Sounds good to me. With two choices at each level, you need to make sure that both choices are balanced. You also need to make sure that the player understands why one unit would be better than the other, but even then the differences can only be slight. A small shift in balance between two units becomes astronomical when you've got hundreds of them. Your skilled players will figure out which unit from each level is better and always use that, and crush new players with that knowledge. It's bad when most of the skill of a game is simply knowing which units are more imbalanced.
Now my real opinion is that I think you'd be best doing it with 3 choices at each level. At each choice level, the three new units would have a rock->paper->scissors relationship. The units would have to be mostly balanced with a small favor against one unit and small weakness against the other. This would accomplish a few things.
First, you're less likely to botch the balance so that there is only one good choice. If you've got two units and one just ends up being a little better, then that's always going to be the right choice. A R-P-S style would make it so that even if one unit is a little too good, it would still be weak against another specific unit.
Second, it offers a way for players who are behind to come back. The original evolves generally snowballed so that once you got a little ahead you couldn't be beaten (at least in 1v1). With a R-P-S style, the person who is behind now has a slight advantage (if they're good enough to figure it out). They can see what the other players have chosen for the next level and attempt to make a counter pick when they finally reach the next level themselves.
I remember the days of making maps for sc1 when I was 14. Back then we had to trigger uphill, in the snow... both ways to Sunday. And they didn't have variables back then to keep you warm.
Garbage collection? We had to take out or own damn garbage and we were grateful!
A boss fight is only limited by your imagination, but one thing that holds true with most every boss fight is that they evolve, or change, or spawn things as you fight them.
The way I have always done my boss fights since the start of WC3 is to use custom values. Choose one custom value index, let's say 10, and use the actual value of it to control the phases. You can have an event for "Unit is attacked", then condition "unit type of triggering unit == Your Boss", then add a series of OR conditions.
Custom value 10 of triggering unit == 0 AND percentage life (current) for triggering unit <= 90
OR
Custom value 10 of triggering unit == 1 AND percentage life (current) for triggering unit <= 65
OR
Custom value 10 of triggering unit == 2 AND percentage life (current) for triggering unit <= 40
Then, within the trigger events, the very first thing you want to do is increment custom value 10 by +1. This way your trigger will get invoked only once as the boss reaches each hitpoint benchmark of 90% life, 65% life, and 40% life.
I'm not sure what's so inefficient about it. You're not going to notice any kind of slow-down or lag from that trigger.
Most importantly, you don't want to have variables like UnitsP1. Instead, you want to have something like playerUnits[x], where you have an array of unit groups (one for each player). When your trigger starts, set local integer playerNumber = owner of killing unit, then reference your unit group using playerUnits[playerNumber].
In general, I see a lot of people concerned about the efficiency of triggers. In reality it's not a problem unless you're doing something many times per second throughout the entire game, and even then some times it's not even a problem. Don't forget that your CPU is screaming millions of numbers per second just to run and render Starcraft 2, so going into a small unit group and updating a few integers is just no sweat.
I have a mechanic in my tower defense where kills are redirected. Let's say tower A has a skill that generates +$10 for each kill, and tower B can redirect any of its kills to another tower. I have a trigger that acts as a function, let's call it awardKillCredit(unit), where you pass in a unit as the parameter, which is going to be the tower that will reap the kill benefit.
I have two different triggers that detect kills. In one trigger, the event is "Unit dies" with the condition that "killing unit == tower A", then in the actions you simply call awardKillCredit(killing unit).
In the second trigger, the event is "Unit dies" with the condition that "killing unit == tower B". In this trigger you figure out which tower is being awarded the kills from tower B. I have a simple condition that sees if it's redirecting kills to tower A, then call awardKillCredit(tower A). You can even adjust the unit property to add +1 kill to tower A and -1 kill to tower B, if you care about that stat.
The only tricky part is figuring out which unit to award your kills to. In your case, I assume you have one hero. You have heroUnit[x] (x is player's number), and then when an intercepter bird gets a kill, check if heroUnit[x] is of the type Birdman, and then call the your function awardKillCredit(birdman unit).
This can all be done with the GUI triggers. If you don't know how to make a function then let us know.
As for lore, I do have some... But I'm not going to release it JUST yet.
I think the lore is relevant for the title of your game. Your title can mean something in relation to the artistic style of the map, style of gameplay, or lore. I don't like titles that describe the style of gameplay, which many of the awful games tend to have (Defense Tree War Protoss 2WArzs v3 Defense).
In my opinion you should shoot for a title of a style that is not commonly seen on B.Net so it can stand out. Like something simple: "The Rupture" or "The Decay" or "The Homelands".
You could have a light-weight sentency title that says something vague about the map, like "To The Frontline And Back".
My last suggestion is to take the title of a romantic comedy movie and change a word in it to be about fighting. "War Happens", or "War Is Complicated", or "Out Of My League", or "Finding Blood", or "The Accidental Conflict", or "Just Enemies", or "The Next Battle", or "10 Things I Hate About Pillaging", or "While You Were Dying", or "My Big Fat Rocket Launcher", or "Violent In Red", or "Never Been Slain", or "Must Hate Zerg", or "How To Lose A War In 10 Days".
Yeah I know. I'm making a single player version of my map for private distribution to some friends, but my published multiplayer game will have soundtracks removed.
