Work on the map have been slow lately, but I have done another map-related thing over the last couple of days. A map-website! Right now I have no plans to actually release the website though, but still, I would love to get some feedback on the design, and maybe on some of the unique features (explained later in the post)
Website preview
I have no web-host as of now, but in the attachment is a picture of the "home" page of the website on a 1920x1080 screen running local (all text is obviously just fillers)
The "unique features" is for example that when you're logged in, you can actually click a button to run a script on your computer that locates and uploads your bank-file as an XML-file in the online database. This means that, just like in-game, other people can then see your hero-stats by hovering over your avatar whenever you post a reply or topic on the website. Other things like which difficulties you have completed, if any, will also be visible to other people in another unique way, at the moment, by changing the background-color of your posts.
As mentioned, I have no plans as of now to publish the website, it's just for fun and practice, but like everything else, I plan to get it to a fully functional state. I might release it if/when the map gets a large enough fan-base.
Feedback is as always much appreciated!
Build 51
More on topic, here is a change-log of what is already done for the next build:
- Ultralisk-battle and abilities revamped
- A new Camera-shake function added, which is triggered by many abilities and events
- Green and Gray items are now dropped on the ground as standard SC2 items, unlike more rare items which are still being rolled for.
- Charge-ability totally revamped, and does now deal damage
- A spawn-point in the temple
- Started the work of a trade-system
@joecab:
WOW! That is some awesome feedback! Thanks a bunch :)
You have pretty much nailed all the things I have found to improve myself, as well as some new things to consider.
I am as always trying to improve boss-battles, but I have to learn how to make them more fun, before using too much time on them (playing other games like Diablo to seek inspiration)
Even though I like the way the war at the end works, I am going to dramatically change it. It will be more about sniping the pylons and letting the war being fought in the background. I like difficult maps as well, so I am sorry to inform that this area will be a lot easier next build. BUT! this brings me to a new feature I will introduce very soon. A difficulty option: There will be three difficulties, each unlocked after the previous one is completed (completion conditions will be moved until the last boss-battle is done). Each difficulty option makes the game harder in multiple ways: Units gain more health/mana/damage and even new/changed/other spells. This is on my list for build 52, build 51 will fix the war as well as the bugs you reported and some I found myself.
ETA for build 51: End of this month
ETA for build 52: Not yet set
Thanks again, and I am glad you enjoy the map :)
Is it up? I'd love to play it. Also how many people can it support? We could play it first in mapnight this friday.
It used to support up to 8 players, but it was too chaotic, so now it's 4. I might increase back up to 8 players if I figure out a way to make it less chaotic.
It would be awesome to see it played at mapnight :) I hope you record it, so I can watch you play. That will give me great insight on what to improve.
Build 50 uploaded to EU, and Nebuli is about to publish on NA
Change-log:
- Fixed an issue, where other heroes would sometimes re-spawn as a warrior
- 10 new items added to the drop-pool
- The item-drop system has been completely revamped
- Some units have had their stats changed
- New stat-types avaible for heroes
Feedback much appreciated, it has been great so far, both from EU and NA! Keep it coming :)
I realize that I have screwed up by not releasing a hot-fix for the heroes re-spawning as warriors??!
To make up for it, I am going to release 10 completely new items for the next build. 7 out of 10 are purple/epic-rare, and most are much better than other current alternatives of the same item-type. Also, there are 6 new prefixes for items:
- X% more melee damage
- X% more spell damage
- X% more fire-spell damage
- X% more frost-spell damage
- X% more nature-spell damage
- X% more movement-speed
A reason why I am creating these high-level items, is because I plan to create a difficulty system soon. It will make it possible for players to play the whole map on three different difficulties - one difficulty is unlocked when at least one player in the map have cleared the previous difficulty (Then vote to play on it).
When this difficulty system goes live, enemies will be too hard to kill without some better items, but for fun, I release the items before the system goes live.
