a place you can go, you can't touch it, but you can see it. So check high and check low.
A quick development update, I largely took the weekend and the fourth off from working on the project, but I'm now back at it. You can expect beta version 1.3 of Wastelands to be up soon, I'm also aiming to have some polish features added to Backwater Station by the end of this week, with the major update coming next week. And now, time for another Easter egg hint for intrepid players! Easter Egg Hint #2
It's not in a place you can go, you can't touch it, but you can see it. So check high and check low.
I think it's pretty obvious where to look for the easter egg, now. :P
EDIT: I see the letter "J" in a pit next to the ramp north of your base. Is that it?
Does that mean you found it, or you have ideas on where to look? I wanted to prevent people from looking in too many places where it was not, because in some ways it can be difficult to see in and of itself. Let's see who finds it first, more tips until someone does! None for now though, but there should be a new one later tonight or tomorrow, depending on when I finish Wastelands 1.3, implementing conversations and removing the hardcoded dialog is proving to be a time consuming task!
Does that mean you found it, or you have ideas on where to look? I wanted to prevent people from looking in too many places where it was not, because in some ways it can be difficult to see in and of itself. Let's see who finds it first, more tips until someone does! None for now though, but there should be a new one later tonight or tomorrow, depending on when I finish Wastelands 1.3, implementing conversations and removing the hardcoded dialog is proving to be a time consuming task!
Nope! (I never noticed that myself, haha, seems it was a random occurrence from the cracked earth texture.) It's something more deliberate and complex than that, but you're getting the right idea of what kind of place it may be in! (On unreachable low or high spots.)
Ah what the heck, here's today's hint:
Easter Egg Hint #3
It's a reference to a popular TV show, I can't be any more specific, for now!
To shed a little light on the above tip, if you're looking hard, you'll still find this whether you've seen the show or not, but you may not know what it is. It's a fairly popular show though.
Nope! I wouldn't really call this a deliberate hint, but it's definitely more than just a doodad placed somewhere, it may be a painted terrain, multiple doodads or units placed, or an amalgamation of those things, but it's not a single doodad/unit/terrain item. Keep looking after a break perhaps! New (real) hints coming later! Let's get more people looking, if you like searching for Easter Eggs download the map and take a look! There's a prize in it for the first image post!
I played your first map, Wastelands, and it was all good, except for the end where it bugged out. I got one wave of zerlings that attacked from behind (the spider mines event), but only used 2 of my mines to kill the lings - I kited the rest around and killed them with Raynor. Then, with all the lings dead, the continuation event didn't trigger and I was stuck just riding around with Raynor as my cart didn't want to move. I got a second wave of lings a couple of minutes lates, but killed all of those as well without unstucking my truck. In the end I just had to exit the map. Also, I kept getting an error message - check the attached screenshot for it. It might have been an old version of your map (I downloaded it 6 days ago and only played it today), so it's possible you've already fixed the bug.
That said, as for proper feedback; I thought the dialogue was at parts a bit long and dragged the gameplay down a bit, especially during the part with the mine. The terrain could use some improvement but is overall pretty good, though I'm a bit incertain about the parts that are never accessed - what is the point of that? It makes you feel a bit uncertain as to where you are supposed to go next, and these parts of terrain don't exactly serve the purpose of housing upgrades or other bonuses.
Edit: My screenshot reminded me of one second gripe with the map - that mission with the auto-turret... wtf is up with that? I was told to go get it, so I moved my units into the circle of power. Then nothing happened, and I figured I might have to 'destroy' the gun as my thought was that I had missed a bit of lore and was required to take the gun with me to replace the gun on the APC. I then got some random message about an SCV being sent out (I never saw an SCV) and failed the objective; which is listed as a main objective, yet I didn't really face any consequences for it and didn't lose the map or anything.
Edit 2: On another small note - remove the visibility fields for areas such as the mine once business there is done. It looks a bit sloppy that I still have vision on that mine while nearing the end of the map.
