I've made a special forces map for the map contest, here's an overview of some of the features:
- I've tried to capture the core gameplay of special forces, and add a few surprises and improvements since we're now on the starcraft 2 engine. Won't spoil them, you just have to play it.
- There's 15 units to choose from, all of them have their uses and their own special ability. Not the normal special abilities like stim pack and whatever (I felt that having that as an upgrade was always a cop out), but each unit has a special ability that is typically in the game and may have been altered or I made a new one. All units retain usefulness throughout the game and upgrades effect all units, so if you start with infantry and decide to get a few aircraft, you can have that kind of combination of units, which also adds a fair bit of re-playability.
- I've put in a fair bit of polish, I'm rather big on that, there's things like how you can pick your starting unit from the battle.net lobby.
So go ahead and give it a try, search for "special forces" and it'll be in that list (not a lot of special forces maps on battle.net it seems). I hope you enjoy it.
Two outstanding issues are:
- I have not done a whole lot of balancing work, especially since the mapping contest didn't let me do that really. I've done my best to balance it for 6 people, but I really won't know until people start playing it.
- The map appears smaller than the original, mostly out of time constraints for the contest, but it still has a lot of gameplay and depth.
I think I'll do some gameplay commentary with someone else. I'll post it up here when I'm done (should be tonight), I guess "play it to find out what I added" doesn't really make people excited to play it.
When you select your race/unit in the lobby, is that just a name change or did you actually enable a choice of races? Just wondering as I've got custom races, which I can't select in the lobby atm.
When you select your race/unit in the lobby, is that just a name change or did you actually enable a choice of races? Just wondering as I've got custom races, which I can't select in the lobby atm.
That's a player attribute option I added. You can open the map to see how I did it, I don't lock any of my maps.
I wish I could remove certain dropdowns but I don't seem to be able to. Like the race selector is unnecessary, I tried making custom races too and it didn't work. You have to use attributes, and hope that sometime in the future blizzard adds the ability to remove unnecessary dropdowns in lobby.
Also it just reached #7 in north america, hurrah! :D
It is up in EU, yes. Played it twice today. We failed hard both times, but had a lot of fun at failing. A lot better than Special Forces: Night. Good job.
Reasonably fun but not very balanced. I couldn't really see a compelling reason to build anything but marines as stimpack is absurdly effective. The life cost is negligable (it should probably scale with their health) and a stimmed marine's dps/cost ratio is something like double any other unit.
Wouldn't play it again but it was entertaining for a single playthrough which is more than I can say for most UMS maps, so good job.
Major update. Bigger map, better enemies, etc. I was able to put the polish that I was unable to put into it due to contest deadlines, and hopefully much more updates to come.
Unfortunately due to the recent battle.net change with gametypes, the version on battle.net is unjoinable unless you look a little bit further down for the one with just the "Special Forces" gametype.
I've made a special forces map for the map contest, here's an overview of some of the features:
- I've tried to capture the core gameplay of special forces, and add a few surprises and improvements since we're now on the starcraft 2 engine. Won't spoil them, you just have to play it.
- There's 15 units to choose from, all of them have their uses and their own special ability. Not the normal special abilities like stim pack and whatever (I felt that having that as an upgrade was always a cop out), but each unit has a special ability that is typically in the game and may have been altered or I made a new one. All units retain usefulness throughout the game and upgrades effect all units, so if you start with infantry and decide to get a few aircraft, you can have that kind of combination of units, which also adds a fair bit of re-playability.
- I've put in a fair bit of polish, I'm rather big on that, there's things like how you can pick your starting unit from the battle.net lobby.
So go ahead and give it a try, search for "special forces" and it'll be in that list (not a lot of special forces maps on battle.net it seems). I hope you enjoy it.
Two outstanding issues are:
- I have not done a whole lot of balancing work, especially since the mapping contest didn't let me do that really. I've done my best to balance it for 6 people, but I really won't know until people start playing it.
- The map appears smaller than the original, mostly out of time constraints for the contest, but it still has a lot of gameplay and depth.
Can we have some videos / screenshots ? :)
Use your imagination vjeux....Sheesh some people...:p
So you made that map for contest and now you uploaded it on bnet ? If so, that is against their rules ?
No you're allowed to after the contest entries are submitted on sept 11. I even waited a day just to be safe.
I think I'll do some gameplay commentary with someone else. I'll post it up here when I'm done (should be tonight), I guess "play it to find out what I added" doesn't really make people excited to play it.
@mikelat: Go
Alright I caved in and made a video of me completing it, you can check it out here (its a 3 parter):
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
It hit about page 2 of popularity today, enjoy the videos.
When you select your race/unit in the lobby, is that just a name change or did you actually enable a choice of races? Just wondering as I've got custom races, which I can't select in the lobby atm.
That's a player attribute option I added. You can open the map to see how I did it, I don't lock any of my maps.
I wish I could remove certain dropdowns but I don't seem to be able to. Like the race selector is unnecessary, I tried making custom races too and it didn't work. You have to use attributes, and hope that sometime in the future blizzard adds the ability to remove unnecessary dropdowns in lobby.
Also it just reached #7 in north america, hurrah! :D
Is it up in EU?
Yes, people manage and mirror my map in the EU and AUS servers as far as I know. I can't check how well they're doing though.
It is up in EU, yes. Played it twice today. We failed hard both times, but had a lot of fun at failing. A lot better than Special Forces: Night. Good job.
It's a fun game, even by yourself, I played and beat it alone, marine is by far the best starting unit.
Ok I found a way to beat it :)
Reasonably fun but not very balanced. I couldn't really see a compelling reason to build anything but marines as stimpack is absurdly effective. The life cost is negligable (it should probably scale with their health) and a stimmed marine's dps/cost ratio is something like double any other unit.
Wouldn't play it again but it was entertaining for a single playthrough which is more than I can say for most UMS maps, so good job.
Major update. Bigger map, better enemies, etc. I was able to put the polish that I was unable to put into it due to contest deadlines, and hopefully much more updates to come.
Unfortunately due to the recent battle.net change with gametypes, the version on battle.net is unjoinable unless you look a little bit further down for the one with just the "Special Forces" gametype.
For complete list of changes, go here: http://www.mikelat.com/2010/09/27/special-forces-elite-major-patch-09272010/
One final update to the map on 30/9/2010, check out the changes: http://www.mikelat.com/2010/09/30/special-forces-elite-%E2%80%93-minor-patch-09302010/
Download here: http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/special-forces-elite/
Minor update, just a small bug fix and some lobby changes to hide the race selector and remove the icons only starting unit selector which was a terrible idea in the first place. Full changes: http://www.mikelat.com/2011/03/22/special-forces-elite-%E2%80%93-minor-patch-03222011/