I don't know what the heck I'm doing wrong, but my firebats simply won't change their texture. I've tried head, main and body. I have the prefix set to FireBat, just like the previewer shows. Gah, this is far too finicky :(.
I managed to make myself a golden-plated raven on my first try, but this firebat is just annoying...
Then you read the thread wrong. I only want the overlay/gun/turret interface to be seen and I need the player VISIBLE to OTHER players. If there was an option to make units invisible to INDIVIDUAL PLAYERS I wouldn't give a damn, but there isn't. I need something that can allow the camera to follow a point just in front of the unit perfectly, without acceleration or deceleration or being subject to the 16 fps limitation (0.625 seconds).
Like I said, whenever I can be sure it doesn't have any major bugs. I've fixed everything that's come up so far, but my US feedback has been minimal.
Don't worry though, I'm anxious to spread it around too!
I sent Blizzard an infringement notice today. Hopefully they remove the stolen versions...I feel like tons of people are getting the wrong idea about the game because it wasn't localized after it was stolen.
Apparently it was high up in popularity when 1.0 was first released in EU (but obviously it died because it wasn't localized).
If you're looking for a more general time frame...I'd say by this time next week it will probably be transferred over, assuming no major bugs are found.
The EU and SEA versions of the game are unofficial. The map file was stolen a while back and somebody uploaded it to all of those servers without my permission. There is also an unofficial version on the US servers, in addition to the real one.
2.0 will be coming to EU and SEA once I'm sure the US version is stable.
Clearly I need to get rid of these stolen versions that have been uploaded all over the world...Is this really the procedure I need to follow (link below)? Seems a little extreme when I could just say "somebody stole my map ...look at the name of his map and the date he uploaded it".
Getting back on topic: how does popularity work now?
I've been playing for hours and hours with my testers and the map's popularity isn't going up at all. It remains at the same number of hours no matter how many times I play it.
I'm just going to avoid the whole Dogmai battle that's going on...
I hear ya, Maknyuzz.
Every update I did to 1.0 (and now the first update that's going live for 2.0) is making the game easier and easier, with additional help available for new players. I'm leaving the high difficulty settings where they are though....the high difficulty is part of the game's charm IMO.
2.2 will feature something that Dogmai mentioned (yes it was already in the works). If you're in the game on your own there's no time limit for the first round. It just starts when you want it to. This gives people more time to read the tutorial and whatnot.
Quote:
When someone makes a dialog that looks horrible (or even ones that aren't horrible, just 'alright' as I imagine this map's to be),
Sadly, my dialogs aren't bad at all, it's just a consistency issue. Some of the dialogs (probably the ones Dogmai was referencing) are directly from FD 1.0. When 1.0 was released, my dialogs were absolutely terrible. I've altered nearly every dialog since then and all the ones I've added for 2.0 look great (although again, I'm not sure how the text reads on lower resolutions...Dogmai's comments made it sound like that could be an issue).
I'm hoping to make a whole new achievement dialog after today's update, which should be fairly impressive if I can pull off what I'm picturing.
I'd like to reiterate what I said on the last page. I never said my dialogs were the "best you'll ever see", I said I found my dialogs impressive. I did not necessarily say that based off of aesthetic appeal, it's due to their functionality.
You can go backwards or forwards through tips at any time (even after you've died) to help you learn how to play. There's a tutorial which provides information on startup if you ask for it.
At any time, you can pull up a tech tree, which lists every units' stats, all upgrades and abilities associated with the unit, what it's prereqs are, and so on.
There's a scouting dialog which gives tactical advice in competitive mode, based on what your opponent has built.