Expect the new build in the next 24 hours on both regions
EDIT: I just revamped the whole item-drop-system, and it works like a charm. It adds a bunch to the fun-factor! With the increased amount of items, I have taken the opportunity to make some items super-rare, for example a new legendary ring called "Ring of Destruction" has one to 1600 to drop from normal mobs, 3 to 1600 from elites, 30 to 1600 from bosses and 85 to 1600 from Story bosses. Meaning you will have to be lucky to ever see this item.
I might do some kind of a trading system soon
You're right, I tried to recreate your bug on both the current build, and an old build, where I knew respawning worked correctly. Both did what you've said, meaning this is a bug caused by patch 1.4.0 for SC2. I will fix this as soon as possible, as this is a game-breaking bug IMO.
The map is not bugged, the terrain is simply not done yet. The area you are talking about will be avaible shortly, with an event.
I have made a few revisions to build 49, one to fix the icon that follows your mouse when choosing your abilities, and one which removes all the placeholder objectives added in build 48, because the system was bugging badly. The current build seems solid now, so I might release it in other regions sometime tomorrow.
Build 50 will add the correct objectives as well as fixing the objective-system altogether. Also, more work will be done on the lore and on boss-battles - those are my top-priorities.
Also, I am as always looking for feedback and any bugs you may have found while playing
Build 49 is now uploaded on EU, I will test to see if the new features are stable and working as intended. If so, I will give the current build to Nebuli for NA to test.
Quote from Crainy:
Great to see that you are still working on this and didnt stop after you released the first beta of it, like some other modders often do :)
I will keep working on this till it's done. Meaning that the full story is told, the terrain is finished and there are no bugs left :) And even then, I will update with new features once in a while ^^
@Nebuli2
I have added your suggestion to the build 49 todo-list ^^
@abvdzh:
Boss fights are something I am constantly trying to improve. The event system added in build 48 is for example to make boss-fights more interesting, if you die during a boss-fight now, you will not respawn till the boss/event is over, or all other players have died. Your death-cam is where you died, so you can observe the fight. A lot more will of cause be done, to improve boss-fights
Sure, if you got any questions, just send me a PM, and I will answer asap :)
Also, I am thrilled over the new patch, it didn't break anything, and I just found out the new patch has made a new feature possible! :D I will explain later
<H2>Build 48... and 49</H2>
I was about to release the new build 48 yesterday, but saw the new patch 1.4.0 for SC2, so I decided to not publish build 48 after all, since this patch certainly will make new features possible, as well as possibly break the map in multiple ways, so why upload a new version when it will break shorty afterwards? IT MAKES NO SENSE OMG!!
I will instead start the work on build 49 when I have updated to 1.4.0 (98% done as of now - seems like it has frozen?!?!?).
Anyways, here is the change-log for build 48 and a screenshot of a new area, enjoy.
Change-log:
- Psionic Saw now has a cooldown and a slightly longer cast-time.
- A new Event system makes heroes unable to spawn till certain events are over
- An icon now follows your cursor when choosing abilities
- When using hotkeys for spells, the corrosponding ability will flash on your ability-bar
- A custom objective system have been added to the top-right (it can be disabled in the main-menu)
- A bunch of objectives, each with an reward, have been added to the map
- More terrain is added and unlocked
- Looting an item, while having a full inventory, will drop the item on the ground instead of it being destroyed
Screenshot:
I think I commented your project somewhere :) If not, I have had a look, and it looks very serious. Also, the features we share, like a minimap, if you wanna save yourself some work, just ask for a system. I have done a lot of work making my triggers logical and easy to export/import. Just ask for anything :)
Joecab, it is not bad news, it's feedback, and I love it!
