That's some really good ideas, thank you tremendously for the thoughtful analysis. I've been thinking about possible interface enhancements to streamline the process like you describe.
The reason the map uses the base SC2 interface right now is because the first priority has been gameplay: get the control point system fully up and running, all heroes completed, implementing your flying battle group idea, and so on. I just finished the final base capture system this week. A progress bar displays over a destroyed base, and team strength in the base's vicinity advances the bar towards the stronger team until the base captures. There's a finite amount of time to learn the editor and implement ideas, and I haven't had time to sit down and experiment with the interface tools much yet. The second phase of beta is coming soon and I'm trying to get all the core gameplay finished by then.
However, you're right that it's difficult for newcomers to learn the mechanics right now, and thorough gameplay doesn't matter if people get frustrated trying to learn it. I'll focus on improving the interface this week.
The upgrades button is a good idea, I'll see what I can do.
Quote:
Otherwise, have it so your UI allows you to click on a hero/swarm to spawn, and you click on the "allowed" spots near the bases to where you want to spawn.
This is a good idea. Another enhancement would be a button to set a global rally point for trained units.
Another major element that I have planned is a concept from World in Conflict called "tactical aid," or TA. The portals in the current version of the map are the first of these. TA's are something else that can be on a game menu. There will be several types:
Teleporters (nydus/portal transport)
Orbital bombardment (targeted AOE)
Summon specialist unit
Field base (structure allowing training of units)
Each of these will require minerals to use, which provides a tradeoff with upgrades, and a use for excess minerals in late game.
Quote:
Even better, when the game starts, it should show a UI tutorial to players maybe
One thing I'm planning is to have tutorial information at the loading screen. Loading will only take a few seconds once people have up-to-date computers, but for the moment it usually takes a minute or two to load most matches, which provides an excellent opportunity to get players up to speed. The loading image could be a screenshot overview of the interface and major gameplay elements with highlighted portions and captions... I do like having an artistic load screen, but you're right about teaching players the basics. It seems a tutorial would be more useful, and shouldn't take me more than a day to do in photoshop.
Really useful thread! This helped me overcome my problem with using forces... I didn't think of changing max speed.
The counter-intuitive part of this is a unit's possible speed alters how strong the force is, not its current speed. This is what xenrathe was trying to get across with the track runner analogy. Two units with zero acceleration of equal mass can have different effects from the same applied force. This isn't really counter-intuitive so much as it just breaks the laws of physics.
Right angled brackets work (probably since they're a closing symbol), but the difficulty I'm having is left angled brackets show up incorrectly ingame. I think the game reads them as the opening statement of an xml tag...without checking to see if what follows is actually a tag or not. I've been trying to find ways to work around this... unfortunately, using custom script doesn't work.
It's something easy to realize once playing around with the functions a while, but galaxy does NOT follow the standard for c-style languages of truncating when converting floats to integers (round towards 0). Instead, it floor's (rounds to negative infinity).
Thank you dra6o0n! Game length is something we're definitely looking into, and considering options. At the very least, our temporary plan is to double the length of matches from 10 minutes to 20.
There's an underlying problem we've been trying to solve regarding game length... fact of the matter is, most games are decided in the first 5 minutes since teams are usually uneven in skill levels. A few highly-skilled players on a team can drastically change the outcome. This is fair from a competitive standpoint, though somewhat punishing to newcomers. We've been trying to figure out ways to solve this - while not punishing skillful play either.
I like the idea of mobile bases flying around... possibly with a carrier/battlecruiser group on the captain side, and a brood lord/overseer group on the swarm side. It's easy to have units that are a hybrid of AI and player control, too... using the same methods we used to have multiple people "control" one warp prism / hatchery.
