You might be running up against the requirement that the path through your maze be 2x2 throughout. I'm pretty set on keeping this for visual fidelity and balance reasons but I've gotten lots of feedback from people who really want 1x1 mazes so I'll take a look and see how much it would break the game to do so.
I agree with most of the opinions here that this TD has a GREAT idea behind it. it someow remembers me of the gem td from warcraft 3, which has made it's way to many browser-ased clones. The system of combining those different elemental types and building barriers is realy nice.
BUT
i have a massive prolem in solving the first 10 rounds or so, because every time i try to build a good maze and i want to set the elemental blocks (or towers) to complete a path, the game won't let me because it says that i would prevent enemies from finding a way through it. those "path-finding-markers" just block the building process even if there's another (more tricky) way for the creeps to go. so did u actually want this to happen, e.g. for mazes not to get too strong because of complexity, or is this just a bug? anyways, for me it's kind of annoying and i would say that if i was allowed to build a maze just how i want to, this would be my favourite fun map. by far. actually, i don't even need the markers because it's obvious where the creeps go.
->i apologize for typing mistakes, my keyboard is crap....
I think your not using a two space width or something because I have mazed my whole square before with relative ease. I find that they allow a one entry system really does make this game A LOT easier though. I think it would be cool to see something incorporated in which the maze had both an entrance and a exit. I say this because I stacked Fire Towers at the start and used them for AOE for the first two or so levels. After that I began branching out and focusing on traps mainly (one's within the maze floor) the TD became very easy.
I must ask though if you need any Beta Testers I would love to help out. I find this map simply amazing and it has brought to me what I had hoped Starcraft 2 Td's should be. Thanks for an Amazing map!
Sweet review Dark. I have to say, doing reviews of the maps produced by the community is an awesome idea. I'd seen The Sorcerer's Defense on the custom game list prior to reading this review, but not being a fan of TD games, I skipped it. Then yesterday, after I read the review and had to try it, and I had a ball :D
So props to you Riley, an excellent game! And props to you to Dark for tell us all about it!
I'm getting the same issue ptatti. crashed twice now. and i've never crashed while playing any custom maps before. different times, different things going on in the map each time. once i was just doing nothing, other time i was trying to lay towers.
Riley, if you figure out the reason why your map is crashing, please post it here. Crashing is a scary problem that is hard to troubleshoot, so I think a lot of people would like to know the cause so we can all avoid it with long maps.
Thanks for your dedication to making what I consider to be the first 'real' TD game in SC2.
I promise the very moment I know what's causing the crashing I will publish an updated version that fixes it and put a bug report on the official forums. I am actively working on it, but it is very difficult to trace the exact problem, especially because every time I change something I need to leave the map running for 2-3 hours to confirm whether or not the crashing is gone or not. :(
Posted an updated version that disabled the music triggers, which might be the cause of the crashing. If you were crashing regularly before I would really be interested in hearing whether or not this fixes the problem for you.
So next it became Alchemy Defense. Here the components were aether, mercury, vitriol, sulfur, and aqua. Towers were based on alchemical compounds, processes, or creations. For example, combining Aqua and Vitriol gave "Aqua Fortis" which was an acid-type tower. Gameplay wise this was a massive improvement over tarot D but ultimately too arcane for most people to understand, especially with the number of combinations I was planning on having. Also, it became difficult to find unique names things, and the sort of strength-weakness relationships the ingredients had didn't really make sense and was absolutely unintuitive. (Mercury beats vitriol? Uh, okay, that's easy to remember.)
I finally went to using elements because they're an established gaming vocabulary; people understand them immediately and can even intuitively guess at their weaknesses and strengths. I still think the alchemy version would have been cool, but I don't think it would have been a very popular map.
I agree, it would have undoubtedly been harder to learn and less popular, but it's always nice when games can make some effort to teach as well. And we could learn chemistry AND latin :P
One thing that could be done to make any of it pretty easy is to just create a chart. I think they had one for Pokemon or Magic... Basically, you color-code whatever the things may be, tarots, elements, chemicals, and then you just have colors with arrows.
Red -> Blue
^ - - - - - - v
Green <- Yellow
You could display that in a dialog box that you could toggle on and off, for a quick reference as to what does what. As it stands, you could probably substitute any of the elements for a translation (to any foreign language, or different word set) and based on the colors alone, players would be able to follow what's going on.
On to the map itself, why I originally posted.
In summary, I think all I wanted to say was this:
In a day and age where Tower Defense has become not just a map or mod, but a full-on game released in hundreds of variations by hundreds of developers, available on almost every platform, the general gameplay of Tower Defense has become more or less outdone and overused.
As such, I've personally avoided most of the TD maps on battle.net, but having gotten the all-time best score on DarkRevenant's rating system, I had to check this out.
Sorcerer's Defense reminds me what I originally appreciated most in Tower Defense games, and does it excellently.
The selection of towers, and "element" style design works off of the most basic chess-originated elements of Strategy gameplay. Choosing which units will serve you best against your opponent(s), and complimenting the towers to each-other makes it that much more interesting. The fact that you're dealt random building blocks means that the user has to learn the mechanic, as opposed to memorizing a strategy, which enriches the experience that much more.
