My map has an annoying issue where it sometimes causes StarCraft II.exe to crash to Access Violation for a player who quits the map. It doesn't matter how the player quits (F10 menu, victory/defeat trigger, Alt+F4, Restart Mission in editor, Test Document while the map is already running), but it might have to require that the player is logged on to Battle.net for it to occur.
I tried to reproduce this alone while off-line and it didn't crash even after 200 games, then after two multiplayer games it happened again. The issue seems to occur more often for some players than others, possibly due to hardware differences. Here is a Bnet thread about it with a crash log.
I've spent almost a week several hours a day trying to fix or even reliably reproduce the issue, but I can't figure it out.
Has anyone had a similar problem or got any ideas how to narrow it down or solve it?
Update: Fixed. The crash was somehow related to using the flyer helper trick to send actor messages to specific players. I had a cloak ability that hid an actor for a player group and somehow that caused the game to sometimes crash on quit. There was something else related to it too but I didn't figure out what it was (it didn't crash when the only thing we did in the map was to use that ability, but it stopped crashing when we never used that ability, and stopped crashing when I made the ability use the standard Cloak + Burrowed flags).
Mad Space is a top-down space shooter arena game for two teams of 1—4 players who battle for the control of capture points. The arena consists of several tiny planets whose gravity pulls ships and projectiles towards them.
2D physics engine with gravity, collisions, and bounces.
Team vs team area control game mode with team colored projectiles that only damage the enemy.
Arenas with multiple planets to use as cover, and vortexes to fall into and die.
Weapon system with primary and secondary fire modes for each weapon.
Loadout system with five customizable action bar slots that can each fit a weapon or an ability.
A bunch of weapons and abilities to choose from.
Fully sortable, round-based statistics for kills, deaths, damage dealt, and damage done for each player.
Banking for hotkey binds, loadouts, and statistics for played rounds and victories.
The Future
Mad Space is currently in beta, but will be finalized by the end of May, 2014 to enter Blizzard's Rock the Cabinet contest. There are a few more steps to take before that:
Lots of balance testing. I appreciate any help I can get!
More weapons and abilities.
Even more features are planned (more weapons, more abilities, asteroids, moons), although they'll have to wait for later!
There's no reason why players wouldn't take replayability into account when they are voting for the maps. That's why it's also important to publish your map before the deadline and gather a following while you work on it.
Following the Deadline, Sponsor shall review the submissions to confirm that the submissions meet the Contest requirements, and then select submissions that will be made available by Sponsor for judging by the Arcade community. The submissions that will be made available for public judging will be those submissions that, in Sponsor’s sole opinion, are the best based on the following criteria: Accessibility, fun, engagement, creativity, freshness, visual quality, and technical achievement.
The judging criteria are only used by Blizzard for selecting the initial map pool (and maybe the three winners) where players will then pick the five best ones. The players will most likely only use their own opinion of "fun" as the judging criteria, no matter how Blizzard defines it.
If you don't like subjective judging criteria, don't take part in an art contest (such as this one).
Are we allowed to publicly publish our map on Battle.net before it is submitted as an entry to the contest? If so, is there any kind of time limit to this, i.e. could I publish a map, let's say today, and wait until the deadline before submitting it?
Are we allowed to publicly playtest our maps before submitting them to the contest?
Are we allowed to modify our map that is published on Battle.net after it has been submitted as an entry to the contest? In other words, can the file on Battle.net be a newer version of the map than the one submitted to the contest?
After the contest is over, are the maps treated as regular maps once again, i.e. are we allowed to do whatever with them?
a1win thats awesome! have you played subspace continuum ? reminds me of that :P
it was epic xD
Nope, never seen that one before. However, there were a lot of Finnish cave fighter games in the late 90s that I played a lot! Here's one I spent countless of hours with as a kid:
@A1win: Go Ya know... I always wanted Terran building to go underground during enemy assault... Don't pay attention, it's just me. Also I wanted to ask since I haven't noticed: is there any way to make resource delivery from forge to CC more... autonomous?
The Warp Cargo ability was changed so that you can warp the cargo of a structure with it as well. ;)
Rocks are despawned inside the black mask for performance issues (otherwise the map wouldn't be possible as there are tens of thousands of destructible rocks in total), so the mining station idea can't really be done. It's been suggested before and it eventually gave me the idea for the Quarry, which does kind of the same thing, but is easier to use.