Overall though, this is a campaign I'll play the rest of too, my hat off to you sir. Time to move on to level 2.
No, I think this may be indeed a bug in the most recent version, I made some changes and added some things last week without sufficient bug testing. I'm working on 1.3 of Wastelands right now, in addition to streamlining the dialog, making updates to some of it, adding support for more fail states on optional objectives etc, I will be addressing all of the current bugs. Sorry you had to go through that!
Mission 02, should .... should be largely bug free! Completion of the mission is far less trigger dependent and I haven't had anyone encounter any bugs yet.
PS. What do you mean about the terrain that's unused precisely? You're talking about the sections that are off the beaten path? There's not really a "point" per se, those sections are just the result of the fact that a winding road can only take up so much of a rectangular map. Obviously I can't use every square inch of the map when creating the path. ( I could have done so with a lot of forcing, but the road would've felt really, really artificially accordioned into that space.) Each of those spots tends to have some large scenery/set pieces for people who do try to go see what's over there, usually with revealers activating when you reach the edge of the area, both to show the set piece, and show that there's really nothing of interest from a gameplay perspective that way. Largely I don't feel that these side paths every detracted from the experience, as most people felt they were directed in the right path, did you encounter any areas where you felt mislead?
PS. What do you mean about the terrain that's unused precisely? You're talking about the sections that are off the beaten path? There's not really a "point" per se, those sections are just the result of the fact that a winding road can only take up so much of a rectangular map. Obviously I can't use every square inch of the map when creating the path. ( I could have done so with a lot of forcing, but the road would've felt really, really artificially accordioned into that space.) Each of those spots tends to have some large scenery/set pieces for people who do try to go see what's over there, usually with revealers activating when you reach the edge of the area, both to show the set piece, and show that there's really nothing of interest from a gameplay perspective that way. Largely I don't feel that these side paths every detracted from the experience, as most people felt they were directed in the right path, did you encounter any areas where you felt mislead?
Let me try and elaborate.
Take another look at my screenshot. I'm mainly talking about the areas that are still black in my minimap there. That, and also some of the side-winding paths. No, I don't think you should force it, and no, I don't particularly felt 'mislead' during the map. There were however a couple of times when I felt a bit... at a loss. Because all your units are so much faster than the cart (which is as it should be, seeing as you need to be able to maneuver faster than the thing you're escorting), I often ended up waiting for my cart to come to a specific point since I wasn't exactly sure where I should go from where I was standing.
What I'd recommend to you to fix this problem is to A) create a bit of a 'path' where the road ends with the dirt or concrete texture, so that you still have a basic idea of the direction you'll be taking, and B) make the inaccessible areas more obvious. Right now there's some canyons and some rocks, but it should be crystal clear that specific mountains are inaccessible, and they should probably look a bit more 'blocked off'. Also, if you do make a winded-path, make sure you don't have to go a long ways in to find out it actually has a dead end.
Overall it wasn't terrible, but it was a bit of a gripe that somewhat annoyed me. I know that if this were a Blizzard map, these gripes wouldn't be there and it would all play a bit smoother, which is what I'm basing my feedback around.
Absolutely, the map is still in beta, and the feedback is more than appreciated. I'm holding myself to Blizzard standards using WoL as a benchmark. I will look further into each of the potential paths you can take away from the main route, and make sure that it becomes clear they are dead-ends earlier on. I didn't want to block them all off immediately, lest the player feels the hand of the designer, and that is indeed a bad thing.
I was planning to make updates to the terrain on my next pass through, so I'll include more to indicate the path, similar to the dirt tire tracks near the end of the map.
The first one shows an entrance/exit next to a rock and the second one shows some chopped off trees in a triangular position around some bones, (with the dead tree, it looks like a diamond shape (like the diamond shape in playing cards)) and the ground texture almost looks like a dead stick man, there where those bones are...