An update has just been published to battle.net. If anybody finds any more bugs, don't hesitate to pm me. Patch notes below:
v2.2 Update
Bugs/Faults:
Fixed a visibility issue when there was a split between solo and competitive players
An issue regarding the game variants was pointed out to me yesterday by a user. I believe I have fixed this now, but it's difficult to tell since I'd need 3+ players to reproduce it
The unique defensive unit for Raynor's Radiers (Chain Gunner), was not receiving damage boosts from technicians
UI:
The tower upgrade interface has had some slight modifications made
27 custom icons have been added throughout the game. I will continue to add more in later updates (three were provided by Alex06)
The Victory/Defeat buttons have been altered so they aren't as intense
Towers will now have their use in combat listed in light blue beneath their kills, like units do
The reward messages and victory/defeat buttons will now be displayed beneath pop-up dialogs like the tech trees
Gameplay:
If you've entered the game alone, a start button is present near the top of the screen. There is now no time limitation to prepare yourself for the first wave or read through the tutorial. (Please note: If you enter the game with more than 1 player, the timers will still be present)
Setting solo difficulty to 'weak' stops enemies from speeding up as each wave progresses
Other:
Vortex has been made a little nicer to look at
Please note that this update is a hotifx for that game variant bug more than an actual update.
[Edit]: It seems that in my haste to fix the issue with the game variants, I accidentally created an [almost] equally bad bug. When playing on your own, certain dialogs will not appear, which can make the game a little more confusing.
I already have a fix for this new bug ready to go, but I'm trying to add some more content to the update before it goes live. The patch notes below are "in progress" and will be altered as things are added. I apologize ahead of time for this inconvenience.
2.3 Change Log:
Bugs/Faults:
Dialogs that were accidentally hidden by version 2.2 will be restored
First tier offensive units were not getting the cool 'upgrade effect' other units were. This has been fixed
The tip "Box Formation" was appearing twice
The "Building Tech Tree" button was not flashing when the player had 2 upgrade points
The "On My Mark" achievement was only checking for one type of unit instead of two
Some assassins (most notably the Lyote) (in competitive mode), could get caught between two targets and continuously teleport over and over again. This should no longer happen
Raynor's Raiders' unique defensive unit (Chain Gunner) was injuring allies with its barrage ability
The zoom button on the tutorial dialog was not working correctly for all players and was not zooming to the appropriate spots, in some cases
Tutorial arrows were being removed prematurely for some players
UI:
The unit tech tree has had its icons altered to match the icons that went live in 2.2
Several tooltips have been adjusted
The achievement dialog was completely redesigned. We have a scroll bar now :)
Commander and Martyr buff icons were altered to match the new custom ability icons
The message received if you fail to pick a leader and select difficulty settings within 70 seconds has been altered
The Swarm Spires, Drone Hives and the anti-armour drones (gained through tower upgrades) have had their health bars hidden, since they are invulnerable
Arak'anar and Nyubus (Bosses for wave 10 and 30) have had their summoned minions' health bars altered. They should be more realistically sized now
More custom icons have been added
Many achievment icons have been changed
Tips will no longer be displayed if the tutorial is open. Having both present at the same time cluttered the screen and overwhelmed new players
Other:
Three new, competitive achievements added
If tips are enabled, after the tutorial is closed (or as soon as a leader is picked, if the tutorial is off), the priest, construction drone, and psionic enchanter icons will flash in solo mode (until each is purchased)
Enabling the tutorial automatically sets enemy health to "weak" and enemy formation to "scattered"
The achievement "Come, My Pretties" has been lowered from 250 attacks to 45 to bring it in line with a 2.0 balance change
The achievement "Legacy of a Spine Thrower" has had it's required health lowered to 350 from 400 to bring it in line with a balance change that occurred in 2.0's release
Note: Due to the nature of this achievement layout switch, I am able to add significantly more achievements. However, it is possible some users may lose their achievement history. Know that I have tried very hard to avoid this though.
In both of your posts you described a situation where you are sending units at someone else (Bunker Wars) or rushing them off the map (Tug of War).
All I'm saying is there is a TD and then there are the TD variants you both are describing which are less a TD and more a different genre.
I agree with both of you. I agree that in its essence a tower defense needs to be combined with another genre (to some degree) for competitive mode. On the other hand, Karawasa is right in that a td can be difficult and strategy oriented without needing another genre's concepts.
I think it all comes down to competitive modes...they simply aren't part of the standard TD formula. You add in a competitive aspect into the map and it evolves into a hybrid.
