This is basically the 1.3 update that I reverted a couple of days ago but with the stuck bug fixed and the Unstuck ability added. Feedback about the adjusted difficulty levels and whether or not the CTDs are reduced is greatly appreciated, thanks.
Random Q: Did I inspire the pathing markers at all? Just curious; would be awesome if so...
Sort of. I had a rudimentary implementation for debugging purposes (they looked way uglier) but the positive reception to your video made me decide to put them in as a real feature and make them look nicer. So thanks for that!
I'm curious if we both arrived at the same implementation independently. My technique is to spawn an invisible runner who has a behavior that periodically creates marker units. I order him to run the maze and self-destruct at the end of it. It's almost entirely data driven except for the trigger that creates the runner and sends him on his way.
The pulsating added in the latest version is a very simple effect, I just use timers in the actor event to periodically modify the scale and tint colors.
Oh I like your method... mine was a bit more painful (and after seeing how you did it, I think your way was better, as our result is the same) because I store every marker made in a giant actor array variable... so when someone rebuilds, it removes all of the old markers and then resends the invis runner...
May have made a breakthrough on the crashing issue. I haven't been able to duplicate it on my computer so a friend loaned me his and I think I've narrowed it down to a particular doodad. Need to do more testing to be sure but removing it went from crashing after 5 minutes to over an hour of stability.
Since the crashing is so idiosyncratic though it's hard to be sure if it's related or just luck.
edit: Was able to make the map crash with no doodads. Now running with no doodads and no triggers.
Would be nice, I enjoyed the first 5 rounds of your map, but was never able to go past that. 10 crashes in 10 tries.
Also I noticed, whenever I pause the game, it crashes instantly (at least 3 out of 3 tries)
In EU, only version 1.0 seems to be available, correct?
Some thoughts:
-Cinematics when levels start or finish are extremely annoying. A simple notification message would be better imo (or toggleable/cancelable cinematic)
-Is there a specific reason for the 2x2 pathing? Its quite counter-intuitive imo. Also there is no notification about this; I needed some time to figure out why I was not able to build the way I wanted. If possible somehow, I recommend to use 1x1 pathing.
-While the essence system is quite nice, the selection becomes annoying after a while. Try to think about another method of realizing this, so we can build multiple barricades with shift (maybe 1 hero builder thing which gets charges for abilities representing the elements? Or an auto pick all elements? something like that)
Shift building works sometimes; however not always.
-I would like the changelogs to be added to the first post, since in EU only 1.0 is available, I am not aware of the issues you already fixed. Maybe my whole post is pointless, because you changed everything already ;)
I will probably edit this post for more suggestions.
-Is there a specific reason for the 2x2 pathing? Its quite counter-intuitive imo. Also there is no notification about this; I needed some time to figure out why I was not able to build the way I wanted. If possible somehow, I recommend to use 1x1 pathing.
In the later waves, the creeps are absolutely HUGE and barely fit in a 2x2 gap. I felt that having creeps be inconsistent in their sizes would make mazing much too complicated so I decided the maze would have to be designed around the largest creeps. The newest version tries to improve this by making the pathing radius of all creeps too large to fit in a 1x1 gap and increasing the visual size of all creeps so they look too large to fit through. Definitely open to feedback in this area still, as I'm aware it's one of the most unintuitive aspects of the game.
-While the essence system is quite nice, the selection becomes annoying after a while. Try to think about another method of realizing this, so we can build multiple barricades with shift (maybe 1 hero builder thing which gets charges for abilities representing the elements? Or an auto pick all elements? something like that) Shift building works sometimes; however not always.
I am thinking of adding a small feature when you build with an essence and it disappears, another random essence is selected. A LOT of the current building mechanics are based on limits in the Sc2 game engine; for example, there is not enough command card space for a single builder unit to list every available tower.
-I would like the changelogs to be added to the first post, since in EU only 1.0 is available, I am not aware of the issues you already fixed. Maybe my whole post is pointless, because you changed everything already ;)
Not pointless, because it validates changes already made :) There is a complete changelog in-game under the About tab in the Help Screen. I should probably maintain a changelog here and on the battle.net forums as well.
-tooltips for already placed towers would be nice, in case you need to know what the tower you placed does. You can always look in the help section, but I am too lazy to look up towers there ;)
You can view a tower's tooltip by selecting it and mousing over the big green icon in the selection pane (e.g. where the wireframe would be for a SC2 unit.)
Thanks for the feedback. A lot of issues should be fixed when the newer versions are uploaded to EU.