Such good guesses, you seem to be finding all of the little set pieces I constructed to make the bland areas of the map interesting, that's for sure!!
Still haven't got it yet, but a new hint for intrepid adventurers, before I post Wastelands 1.3 (hopefully within a few hours.) Easter Egg Hint #4
You will find me among that which can make one man blind and another man see. What is nearby can make one building strong and another cease to be!
I found it! I totally expected that it would be from LOST! (After you said "a fairly popular show")
The last hint just confirmed what I expected. =)
Since I had only managed to see it during the end of the mission, I didn't manage to snap a screenshot. It's really hard to see because of the sandstorm and I managed to see it when the sandstorm bugs and disappears, while the interface disappears after you destroy the coolant tower. I recognized the 42 at the end only at first...So I started up the game again and tried to get it before I destroyed the tower.
EDIT: So, what's the surprise? =D
After so many hours of looking, you can imagine how happy I am that I found it!
EDIT 2: The numbers in lost are 15 16, not 15 18. Sorry about that; Blame it on the sandstorm that makes it difficult to see them. :P
Added life pickups off the beaten path as a consolation and incentive.
Added new enemy groups.
Added new dialogs for fail states.
Added new dialog for player attacking own APC.
Changes
The map now requires the Legacy.SC2Mod be installed in order to work.
Adjusted existing enemy groups.
Hydralisks have been adjusted to be slightly weaker.
APC driver has been changed to female medivac portrait to coincide with future APC use.
The bonus objective reward is now clear beforehand.
Reduced volume on text sound, removed cinematic subtitles.
Bugs
Fixed an issue where the level would become unplayable under certain conditions.
Fixed an issue where the APC would stop moving under certain conditions.
I didn't have a chance to implement all of the adjustments I wanted to, but there has been a lot of adjustment and polish since 1.2. A lot of the changes are on the way the triggers are setup, a lot of optimization has been done, but it ended up taking a lot longer than I expected, so some features haven't made it in yet. All the major bugs of 1.2 are fixed though.
New version is available with a few hotfixes, still pending approval but you can download here.
There probably won't be many updates until after the fourth, but expect 1.3 for Wastelands to feature a host of polish updates, and later in the week 1.1 for Backwater Station. I'll be continuing to drop hints about the Easter egg as well if no one finds it.
What map is the easter egg on? I scoured the second map while playing it...And didn't see anything easter-eggy.
Some odd things I noticed:
- Doodad [Tauren] outhouse next to the impassable gate. (Looks like an odd place to put an outhouse, don't you think? Woudln't guards go inside the complex' washrooms, rather than some outhouse next to a gate?)
- Crashed Nomad next to the cooling tower. (Nomads didn't exist until after SCBW)
- Part of the impassable doors can be blown up.
- The adjutant mentions that there are additional tutorials available for my review...I don't see thim. Nor do I see mission hints like in WoL.
- It just seems odd how they all already know their enemy, that they are "Zerg" and that they have "Hives" (insinuating that they are a Collective or Hive Mind, too). Last I remember, in the original mission, everyone was sort of surprised to see anything Zerg, and the victory screen referred to the Zerg as "Xenomorphs", indicating that no one with you ever knew what these aliens really were, much less had time to study them and what not. Replace "The Zerg" with "These Xenomorphs", and "Hive/Hive Cluster" with "some kind of giant nesting area or base", just to give out the sense that the Zerg are being discovered as we're playing the mission.
- There's a small way around the cliffside next to the main hive. You don't have to blow the rocks and get into the orange Zerg base, you can just go around it. Too bad I saw it after I blew up the orange base...How fail is that?
- There is a lone animal skull next to the mineral line in the red base. I found that it looked quite awkward because of the creep not hiding the doodads or removing them, whereas the other doodads where in corners of the creep, so it still looked right, this one was on top of creep, and it just looked weird...
