does the player start together or far away from each other? and if together, will it be posible to use other peoples building? will be fun if there will be like 3 miners, 1 manager that go for the vespe ammo and build thing, 2 wariors in goliaths and single shared resounrces tab instead of everyone for himself. also you can mke it separate gamemode "shared survival"
Yeah, everything except the control of the SCVs is shared between the players. All buildings are controlled by a neutral player, and all players can give orders to the buildings even without being near them with their SCV.
I've taken it for granted so I've forgotten to mention it almost everywhere. Updated the first post with that now. :)
Things are going well and there isn't much left to add anymore. However, I want to make sure the map is properly balanced and that user experience for new players is good enough before releasing even the first version. It's now just a matter of organizing some playtests, but I might take a little break before that. Working on the map for over a month literally every day has burned me out once again. ;)
Meanwhile, a sneak peek on my next project, which will be something completely different:
looks greate. :D blackholemissiles are blowing my mind its that cool. i hope there will be any other way to block or dodge bulets than forcing them to turn by shoting bhm. meybe some kind of deflecting forcefield? or just warp in a piece of wall that will has 250 hp and 10 sec befor auto destruction. and meybe some kind of traps... like land(space)mine?
I'll finish CraftCraft before Diablo III is released, because after that I'm pretty sure I can't be bothered anymore. :D
Singleplayer gameplay feels fine for now, but I still need to get some tests with more players done. I'm dropping max players to 4 from 6, because I have a feeling it wouldn't be very fun with 5-6 players, and it'd take a lot more time to test with 1-6 than with 1-4.
A lot of ideas that I've had probably won't see the light of day, but the map works just fine without them.
If you want to help with testing (on EU), poke me on the #SC2Mapster IRC channel during the evenings or nights (my sleep pattern is screwd up atm).
Edit: Two-player test went well. Looks like I nailed my last bug with the power grid system as well (wasn't sometimes removing the cable models when demolishing multiple structures at the same time). Trying to get some 3-4 player tests done tomorrow.
I just played this with my wife, two players new to the game. Seems like you've got a fun game here, and I like the concept of slowly building your base out, expanding, and exploring.
I have a couple of simple suggestions for you. Our biggest problem with the first play through was understanding the basics, even though we watched the tutorial. During the tutorial, you could have the SCV unit actually move to the forge/refinery and collect the resources and drop them off at the command center, and you could do this with rocks as well. A little demonstration would reinforce the text. Second, I think you should force the status bar ON for both forge and refinery so you can always see how much they've got available, and maybe even consider hiding the health bar just to emphasize the resources. Finally, it seemed like we were getting vespene a little too slow. Not sure if this is less of a problem if you get a good build order, but we weren't generating enough vespene for the amount of defense that we felt we needed to keep the expansion refineries alive.
Anyway, thanks for getting this into NA. Good work!
Yup, I should improve the tutorial even further, and work on ways to make the learning curve smoother. I'll see if I can get the SCV demonstration in at some point.
As far as I know, I can't change a client's status bar settings, that needs to be done manually.
The researches you do at the Research Lab are extremely important for keeping your bases alive. This isn't explained to new players in any way and should be improved. I also had an idea how to make the research system better, which will change things a bit. :)
I feel the opposite. I feel that the learning curve was fine.
There's a few stumbling blocks though. Firstly, as stated as an example above, you have to collect vespene/vanadium from the factories. It really should be automatic if connected to a command centre.
Secondly, the vehicles are just traps for wasting vanadium. Only the goliath has any use whatsoever. I'd either remove the other 2, or give them defined roles. Vulture could be very fast, moderate damage but low life and lay mines at a cost of vanadium for example, while the mule could have vastly increased cargo bay and "teleport" resources directly to the command centre on a much shorter cooldown.
Lastly, the relationship between vespene and power. That took us an entire try to figure out.
Yeah the learning curve was fine... I had one problem with it though: there isn't enough to learn! (lack of content) ; )
But of course everyone is different and some people are slow while others are fast... but how do you find the perfect balance?
Players should not be directed towards every building or unit (apart for the first base structures which you have covered anyway), most people are curious (of course) and will investigate other units/structures/techs... because, if they aren't investigating these things, are they even playing the game?
At the end of the day, some people are only capable of playing Tower Defence games and Tug of Wars, and will never play this map again, but this is something we just can't change.
For the kind of game this is, if the majority of people can figure everything out on their first game, it's unusual, and shouldn't be expected. When I play a game, if I don't understand it but enjoy it on the first go, I'll try it out again.
