I enjoyed the first Catalyst. Version 2 sounds really cool, Will keep a look out for it;p.
Will it still be EU only?
The beta will be EU only, though this should be short since I plan to get all the content I want to add in BEFORE I release this time, it'd be entirely for balance and bugs.
Still working on polish. Spent a while on the intro screen today.
I want a nice Catalyst logo in the middle, but for some reason any .tga I import has it's transparency removed and it just looks plan bad;
Enough working on the splash for now. SC logo is a placeholder until I can get someone to make a decent Catalyst logo or get around to doing it myself.
Looks good, but if I may suggest, the select your vehicle box does not seem to really blend in. =/ I dont know if you see the same problem or if it was on purpose, just saying it looks a bit to out there. o.o
So I'm back on the drawing board for one final concept.
Basically, the game is split into 3 main stages. Early game, mid game and late game. Early game you will be limited by minerals and not really have to worry about vespene much. Mid game, you will be limited by minerals and vespene. Late game, you will typically have more than enough minerals and be limited only by vespene.
To ensure the game keeps it's flow, I will be introducing consumables. Consumables will cost minerals and will typically be designed around bringing the game to an end. Some examples for consumables are tank drops, which airlifts in a tank squad which will operate autonomously to bring victory, and more traditional ones such as nukes or chemical weapons.
While ideas for consumables are more than welcome, what I would like is a method of purchasing these consumables. Consumables will be displayed like items are in SotIS, and for all intensive purposes will be items. Just they won't provide passive effects and must be casted in order to gain benefit, at which point the item is spent and removed. I want a way to purchase these items.
A little background for a moment. Right now the team bases are rather useless. It's part intentional, you never need to really visit your base. You can repair outside combat in the field and vehicle components are also constructed in the field. With that in mind I have 2 main options:
1) The shop option. A shop in your base that sells these items in the same way most RPGs work.
2) The construction option. You build a "shop" inside your vehicle and purchase from there.
I'm seeking criticism here. I'm not sure consumables will make it into release if I can't solidify their design. Basically I want an end-game way to spend minerals and draw the game to a close (without being overpowered), and this idea seems to fit the bill.
Personally, I think you should postpone the consumable item implementation until after uploading the first beta version. The way I see (or rather read) it, it's pretty much an "icing on the cake" thing that isn't in any way critical to the way the map plays. Rather it seems like a perfect candidate for an 'additional feature/content' to be introduced in a later version of the map.
Another advantage of leaving consumables out for the first release would be not flooding players with too many things to learn about right from the start. Let players (especially those who maybe have never played the old version of Catalyst) concentrate on building their vehicle first, and then, after they get a grip on what's going on, open up more possibilities to them. I know this is very theoretical and won't apply to every player out there (depending on learning curve and other factors), but I believe that for the most part, this would be the best course of action.
For the record though, I'm not especially fond of constructing a shop inside you vehicle, although I hear where you're coming from with the "no need to return to base"-concept. I'd rather suggest that maybe you could set up those shops in both teams' bases as well as additional ones out on the battefield (maybe in the two remaining corners).
Place a shop at either every control point or just the center and corner ones. And at the bases as well of course. Purchasing items from your vehicle doesn't really make much sense, unless you give each item a build time so that its not exactly "buying" but "contstructing" items.
Well you'd be constructing them. Like some cheap, but techy structure that builds a nuke.
I might try a little of everything anyway. A few sold by control points, a few more sold by your base and a few different ones "sold" by constructing them. I might add them as random spawns during lategame too but shall see.
For now I might just add a consumable chemical nuke and see how that plays out before going further. I'll be keeping an eye on it during beta and if it doesn't fit, I'll get rid of it before release. They will basically play a similar role to the support powers from Command & Conquer.
This is starting to seem more like potential update material than something I'd want to fit into release though.
I like the idea of a factory; you build it in your tank and you can activate it, at a production cost of some minerals per second it constantly produces the consumables.
I really don't like the idea of driving to a shop at the end of the world to buy a nuke. It goes against the whole mobility concept of catalyst 2.0.
Is it not possible to just make the command center the shop and set the range for the shop to like the whole map? That way you could hotkey it and be able to buy stuff whenever you want. You could also add an animation, for reality's sake, that if you buy an item a little drop pod drops into your vehicle to play the delivery-boy.
Or you could do something with the control-nodes. Say the more you have the more stuff you can buy at the command-center. I also really loved the idea that you could build different stuff than turrets in the beta there, that would also be pretty neat.
I assume you still need vespene gas to fortify your control nodes with towers right?
Also what is the purpose of selling some at controlpoints, some at the base and some being random drops? Thats just confusing and unneccesary imo. Do it like blizzard does with ui, clear basic features easy to understand and not 99 different ways to do the same thing. That reminds me of the forest shops in dota, i mean what is the purpose other than unnecessary legwork? xD
I assume you still need vespene gas to fortify your control nodes with towers right?
I changed things around a lot. The way this works now is more akin to how the deployable turrets worked.
