Ok, I've played it. Then I tried to play it with a friend but after loading we got stuck looking at doodads on black background forever.
- I would have preferred if game displayed controls in the beginning of stage (and when new control options become available). First time I played I only used up/down/left/right/Z/Q because those were the keys I was familiar with from navigating the menu. I was wondering what were all those powerups I was pickign up, I hit keys near "Z" ("X" and "C") but they didn't do anything I was confused and contionued to "Z" trough the level.
- Next time I played I made sure to carefully read arcades description to see what keys I could use. Then I went to options as info screen said I could use mouse, so I thought I could rebind control to mouse, confusingly I couldn't, just to discover that mouse control is a toggle ;_;
- Once I toggled to mouse it was like another game. My performance increased tenfold and I was even able to reach levels boss (with keyboard I only got slightly further past miniboss). Still, mouse control didn't feel as smooth as it could have been. I remember playing a map by FunkyUserName where you controlled a banshee via mouse-only in a 4 player game and that control felt super fluid, unlike here where my ship wouldn't follow mouse all the way. (Move mouse quickly across the screen and then stop, ship will move in mouse direction for approx 2-3 tiles and then stop, requiring me to wiggle mouse again in order to get ship moving for another 2-3 tiles).
- Throughout playing I kept on wondering: "Are these colorful backgrounds distracting me or is it just in my head? Would I get a performance boost if they weren't there?". I guess I'll never know, but it would be super cool if I could toggle something like "simple background" in options so I only have sky-box beneath me.
- I played on default settings which I think are the easiest, and I still died alot (I think when I used keyboard my usual survival time amounted to to 5-10 seconds as I couldn't help but to ram into enemies all the time. It was better with mouse, but I still wasted 2 credits before reaching the boss). Maybe, for scrubs like me, when playing on easy - the death penalty could be instead of losing all weapons you only lose your current one? That way it wouldn't be as painful when you die and lose that 4 upgraded weapon you never got to use. Would also encourage trying out these weapons.
- Can't comment on the shops, was too poor to buy anything :D
- A level loading that lasted for a minute left me scratching my head tho..
Overall I like the level design. feels like a well thought out stage out of a game of this genre.
I'm yet to beat Stage 1 boss, furthest I got was 1 cannon remaining, so I imagine some evening I'll try it again.
I'm itching to make multiple simple-ish maps in 2017, hopefully after all this time I've gained enough of ability to be able to follow through with it. Many youtube records from korean scbw UMS scene help greatly at figuring the mood I'm aiming for. Also want to incorporate some of Abvdzh's data assets (namely his Alarak hits my fancy). I haven't seen them used in arcade and that's a real shame, work like that is meant to be displayed.
But for now I'm waiting for replacement parts because on christmas some of my hardware lit up ;_; ...
Oww :( Nobody is intereted in this or you don't find it or something else ?
We just need some impressions at reading this or some game opinions.
Ah, you posted it just as the whole mapster update thing happened, and with all attention to that and latest posts box disappearing it really looks like nobody noticed (at least I know I didn't) :/
This looks lovely tho, I'll be sure to give it a try sometime next year, as soon as I fix my hardware issues.
Heya. Wanted to drop by and say that I didn't forget about this, regrettably my motherboard and god knows what else got fried up so it'll be some time until I replace damaged hardware and be able to do SC2 again.
But I'll be cheering on you until then ^_^
-----------------
Also I got to play two games last week on NA.
It feels that siege weapons projectiles should be dodgeable, after all, siege's good vs static targets and mobility should be able a natural counter to it, instead we found that grouped up siege weapons would oneshot less tankier heroes, so we gravitated towards "run in, use ult, die, respawn, repeat" strategy every time we faced 5+ siege weapons, which felt somewhat scummy.
Also, on our second game we accidentally discovered "wave" command. Rip progress. With all the fps drops (maybe it was frozen, maybe it was something else, but we had game drop to 0-1 fps and stay there for a minute several times) and siege oneshotting heroes when they come one by one we decided to not go for 3rd playtrough.