May I ask when this is supposed to happen?
Quote:
Removed them in 1.1 because people found them annoying.
Good news :)
Quote:
In the later waves, the creeps are absolutely HUGE and barely fit in a 2x2 gap. I felt that having creeps be inconsistent in their sizes would make mazing much too complicated so I decided the maze would have to be designed around the largest creeps. The newest version tries to improve this by making the pathing radius of all creeps too large to fit in a 1x1 gap and increasing the visual size of all creeps so they look too large to fit through. Definitely open to feedback in this area still, as I'm aware it's one of the most unintuitive aspects of the game.
Well, I would do just the opposite of what you did: Make creeps smaller. For bigger creeps you could adjust the z-scaling a little more, so the creeps will become taller, but not actually bigger in terms of footprints.
Dunno what it will look like, but I prefer slight compromises in visuals if the gameplay feeling improves.
Quote:
I am thinking of adding a small feature when you build with an essence and it disappears, another random essence is selected. A LOT of the current building mechanics are based on limits in the Sc2 game engine; for example, there is not enough command card space for a single builder unit to list every available tower.
Yes, I noticed a bug when playing again. If I have many different essences, I was not able to build some towers, even though, I had all needed essences (recall trap for example). Dunno if I did something wrong or this was a bug of some kind.
You could maybe use the system of Gem TD in warcraft 3, or use custom dialogs to build towers (for a much more customizable and less limited command card - would require some work, though)
You could also limit tower building only to their basic buildings. Only way to get better towers would be upgrading, which is not a big deal, but you have much more available space on your builder.
Quote:
You can view a tower's tooltip by selecting it and mousing over the big green icon in the selection pane (e.g. where the wireframe would be for a SC2 unit.)
Yes, noticed that myself, so I edited my previous post ;)
Quote:
Glad you enjoyed it and thank you for the feedback. Still working on the crashing issues, they're my #1 priority right now.
Hope, you find it. I got crashes quite consistently either in the first 5 rounds, when I pause the game or after leaving the game. Somehow I doubt, one single issue is causing all this :(
May have made a breakthrough on the crashing issue. I haven't been able to duplicate it on my computer so a friend loaned me his and I think I've narrowed it down to a particular doodad. Need to do more testing to be sure but removing it went from crashing after 5 minutes to over an hour of stability.
Since the crashing is so idiosyncratic though it's hard to be sure if it's related or just luck.
edit: Was able to make the map crash with no doodads. Now running with no doodads and no triggers.
Try running the map with the default tileset lighting. I saw texture corruption on some units today and can't think of any other reasons why it happened.
Another feedback.
Instead of using water tiles as the base, switch to fog. The water doesn't have enough visual impact that warrants such a performance hit, especially on low-end computers. On the other hand, fog has similar visual effect and goes much easier on the machine.
The problem seems to truly be random, crashing at random times, sometimes crashing outright at the start. Might be a random memory leak... unfortunately I do enjoy the game, but can't even finish it 90% of the time.
I've uploaded a new version which disables the music triggers. If you're having crashing issues I would really like to know if this fixes them for you.
This is truly the most epic TD SC2 has seen so far. And i think it will be pretty hard to beat. I have to mention two things. It was really hard to keep the overwiev over all my towers.
So first it would be cool if the strongest tower so far would be highlighted (meaning the highest tier tower). Something like a little glow or something, so i get an idea which tower to empower. Second, and thats a much bigger wish, it would be cool if all towers i am able to upgrade this round would be highlighted. It sucked to click through all towers searching for upgrades.
Second, and thats a much bigger wish, it would be cool if all towers i am able to upgrade this round would be highlighted. It sucked to click through all towers searching for upgrades.
This is an excellent idea and I'll see what I can do to get it in the next version.
I have a few things, which came to my mind while playing today:
the game still crashes my starcraft after each game (well, nothing new so far ;) ), but no crash ingame until now (after 15+ tests, seems quite promising)
Interest rate is much too high (20%), if you reach like 3000-ish money, you will have a hard time to reduce your money at all and end up with like 60k money (mana ofc ;) ), even on brutal (was my first ever attempt on brutal btw; made quite a few mistakes; a better player could easily accumulate even more money I think). I would suggest a squareroot or logarithmic approach; the more money you got banked; the less interest rate (so you still get more money if you have more money but not to that extend)
recall traps + slow feel kinda broken. If you have a sufficient amount of slow, a recall trap sometimes teleports enemies ahead, because they have some range and teleport their targets to their center. Teleporting to the spot where the target was hit by the trap seems to be the obvious solution (if easily doable)
also recall+teleport traps + slow against bosses can keep them in one spot forever. I would suggest a cooldown for units hit by such a trap.