- Some of the resources are off the beaten path (On a lone road to the east of Backwater Station and on a cliff next to your main base and the path to the read base (some gas inside a large skeleton, wtf? Is that supposed to be the easter egg?)) and aren't worth getting, really. It's like 100 min, 100 gas, and you will likely already be drowning in cash anyways. Maybe up the reward for finding them or move them or replace them with something else?
Though I doubt any of those are the easter egg...
EDIT: Missed the last version! Damn.
EDIT: Wait...So, you're NOT supposed to be able to build bunkers? Why? O_o
@AlexO6: Go
Hey Alex, lots of great feedback in there! Yeah there are some polish issues that are not quite ironed out yet. I think I forgot to put this in the known caveat, but none of the tip or tutorial content is in yet. I really put that on the back burner because it's irrelevant to being able to play test the level. They'll be in, in the next major update to the level.
Regarding the Nomad... Is there solid canon that says the Nomad didn't exist 4 years before SC2? From what I understand it was used in harsh conditions, so it seemed appropriate near the dust bowl. It's used as a junker in SC2 during the mercenary level, I figured anything used as a junker is not new tech. From our perspective it was new in SC2, but lore wise I'm not sure that is the case? A lot of units are new, but anyways, I couldn't find a crashed drop ship or anything, and the landing pad felt absolutely naked without anything on it. I can put generic debris there though if you can point me to the canon about the Nomad. The outhouse is also a good call, I wasn't sure what to put there, and they needed something else, I just figured instead of having to have them open that giant gate they might have an outhouse for quick restroom breaks from guard duty. Maybe I'll put something else there though.
The door issue was fixed in the minor patch, unfortunately it sometimes takes long periods of time for a file to be confirmed, so, sorry about that! It had some other hotfixes also. Weird about the animal skull, I'll fix or remove it. The cliffside path was intentional, if you near the destructible rocks at orange's back door, the firebat will mention you can just continue along the path and avoid the hive entirely. It's the safest, quickest option, destroying the base is unnecessary, and I wanted to keep it that way, but am open to feedback.
Regarding the issue of familiarity with the Zerg! First off, good catch! You're right, this was something I was actually aware of, but to be clear, they did start referring to them as Zerg by this point. Though the UI in some cases called them xenomorphs, the actual characters only referred to them as such in the demo campaign. In the Terran campaign they called them Zerg. I was wary of the use of "Hive cluster" and originally having wrote that scratched it out and referred to it as merely a "hive" also at one point the Adjutant refers to it as a "nest" so I wanted to make it ambiguous, in that they are really not sure what to call it. I also made sure when he called it a hive, that the firebat hesitated, the line is....
SCLAoF02Firebat00023 Firebat We haven't heard back, and it doesn't look good. Seems the zerg have set up some sort of... hive nearby.
At some point they had to start calling them hives, but if this feels unnatural for some people, it's probably too early, I was on the fence about it. I may adjust the line to merely say nest as well.
As far as the hidden resources go, you're right to assume that those are not the Easter eggs. The gas inside the large skeleton, well, where does vespene gas come from? I have no idea honestly, I suppose I should've looked into that, but I assumed it may have been a natural gas of some kind, so putting it near some fossils, ah I was just trying to put a natural gas item somewhere that would make sense (lol.) Was it really odd for you? As far as them all being off the beaten path, yeah that's intentional, they're just little rewards for the player going off the beaten path and exploring. They don't do much, but it's a consolation prize. Nothing worse than leaving your players room to explore and giving them nothing for doing so. (There will very likely be an achievement for collecting all of them, or something in that vein.)
As far as bunkers go, the reason I wanted to avoid using them is that they are a major part of the gameplay in Mission 03 "Desperate Alliances," which is, if you happen to remember from SC1, a holdout mission. This is something I'm still debating on myself, whether or not to allow bunkers, they're not allowed in the original game during this mission, but the Zerg also do not attack. (You do actually, rescue bunkers at Backwater though.) The mission is very easy even without constructing bunkers on casual and normal, and on hard and brutal, not being able to construct bunkers makes the mission more challenging. There is something inherently awkward about letting the player rescue bunkers and not build them though... I will see how everyone feels about this, and consider adding bunkers back in!