Like I said yesterday: there needs to be more content!
Just don't dumb the game down ; )
I played a match or two with 3 friends yesterday and we had a great time.
The first 10-15 minutes of the first match we pretty much only learned the basics of the game, but I think that’s totally fine.
Explaining everything in a tutorial could be too much for most people to remember anyway. Also, it's really not that hard to understand.
However as already stated by others, I find there are a few problems with all the vehicles except the goliath (or ancient).
You could give the mule a passive resource transportation ability (e.g. 4 or 5 resources every second).
Also I really like the idea of allowing refineries to transfer at least part of its mined vespene fas via the energy grid.
Maybe half of what it's mining? So there's still a pretty big benefit to collecting it manually or researching automated refineries, but you would not need someone who does little else but run from refinery to refinery and collect all that gas.
Also, I'd like there to be more "reliable" vanadium sinks. As it is, once you have your turrets set up and everyone has a goliath there is little need for any more vanadium. One Idea I had was to make (some) abilities cost small amounts of vanadium. Repair drones and SCV teleportation come to mind.
Btw, I'm impressed by your change log. Submitting (multiple) patches nearly every day without breaking stuff horribly really amazes me.
Keep up the good work and let's hope you can squeeze out a few more features before Diablo 3 comes out :)
If you end up having too much vanadium, it means you have produced too much of it, and wasted neosteel and vespene gas (power costs vespene). Try turning off your Forges when you have enough vanadium.
I removed MULE in the latest patch, and replaced it with a Quarry building, which produces neosteel by mining it from under the ground at the cost of power.
I'll add more interesting vehicles once I have the time to develop them. Vulture is quite a bit faster now, and I'll try to make it even more interesting (it's never been "bad", just not useful as often as a Goliath).
More content will come (and just did in patch 0.114, although not yet on NA). The map has been published for only 11 days, and I've already added a huge bunch of stuff! Just check the changelog here. The release of Diablo III will slow things down, but if people keep playing the map, I'll keep working on it.
The (secret) reason why things don't break down easily by the huge number changes is that none of the changes are actually very big in comparison the number of features the map has. Another reason is that the map doesn't break if things get easier or harder, because it is co-op: they simply make it easier or harder. That, and I can easily estimate how big an effect the change actually has, since I made the entire map just by myself. :)
With the current US version, multiplayer appears to not work quite right. Specifically, people keep disconnecting. It happened twice so far, two people drop suddenly. I can't see any obvious triggers, but It looks like a desync, at least if it were in wc3. No idea if you can locally desync in sc2 tho...
It is a desync problem, and I don't really know how to fix it. I haven't seen many complaints about it, so I'm assuming it's a very small minority of players having it, mostly Mac users. It would seem it has something to do with pathfinding or the way the rocks split up the navigation mesh, but I can't really decrease the number of rocks, because that'd mean I'd have to decrease player sight radius by one, and it's only 7 at the moment.
I found the map yesterday. Very good, I enjoyed it, I have being playing a few public games, then went solo (It's weird to be able to play solo so +1 for that) to see how everything worked. Then went back to public, team was not that bad for public but once i told em we we're rdy for an artifact and pre builded everything they went to power their own instead of helping with the first. We ended up with 12 spawn running around...
So why is it hard difficulty when first timers can actually survive quit a lot?
Do killing nest actually affect enemy spawning? so far the only bonus to kill a pool is the refine near it and a hatchery is the crystal u'll get from it and around those open spaces.
Looking forward too seeing more reason to make "outpost" like the ones near refine. I don't know, maybe a building that works better with free space around like an eolic field (was gonna say like a solar power plant at first, but the cave them may interfere with it. Or simply more local resources.
Another thing that would be explorable would be to upgrade vehicles. Giving bonus to Goliath fire rate at high cost! so u'd take care of it.
Yeah I actually see Hard difficulty being quite...err..hard. I've been unable to win in 3 successive attempts with random people, usually because one person wasted a bunch of resources >_>
The attacks are absolutely relentless and if you start to fall behind it's a slow (potentially >1hr) and painful death from there. You might want to consider some degree of difficulty adjustment based on player success level. Either quickly wipe out teams who are struggling too much, or give them some additional breathing room to catch up.
Interesting game overall, though. You've done quite a few things I like here.