The "mazing", or leading units through a path of your creation, adds a puzzle element to the strategy game. Unlike other games I've seen, which use a single, linear path, the need to "circle" the four gates takes a very simple and easy to understand concept, and allows the player to use it as a tool to make their puzzles that much more intricate. In the end, the combination of puzzle and strategy play makes for a deep and very enjoyable experience.
The casual difficulty could be beaten by practically anyone, which makes for a well-placed introductory to lure players in. I quickly learned the hard way that normal wouldn't be nearly as forgiving, but after picking up the strategies, managed to master it as well. Attempts to tackle the higher difficulties have proven the map's replay value.
You might be running up against the requirement that the path through your maze be 2x2 throughout. I'm pretty set on keeping this for visual fidelity and balance reasons but I've gotten lots of feedback from people who really want 1x1 mazes so I'll take a look and see how much it would break the game to do so.
I think your not using a two space width or something because I have mazed my whole square before with relative ease. I find that they allow a one entry system really does make this game A LOT easier though. I think it would be cool to see something incorporated in which the maze had both an entrance and a exit. I say this because I stacked Fire Towers at the start and used them for AOE for the first two or so levels. After that I began branching out and focusing on traps mainly (one's within the maze floor) the TD became very easy.
I must ask though if you need any Beta Testers I would love to help out. I find this map simply amazing and it has brought to me what I had hoped Starcraft 2 Td's should be. Thanks for an Amazing map!
Sweet review Dark. I have to say, doing reviews of the maps produced by the community is an awesome idea. I'd seen The Sorcerer's Defense on the custom game list prior to reading this review, but not being a fan of TD games, I skipped it. Then yesterday, after I read the review and had to try it, and I had a ball :D
So props to you Riley, an excellent game! And props to you to Dark for tell us all about it!
I wonder if you guys crash while playing this map? Coz when I play, it occasionally crashes my SC2.
P.S. Great review.
@ptatti: Go
I'm getting the same issue ptatti. crashed twice now. and i've never crashed while playing any custom maps before. different times, different things going on in the map each time. once i was just doing nothing, other time i was trying to lay towers.
Riley, if you figure out the reason why your map is crashing, please post it here. Crashing is a scary problem that is hard to troubleshoot, so I think a lot of people would like to know the cause so we can all avoid it with long maps.
Thanks for your dedication to making what I consider to be the first 'real' TD game in SC2.
I promise the very moment I know what's causing the crashing I will publish an updated version that fixes it and put a bug report on the official forums. I am actively working on it, but it is very difficult to trace the exact problem, especially because every time I change something I need to leave the map running for 2-3 hours to confirm whether or not the crashing is gone or not. :(
Posted an updated version that disabled the music triggers, which might be the cause of the crashing. If you were crashing regularly before I would really be interested in hearing whether or not this fixes the problem for you.
@RileyStarcraft: Go
will give it a shot after work tonight and let you know
Just gave it a shot, made it through all 36 waves on casual no crashing.
Finished the map twice without crashing yet. I'll post here again if there is more crash.
I agree, it would have undoubtedly been harder to learn and less popular, but it's always nice when games can make some effort to teach as well. And we could learn chemistry AND latin :P
One thing that could be done to make any of it pretty easy is to just create a chart. I think they had one for Pokemon or Magic... Basically, you color-code whatever the things may be, tarots, elements, chemicals, and then you just have colors with arrows.
Red -> Blue
^ - - - - - - v
Green <- Yellow
You could display that in a dialog box that you could toggle on and off, for a quick reference as to what does what. As it stands, you could probably substitute any of the elements for a translation (to any foreign language, or different word set) and based on the colors alone, players would be able to follow what's going on.
On to the map itself, why I originally posted.
In summary, I think all I wanted to say was this:
In a day and age where Tower Defense has become not just a map or mod, but a full-on game released in hundreds of variations by hundreds of developers, available on almost every platform, the general gameplay of Tower Defense has become more or less outdone and overused.
As such, I've personally avoided most of the TD maps on battle.net, but having gotten the all-time best score on DarkRevenant's rating system, I had to check this out.
Sorcerer's Defense reminds me what I originally appreciated most in Tower Defense games, and does it excellently.
The selection of towers, and "element" style design works off of the most basic chess-originated elements of Strategy gameplay. Choosing which units will serve you best against your opponent(s), and complimenting the towers to each-other makes it that much more interesting. The fact that you're dealt random building blocks means that the user has to learn the mechanic, as opposed to memorizing a strategy, which enriches the experience that much more.
The "mazing", or leading units through a path of your creation, adds a puzzle element to the strategy game. Unlike other games I've seen, which use a single, linear path, the need to "circle" the four gates takes a very simple and easy to understand concept, and allows the player to use it as a tool to make their puzzles that much more intricate. In the end, the combination of puzzle and strategy play makes for a deep and very enjoyable experience.
The casual difficulty could be beaten by practically anyone, which makes for a well-placed introductory to lure players in. I quickly learned the hard way that normal wouldn't be nearly as forgiving, but after picking up the strategies, managed to master it as well. Attempts to tackle the higher difficulties have proven the map's replay value.