Posted an updated version that disabled the music triggers, which might be the cause of the crashing. If you were crashing regularly before I would really be interested in hearing whether or not this fixes the problem for you.
I promise the very moment I know what's causing the crashing I will publish an updated version that fixes it and put a bug report on the official forums. I am actively working on it, but it is very difficult to trace the exact problem, especially because every time I change something I need to leave the map running for 2-3 hours to confirm whether or not the crashing is gone or not. :(
You might be running up against the requirement that the path through your maze be 2x2 throughout. I'm pretty set on keeping this for visual fidelity and balance reasons but I've gotten lots of feedback from people who really want 1x1 mazes so I'll take a look and see how much it would break the game to do so.
That was a funny tidbit about the crashing. I haven't played the game yet but judging by the review (very good as always), I would not say that it is trying to be an ETD. Obviously Riley has borrowed a lot from me, but it seems he has applied it somewhat differently and to a different type of TD altogether.
I guess comparisons with Element TD are inevitable but truthfully I think they're very different kinds of games which try to be challenging in different ways. The use of "elements" is kind of an interesting story. This map went through two earlier phases. At the beginning it was called "Tarot Defense" and you were dealt a set of tarot cards that you had to combine to make different tower types based on the major arcana - for example, two wands and two cups make The Hanged Man who did damage over time. This was pretty cool and unique thematically but unfortunately it was a gameplay disaster because there was no relationship between what the towers did or were called and the cards needed to build them.
So next it became Alchemy Defense. Here the components were aether, mercury, vitriol, sulfur, and aqua. Towers were based on alchemical compounds, processes, or creations. For example, combining Aqua and Vitriol gave "Aqua Fortis" which was an acid-type tower. Gameplay wise this was a massive improvement over tarot D but ultimately too arcane for most people to understand, especially with the number of combinations I was planning on having. Also, it became difficult to find unique names things, and the sort of strength-weakness relationships the ingredients had didn't really make sense and was absolutely unintuitive. (Mercury beats vitriol? Uh, okay, that's easy to remember.)
I finally went to using elements because they're an established gaming vocabulary; people understand them immediately and can even intuitively guess at their weaknesses and strengths. I still think the alchemy version would have been cool, but I don't think it would have been a very popular map.
Just wanted to say thanks for the review and I'm glad you liked it. The criticisms are extremely helpful as well, in fact I already took your advice and changed "Undo" to "Reset" :)
The counterintuitiveness is a big problem for me personally because I've joined lots of random games where players have no idea what to do and die in a couple of rounds. I am welcoming any suggestions on how to make the map more intuitive and newb-friendly without necessarily requiring people to read all the tips in the help menu.
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Posted an updated version that disabled the music triggers, which might be the cause of the crashing. If you were crashing regularly before I would really be interested in hearing whether or not this fixes the problem for you.
I promise the very moment I know what's causing the crashing I will publish an updated version that fixes it and put a bug report on the official forums. I am actively working on it, but it is very difficult to trace the exact problem, especially because every time I change something I need to leave the map running for 2-3 hours to confirm whether or not the crashing is gone or not. :(
You might be running up against the requirement that the path through your maze be 2x2 throughout. I'm pretty set on keeping this for visual fidelity and balance reasons but I've gotten lots of feedback from people who really want 1x1 mazes so I'll take a look and see how much it would break the game to do so.
I guess comparisons with Element TD are inevitable but truthfully I think they're very different kinds of games which try to be challenging in different ways. The use of "elements" is kind of an interesting story. This map went through two earlier phases. At the beginning it was called "Tarot Defense" and you were dealt a set of tarot cards that you had to combine to make different tower types based on the major arcana - for example, two wands and two cups make The Hanged Man who did damage over time. This was pretty cool and unique thematically but unfortunately it was a gameplay disaster because there was no relationship between what the towers did or were called and the cards needed to build them.
So next it became Alchemy Defense. Here the components were aether, mercury, vitriol, sulfur, and aqua. Towers were based on alchemical compounds, processes, or creations. For example, combining Aqua and Vitriol gave "Aqua Fortis" which was an acid-type tower. Gameplay wise this was a massive improvement over tarot D but ultimately too arcane for most people to understand, especially with the number of combinations I was planning on having. Also, it became difficult to find unique names things, and the sort of strength-weakness relationships the ingredients had didn't really make sense and was absolutely unintuitive. (Mercury beats vitriol? Uh, okay, that's easy to remember.)
I finally went to using elements because they're an established gaming vocabulary; people understand them immediately and can even intuitively guess at their weaknesses and strengths. I still think the alchemy version would have been cool, but I don't think it would have been a very popular map.
Just wanted to say thanks for the review and I'm glad you liked it. The criticisms are extremely helpful as well, in fact I already took your advice and changed "Undo" to "Reset" :)
The counterintuitiveness is a big problem for me personally because I've joined lots of random games where players have no idea what to do and die in a couple of rounds. I am welcoming any suggestions on how to make the map more intuitive and newb-friendly without necessarily requiring people to read all the tips in the help menu.