I can't imagine "Blizzard DOTA" is going to be released before a patch that fixes the terrible inventory UI and various hero bugs that plague the current version of the game. It makes me wonder if they've been developing it against a newer version of the game.
In any case, its existence bodes well for massive improvements to the inventory and leveling systems in the editor.
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. :(
I use a quadratic formula for calculating creep HP in Sorcerer's Defense. x is the current wave and a b and c are based on the difficulty level. Math tends to be very useful in game design - just take a look at the spreadsheets people make for WoW.
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 can also suggest using a trigger with event of when a unit goes idle (a unit getting stuck will trigger this)... then to reorder it (check the owner of the triggering unit is player 15 or w/e player is the creeps too).
If it's the bug I was experiencing that won't cut it. Units would get stuck but still have their movement orders, so they wouldn't be considered idle and checking the order count on them wouldn't return zero. It's strange but that's why I had to resort to constantly refreshing orders on all units.
I had this problem. It seems to be a glitch in the pathing AI. The workaround I used is to have a trigger executing every .5 seconds which re-issues the movement orders for every creep.
-Is there a specific reason for the 2x2 pathing? Its quite counter-intuitive imo. Also there is no notification about this; I needed some time to figure out why I was not able to build the way I wanted. If possible somehow, I recommend to use 1x1 pathing.
In the later waves, the creeps are absolutely HUGE and barely fit in a 2x2 gap. I felt that having creeps be inconsistent in their sizes would make mazing much too complicated so I decided the maze would have to be designed around the largest creeps. The newest version tries to improve this by making the pathing radius of all creeps too large to fit in a 1x1 gap and increasing the visual size of all creeps so they look too large to fit through. Definitely open to feedback in this area still, as I'm aware it's one of the most unintuitive aspects of the game.
-While the essence system is quite nice, the selection becomes annoying after a while. Try to think about another method of realizing this, so we can build multiple barricades with shift (maybe 1 hero builder thing which gets charges for abilities representing the elements? Or an auto pick all elements? something like that) Shift building works sometimes; however not always.
I am thinking of adding a small feature when you build with an essence and it disappears, another random essence is selected. A LOT of the current building mechanics are based on limits in the Sc2 game engine; for example, there is not enough command card space for a single builder unit to list every available tower.
-I would like the changelogs to be added to the first post, since in EU only 1.0 is available, I am not aware of the issues you already fixed. Maybe my whole post is pointless, because you changed everything already ;)
Not pointless, because it validates changes already made :) There is a complete changelog in-game under the About tab in the Help Screen. I should probably maintain a changelog here and on the battle.net forums as well.
-tooltips for already placed towers would be nice, in case you need to know what the tower you placed does. You can always look in the help section, but I am too lazy to look up towers there ;)
You can view a tower's tooltip by selecting it and mousing over the big green icon in the selection pane (e.g. where the wireframe would be for a SC2 unit.)
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.
May have made a breakthrough on the crashing issue. I haven't been able to duplicate it on my computer so a friend loaned me his and I think I've narrowed it down to a particular doodad. Need to do more testing to be sure but removing it went from crashing after 5 minutes to over an hour of stability.
Since the crashing is so idiosyncratic though it's hard to be sure if it's related or just luck.
edit: Was able to make the map crash with no doodads. Now running with no doodads and no triggers.
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I can't imagine "Blizzard DOTA" is going to be released before a patch that fixes the terrible inventory UI and various hero bugs that plague the current version of the game. It makes me wonder if they've been developing it against a newer version of the game.
In any case, its existence bodes well for massive improvements to the inventory and leveling systems in the editor.
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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. :(
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I use a quadratic formula for calculating creep HP in Sorcerer's Defense. x is the current wave and a b and c are based on the difficulty level. Math tends to be very useful in game design - just take a look at the spreadsheets people make for WoW.
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Is this SC2Mapster.com or HomeworkHelper.com?
But seriously, let's see, it's been a few years since high school math but I think I still remember the quadratic forumula...
x = (-b +- sqrt(b^2 - 4ac))/2a
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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.
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See attached map. The magister's psi bolt ability is a complete implementation of this.
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Thanks for the suggestions but I've tried removing water and lightning and neither fixes the crashing bugs.
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If it's the bug I was experiencing that won't cut it. Units would get stuck but still have their movement orders, so they wouldn't be considered idle and checking the order count on them wouldn't return zero. It's strange but that's why I had to resort to constantly refreshing orders on all units.
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Thanks for making the videos!
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I had this problem. It seems to be a glitch in the pathing AI. The workaround I used is to have a trigger executing every .5 seconds which re-issues the movement orders for every creep.
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max(a, max(b, max(c, d)))
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Thanks for the feedback. A lot of issues should be fixed when the newer versions are uploaded to EU.
Removed them in 1.1 because people found them annoying.
In the later waves, the creeps are absolutely HUGE and barely fit in a 2x2 gap. I felt that having creeps be inconsistent in their sizes would make mazing much too complicated so I decided the maze would have to be designed around the largest creeps. The newest version tries to improve this by making the pathing radius of all creeps too large to fit in a 1x1 gap and increasing the visual size of all creeps so they look too large to fit through. Definitely open to feedback in this area still, as I'm aware it's one of the most unintuitive aspects of the game.
I am thinking of adding a small feature when you build with an essence and it disappears, another random essence is selected. A LOT of the current building mechanics are based on limits in the Sc2 game engine; for example, there is not enough command card space for a single builder unit to list every available tower.
Not pointless, because it validates changes already made :) There is a complete changelog in-game under the About tab in the Help Screen. I should probably maintain a changelog here and on the battle.net forums as well.
You can view a tower's tooltip by selecting it and mousing over the big green icon in the selection pane (e.g. where the wireframe would be for a SC2 unit.)
Glad you enjoyed it and thank you for the feedback. Still working on the crashing issues, they're my #1 priority right now.
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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.
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Jesus christ, that's gorgeous looking. I hope to one day own a computer capable of rendering that :)
I'd love to see you doing terrain for an RPG.
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May have made a breakthrough on the crashing issue. I haven't been able to duplicate it on my computer so a friend loaned me his and I think I've narrowed it down to a particular doodad. Need to do more testing to be sure but removing it went from crashing after 5 minutes to over an hour of stability.
Since the crashing is so idiosyncratic though it's hard to be sure if it's related or just luck.
edit: Was able to make the map crash with no doodads. Now running with no doodads and no triggers.