But it's not impossible for a solo or team-oriented TD to have some solid strategy behind it.
For FD, I've always said it's a strategy game first and a defense map second.
Agreed, Formation Defense's new competitive mode can get quite intense towards the end. You stop controlling your troops for a couple seconds and somebody's going to wipe you off the map.
I do appreciate that you took the time to try it out (twice in fact). What I didn't appreciate was the segment of your first post where you said:
Quote:
Congratulations, you gave me a headache, I am not sure if it was from the Cigar I smoked earlier or your map, but it happened right around the time I was defeated. Your map is incredilbly hard to learn from a noob point of view, I have no doubt that you could find a cliche group of people that like it, but I don't. It gave me a headache, I lost interest and the UI hurts my eyes.
The rest of the post was alright. It just gave the impression that you looked at the dialogs for 20 seconds, decided you didn't like them and gave up. The only mention of actual gameplay was the leader hotkey. But anyway...moving on.
Quote:
Your UI is not clean and is cluttered, the font styles are all over the place, the text to background contrast is not high enough.
Can you specify which dialog you found this to be the case with? The tutorial and tip dialogs use similar text styles and have the same background, but all the others are different.
I'm actually in the middle of revamping the achievement dialog, because it's quite dated at this point (it's one of the few things that didn't get updated with 2.0).
I'm also confused by the green background comment you made in your first post. The only dialog with a green background is a small section of the unit tech tree dialog. If you're terran, you'll get the default terran background for a couple. Was it the default terran background that hurt your eyes?
Part of the problem with the dialogs is that I have a really high-end monitor, so the text is clearer for me than it might be for others. I've gone down to lower resolutions to check things from time to time, but not often enough, clearly.
Yeah, I've seen tofu. The dialogs are great, no denying it. But you also had the advantage of having a whole new UI layout. You hide the info panel, alter this, alter that...it's a lot easier to pull off something great.
Formation Defense is a srategy game, which means every part of the blizzard UI is necessary. I had to alter everything to fit around the interface without cluttering it more. That's the difficulty of making good dialogs. Presenting the information in the best possible way without cluttering the screen.
Tofu has five icons and a few long bars to represent health and such. And your scoreboard at the top.
Formation Defense has two full tech trees, a tip interface, multiboard, tutorial dialog, scout report, and six pages of achievements. Getting all of that information on the screen, without cluttering things up, and presenting them all in a nice way is very time consuming, especially when you're working around Blizzard's already clunky UI.
I didn't say my dialogs were the best, I said I thought they were impressive. Why? Not necessarily because they're pretty (although they look a lot better than the average dialog flying around B-Net), but because so much informaiton can be found on them. Like ProzaicMuse said, an important part of creating a complex game is giving users access to information quickly. The tech trees, tip system, and achievement dialogs all give you all of the information you need in 1 click (three tops if you need to sort through achievments).
Finally, after all the negativity that's been directed at Tofu (not by me, I might add...I think it looks great), I would have thought you'd learned how important constructive feedback is, instead of simply trashing somebody's project.
The only constructive suggestion in your post was the idea of a hotkey for the leader. I used to have one, but got rid of it because it was never, ever used.
Dogmai's post is the first negative response I've gotten. Everything else has been positive. I am already attempting to flatten out the difficulty curve a bit. 2.0 introduced a wide variety of changes that help with tackling the difficulty curve (tips, new tutorial, refined tech trees, scouting reports, flashing tip icons, sight sharing for competitive, etc; ).
The difficulty settings were also scaled back a fair bit. I intend to make the game more user friendly with every update. I already suspected it might be a sticking point for some people.
I have another update (2.2) coming some time today, which should (once again) make the low difficulty settings easier.
I spent almost a full month just playing (nearly every night) with my main alpha tester in competitive mode. Nearly every day I polished more, made more balance changes, etc; I've put a ton of work into it (mostly competitive...the solo mode is pretty much 'classic' version now).