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does the player start together or far away from each other? and if together, will it be posible to use other peoples building? will be fun if there will be like 3 miners, 1 manager that go for the vespe ammo and build thing, 2 wariors in goliaths and single shared resounrces tab instead of everyone for himself. also you can mke it separate gamemode "shared survival"
@rodon1: Go Hmm, Interseting. I thought that was answered already, but actually, It must have not been.
It should be obvious that everyone shares the same base however, with shared control over the base (but not the scvs)
Ofc, that really ought to be in the op.
Yeah, everything except the control of the SCVs is shared between the players. All buildings are controlled by a neutral player, and all players can give orders to the buildings even without being near them with their SCV.
I've taken it for granted so I've forgotten to mention it almost everywhere. Updated the first post with that now. :)
Things are going well and there isn't much left to add anymore. However, I want to make sure the map is properly balanced and that user experience for new players is good enough before releasing even the first version. It's now just a matter of organizing some playtests, but I might take a little break before that. Working on the map for over a month literally every day has burned me out once again. ;)
Meanwhile, a sneak peek on my next project, which will be something completely different:
looks greate. :D blackholemissiles are blowing my mind its that cool. i hope there will be any other way to block or dodge bulets than forcing them to turn by shoting bhm. meybe some kind of deflecting forcefield? or just warp in a piece of wall that will has 250 hp and 10 sec befor auto destruction. and meybe some kind of traps... like land(space)mine?
I'll finish CraftCraft before Diablo III is released, because after that I'm pretty sure I can't be bothered anymore. :D
Singleplayer gameplay feels fine for now, but I still need to get some tests with more players done. I'm dropping max players to 4 from 6, because I have a feeling it wouldn't be very fun with 5-6 players, and it'd take a lot more time to test with 1-6 than with 1-4.
A lot of ideas that I've had probably won't see the light of day, but the map works just fine without them.
If you want to help with testing (on EU), poke me on the #SC2Mapster IRC channel during the evenings or nights (my sleep pattern is screwd up atm).
Edit: Two-player test went well. Looks like I nailed my last bug with the power grid system as well (wasn't sometimes removing the cable models when demolishing multiple structures at the same time). Trying to get some 3-4 player tests done tomorrow.
Follow @A1win on Twitter for updates.
I think I'll get better test results with more players than just my friends.
Released CraftCraft 0.70 Beta on EU region. I'm not sure when I'll get it on US but shouldn't be too long now.
Released on NA servers. Go give it a shot!
@A1win: Go
I just played this with my wife, two players new to the game. Seems like you've got a fun game here, and I like the concept of slowly building your base out, expanding, and exploring.
I have a couple of simple suggestions for you. Our biggest problem with the first play through was understanding the basics, even though we watched the tutorial. During the tutorial, you could have the SCV unit actually move to the forge/refinery and collect the resources and drop them off at the command center, and you could do this with rocks as well. A little demonstration would reinforce the text. Second, I think you should force the status bar ON for both forge and refinery so you can always see how much they've got available, and maybe even consider hiding the health bar just to emphasize the resources. Finally, it seemed like we were getting vespene a little too slow. Not sure if this is less of a problem if you get a good build order, but we weren't generating enough vespene for the amount of defense that we felt we needed to keep the expansion refineries alive.
Anyway, thanks for getting this into NA. Good work!
Yup, I should improve the tutorial even further, and work on ways to make the learning curve smoother. I'll see if I can get the SCV demonstration in at some point.
As far as I know, I can't change a client's status bar settings, that needs to be done manually.
The researches you do at the Research Lab are extremely important for keeping your bases alive. This isn't explained to new players in any way and should be improved. I also had an idea how to make the research system better, which will change things a bit. :)
I feel the opposite. I feel that the learning curve was fine.
There's a few stumbling blocks though. Firstly, as stated as an example above, you have to collect vespene/vanadium from the factories. It really should be automatic if connected to a command centre.
Secondly, the vehicles are just traps for wasting vanadium. Only the goliath has any use whatsoever. I'd either remove the other 2, or give them defined roles. Vulture could be very fast, moderate damage but low life and lay mines at a cost of vanadium for example, while the mule could have vastly increased cargo bay and "teleport" resources directly to the command centre on a much shorter cooldown.
Lastly, the relationship between vespene and power. That took us an entire try to figure out.
Yeah the learning curve was fine... I had one problem with it though: there isn't enough to learn! (lack of content) ; ) But of course everyone is different and some people are slow while others are fast... but how do you find the perfect balance?