And as of right now game feels somewhat limited. You look at abilities and can't help but to think - this is rather weak, looks balanced for PvP combat. I know it's supposed to mirror Hots, but I'm concerned that wanting to keep HotS familiarity could restrain game in a bad way. But you mentioned adding talents, which I imagine are some sort of leveling/progression system aimed at adding exploration and customization to heroes, so I'll wait for you to finish that first and think about these design questions later.
Oh wow, it's unfathomable, but I can now view my own post history. And other peoples post history. And even ignoring and stalking folks is suddenly a possibility :0 GJ curse guys!
EDIT: IT even has notifications when someone posted in the thread you posted. Amazing.
This said, it appears that my PM box got emptied, a shame, some useful things/discussions may have been lost :\
And, do we no longer have a "Preview Post" option when posting? (previewing embedded images/videos)
The front page has now become entirely useless for me. I mean, I'm an arcade mapper, I host my projects on bnet, I visit mapster for forum activity/community. If I were an an arcade mapper that has never been to mapster before and I saw that front page - my first impression would be "well this looks scammy - "give us your projects (which is an entirely redundant/obsolete method of distribution as far as the arcade goes) for PayPal/Steam/Amazon money! Register today for bonus offer and get started right away!"".
It probably works for campaign/custom assets guys tho, since they've been forever neglected by blizz, so the front-page might not be entirely out of sense.
Removal of latest 5 posts and community events (especially now since we just started a community oriented thing) is extremely unfortunate. That panel was great at helping to keep track of what's going on, being able to drop in and see what's up. This way I might never get to be exposed to things I care little about but could have taken notice of due to their luck of being in latest posts panel at the appropriate time. A huge hit for ease of navigation.
*makes a dramatic gesture*
Is this the price we have to pay for salvation against the spambots? :'|
If that makes you feel any better, I've worked with 2 other mapmakers besides myself an none of us use code, all GUI. Hell, I'm so lame I don't even XML.
As for the motivation, sometimes I take a break from working on all the depressingly unreleased stuff/SC2 and come back a few months later with renewed vigor and determination. Haven't managed to break the loop yet ;0
Ooh hello there. I like your ambition <3 , was worried for a bit that it would be a throwaway, so I'm relieved that you have have all the intention to work on this.
Sometime this week I'll try to get friends to play a few rounds of this with me to get a better impression of multiplayer experience.
Meanwhile, it would help greatly if you upload the map to EU server too, since that is the place where I usually hang around nowadays.
"UI/ResourceIconNoBackground0" is the link for icon image, if you want game to display imported icon then type here your imported icons directory.
For example I imported a custom solarite icon called "Icon_Solarite.dds" which I put into "Imports/Icons/" import folders. To display it I replaced "UI/ResourceIconNoBackground0" with "Imports/Icons/Icon_Solarite.dds". If you're not organizing your import folders and just importing into default space then just file name (for ex. "Icon_Solarite.dds") should suffice.
Alright, so I first played on EU, apparently the old version, and had much the same troubles that others had, which have all been fixed by the time I went to play on NA.
----------------------------
Points not mentioned before:
Once rocks collapse and seal off cave they still display healthbar even tho they effectively became a doodad at that point;
My default screen resolution is 1280x1024, during briefing objectives were anchored off-screen;
I played in the arcade, and when online - saving doesn't work. On one hand, it hint's that I should be careful about next part, on the other hand - you can detect if game is a local test and not display Ctrl-Q hints when functionality isn't available.
Zerglings in attack waves were normal strain while zerglings hatching in base were swarmling strain?
I didn't see any in-game benefit to destroying caves, so ditched those I could. I noticed there was a credits earned tab in score screen, but there's no indication that bonus objective affected it in the slightest.
----------------------
Personal preferences:
Would prefer if I could skip text by clicking on text instead of faraway button (1 click to finish text writeout, 1 click to skip to next sequence);
Decreasing starting minerals in base could hint to turtles that they don't need to mass 100 marines before heading out.