I feel confident in saying that there are no noticable bugs with 1-2 players, because the testing has been so intensive. Once more players get thrown in...I'm not sure how some of the new stuff will react. It should be fine, but that's why it's a beta still.
As for polish, it's already one of the most polished maps I've seen. I'm not trying to brag, but I've made some very impressive custom dialogs. The only thing that's a little off are the cases where I have a unit that doesn't have an icon or wireframe, and I've had to improvise. As we speak, I'm actually making custom icons to fix this.
I intend about 40 custom icons. I have 24 so far (estimating off the top of my head).
Hopefully that helps make it look a little more professional. I hate when you see a unit that has half coloured abilities and half desaturated team-coloured ones.
The new competitive mode has a handy new feature...scouts. I don't know if you've played the game or watched the videos, but offensive units (competitive only) can be made into 'specialists'. One of these specialists is the Scout, which actually reports to you how many units of each type the enemy has (if it gets close enough to see for itself).
For example, it might say:
8 Melee
12 Rangers
3 Healers
Then it makes a recommendation for what you should build to counter that combination. Like so:
Recommended Strain: Mechanical
Recommended Specialist: Tank
(NOTE: The scout was intentionally designed to give so-so advice. The advice it gives is 100% accuracte, but it only grants the advice based upon the numbers you're given, so it doesn't know if the rangers are anti-bio or anti-mech, it just generalizes). This was done intentionally so good players still had a slight advantage...I wouldn't want a noob to be able to just blindly follow scout advice to win against a pro that watches the enemy base for himself.
It's absolutely fantastic for slightly evening out the playing field. My tester almost never beat me until I added in scouts. Once scouts were in, he managed quite a few wins.
The whole interface is nicely tucked ina corner and doesn't get in the way too :).
0
I don't know what the heck I'm doing wrong, but my firebats simply won't change their texture. I've tried head, main and body. I have the prefix set to FireBat, just like the previewer shows. Gah, this is far too finicky :(.
I managed to make myself a golden-plated raven on my first try, but this firebat is just annoying...
0
http://forums.sc2mapster.com/resources/tutorials/19371-tutorial-trigger-data-show-hide-destroy-any-given-actor/
It works perfectly...hides a unit for a player group.
Ahh, the person above me already posted it...whoops :S.
0
Like I said, whenever I can be sure it doesn't have any major bugs. I've fixed everything that's come up so far, but my US feedback has been minimal.
Don't worry though, I'm anxious to spread it around too!
I sent Blizzard an infringement notice today. Hopefully they remove the stolen versions...I feel like tons of people are getting the wrong idea about the game because it wasn't localized after it was stolen.
Apparently it was high up in popularity when 1.0 was first released in EU (but obviously it died because it wasn't localized).
If you're looking for a more general time frame...I'd say by this time next week it will probably be transferred over, assuming no major bugs are found.
0
The EU and SEA versions of the game are unofficial. The map file was stolen a while back and somebody uploaded it to all of those servers without my permission. There is also an unofficial version on the US servers, in addition to the real one.
2.0 will be coming to EU and SEA once I'm sure the US version is stable.
Clearly I need to get rid of these stolen versions that have been uploaded all over the world...Is this really the procedure I need to follow (link below)? Seems a little extreme when I could just say "somebody stole my map ...look at the name of his map and the date he uploaded it".
http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/infringementnotice.html
0
2.3 is now live.
Again, I apologize for any inconveniene caused by the missing tech trees.
0
Ehem...anything a little more precise?
Paint dries slower in certain parts of the world :P.
0
Getting back on topic: how does popularity work now?
I've been playing for hours and hours with my testers and the map's popularity isn't going up at all. It remains at the same number of hours no matter how many times I play it.
How are the hours actually calculated?
0
@Maknyuzz: Go
I'm just going to avoid the whole Dogmai battle that's going on...
I hear ya, Maknyuzz.
Every update I did to 1.0 (and now the first update that's going live for 2.0) is making the game easier and easier, with additional help available for new players. I'm leaving the high difficulty settings where they are though....the high difficulty is part of the game's charm IMO.