slow itself is another issue. You reach minimum speed for units very fast; you have like 5 or 6 slow towers but adding new slow towers after 2 or so is quite pointless, because you reach minimum speed so fast. I would reduce the amount of slow for most towers or modify the minimum speed of the towers (or cut some slow effects in general? You seem to have quite a lot of them)
The waves themselves are quite boring. You could give them some special abilities (maybe in another game mode? maybe for later levels only? dunno). You could use usual stuff like extra speed, short phases of invulnerability, high armor, slow but mass hp, stuff like that. Also you can implement some fancy stuff, dependant on your current content (like gets a bonus when you cast one of your custom spells on them, cannot be slowed, gets a speed boost when attacked by fire or whatever)
Played it through entirely on normal now, no crashes at all! And previously I'd always crash before wave 10 and the only way I could get beyond that is lowering all my settings to minimum, but even then 25-30 would always crash me.
On the interest, I personally am a big fan of the interest due to my Defense Grid play, in which high scores are basically 100% decided by timing in regards to interest. The more you can delay things, the better. (assuming you have the best maze setups obviously, which changes per map). Though I will agree that the interest seems rather high. The last wave gave me a 45k interest tick.
I'll comment on the towers tomorrow as it's pretty late now, I had so much money that I was spamming max rank towers all over the place to try them out during the last 10'ish waves so I got to experience them all pretty well.
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New version posted on US (EU tomorrow hopefully.)
This is basically the 1.3 update that I reverted a couple of days ago but with the stuck bug fixed and the Unstuck ability added. Feedback about the adjusted difficulty levels and whether or not the CTDs are reduced is greatly appreciated, thanks.
@RileyStarcraft: Go
Looks awesome!
Random Q: Did I inspire the pathing markers at all? Just curious; would be awesome if so...
Sort of. I had a rudimentary implementation for debugging purposes (they looked way uglier) but the positive reception to your video made me decide to put them in as a real feature and make them look nicer. So thanks for that!
I'm curious if we both arrived at the same implementation independently. My technique is to spawn an invisible runner who has a behavior that periodically creates marker units. I order him to run the maze and self-destruct at the end of it. It's almost entirely data driven except for the trigger that creates the runner and sends him on his way.
The pulsating added in the latest version is a very simple effect, I just use timers in the actor event to periodically modify the scale and tint colors.
@RileyStarcraft: Go
Oh I like your method... mine was a bit more painful (and after seeing how you did it, I think your way was better, as our result is the same) because I store every marker made in a giant actor array variable... so when someone rebuilds, it removes all of the old markers and then resends the invis runner...
May have made a breakthrough on the crashing issue. I haven't been able to duplicate it on my computer so a friend loaned me his and I think I've narrowed it down to a particular doodad. Need to do more testing to be sure but removing it went from crashing after 5 minutes to over an hour of stability.
Since the crashing is so idiosyncratic though it's hard to be sure if it's related or just luck.
edit: Was able to make the map crash with no doodads. Now running with no doodads and no triggers.
Would be nice, I enjoyed the first 5 rounds of your map, but was never able to go past that. 10 crashes in 10 tries.
Also I noticed, whenever I pause the game, it crashes instantly (at least 3 out of 3 tries)
In EU, only version 1.0 seems to be available, correct?
Some thoughts:
-Cinematics when levels start or finish are extremely annoying. A simple notification message would be better imo (or toggleable/cancelable cinematic)
-Is there a specific reason for the 2x2 pathing? Its quite counter-intuitive imo. Also there is no notification about this; I needed some time to figure out why I was not able to build the way I wanted. If possible somehow, I recommend to use 1x1 pathing.
-While the essence system is quite nice, the selection becomes annoying after a while. Try to think about another method of realizing this, so we can build multiple barricades with shift (maybe 1 hero builder thing which gets charges for abilities representing the elements? Or an auto pick all elements? something like that) Shift building works sometimes; however not always.
-I would like the changelogs to be added to the first post, since in EU only 1.0 is available, I am not aware of the issues you already fixed. Maybe my whole post is pointless, because you changed everything already ;)
I will probably edit this post for more suggestions.
Very nice map, btw ;).
Thanks for the feedback. A lot of issues should be fixed when the newer versions are uploaded to EU.