Do you have a marine range upgrade later in tech tree? Blizz added "superior warp gate" upgrade in campaign for casual and normal difficulty, you could do the same thing here for Glorn-level skilled players :D
Every time I watched intro cinematic I couldn't help but to feel that the nuking ghost would get killed as well from nuking at such short range t_t
To counter the achievement point - I didn't like when blizz added achievement preview into briefing rooms. It spoils what's gonna happen in mission for the player. And it also showed their own disregard towards their story/exploration element.
EDIT: If you do decide to show achievement preview during briefing screen, please require player to first click a button to reveal those achievement icons (which would be hidden by default).
----------------------
Other thoughts:
There isn't much of anything else to say about this. It's a first mission, it's well-designed and well-paced (for the most part, there was a bit of not being able to do much during base building part other than just stare at mineral counter, but that's acceptable. Usually you can balance base building with exploration of what's outside the base (that's the reason blizz just loved to put mineral pallets everywhere - so that players can explore map with minisquads while building forces to attack main base), but I feel it's ok to just chill at base during the first mission). It got good dialogue, nice background info for world building and is just overall a pleasure to play.
----------------------
Closing thoughts:
I really enjoyed it, the attention to details from briefing goodies to quality terrain to cart mechanic to tooltips on objectives give an impression that this is a labor of love, which is always heartwarming to see.
If you have a testing exercise that is just come and share feedback without too many guidelines - it might attract some people to freestyle it. Tell what they think using their own speaking habits without bothering too much. The more guidelines you add - the more hurdles there are to just casually drop in and post something. Of course, everyone interprets them differently. Some take "don't be an asshole" as - no personal attacks. Others may take it as "be polite", or even "be nice". Depending on personal circumstances, interpretations of this guideline might be the difference between "eh, I can give it a shot" and "meh, what a bother".
My agenda was not to facilitate a helpful high-level feedback provision. There are already people who are on it. The idea was to involve those who don't want to bother too much. Whatever is posted could generate discussions and more participation. I am not disregarding the value of being helpful with the feedback provided - it is obvious we don't have problem with that as there are some people who are quite passionate about being helpful and nurturing. They post good extensive feedback in encouraging way that makes others to aspire to be like them.
Now whether the potential people I was concerned about exist or not - we'll never know who and when lurks. New people have been popping out here and there.
You can make argument that we should strive to bring the best of people instead of pandering to the lowest common denominator, but I believe that value can be found in anything and the opportunities should be explored. Again, you will teach people on how to be good organically by being an example to be followed if that is your concern.
In the end, it comes down to that I foolishly got influenced by my own bias and assumed that the most valuable thing coming out of this could be the volume of people getting involved as the more people could provide a bigger range of points of view for the testing projects showcased.
It is however now clear that community’s intent has been slightly different - to create grounds where authors can be given focused high-quality feedback, for this goal, setting up guidelines is completely OK.
Soo... uuh, yeah, I guess I'll see you all in the decembers test thread.
Edit: Also GlornII, you're quite charming, I appreciate your approach, have a like.
Cool, nice to see that conduct is such a big part of current mapsters culture.
I took my chance asking if people would be more chill about it, but I guess no luck. If I manage to direct an outsider to leave their feedback for this endeavor I hope you guys won't bully them too much should they say something inconsiderate. I'll be sure to stress to them how much everyone appreciates their professional approach.
Admittedly, I find strange that you dislike the idea of not being able to be mean to an author, and angry if an author defneds towards what they feel is an attack...
Author asking to invest time into their creation and then being defensive about anything sends the message that author really isn't open about what they want to hear. From feedback providers point of view - if you don't want to hear something - fine, you needed it more than me, I simply won't invest further time into this communication. It grinds my gears to see people shoot themselves in the foot because they don't realize concepts of demographics, personal preferences and the randomness of circumstances.