2.2 will feature something that Dogmai mentioned (yes it was already in the works). If you're in the game on your own there's no time limit for the first round. It just starts when you want it to. This gives people more time to read the tutorial and whatnot.
Sadly, my dialogs aren't bad at all, it's just a consistency issue. Some of the dialogs (probably the ones Dogmai was referencing) are directly from FD 1.0. When 1.0 was released, my dialogs were absolutely terrible. I've altered nearly every dialog since then and all the ones I've added for 2.0 look great (although again, I'm not sure how the text reads on lower resolutions...Dogmai's comments made it sound like that could be an issue).
I'm hoping to make a whole new achievement dialog after today's update, which should be fairly impressive if I can pull off what I'm picturing.
I'd like to reiterate what I said on the last page. I never said my dialogs were the "best you'll ever see", I said I found my dialogs impressive. I did not necessarily say that based off of aesthetic appeal, it's due to their functionality.
You can go backwards or forwards through tips at any time (even after you've died) to help you learn how to play. There's a tutorial which provides information on startup if you ask for it.
At any time, you can pull up a tech tree, which lists every units' stats, all upgrades and abilities associated with the unit, what it's prereqs are, and so on.
There's a scouting dialog which gives tactical advice in competitive mode, based on what your opponent has built.
That's what I meant by 'impressive'.
0
An update has just been published to battle.net. If anybody finds any more bugs, don't hesitate to pm me. Patch notes below:
v2.2 Update
Bugs/Faults:
UI:
Gameplay:
Other:
Please note that this update is a hotifx for that game variant bug more than an actual update.
[Edit]: It seems that in my haste to fix the issue with the game variants, I accidentally created an [almost] equally bad bug. When playing on your own, certain dialogs will not appear, which can make the game a little more confusing.
I already have a fix for this new bug ready to go, but I'm trying to add some more content to the update before it goes live. The patch notes below are "in progress" and will be altered as things are added. I apologize ahead of time for this inconvenience.
2.3 Change Log:
Bugs/Faults:
UI:
Other:
Note: Due to the nature of this achievement layout switch, I am able to add significantly more achievements. However, it is possible some users may lose their achievement history. Know that I have tried very hard to avoid this though.
0
I agree with both of you. I agree that in its essence a tower defense needs to be combined with another genre (to some degree) for competitive mode. On the other hand, Karawasa is right in that a td can be difficult and strategy oriented without needing another genre's concepts.
I think it all comes down to competitive modes...they simply aren't part of the standard TD formula. You add in a competitive aspect into the map and it evolves into a hybrid.
But it's not impossible for a solo or team-oriented TD to have some solid strategy behind it.
For FD, I've always said it's a strategy game first and a defense map second.
0
@Karawasa: Go
Agreed, Formation Defense's new competitive mode can get quite intense towards the end. You stop controlling your troops for a couple seconds and somebody's going to wipe you off the map.
[Edit]: Woah, two quick responses.
0
I do appreciate that you took the time to try it out (twice in fact). What I didn't appreciate was the segment of your first post where you said:
The rest of the post was alright. It just gave the impression that you looked at the dialogs for 20 seconds, decided you didn't like them and gave up. The only mention of actual gameplay was the leader hotkey. But anyway...moving on.
Can you specify which dialog you found this to be the case with? The tutorial and tip dialogs use similar text styles and have the same background, but all the others are different.
I'm actually in the middle of revamping the achievement dialog, because it's quite dated at this point (it's one of the few things that didn't get updated with 2.0).
I'm also confused by the green background comment you made in your first post. The only dialog with a green background is a small section of the unit tech tree dialog. If you're terran, you'll get the default terran background for a couple. Was it the default terran background that hurt your eyes?
Part of the problem with the dialogs is that I have a really high-end monitor, so the text is clearer for me than it might be for others. I've gone down to lower resolutions to check things from time to time, but not often enough, clearly.
0
@DogmaiSEA: Go
Yeah, I've seen tofu. The dialogs are great, no denying it. But you also had the advantage of having a whole new UI layout. You hide the info panel, alter this, alter that...it's a lot easier to pull off something great.