Players should not be directed towards every building or unit (apart for the first base structures which you have covered anyway), most people are curious (of course) and will investigate other units/structures/techs... because, if they aren't investigating these things, are they even playing the game?
At the end of the day, some people are only capable of playing Tower Defence games and Tug of Wars, and will never play this map again, but this is something we just can't change.
For the kind of game this is, if the majority of people can figure everything out on their first game, it's unusual, and shouldn't be expected. When I play a game, if I don't understand it but enjoy it on the first go, I'll try it out again.
Like I said yesterday: there needs to be more content! Just don't dumb the game down ; )
I played a match or two with 3 friends yesterday and we had a great time. The first 10-15 minutes of the first match we pretty much only learned the basics of the game, but I think that’s totally fine. Explaining everything in a tutorial could be too much for most people to remember anyway. Also, it's really not that hard to understand.
However as already stated by others, I find there are a few problems with all the vehicles except the goliath (or ancient).
You could give the mule a passive resource transportation ability (e.g. 4 or 5 resources every second). Also I really like the idea of allowing refineries to transfer at least part of its mined vespene fas via the energy grid. Maybe half of what it's mining? So there's still a pretty big benefit to collecting it manually or researching automated refineries, but you would not need someone who does little else but run from refinery to refinery and collect all that gas.
Also, I'd like there to be more "reliable" vanadium sinks. As it is, once you have your turrets set up and everyone has a goliath there is little need for any more vanadium. One Idea I had was to make (some) abilities cost small amounts of vanadium. Repair drones and SCV teleportation come to mind.
Btw, I'm impressed by your change log. Submitting (multiple) patches nearly every day without breaking stuff horribly really amazes me.
Keep up the good work and let's hope you can squeeze out a few more features before Diablo 3 comes out :)
Thanks for all the feedback!
A few comments:
With the current US version, multiplayer appears to not work quite right. Specifically, people keep disconnecting. It happened twice so far, two people drop suddenly. I can't see any obvious triggers, but It looks like a desync, at least if it were in wc3. No idea if you can locally desync in sc2 tho...
It is a desync problem, and I don't really know how to fix it. I haven't seen many complaints about it, so I'm assuming it's a very small minority of players having it, mostly Mac users. It would seem it has something to do with pathfinding or the way the rocks split up the navigation mesh, but I can't really decrease the number of rocks, because that'd mean I'd have to decrease player sight radius by one, and it's only 7 at the moment.
If anyone has any bright ideas, I'm all ears.
Alright, Next time it happens I will inquire as to MAC status.
Also, New bug. The teleport spell will drop you off the map if your target dies before you land.
Also, I love how you hid ancients in the map....
I found the map yesterday. Very good, I enjoyed it, I have being playing a few public games, then went solo (It's weird to be able to play solo so +1 for that) to see how everything worked. Then went back to public, team was not that bad for public but once i told em we we're rdy for an artifact and pre builded everything they went to power their own instead of helping with the first. We ended up with 12 spawn running around...
So why is it hard difficulty when first timers can actually survive quit a lot?
Do killing nest actually affect enemy spawning? so far the only bonus to kill a pool is the refine near it and a hatchery is the crystal u'll get from it and around those open spaces.
Looking forward too seeing more reason to make "outpost" like the ones near refine. I don't know, maybe a building that works better with free space around like an eolic field (was gonna say like a solar power plant at first, but the cave them may interfere with it. Or simply more local resources.
Another thing that would be explorable would be to upgrade vehicles. Giving bonus to Goliath fire rate at high cost! so u'd take care of it.
Front page on NA, Release update NAOW!!!!!!
XD
There might be a solution to the Mac dropping issue (an update to OS X Lion).
Good to hear it made on the front page in NA as well. :)
On EU, CraftCraft is currently down to 2nd page as new players are done skimming it through.
Unfortunately, my dedicated uploader is currently not available, and I'm not sure how long he'll take.
The learning curve is still quite hard for most players. If I ever get it easier to learn, I might rename Hard difficulty to Normal or something.
@A1win: Go
Yeah I actually see Hard difficulty being quite...err..hard. I've been unable to win in 3 successive attempts with random people, usually because one person wasted a bunch of resources >_>
The attacks are absolutely relentless and if you start to fall behind it's a slow (potentially >1hr) and painful death from there. You might want to consider some degree of difficulty adjustment based on player success level. Either quickly wipe out teams who are struggling too much, or give them some additional breathing room to catch up.
Interesting game overall, though. You've done quite a few things I like here.