Wouldn't you agree that sometimes just giving a silent nod is more beneficial than acting on emotions? Sure, I'm being strict on author and not on tester, but the obligation to be gracious lies on the one who receives the benefits, in whatever form they may come.
I wonder if there were any other people who didn't leave feedback because they didn't have much good thing to say and censoring themselves to be positive was more of an effort than what seemed feasible. I know I played a few bi-weekly maps but refrained from posting stream of consciousness because of not wanting to come off too hurtful.
The "Don't be an asshole" rule, is slightly annoying. I mean, even if someone is an asshole in their feedback - someone else can go clarify the points and go in more detail, catch and elaborate the train of thought. Discussion at the expense of hurting someones feels is more beneficial than nothing at all, no?
About authors replying to feedback - from what I care - just "like" the post and move on, I'll know that you've read it and be happy that my X hours spent into playing and writing feedback posts served their purpose. There is nothing that grinds my gears more than mapmaker going defensive (or excusing themselves) on the feedback he recieves (unless defense was explicitly requested by poster). Politely asking for a ways to improve is ok tho.
0
You guys are insane, in the most admirable and endearing of ways.
My only grievance is that when I'm playing on my native resolution (1280x1024) some of dialogs are cut off (or overlap).
I've only played first and second missions so far, will probably wait for a friend to continue together :D
Pure awesome.
0
Ok, I've played it. Then I tried to play it with a friend but after loading we got stuck looking at doodads on black background forever.
- I would have preferred if game displayed controls in the beginning of stage (and when new control options become available). First time I played I only used up/down/left/right/Z/Q because those were the keys I was familiar with from navigating the menu. I was wondering what were all those powerups I was pickign up, I hit keys near "Z" ("X" and "C") but they didn't do anything I was confused and contionued to "Z" trough the level.
- Next time I played I made sure to carefully read arcades description to see what keys I could use. Then I went to options as info screen said I could use mouse, so I thought I could rebind control to mouse, confusingly I couldn't, just to discover that mouse control is a toggle ;_;
- Once I toggled to mouse it was like another game. My performance increased tenfold and I was even able to reach levels boss (with keyboard I only got slightly further past miniboss). Still, mouse control didn't feel as smooth as it could have been. I remember playing a map by FunkyUserName where you controlled a banshee via mouse-only in a 4 player game and that control felt super fluid, unlike here where my ship wouldn't follow mouse all the way. (Move mouse quickly across the screen and then stop, ship will move in mouse direction for approx 2-3 tiles and then stop, requiring me to wiggle mouse again in order to get ship moving for another 2-3 tiles).
- Throughout playing I kept on wondering: "Are these colorful backgrounds distracting me or is it just in my head? Would I get a performance boost if they weren't there?". I guess I'll never know, but it would be super cool if I could toggle something like "simple background" in options so I only have sky-box beneath me.
- I played on default settings which I think are the easiest, and I still died alot (I think when I used keyboard my usual survival time amounted to to 5-10 seconds as I couldn't help but to ram into enemies all the time. It was better with mouse, but I still wasted 2 credits before reaching the boss). Maybe, for scrubs like me, when playing on easy - the death penalty could be instead of losing all weapons you only lose your current one? That way it wouldn't be as painful when you die and lose that 4 upgraded weapon you never got to use. Would also encourage trying out these weapons.
- Can't comment on the shops, was too poor to buy anything :D
- A level loading that lasted for a minute left me scratching my head tho..
Overall I like the level design. feels like a well thought out stage out of a game of this genre.
I'm yet to beat Stage 1 boss, furthest I got was 1 cannon remaining, so I imagine some evening I'll try it again.
0
Here are 2 recordings of the games we played, maybe seeing when what occurred will help you figure stuff out.
0
I feel like this is going to be a great year.
I'm itching to make multiple simple-ish maps in 2017, hopefully after all this time I've gained enough of ability to be able to follow through with it. Many youtube records from korean scbw UMS scene help greatly at figuring the mood I'm aiming for. Also want to incorporate some of Abvdzh's data assets (namely his Alarak hits my fancy). I haven't seen them used in arcade and that's a real shame, work like that is meant to be displayed.