It's true careful work with doodads can enhance the atmosphere of any scene. The curtain grass below is a combination of Mar Sara and Tarsonis varieties, with the darker Mar Sara used for grass that's been singed. The line of sight blocking feature can be maintained across gaps in the grass by simply dropping the grass below terrain level where it's "missing". Small details like these can make a subtle but valuable difference, so it's good to balance out grand doodad schemes with detail work too, even if players are only aware of the details on a subconscious level. Make sure not to overlook gameplay aspects as well, and try to incorporate visuals into the gameplay.
but then I got the error everytime I try to save the map: "Unable to move existing archive (It is already being used by another process)" C:\Users\Metrael\Documents\Starcraft II Beta\Maps\testMap.SC2map
I got exactly the same problem when working with imported sound files. The only program open was the galaxy editor, and with just the map open I'm working on.
Has anyone encountered a situation where customized upgrades can sometimes be researched without meeting the resource costs? The odd part is the upgrades sometimes require resources, and sometimes ignore resources. I haven't been able to identify a consistent pattern.
I've set up these as normal for each upgrade on the ability:
Restricted state
Requirements
When the correct behavior occurs the resource cost is highlighted in red and an error message occurs as usual. When the situation is erroneous, the resource cost is the default white color and no error occurs. If the erroneous upgrade is canceled while in progress, the default (not paid) cost is refunded.
Additionally, I've sometimes encountered a strange problem where the select larvae icon appears in the build queue when researching upgrades at that building. (The building has both select larvae and evolution chamber abilities.) I'm uncertain if these two issues are related, but after quite a bit of testing I haven't managed to track down a cause for either problem.
Yeah, but that's on a unit-type basis. I was hoping for some way to create a hallucinated unit that had a lower priority, not higher (apparently ties are broken in favor of the hallucinated unit). Creating a duplicate unit and modifying that 1 value for anything I want to hallucinate is a horrible method to use... but it's what I'm currently stuck with.
Guardian Shield provides a rather nice shockwave effect that could be used for the visual aspect, among other things. There's also a 'create explosion' trigger action, though they said it was all data editor.
The part that's really stumping me though, specifically, is the knockback / into the air.
Well, one potential use I could see is creating a virtual machine, to overcome the memory use restrictions imposed by blizzard. Fixed-size arrays are inefficient for many tasks and their use is prone to bug generation. By converting data types to byte sequences, they could be stored in one chunk of memory. Basically, it could be used to create our own dynamic memory system. I think it's a good idea and could open up map making to true object-oriented design.
0
@dra6o0n: Go
That's some really good ideas, thank you tremendously for the thoughtful analysis. I've been thinking about possible interface enhancements to streamline the process like you describe.
The reason the map uses the base SC2 interface right now is because the first priority has been gameplay: get the control point system fully up and running, all heroes completed, implementing your flying battle group idea, and so on. I just finished the final base capture system this week. A progress bar displays over a destroyed base, and team strength in the base's vicinity advances the bar towards the stronger team until the base captures. There's a finite amount of time to learn the editor and implement ideas, and I haven't had time to sit down and experiment with the interface tools much yet. The second phase of beta is coming soon and I'm trying to get all the core gameplay finished by then.
However, you're right that it's difficult for newcomers to learn the mechanics right now, and thorough gameplay doesn't matter if people get frustrated trying to learn it. I'll focus on improving the interface this week.
The upgrades button is a good idea, I'll see what I can do.
This is a good idea. Another enhancement would be a button to set a global rally point for trained units.
Another major element that I have planned is a concept from World in Conflict called "tactical aid," or TA. The portals in the current version of the map are the first of these. TA's are something else that can be on a game menu. There will be several types:
Each of these will require minerals to use, which provides a tradeoff with upgrades, and a use for excess minerals in late game.
One thing I'm planning is to have tutorial information at the loading screen. Loading will only take a few seconds once people have up-to-date computers, but for the moment it usually takes a minute or two to load most matches, which provides an excellent opportunity to get players up to speed. The loading image could be a screenshot overview of the interface and major gameplay elements with highlighted portions and captions... I do like having an artistic load screen, but you're right about teaching players the basics. It seems a tutorial would be more useful, and shouldn't take me more than a day to do in photoshop.
0
Truncation
Floor Function
This is a significant difference when doing any sort of rounding.
0
@Joshjje: Go
0
Really useful thread! This helped me overcome my problem with using forces... I didn't think of changing max speed.