Last but not least, the Easter egg! I'm glad that you took some time to look for it, sorry you didn't find it! Keep looking everyone! I wasn't planning to give out a hint this early, but it's only fair as it's a rather difficult one to find.
Easter Egg Hint #1
It's not underneath creep! With this in mind, you now know you won't need to kill any Zerg bases to find it.
Thanks for the reply.
I have a few things:
- Leave bunkers unbuildable, then, but you should then maybe put an achievement about keeping them alive or above 75% health on hard or brutal. I do remember them not being buildable originally, but since there are zerglings attacking your main base, I had built some and they seemed to hold quite well for a while. After you get the station, there's no need to keep the bunkers in your base, however, so I guess you kinda made a good call by not making them buildable, after all. They aren't that necessary and do make the mission more challenging. I was on hard and could've easily managed without bunkers.
- The additional resources are fine, but you could add a few more, like on that fossil, you can put 3 gas instead of just 1, and on the road, also add a decoration, like a crashed truck or something. (They do that in the SC2 campaign, to make the dropped resource pallets/canisters look natural)
- Just checked the SC wikia...It turns out that the Nomad's lore is ambiguous enough that it allows for a crashed one in this mission. So yeah, it's fine after all.
- Another odd thing I forgot to mention was the use of tech labs instead of academies. But I can understand as this is meant to use SC2 mechanics.
@AlexO6: Go
Excellent suggestion for the achievement, I guarantee that will be one of the three. Bunkers will be introduced in earnest in the next level, where they will be a necessary tool to survive. (There's already some great ways to defend your primary base from the red zerg should you choose to tackle the bonus objective! And the primary Zerg threat isn't a huge issue because you can push forward and capture the much more easily defensible station early on. There will be prods in the final version of the level to keep players from waiting too long to do so also.)
The resource pick-ups were hastily placed, so your feedback is appreciated, I noticed this also watching someone playthrough, given their location they're relatively insignificant by the time someone picks them up. I may boost some of them to give more resources, and place a few more. I was planning to add a truck on the road, I must have forgotten, so thanks for the reminder. :)
As for tech labs vs academies. Yes, I've made the decision to keep some of the SC2 tech the same. What is kept the same and what isn't is still under some deliberation, but suffice to say at the very least, the tech lab will be replacing the academy. A lot of what will be kept are things that are not in conflict with the canon, just things that help to further differentiate the play styles of each race. (Creep spread, addons and lowerable supply depots, warping units in, etc.) The goal is for the campaign to feel like StarCraft 1, while still managing to retain some of the functionality that we love in SC2.
A quick development update, I largely took the weekend and the fourth off from working on the project, but I'm now back at it. You can expect beta version 1.3 of Wastelands to be up soon, I'm also aiming to have some polish features added to Backwater Station by the end of this week, with the major update coming next week. And now, time for another Easter egg hint for intrepid players!
Easter Egg Hint #2
It's not in a place you can go, you can't touch it, but you can see it. So check high and check low.
I think it's pretty obvious where to look for the easter egg, now. :P
EDIT: I see the letter "J" in a pit next to the ramp north of your base. Is that it?
@AlexO6: Go
Does that mean you found it, or you have ideas on where to look? I wanted to prevent people from looking in too many places where it was not, because in some ways it can be difficult to see in and of itself. Let's see who finds it first, more tips until someone does! None for now though, but there should be a new one later tonight or tomorrow, depending on when I finish Wastelands 1.3, implementing conversations and removing the hardcoded dialog is proving to be a time consuming task!
Is it the "J" letter that I mentioned?
EDIT: Screenshot:
http://imageshack.us/f/854/screenshot2011070619182.jpg/
Is it that "J" letter in that pit area on the left of the screenshot?