There is a reason why it's still a beta. I want to make a great RPG, and the feedback I had from you and others already is much more positive than I expected. I am certain that the upcoming updates will bring a bunch more fun to the map, with just a little bit of work (adding objectives, and the MAIN objective/quest), it is going to be much better, and your feedback is helping a great deal as well - keep it coming! :D
Quote from joecab:
I just finished Playing the map. played it solo with a total of 30450/38213 with the mage fella
Like Mentioned earlier the targeting system was kind of difficult to handle at first because there was no auto target on the last unit that attacked you. After awhile i got used to spamming tab but it was still difficult most times to do combat, and seeing as this game is 90% combat you want smooth and easy to control combat, tho overall it really is a great game the terrain and game play was awesome, it just needs some tweaking. Also something that would help soo much would be to put a small 1-2-3-4-5-6 on the spell bar in the corner of the boxes, it just would make combat a little easier. And it would be nice to know what level i was as well lol, a little number above the hero bar to indicate the current level. Also make it alot more obvious that you just leveled, make some sort of effect go around your hero.
i did like the beginning with the text telling you what to do and how 2 do it but i would personally put in a general help button and the text can guide you to that.
Also it would be EXCELLENT if a wsad or some kind of keyboard movement was put in2 it. now i know it would be getting world of warcrafty but it is hard in the heat of battle to not run in2 your enemies instead of selecting them, this had been my doom about 1/4 of the times i died. I would personally put in an option to turn on and off the wsad movement or turn on a diabilo type movement were you hold the mouse down instead of constantly clicking over and over and over and over again. oh and with the items whenever i dropped an item it gave me the weird unidentified sphere thing instead of whatever you meant the model to be. It would also be nice if somehow you could see the item before you picked it up.
Going to the archon fight they seemed to be missing the actor that made the volt of lightning come out of their hands so they just looked like they were pushing their hands at me, and i loved the blades that flew around the big boss but they were quite easy to dodge, possibly close the player in the room?
The story seemed to be interesting but i felt as if there were no objectives, no quests, no merchants (sorry if you said earlier that you would add) so i just felt lost the entire way to the end. It would be awesome if names of enemies selected were in the top left above their portrait as well. at least put in some quests like, Save this dude! or Defend this place, or Kill this bad guy! and town interactions with units was close to none so that is were i would put the quests. There is a model that is a question mark in the shapes so you could use that to put above a unit. One last thing that i just discovered, in the re select thing put a big obvious exit option encase the person changes their mind about re selecting, and the choose portrait is the same for everyone but the warrior.
Overall this is a great start to something epic, i'm certain that this will become an excellent map but for now it needs tweaking.
Thank you for the feedback. You can see your hero-level, as well as any other stat you could ever want, by hovering over your hero-icon in the top-left.
A level up effect, is something that others have been suggesting before, but I somehow have not done it yet? This will be fixed for the next version!
I will look into everything you posted, even though WASD movement is unlikely too be added, I worry that it will cause too much lag - Some alternative movement system might be added at some point though.
One last thing; Quests/Objectives is something I will be adding over the next few updates (they will come fast), since I have first now completed the storyline, and I saw no reason to make some place-holder storyline for the early beta. I will post here when a new update is released :)
Thank you for the feedback, NA seems to bring a lot of it! :)
We made the test. It was pretty good. Only seems to be fun with multiple players. Perhaps fix this? :O Otherwise it's very good. Not exactly super polished, but I like it. Nebuli mensioned in the game that it's fast paced. I think he meant that it went really quick. There's no goal but to test it atm and there's not a whole lot of questing besides get as far on the map as you can and just go with it. Items are ok...wish there was a shop. Otherwise, very good job. ;)
All good things to consider!
Just the fact that you find it boring in single-player tells me a lot of how I can make the map more fun in both single-player and multiplayer :)
I recently watched some D3 game-play, and they have these objectives at all times, sometimes very simple ones, like: "Talk to the blacksmith" or "Find the Key to Open the gate". I think, just having an objective at all times, even some that does not involve saving the universe, would add a whole lot more fun to the map. And of cause, these objectives/quests will reward XP and sometimes objective-only items.
As a matter of fact, I will write this far up my list in prioritized order. Any thoughts about this is very welcome!