You build a turret core internally. There are 5 different turret cores right now. Building a turret core enables a build menu on your vehicle in the field. Building the turret core costs minerals. Building the turret itself costs energy from your vehicle. Basically, it works exactly how deployable turrets from Catalyst worked, only these are placeable.
I've done away with vespene as a team resource. It's now used for upgrades. For example, you can improve your vehicle's armour by 1 point for 75 minerals and 75 vespene. There are no purchasable buildings in the field anymore. Everything is constructed by players. I feel this makes the whole experience much more dynamic.
I'm not sure that was a good explanation. It's very simple to get to grips with. I've tested with a few people and I've not even had anyone have to ask questions over how things work. I'm really pleased with how intuitive this all fits together, and making things fit together well is a top priority for me right now.
Also what is the purpose of selling some at controlpoints, some at the base and some being random drops? Thats just confusing and unneccesary imo. Do it like blizzard does with ui, clear basic features easy to understand and not 99 different ways to do the same thing. That reminds me of the forest shops in dota, i mean what is the purpose other than unnecessary legwork? xD
Yeah come to think of it I hated the forest shops with a passion. Internal factory "shop" it is.
Alright thats a bummer i liked that control-nodes had more to them than just being control-nodes.
Regarding your turret-build-system i sense a really ugly problem incoming.
You see in catalyst1.0 it was already annoying when 2-3 turret-carriers planted their turrets in one spot basically rendering this spot inpenetrable for the enemy.
Now whith the new system there is no limit to how many turrets you can deploy after purchasing the turret-node -> hope you see the problem right there.
So if you want to keep this as is turrets should cost minerals and/or vespene otherwise 1 player can render a whole area of the map inpenetrable resulting in unnecessary drawn out games or stalemates.
A limit per turret node would not solve the problem cause you could just build 20 more turret-nodes in the hangar.
You see in catalyst1.0 it was already annoying when 2-3 turret-carriers planted their turrets in one spot basically rendering this spot inpenetrable for the enemy. Now whith the new system there is no limit to how many turrets you can deploy -> hope you see the problem right there.
You may only have as many active turrets as you have turret cores. If you have 3 artillary cores, you may have 3 artillary turrets. If one turret dies, you may replace it, costing only energy. The only way you could get a 4th artillary turret is by purchasing a 4th artillary core, which costs minerals.
It's basically just like the turrets in Cityscape, only replace "items" with "cores".
Do you still have "turret"-weapons and normal "stand-still-to-fire"-weapons? That 's pretty cool but i didn't really see that in you big weapons-post on 38.
If you have it would make things easier if you placed like all turret-weapons to the left side of the control-panel(for example in the light weapons tab) and all normal weapons on the right side. So a turret-weapon oriented player would primarily look on the left side when building stuff and so on.
@Eiviyn: Go
I enjoyed the first Catalyst. Version 2 sounds really cool, Will keep a look out for it;p.
Will it still be EU only?
The beta will be EU only, though this should be short since I plan to get all the content I want to add in BEFORE I release this time, it'd be entirely for balance and bugs.
Still working on polish. Spent a while on the intro screen today.
I want a nice Catalyst logo in the middle, but for some reason any .tga I import has it's transparency removed and it just looks plan bad;
You could convert it to .dds, never had a problem with it.
Enough working on the splash for now. SC logo is a placeholder until I can get someone to make a decent Catalyst logo or get around to doing it myself.
More vehicles will come but release will have 3.
As i told you, looks awesome =D Cant wait till you release the map, but take your time and make it as perfect as you can ;)
It does now.
Looks good, but if I may suggest, the select your vehicle box does not seem to really blend in. =/ I dont know if you see the same problem or if it was on purpose, just saying it looks a bit to out there. o.o
Like the menu background you got going on, looks like a pretty hefty battleground. :)
So I'm back on the drawing board for one final concept.
Basically, the game is split into 3 main stages. Early game, mid game and late game. Early game you will be limited by minerals and not really have to worry about vespene much. Mid game, you will be limited by minerals and vespene. Late game, you will typically have more than enough minerals and be limited only by vespene.
To ensure the game keeps it's flow, I will be introducing consumables. Consumables will cost minerals and will typically be designed around bringing the game to an end. Some examples for consumables are tank drops, which airlifts in a tank squad which will operate autonomously to bring victory, and more traditional ones such as nukes or chemical weapons.
While ideas for consumables are more than welcome, what I would like is a method of purchasing these consumables. Consumables will be displayed like items are in SotIS, and for all intensive purposes will be items. Just they won't provide passive effects and must be casted in order to gain benefit, at which point the item is spent and removed. I want a way to purchase these items.
A little background for a moment. Right now the team bases are rather useless. It's part intentional, you never need to really visit your base. You can repair outside combat in the field and vehicle components are also constructed in the field. With that in mind I have 2 main options:
1) The shop option. A shop in your base that sells these items in the same way most RPGs work.
2) The construction option. You build a "shop" inside your vehicle and purchase from there.
I'm seeking criticism here. I'm not sure consumables will make it into release if I can't solidify their design. Basically I want an end-game way to spend minerals and draw the game to a close (without being overpowered), and this idea seems to fit the bill.