But for now I'm waiting for replacement parts because on christmas some of my hardware lit up ;_; ...
0
0
Heya. Wanted to drop by and say that I didn't forget about this, regrettably my motherboard and god knows what else got fried up so it'll be some time until I replace damaged hardware and be able to do SC2 again.
But I'll be cheering on you until then ^_^
-----------------
Also I got to play two games last week on NA.
It feels that siege weapons projectiles should be dodgeable, after all, siege's good vs static targets and mobility should be able a natural counter to it, instead we found that grouped up siege weapons would oneshot less tankier heroes, so we gravitated towards "run in, use ult, die, respawn, repeat" strategy every time we faced 5+ siege weapons, which felt somewhat scummy.
Also, on our second game we accidentally discovered "wave" command. Rip progress. With all the fps drops (maybe it was frozen, maybe it was something else, but we had game drop to 0-1 fps and stay there for a minute several times) and siege oneshotting heroes when they come one by one we decided to not go for 3rd playtrough.
And as of right now game feels somewhat limited. You look at abilities and can't help but to think - this is rather weak, looks balanced for PvP combat. I know it's supposed to mirror Hots, but I'm concerned that wanting to keep HotS familiarity could restrain game in a bad way. But you mentioned adding talents, which I imagine are some sort of leveling/progression system aimed at adding exploration and customization to heroes, so I'll wait for you to finish that first and think about these design questions later.
0
Oh wow, it's unfathomable, but I can now view my own post history. And other peoples post history. And even ignoring and stalking folks is suddenly a possibility :0 GJ curse guys!
EDIT: IT even has notifications when someone posted in the thread you posted. Amazing.
This said, it appears that my PM box got emptied, a shame, some useful things/discussions may have been lost :\
And, do we no longer have a "Preview Post" option when posting? (previewing embedded images/videos)
The front page has now become entirely useless for me. I mean, I'm an arcade mapper, I host my projects on bnet, I visit mapster for forum activity/community. If I were an an arcade mapper that has never been to mapster before and I saw that front page - my first impression would be "well this looks scammy - "give us your projects (which is an entirely redundant/obsolete method of distribution as far as the arcade goes) for PayPal/Steam/Amazon money! Register today for bonus offer and get started right away!"".
It probably works for campaign/custom assets guys tho, since they've been forever neglected by blizz, so the front-page might not be entirely out of sense.
Removal of latest 5 posts and community events (especially now since we just started a community oriented thing) is extremely unfortunate. That panel was great at helping to keep track of what's going on, being able to drop in and see what's up. This way I might never get to be exposed to things I care little about but could have taken notice of due to their luck of being in latest posts panel at the appropriate time. A huge hit for ease of navigation.
*makes a dramatic gesture*
Is this the price we have to pay for salvation against the spambots? :'|
0
@hjfabre: Go
If that makes you feel any better, I've worked with 2 other mapmakers besides myself an none of us use code, all GUI. Hell, I'm so lame I don't even XML.
As for the motivation, sometimes I take a break from working on all the depressingly unreleased stuff/SC2 and come back a few months later with renewed vigor and determination. Haven't managed to break the loop yet ;0
At this point, I don't think I'll ever quit. :<
(unless WC4 or WW3)
0
Ooh hello there. I like your ambition <3 , was worried for a bit that it would be a throwaway, so I'm relieved that you have have all the intention to work on this.
Sometime this week I'll try to get friends to play a few rounds of this with me to get a better impression of multiplayer experience.
Meanwhile, it would help greatly if you upload the map to EU server too, since that is the place where I usually hang around nowadays.
0
Yeah, for me and another mapper I know it took around 7-10 retries to upload anything on EU yesterday due to that error.
0
@k3llym0: Go
You seem so frustrated, did this not help at all?