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Build 51 and new map website preview
Work on the map have been slow lately, but I have done another map-related thing over the last couple of days. A map-website! Right now I have no plans to actually release the website though, but still, I would love to get some feedback on the design, and maybe on some of the unique features (explained later in the post)Website preview
I have no web-host as of now, but in the attachment is a picture of the "home" page of the website on a 1920x1080 screen running local (all text is obviously just fillers) The "unique features" is for example that when you're logged in, you can actually click a button to run a script on your computer that locates and uploads your bank-file as an XML-file in the online database. This means that, just like in-game, other people can then see your hero-stats by hovering over your avatar whenever you post a reply or topic on the website. Other things like which difficulties you have completed, if any, will also be visible to other people in another unique way, at the moment, by changing the background-color of your posts. As mentioned, I have no plans as of now to publish the website, it's just for fun and practice, but like everything else, I plan to get it to a fully functional state. I might release it if/when the map gets a large enough fan-base. Feedback is as always much appreciated!Build 51
More on topic, here is a change-log of what is already done for the next build: - Ultralisk-battle and abilities revamped - A new Camera-shake function added, which is triggered by many abilities and events - Green and Gray items are now dropped on the ground as standard SC2 items, unlike more rare items which are still being rolled for. - Charge-ability totally revamped, and does now deal damage - A spawn-point in the temple - Started the work of a trade-system@joecab:
@Keyeszx:
I had no idea that was an issue. Well, I will do my best to fix it asap
Quote from Keyeszx: @Nebuli2: Go
Is it up? I'd love to play it. Also how many people can it support? We could play it first in mapnight this friday.
It used to support up to 8 players, but it was too chaotic, so now it's 4. I might increase back up to 8 players if I figure out a way to make it less chaotic.
It would be awesome to see it played at mapnight :) I hope you record it, so I can watch you play. That will give me great insight on what to improve.
@Maartz:
You're right, I tried to recreate your bug on both the current build, and an old build, where I knew respawning worked correctly. Both did what you've said, meaning this is a bug caused by patch 1.4.0 for SC2. I will fix this as soon as possible, as this is a game-breaking bug IMO.
The map is not bugged, the terrain is simply not done yet. The area you are talking about will be avaible shortly, with an event.
Thanks for the feedback :D I'll get right on it
Quote from Nebuli2: @joecab: Go
Well, Enexy and I are working on one :P
I think I commented your project somewhere :) If not, I have had a look, and it looks very serious. Also, the features we share, like a minimap, if you wanna save yourself some work, just ask for a system. I have done a lot of work making my triggers logical and easy to export/import. Just ask for anything :)
Joecab, it is not bad news, it's feedback, and I love it! There is a reason why it's still a beta. I want to make a great RPG, and the feedback I had from you and others already is much more positive than I expected. I am certain that the upcoming updates will bring a bunch more fun to the map, with just a little bit of work (adding objectives, and the MAIN objective/quest), it is going to be much better, and your feedback is helping a great deal as well - keep it coming! :D
Thank you for the feedback. You can see your hero-level, as well as any other stat you could ever want, by hovering over your hero-icon in the top-left. A level up effect, is something that others have been suggesting before, but I somehow have not done it yet? This will be fixed for the next version! I will look into everything you posted, even though WASD movement is unlikely too be added, I worry that it will cause too much lag - Some alternative movement system might be added at some point though.
One last thing; Quests/Objectives is something I will be adding over the next few updates (they will come fast), since I have first now completed the storyline, and I saw no reason to make some place-holder storyline for the early beta. I will post here when a new update is released :)
Thank you for the feedback, NA seems to bring a lot of it! :)
All good things to consider!
Just the fact that you find it boring in single-player tells me a lot of how I can make the map more fun in both single-player and multiplayer :) I recently watched some D3 game-play, and they have these objectives at all times, sometimes very simple ones, like: "Talk to the blacksmith" or "Find the Key to Open the gate". I think, just having an objective at all times, even some that does not involve saving the universe, would add a whole lot more fun to the map. And of cause, these objectives/quests will reward XP and sometimes objective-only items.
As a matter of fact, I will write this far up my list in prioritized order. Any thoughts about this is very welcome!