@AlexO6: Go
Nope! (I never noticed that myself, haha, seems it was a random occurrence from the cracked earth texture.) It's something more deliberate and complex than that, but you're getting the right idea of what kind of place it may be in! (On unreachable low or high spots.)
Ah what the heck, here's today's hint:
Easter Egg Hint #3
It's a reference to a popular TV show, I can't be any more specific, for now!
To shed a little light on the above tip, if you're looking hard, you'll still find this whether you've seen the show or not, but you may not know what it is. It's a fairly popular show though.
Is it that Optimus Prime truck?
@lolzguy: Go
Nope! I wouldn't really call this a deliberate hint, but it's definitely more than just a doodad placed somewhere, it may be a painted terrain, multiple doodads or units placed, or an amalgamation of those things, but it's not a single doodad/unit/terrain item. Keep looking after a break perhaps! New (real) hints coming later! Let's get more people looking, if you like searching for Easter Eggs download the map and take a look! There's a prize in it for the first image post!
Finally, I found this thread again!
I played your first map, Wastelands, and it was all good, except for the end where it bugged out. I got one wave of zerlings that attacked from behind (the spider mines event), but only used 2 of my mines to kill the lings - I kited the rest around and killed them with Raynor. Then, with all the lings dead, the continuation event didn't trigger and I was stuck just riding around with Raynor as my cart didn't want to move. I got a second wave of lings a couple of minutes lates, but killed all of those as well without unstucking my truck. In the end I just had to exit the map. Also, I kept getting an error message - check the attached screenshot for it. It might have been an old version of your map (I downloaded it 6 days ago and only played it today), so it's possible you've already fixed the bug.
That said, as for proper feedback; I thought the dialogue was at parts a bit long and dragged the gameplay down a bit, especially during the part with the mine. The terrain could use some improvement but is overall pretty good, though I'm a bit incertain about the parts that are never accessed - what is the point of that? It makes you feel a bit uncertain as to where you are supposed to go next, and these parts of terrain don't exactly serve the purpose of housing upgrades or other bonuses.
Edit: My screenshot reminded me of one second gripe with the map - that mission with the auto-turret... wtf is up with that? I was told to go get it, so I moved my units into the circle of power. Then nothing happened, and I figured I might have to 'destroy' the gun as my thought was that I had missed a bit of lore and was required to take the gun with me to replace the gun on the APC. I then got some random message about an SCV being sent out (I never saw an SCV) and failed the objective; which is listed as a main objective, yet I didn't really face any consequences for it and didn't lose the map or anything.
Edit 2: On another small note - remove the visibility fields for areas such as the mine once business there is done. It looks a bit sloppy that I still have vision on that mine while nearing the end of the map.
Overall though, this is a campaign I'll play the rest of too, my hat off to you sir. Time to move on to level 2.
@Mozared: Go
No, I think this may be indeed a bug in the most recent version, I made some changes and added some things last week without sufficient bug testing. I'm working on 1.3 of Wastelands right now, in addition to streamlining the dialog, making updates to some of it, adding support for more fail states on optional objectives etc, I will be addressing all of the current bugs. Sorry you had to go through that!
Mission 02, should .... should be largely bug free! Completion of the mission is far less trigger dependent and I haven't had anyone encounter any bugs yet.
PS. What do you mean about the terrain that's unused precisely? You're talking about the sections that are off the beaten path? There's not really a "point" per se, those sections are just the result of the fact that a winding road can only take up so much of a rectangular map. Obviously I can't use every square inch of the map when creating the path. ( I could have done so with a lot of forcing, but the road would've felt really, really artificially accordioned into that space.) Each of those spots tends to have some large scenery/set pieces for people who do try to go see what's over there, usually with revealers activating when you reach the edge of the area, both to show the set piece, and show that there's really nothing of interest from a gameplay perspective that way. Largely I don't feel that these side paths every detracted from the experience, as most people felt they were directed in the right path, did you encounter any areas where you felt mislead?