Formation Defense is a srategy game, which means every part of the blizzard UI is necessary. I had to alter everything to fit around the interface without cluttering it more. That's the difficulty of making good dialogs. Presenting the information in the best possible way without cluttering the screen.
Tofu has five icons and a few long bars to represent health and such. And your scoreboard at the top.
Formation Defense has two full tech trees, a tip interface, multiboard, tutorial dialog, scout report, and six pages of achievements. Getting all of that information on the screen, without cluttering things up, and presenting them all in a nice way is very time consuming, especially when you're working around Blizzard's already clunky UI.
I didn't say my dialogs were the best, I said I thought they were impressive. Why? Not necessarily because they're pretty (although they look a lot better than the average dialog flying around B-Net), but because so much informaiton can be found on them. Like ProzaicMuse said, an important part of creating a complex game is giving users access to information quickly. The tech trees, tip system, and achievement dialogs all give you all of the information you need in 1 click (three tops if you need to sort through achievments).
Finally, after all the negativity that's been directed at Tofu (not by me, I might add...I think it looks great), I would have thought you'd learned how important constructive feedback is, instead of simply trashing somebody's project.
The only constructive suggestion in your post was the idea of a hotkey for the leader. I used to have one, but got rid of it because it was never, ever used.
Dogmai's post is the first negative response I've gotten. Everything else has been positive. I am already attempting to flatten out the difficulty curve a bit. 2.0 introduced a wide variety of changes that help with tackling the difficulty curve (tips, new tutorial, refined tech trees, scouting reports, flashing tip icons, sight sharing for competitive, etc; ).
The difficulty settings were also scaled back a fair bit. I intend to make the game more user friendly with every update. I already suspected it might be a sticking point for some people.
I have another update (2.2) coming some time today, which should (once again) make the low difficulty settings easier.
0
@Mozared: Go
Sounds like a drinking game. ^_^
0
I spent almost a full month just playing (nearly every night) with my main alpha tester in competitive mode. Nearly every day I polished more, made more balance changes, etc; I've put a ton of work into it (mostly competitive...the solo mode is pretty much 'classic' version now).
I feel confident in saying that there are no noticable bugs with 1-2 players, because the testing has been so intensive. Once more players get thrown in...I'm not sure how some of the new stuff will react. It should be fine, but that's why it's a beta still.
As for polish, it's already one of the most polished maps I've seen. I'm not trying to brag, but I've made some very impressive custom dialogs. The only thing that's a little off are the cases where I have a unit that doesn't have an icon or wireframe, and I've had to improvise. As we speak, I'm actually making custom icons to fix this.
I intend about 40 custom icons. I have 24 so far (estimating off the top of my head).
Hopefully that helps make it look a little more professional. I hate when you see a unit that has half coloured abilities and half desaturated team-coloured ones.
@Mephs: Go
Way to bum me out :P.
@Zelda: How large is this 'news queue'? Are we talking 'some time in the next week' or 'some time in the next month'?
@Maknyuzz: Go
The new competitive mode has a handy new feature...scouts. I don't know if you've played the game or watched the videos, but offensive units (competitive only) can be made into 'specialists'. One of these specialists is the Scout, which actually reports to you how many units of each type the enemy has (if it gets close enough to see for itself).
For example, it might say:
Then it makes a recommendation for what you should build to counter that combination. Like so:
(NOTE: The scout was intentionally designed to give so-so advice. The advice it gives is 100% accuracte, but it only grants the advice based upon the numbers you're given, so it doesn't know if the rangers are anti-bio or anti-mech, it just generalizes). This was done intentionally so good players still had a slight advantage...I wouldn't want a noob to be able to just blindly follow scout advice to win against a pro that watches the enemy base for himself.
It's absolutely fantastic for slightly evening out the playing field. My tester almost never beat me until I added in scouts. Once scouts were in, he managed quite a few wins.
The whole interface is nicely tucked ina corner and doesn't get in the way too :).