The counter-intuitive part of this is a unit's possible speed alters how strong the force is, not its current speed. This is what xenrathe was trying to get across with the track runner analogy. Two units with zero acceleration of equal mass can have different effects from the same applied force. This isn't really counter-intuitive so much as it just breaks the laws of physics.
0
Right angled brackets work (probably since they're a closing symbol), but the difficulty I'm having is left angled brackets show up incorrectly ingame. I think the game reads them as the opening statement of an xml tag...without checking to see if what follows is actually a tag or not. I've been trying to find ways to work around this... unfortunately, using custom script doesn't work.
0
How can left angled brackets (<) be included in Text entries that have formatting (style or color)? I tried escaping them with \, which didn't work.
0
I need a monospaced font (like courier). Has anyone found such a style?
0
It's something easy to realize once playing around with the functions a while, but galaxy does NOT follow the standard for c-style languages of truncating when converting floats to integers (round towards 0). Instead, it floor's (rounds to negative infinity).
0
@dra6o0n: Go
Thank you dra6o0n! Game length is something we're definitely looking into, and considering options. At the very least, our temporary plan is to double the length of matches from 10 minutes to 20.
There's an underlying problem we've been trying to solve regarding game length... fact of the matter is, most games are decided in the first 5 minutes since teams are usually uneven in skill levels. A few highly-skilled players on a team can drastically change the outcome. This is fair from a competitive standpoint, though somewhat punishing to newcomers. We've been trying to figure out ways to solve this - while not punishing skillful play either.
I like the idea of mobile bases flying around... possibly with a carrier/battlecruiser group on the captain side, and a brood lord/overseer group on the swarm side. It's easy to have units that are a hybrid of AI and player control, too... using the same methods we used to have multiple people "control" one warp prism / hatchery.
0
It's true careful work with doodads can enhance the atmosphere of any scene. The curtain grass below is a combination of Mar Sara and Tarsonis varieties, with the darker Mar Sara used for grass that's been singed. The line of sight blocking feature can be maintained across gaps in the grass by simply dropping the grass below terrain level where it's "missing". Small details like these can make a subtle but valuable difference, so it's good to balance out grand doodad schemes with detail work too, even if players are only aware of the details on a subconscious level. Make sure not to overlook gameplay aspects as well, and try to incorporate visuals into the gameplay.
0
I got exactly the same problem when working with imported sound files. The only program open was the galaxy editor, and with just the map open I'm working on.
0
Has anyone encountered a situation where customized upgrades can sometimes be researched without meeting the resource costs? The odd part is the upgrades sometimes require resources, and sometimes ignore resources. I haven't been able to identify a consistent pattern.
I've set up these as normal for each upgrade on the ability:
When the correct behavior occurs the resource cost is highlighted in red and an error message occurs as usual. When the situation is erroneous, the resource cost is the default white color and no error occurs. If the erroneous upgrade is canceled while in progress, the default (not paid) cost is refunded.
Additionally, I've sometimes encountered a strange problem where the select larvae icon appears in the build queue when researching upgrades at that building. (The building has both select larvae and evolution chamber abilities.) I'm uncertain if these two issues are related, but after quite a bit of testing I haven't managed to track down a cause for either problem.
0
@Vophsix: Go
Yeah, but that's on a unit-type basis. I was hoping for some way to create a hallucinated unit that had a lower priority, not higher (apparently ties are broken in favor of the hallucinated unit). Creating a duplicate unit and modifying that 1 value for anything I want to hallucinate is a horrible method to use... but it's what I'm currently stuck with.
0
@mrm3fan: Go
Guardian Shield provides a rather nice shockwave effect that could be used for the visual aspect, among other things. There's also a 'create explosion' trigger action, though they said it was all data editor.
The part that's really stumping me though, specifically, is the knockback / into the air.
0
Well, one potential use I could see is creating a virtual machine, to overcome the memory use restrictions imposed by blizzard. Fixed-size arrays are inefficient for many tasks and their use is prone to bug generation. By converting data types to byte sequences, they could be stored in one chunk of memory. Basically, it could be used to create our own dynamic memory system. I think it's a good idea and could open up map making to true object-oriented design.