Personally, I think you should postpone the consumable item implementation until after uploading the first beta version. The way I see (or rather read) it, it's pretty much an "icing on the cake" thing that isn't in any way critical to the way the map plays. Rather it seems like a perfect candidate for an 'additional feature/content' to be introduced in a later version of the map.
Another advantage of leaving consumables out for the first release would be not flooding players with too many things to learn about right from the start. Let players (especially those who maybe have never played the old version of Catalyst) concentrate on building their vehicle first, and then, after they get a grip on what's going on, open up more possibilities to them. I know this is very theoretical and won't apply to every player out there (depending on learning curve and other factors), but I believe that for the most part, this would be the best course of action.
For the record though, I'm not especially fond of constructing a shop inside you vehicle, although I hear where you're coming from with the "no need to return to base"-concept. I'd rather suggest that maybe you could set up those shops in both teams' bases as well as additional ones out on the battefield (maybe in the two remaining corners).
Place a shop at either every control point or just the center and corner ones. And at the bases as well of course. Purchasing items from your vehicle doesn't really make much sense, unless you give each item a build time so that its not exactly "buying" but "contstructing" items.
Well you'd be constructing them. Like some cheap, but techy structure that builds a nuke.
I might try a little of everything anyway. A few sold by control points, a few more sold by your base and a few different ones "sold" by constructing them. I might add them as random spawns during lategame too but shall see.
For now I might just add a consumable chemical nuke and see how that plays out before going further. I'll be keeping an eye on it during beta and if it doesn't fit, I'll get rid of it before release. They will basically play a similar role to the support powers from Command & Conquer.
This is starting to seem more like potential update material than something I'd want to fit into release though.
I like the idea of a factory; you build it in your tank and you can activate it, at a production cost of some minerals per second it constantly produces the consumables.
I really don't like the idea of driving to a shop at the end of the world to buy a nuke. It goes against the whole mobility concept of catalyst 2.0.
Is it not possible to just make the command center the shop and set the range for the shop to like the whole map? That way you could hotkey it and be able to buy stuff whenever you want. You could also add an animation, for reality's sake, that if you buy an item a little drop pod drops into your vehicle to play the delivery-boy.
Or you could do something with the control-nodes. Say the more you have the more stuff you can buy at the command-center. I also really loved the idea that you could build different stuff than turrets in the beta there, that would also be pretty neat.
I assume you still need vespene gas to fortify your control nodes with towers right?
Also what is the purpose of selling some at controlpoints, some at the base and some being random drops? Thats just confusing and unneccesary imo. Do it like blizzard does with ui, clear basic features easy to understand and not 99 different ways to do the same thing. That reminds me of the forest shops in dota, i mean what is the purpose other than unnecessary legwork? xD
I changed things around a lot. The way this works now is more akin to how the deployable turrets worked.
You build a turret core internally. There are 5 different turret cores right now. Building a turret core enables a build menu on your vehicle in the field. Building the turret core costs minerals. Building the turret itself costs energy from your vehicle. Basically, it works exactly how deployable turrets from Catalyst worked, only these are placeable.
I've done away with vespene as a team resource. It's now used for upgrades. For example, you can improve your vehicle's armour by 1 point for 75 minerals and 75 vespene. There are no purchasable buildings in the field anymore. Everything is constructed by players. I feel this makes the whole experience much more dynamic.
I'm not sure that was a good explanation. It's very simple to get to grips with. I've tested with a few people and I've not even had anyone have to ask questions over how things work. I'm really pleased with how intuitive this all fits together, and making things fit together well is a top priority for me right now.
Yeah come to think of it I hated the forest shops with a passion. Internal factory "shop" it is.
Alright thats a bummer i liked that control-nodes had more to them than just being control-nodes.
Regarding your turret-build-system i sense a really ugly problem incoming.
You see in catalyst1.0 it was already annoying when 2-3 turret-carriers planted their turrets in one spot basically rendering this spot inpenetrable for the enemy. Now whith the new system there is no limit to how many turrets you can deploy after purchasing the turret-node -> hope you see the problem right there. So if you want to keep this as is turrets should cost minerals and/or vespene otherwise 1 player can render a whole area of the map inpenetrable resulting in unnecessary drawn out games or stalemates. A limit per turret node would not solve the problem cause you could just build 20 more turret-nodes in the hangar.
You may only have as many active turrets as you have turret cores. If you have 3 artillary cores, you may have 3 artillary turrets. If one turret dies, you may replace it, costing only energy. The only way you could get a 4th artillary turret is by purchasing a 4th artillary core, which costs minerals.
It's basically just like the turrets in Cityscape, only replace "items" with "cores".
@Eiviyn: Go
Alright than 1 per core is ok i guess xD
Do you still have "turret"-weapons and normal "stand-still-to-fire"-weapons? That 's pretty cool but i didn't really see that in you big weapons-post on 38. If you have it would make things easier if you placed like all turret-weapons to the left side of the control-panel(for example in the light weapons tab) and all normal weapons on the right side. So a turret-weapon oriented player would primarily look on the left side when building stuff and so on.