I think it's easier to just build a new power generator than spread the grid with long-distance cables. I originally had a Power Relay tower that just allowed longer cables but it turned out completely useless in the end as you had to protect it too, in which case you could've just built a power generator there anyway. The other option was that enemies didn't attack the towers, but having very long invulnerable power lines just didn't seem right.
I thought of Pylons so that they'd "teleport" power, or in other words all Pylons would be in the same grid no matter where they were... but I still think even that would get overly complicated. The current power grid setup feels just right to me. I'm definitely in for more buildings, but they need to be interesting enough and different from the buildings that are already there.
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I've added a to the first post!
Some of many updates since the first release:
Full changelog is available here.
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My map has an annoying issue where it sometimes causes StarCraft II.exe to crash to Access Violation for a player who quits the map. It doesn't matter how the player quits (F10 menu, victory/defeat trigger, Alt+F4, Restart Mission in editor, Test Document while the map is already running), but it might have to require that the player is logged on to Battle.net for it to occur.
I tried to reproduce this alone while off-line and it didn't crash even after 200 games, then after two multiplayer games it happened again. The issue seems to occur more often for some players than others, possibly due to hardware differences. Here is a Bnet thread about it with a crash log.
I've spent almost a week several hours a day trying to fix or even reliably reproduce the issue, but I can't figure it out.
Has anyone had a similar problem or got any ideas how to narrow it down or solve it?
Update: Fixed. The crash was somehow related to using the flyer helper trick to send actor messages to specific players. I had a cloak ability that hid an actor for a player group and somehow that caused the game to sometimes crash on quit. There was something else related to it too but I didn't figure out what it was (it didn't crash when the only thing we did in the map was to use that ability, but it stopped crashing when we never used that ability, and stopped crashing when I made the ability use the standard Cloak + Burrowed flags).
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I've considered adding AI, but it'll have to wait for later. It's a big project and also risky as the map is already quite heavy on performance.
Join us in the Mad Space group on Europe region to find people to play with!
starcraft://group/2/197227
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Mad Space is a top-down space shooter arena game for two teams of 1—4 players who battle for the control of capture points. The arena consists of several tiny planets whose gravity pulls ships and projectiles towards them.
Map Links
Media
Features
The Future
Mad Space is currently in beta, but will be finalized by the end of May, 2014 to enter Blizzard's Rock the Cabinet contest. There are a few more steps to take before that:
Even more features are planned (more weapons, more abilities, asteroids, moons), although they'll have to wait for later!
Links
Have fun!
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There's no reason why players wouldn't take replayability into account when they are voting for the maps. That's why it's also important to publish your map before the deadline and gather a following while you work on it.
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The judging criteria are only used by Blizzard for selecting the initial map pool (and maybe the three winners) where players will then pick the five best ones. The players will most likely only use their own opinion of "fun" as the judging criteria, no matter how Blizzard defines it.
If you don't like subjective judging criteria, don't take part in an art contest (such as this one).
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"Fun" already is a judging criteria, which includes balance and replayability.
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Hmm... I wonder if four months is enough to finish my map and write a novel inside it. *cracks knuckles*
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Faaaaar more than that. ;)
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This will be one brutal contest if any map ever created is allowed to participate.
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A few questions...
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Some footage from a multiplayer test with recent modifications:
Nope, never seen that one before. However, there were a lot of Finnish cave fighter games in the late 90s that I played a lot! Here's one I spent countless of hours with as a kid:
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Mad Space
The game is now released on all four regions on the Arcade!
More info on my blog page and on the Battle.net forum thread for Rock the Cabinet contest.
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The Warp Cargo ability was changed so that you can warp the cargo of a structure with it as well. ;)
Rocks are despawned inside the black mask for performance issues (otherwise the map wouldn't be possible as there are tens of thousands of destructible rocks in total), so the mining station idea can't really be done. It's been suggested before and it eventually gave me the idea for the Quarry, which does kind of the same thing, but is easier to use.
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@thedudewithacup: Go
I think it's easier to just build a new power generator than spread the grid with long-distance cables. I originally had a Power Relay tower that just allowed longer cables but it turned out completely useless in the end as you had to protect it too, in which case you could've just built a power generator there anyway. The other option was that enemies didn't attack the towers, but having very long invulnerable power lines just didn't seem right.
I thought of Pylons so that they'd "teleport" power, or in other words all Pylons would be in the same grid no matter where they were... but I still think even that would get overly complicated. The current power grid setup feels just right to me. I'm definitely in for more buildings, but they need to be interesting enough and different from the buildings that are already there.