Let me try and elaborate.
Take another look at my screenshot. I'm mainly talking about the areas that are still black in my minimap there. That, and also some of the side-winding paths. No, I don't think you should force it, and no, I don't particularly felt 'mislead' during the map. There were however a couple of times when I felt a bit... at a loss. Because all your units are so much faster than the cart (which is as it should be, seeing as you need to be able to maneuver faster than the thing you're escorting), I often ended up waiting for my cart to come to a specific point since I wasn't exactly sure where I should go from where I was standing.
What I'd recommend to you to fix this problem is to A) create a bit of a 'path' where the road ends with the dirt or concrete texture, so that you still have a basic idea of the direction you'll be taking, and B) make the inaccessible areas more obvious. Right now there's some canyons and some rocks, but it should be crystal clear that specific mountains are inaccessible, and they should probably look a bit more 'blocked off'. Also, if you do make a winded-path, make sure you don't have to go a long ways in to find out it actually has a dead end.
Overall it wasn't terrible, but it was a bit of a gripe that somewhat annoyed me. I know that if this were a Blizzard map, these gripes wouldn't be there and it would all play a bit smoother, which is what I'm basing my feedback around.
@Mozared: Go
Absolutely, the map is still in beta, and the feedback is more than appreciated. I'm holding myself to Blizzard standards using WoL as a benchmark. I will look further into each of the potential paths you can take away from the main route, and make sure that it becomes clear they are dead-ends earlier on. I didn't want to block them all off immediately, lest the player feels the hand of the designer, and that is indeed a bad thing.
I was planning to make updates to the terrain on my next pass through, so I'll include more to indicate the path, similar to the dirt tire tracks near the end of the map.
It's one of these 2, isn't it?
The first one shows an entrance/exit next to a rock and the second one shows some chopped off trees in a triangular position around some bones, (with the dead tree, it looks like a diamond shape (like the diamond shape in playing cards)) and the ground texture almost looks like a dead stick man, there where those bones are...
@AlexO6: Go
Such good guesses, you seem to be finding all of the little set pieces I constructed to make the bland areas of the map interesting, that's for sure!!
Still haven't got it yet, but a new hint for intrepid adventurers, before I post Wastelands 1.3 (hopefully within a few hours.)
Easter Egg Hint #4
You will find me among that which can make one man blind and another man see. What is nearby can make one building strong and another cease to be!
I found it! I totally expected that it would be from LOST! (After you said "a fairly popular show")
The last hint just confirmed what I expected. =)
Since I had only managed to see it during the end of the mission, I didn't manage to snap a screenshot. It's really hard to see because of the sandstorm and I managed to see it when the sandstorm bugs and disappears, while the interface disappears after you destroy the coolant tower. I recognized the 42 at the end only at first...So I started up the game again and tried to get it before I destroyed the tower.
EDIT: So, what's the surprise? =D
After so many hours of looking, you can imagine how happy I am that I found it!
EDIT 2: The numbers in lost are 15 16, not 15 18. Sorry about that; Blame it on the sandstorm that makes it difficult to see them. :P
@AlexO6: Go
Nope you haven't got it yet, just keep... Just kidding!
CONGRATULATIONS!
You found it, nice job! Regarding the reward/surprise, I'm heading to the movies now, but I'll PM you later with the details! Awesome job Alex06!
For a more clear image of the hatch in question:
In other news, before I go....
Wastelands Beta Ver1.3 is finally up, lots of big changes!
Change Log
Additions
Changes
Bugs
I didn't have a chance to implement all of the adjustments I wanted to, but there has been a lot of adjustment and polish since 1.2. A lot of the changes are on the way the triggers are setup, a lot of optimization has been done, but it ended up taking a lot longer than I expected, so some features haven't made it in yet. All the major bugs of 1.2 are fixed though.