SC2Mapster

Tested it just now (Wastelands). Everything seems good. My only ick is that when you select the APC, the unit itself doesn't seem to have a portrait, or voice.

Some spots are also very tight, and if your APC goes in first, your units have to wait for the APC to pass and actually pass, too. And that lets the APC get damaged.

And the achievements are far too easy to get. But ok, it's the first mission. :P
Perhaps when Blizzard adds full campaign support into the game, you could have triggers to calculate points gained by achievements, and at the end of the campaign, give players a score and/or a placement on a hi-score chart. It's possible to do in part, because maps such as SotIS and Mafia do keep track of player score and carry it from a game/match to another.

EDIT: Waiting on the 3rd mission alpha, if the offer still stands, that is. ;P

Waiting on that PM over here, I'll test this 1.3 Wasteland later today.

Quote from designerdougm: Go

@AlexO6: Go

Such good guesses, you seem to be finding all of the little set pieces I constructed to make the bland areas of the map interesting, that's for sure!!

Still haven't got it yet, but a new hint for intrepid adventurers, before I post Wastelands 1.3 (hopefully within a few hours.) Easter Egg Hint #4

You will find me among that which can make one man blind and another man see. What is nearby can make one building strong and another cease to be!

I found it! I totally expected that it would be from LOST! (After you said "a fairly popular show")
The last hint just confirmed what I expected. =)

Since I had only managed to see it during the end of the mission, I didn't manage to snap a screenshot. It's really hard to see because of the sandstorm and I managed to see it when the sandstorm bugs and disappears, while the interface disappears after you destroy the coolant tower. I recognized the 42 at the end only at first...So I started up the game again and tried to get it before I destroyed the tower.

EDIT: So, what's the surprise? =D

After so many hours of looking, you can imagine how happy I am that I found it!

EDIT 2: The numbers in lost are 15 16, not 15 18. Sorry about that; Blame it on the sandstorm that makes it difficult to see them. :P

It's one of these 2, isn't it?

The first one shows an entrance/exit next to a rock and the second one shows some chopped off trees in a triangular position around some bones, (with the dead tree, it looks like a diamond shape (like the diamond shape in playing cards)) and the ground texture almost looks like a dead stick man, there where those bones are...

Quote from designerdougm: Go

@AlexO6: Go

Does that mean you found it, or you have ideas on where to look? I wanted to prevent people from looking in too many places where it was not, because in some ways it can be difficult to see in and of itself. Let's see who finds it first, more tips until someone does! None for now though, but there should be a new one later tonight or tomorrow, depending on when I finish Wastelands 1.3, implementing conversations and removing the hardcoded dialog is proving to be a time consuming task!

Is it the "J" letter that I mentioned?

EDIT: Screenshot:
http://imageshack.us/f/854/screenshot2011070619182.jpg/
Is it that "J" letter in that pit area on the left of the screenshot?

Quote from designerdougm: Go

A quick development update, I largely took the weekend and the fourth off from working on the project, but I'm now back at it. You can expect beta version 1.3 of Wastelands to be up soon, I'm also aiming to have some polish features added to Backwater Station by the end of this week, with the major update coming next week. And now, time for another Easter egg hint for intrepid players! Easter Egg Hint #2

It's not in a place you can go, you can't touch it, but you can see it. So check high and check low.

I think it's pretty obvious where to look for the easter egg, now. :P

EDIT: I see the letter "J" in a pit next to the ramp north of your base. Is that it?

Thanks for the reply.

I have a few things:
- Leave bunkers unbuildable, then, but you should then maybe put an achievement about keeping them alive or above 75% health on hard or brutal. I do remember them not being buildable originally, but since there are zerglings attacking your main base, I had built some and they seemed to hold quite well for a while. After you get the station, there's no need to keep the bunkers in your base, however, so I guess you kinda made a good call by not making them buildable, after all. They aren't that necessary and do make the mission more challenging. I was on hard and could've easily managed without bunkers.
- The additional resources are fine, but you could add a few more, like on that fossil, you can put 3 gas instead of just 1, and on the road, also add a decoration, like a crashed truck or something. (They do that in the SC2 campaign, to make the dropped resource pallets/canisters look natural)
- Just checked the SC wikia...It turns out that the Nomad's lore is ambiguous enough that it allows for a crashed one in this mission. So yeah, it's fine after all.
- Another odd thing I forgot to mention was the use of tech labs instead of academies. But I can understand as this is meant to use SC2 mechanics.

What map is the easter egg on? I scoured the second map while playing it...And didn't see anything easter-eggy.

Some odd things I noticed:
- Doodad [Tauren] outhouse next to the impassable gate. (Looks like an odd place to put an outhouse, don't you think? Woudln't guards go inside the complex' washrooms, rather than some outhouse next to a gate?)
- Crashed Nomad next to the cooling tower. (Nomads didn't exist until after SCBW)
- Part of the impassable doors can be blown up.
- The adjutant mentions that there are additional tutorials available for my review...I don't see thim. Nor do I see mission hints like in WoL.
- It just seems odd how they all already know their enemy, that they are "Zerg" and that they have "Hives" (insinuating that they are a Collective or Hive Mind, too). Last I remember, in the original mission, everyone was sort of surprised to see anything Zerg, and the victory screen referred to the Zerg as "Xenomorphs", indicating that no one with you ever knew what these aliens really were, much less had time to study them and what not. Replace "The Zerg" with "These Xenomorphs", and "Hive/Hive Cluster" with "some kind of giant nesting area or base", just to give out the sense that the Zerg are being discovered as we're playing the mission.
- There's a small way around the cliffside next to the main hive. You don't have to blow the rocks and get into the orange Zerg base, you can just go around it. Too bad I saw it after I blew up the orange base...How fail is that?
- There is a lone animal skull next to the mineral line in the red base. I found that it looked quite awkward because of the creep not hiding the doodads or removing them, whereas the other doodads where in corners of the creep, so it still looked right, this one was on top of creep, and it just looked weird...
- Some of the resources are off the beaten path (On a lone road to the east of Backwater Station and on a cliff next to your main base and the path to the read base (some gas inside a large skeleton, wtf? Is that supposed to be the easter egg?)) and aren't worth getting, really. It's like 100 min, 100 gas, and you will likely already be drowning in cash anyways. Maybe up the reward for finding them or move them or replace them with something else?

Though I doubt any of those are the easter egg...

EDIT: Missed the last version! Damn.
EDIT: Wait...So, you're NOT supposed to be able to build bunkers? Why? O_o