0
Alright, so I first played on EU, apparently the old version, and had much the same troubles that others had, which have all been fixed by the time I went to play on NA.
----------------------------Points not mentioned before:
----------------------Personal preferences:
:DEDIT: If you do decide to show achievement preview during briefing screen, please require player to first click a button to reveal those achievement icons (which would be hidden by default).
----------------------Other thoughts:
----------------------Closing thoughts:
;)0
Ok, so, this was my hypothesis.
If you have a testing exercise that is just come and share feedback without too many guidelines - it might attract some people to freestyle it. Tell what they think using their own speaking habits without bothering too much. The more guidelines you add - the more hurdles there are to just casually drop in and post something. Of course, everyone interprets them differently. Some take "don't be an asshole" as - no personal attacks. Others may take it as "be polite", or even "be nice". Depending on personal circumstances, interpretations of this guideline might be the difference between "eh, I can give it a shot" and "meh, what a bother".
My agenda was not to facilitate a helpful high-level feedback provision. There are already people who are on it. The idea was to involve those who don't want to bother too much. Whatever is posted could generate discussions and more participation. I am not disregarding the value of being helpful with the feedback provided - it is obvious we don't have problem with that as there are some people who are quite passionate about being helpful and nurturing. They post good extensive feedback in encouraging way that makes others to aspire to be like them.
Now whether the potential people I was concerned about exist or not - we'll never know who and when lurks. New people have been popping out here and there.
You can make argument that we should strive to bring the best of people instead of pandering to the lowest common denominator, but I believe that value can be found in anything and the opportunities should be explored. Again, you will teach people on how to be good organically by being an example to be followed if that is your concern.
In the end, it comes down to that I foolishly got influenced by my own bias and assumed that the most valuable thing coming out of this could be the volume of people getting involved as the more people could provide a bigger range of points of view for the testing projects showcased.
It is however now clear that community’s intent has been slightly different - to create grounds where authors can be given focused high-quality feedback, for this goal, setting up guidelines is completely OK.
Soo... uuh, yeah, I guess I'll see you all in the decembers test thread.
Edit: Also GlornII, you're quite charming, I appreciate your approach, have a like.
0
Cool, nice to see that conduct is such a big part of current mapsters culture.
I took my chance asking if people would be more chill about it, but I guess no luck. If I manage to direct an outsider to leave their feedback for this endeavor I hope you guys won't bully them too much should they say something inconsiderate. I'll be sure to stress to them how much everyone appreciates their professional approach.
Author asking to invest time into their creation and then being defensive about anything sends the message that author really isn't open about what they want to hear. From feedback providers point of view - if you don't want to hear something - fine, you needed it more than me, I simply won't invest further time into this communication. It grinds my gears to see people shoot themselves in the foot because they don't realize concepts of demographics, personal preferences and the randomness of circumstances.
Wouldn't you agree that sometimes just giving a silent nod is more beneficial than acting on emotions? Sure, I'm being strict on author and not on tester, but the obligation to be gracious lies on the one who receives the benefits, in whatever form they may come.
0
lol 30 minutes..
Anyway, I have few thoughts.
I wonder if there were any other people who didn't leave feedback because they didn't have much good thing to say and censoring themselves to be positive was more of an effort than what seemed feasible. I know I played a few bi-weekly maps but refrained from posting stream of consciousness because of not wanting to come off too hurtful.
The "Don't be an asshole" rule, is slightly annoying. I mean, even if someone is an asshole in their feedback - someone else can go clarify the points and go in more detail, catch and elaborate the train of thought. Discussion at the expense of hurting someones feels is more beneficial than nothing at all, no?
About authors replying to feedback - from what I care - just "like" the post and move on, I'll know that you've read it and be happy that my X hours spent into playing and writing feedback posts served their purpose. There is nothing that grinds my gears more than mapmaker going defensive (or excusing themselves) on the feedback he recieves (unless defense was explicitly requested by poster). Politely asking for a ways to improve is ok tho.
I'll be looking forward to this Thursday.