Removed them in 1.1 because people found them annoying.
In the later waves, the creeps are absolutely HUGE and barely fit in a 2x2 gap. I felt that having creeps be inconsistent in their sizes would make mazing much too complicated so I decided the maze would have to be designed around the largest creeps. The newest version tries to improve this by making the pathing radius of all creeps too large to fit in a 1x1 gap and increasing the visual size of all creeps so they look too large to fit through. Definitely open to feedback in this area still, as I'm aware it's one of the most unintuitive aspects of the game.
I am thinking of adding a small feature when you build with an essence and it disappears, another random essence is selected. A LOT of the current building mechanics are based on limits in the Sc2 game engine; for example, there is not enough command card space for a single builder unit to list every available tower.
Not pointless, because it validates changes already made :) There is a complete changelog in-game under the About tab in the Help Screen. I should probably maintain a changelog here and on the battle.net forums as well.
You can view a tower's tooltip by selecting it and mousing over the big green icon in the selection pane (e.g. where the wireframe would be for a SC2 unit.)
Glad you enjoyed it and thank you for the feedback. Still working on the crashing issues, they're my #1 priority right now.
May I ask when this is supposed to happen?
Good news :)
Well, I would do just the opposite of what you did: Make creeps smaller. For bigger creeps you could adjust the z-scaling a little more, so the creeps will become taller, but not actually bigger in terms of footprints. Dunno what it will look like, but I prefer slight compromises in visuals if the gameplay feeling improves.
Yes, I noticed a bug when playing again. If I have many different essences, I was not able to build some towers, even though, I had all needed essences (recall trap for example). Dunno if I did something wrong or this was a bug of some kind.
You could maybe use the system of Gem TD in warcraft 3, or use custom dialogs to build towers (for a much more customizable and less limited command card - would require some work, though) You could also limit tower building only to their basic buildings. Only way to get better towers would be upgrading, which is not a big deal, but you have much more available space on your builder.
Yes, noticed that myself, so I edited my previous post ;)
Hope, you find it. I got crashes quite consistently either in the first 5 rounds, when I pause the game or after leaving the game. Somehow I doubt, one single issue is causing all this :(
Hey Riley,
Try running the map with the default tileset lighting. I saw texture corruption on some units today and can't think of any other reasons why it happened.
Another feedback.
Instead of using water tiles as the base, switch to fog. The water doesn't have enough visual impact that warrants such a performance hit, especially on low-end computers. On the other hand, fog has similar visual effect and goes much easier on the machine.
Thanks for the suggestions but I've tried removing water and lightning and neither fixes the crashing bugs.
@RileyStarcraft: Go
Did you use specific lighting for any individual unit?
The problem seems to truly be random, crashing at random times, sometimes crashing outright at the start. Might be a random memory leak... unfortunately I do enjoy the game, but can't even finish it 90% of the time.
I've uploaded a new version which disables the music triggers. If you're having crashing issues I would really like to know if this fixes them for you.
I would do this asap (I crash in like 90% of the games), but unfortunately its not uploaded in EU :/
I sent it to my EU publisher so it should be up within a day or two.
EU version seems to be up (at least I had to re-download the map, no indication for a new map in the changelog)
No crash while playing so far, but still crashing every time I close the map.
This is truly the most epic TD SC2 has seen so far. And i think it will be pretty hard to beat. I have to mention two things. It was really hard to keep the overwiev over all my towers.
So first it would be cool if the strongest tower so far would be highlighted (meaning the highest tier tower). Something like a little glow or something, so i get an idea which tower to empower. Second, and thats a much bigger wish, it would be cool if all towers i am able to upgrade this round would be highlighted. It sucked to click through all towers searching for upgrades.
This is an excellent idea and I'll see what I can do to get it in the next version.
I have a few things, which came to my mind while playing today:
just my 2 cents
Played it through entirely on normal now, no crashes at all! And previously I'd always crash before wave 10 and the only way I could get beyond that is lowering all my settings to minimum, but even then 25-30 would always crash me.
On the interest, I personally am a big fan of the interest due to my Defense Grid play, in which high scores are basically 100% decided by timing in regards to interest. The more you can delay things, the better. (assuming you have the best maze setups obviously, which changes per map). Though I will agree that the interest seems rather high. The last wave gave me a 45k interest tick. I'll comment on the towers tomorrow as it's pretty late now, I had so much money that I was spamming max rank towers all over the place to try them out during the last 10'ish waves so I got to experience them all pretty well.