One thing I wanted to leave in was 2 minute segment of a soundtrack from a movie that's over 25 years old, and play it during the end game sequence about an hour into the game. I've wondered how much Blizzard would care about that. Would they take my game down? Would they ban me? I really want to do it, but I'm not sure it's worth the risk.
0
@arubaru304: Go
Sounds good to me. With two choices at each level, you need to make sure that both choices are balanced. You also need to make sure that the player understands why one unit would be better than the other, but even then the differences can only be slight. A small shift in balance between two units becomes astronomical when you've got hundreds of them. Your skilled players will figure out which unit from each level is better and always use that, and crush new players with that knowledge. It's bad when most of the skill of a game is simply knowing which units are more imbalanced.
Now my real opinion is that I think you'd be best doing it with 3 choices at each level. At each choice level, the three new units would have a rock->paper->scissors relationship. The units would have to be mostly balanced with a small favor against one unit and small weakness against the other. This would accomplish a few things.
First, you're less likely to botch the balance so that there is only one good choice. If you've got two units and one just ends up being a little better, then that's always going to be the right choice. A R-P-S style would make it so that even if one unit is a little too good, it would still be weak against another specific unit.
Second, it offers a way for players who are behind to come back. The original evolves generally snowballed so that once you got a little ahead you couldn't be beaten (at least in 1v1). With a R-P-S style, the person who is behind now has a slight advantage (if they're good enough to figure it out). They can see what the other players have chosen for the next level and attempt to make a counter pick when they finally reach the next level themselves.
0
Garbage collection? We had to take out or own damn garbage and we were grateful!
0
@Gyurii: Go
A boss fight is only limited by your imagination, but one thing that holds true with most every boss fight is that they evolve, or change, or spawn things as you fight them.
The way I have always done my boss fights since the start of WC3 is to use custom values. Choose one custom value index, let's say 10, and use the actual value of it to control the phases. You can have an event for "Unit is attacked", then condition "unit type of triggering unit == Your Boss", then add a series of OR conditions.
Custom value 10 of triggering unit == 0 AND percentage life (current) for triggering unit <= 90
OR
Custom value 10 of triggering unit == 1 AND percentage life (current) for triggering unit <= 65
OR
Custom value 10 of triggering unit == 2 AND percentage life (current) for triggering unit <= 40
Then, within the trigger events, the very first thing you want to do is increment custom value 10 by +1. This way your trigger will get invoked only once as the boss reaches each hitpoint benchmark of 90% life, 65% life, and 40% life.
0
You don't think there's any merit to what he said? A lot of games are good but you can only play them for 10-15 minutes and the hours never stack up.
0
@GlornII: Go
This thread is so bitter. I like it.
They have one of the best game editing tools in the known universe (literally.) and they have a brain-dead system that sucks all the power out of it.
0
@Rice87: Go
I'm not sure what's so inefficient about it. You're not going to notice any kind of slow-down or lag from that trigger.
Most importantly, you don't want to have variables like UnitsP1. Instead, you want to have something like playerUnits[x], where you have an array of unit groups (one for each player). When your trigger starts, set local integer playerNumber = owner of killing unit, then reference your unit group using playerUnits[playerNumber].
In general, I see a lot of people concerned about the efficiency of triggers. In reality it's not a problem unless you're doing something many times per second throughout the entire game, and even then some times it's not even a problem. Don't forget that your CPU is screaming millions of numbers per second just to run and render Starcraft 2, so going into a small unit group and updating a few integers is just no sweat.
0
@Rice87: Go
I have a mechanic in my tower defense where kills are redirected. Let's say tower A has a skill that generates +$10 for each kill, and tower B can redirect any of its kills to another tower. I have a trigger that acts as a function, let's call it awardKillCredit(unit), where you pass in a unit as the parameter, which is going to be the tower that will reap the kill benefit.
I have two different triggers that detect kills. In one trigger, the event is "Unit dies" with the condition that "killing unit == tower A", then in the actions you simply call awardKillCredit(killing unit).
In the second trigger, the event is "Unit dies" with the condition that "killing unit == tower B". In this trigger you figure out which tower is being awarded the kills from tower B. I have a simple condition that sees if it's redirecting kills to tower A, then call awardKillCredit(tower A). You can even adjust the unit property to add +1 kill to tower A and -1 kill to tower B, if you care about that stat.
The only tricky part is figuring out which unit to award your kills to. In your case, I assume you have one hero. You have heroUnit[x] (x is player's number), and then when an intercepter bird gets a kill, check if heroUnit[x] is of the type Birdman, and then call the your function awardKillCredit(birdman unit).
This can all be done with the GUI triggers. If you don't know how to make a function then let us know.
0
F-War Square
0
I think the lore is relevant for the title of your game. Your title can mean something in relation to the artistic style of the map, style of gameplay, or lore. I don't like titles that describe the style of gameplay, which many of the awful games tend to have (Defense Tree War Protoss 2WArzs v3 Defense).
In my opinion you should shoot for a title of a style that is not commonly seen on B.Net so it can stand out. Like something simple: "The Rupture" or "The Decay" or "The Homelands". You could have a light-weight sentency title that says something vague about the map, like "To The Frontline And Back".
My last suggestion is to take the title of a romantic comedy movie and change a word in it to be about fighting. "War Happens", or "War Is Complicated", or "Out Of My League", or "Finding Blood", or "The Accidental Conflict", or "Just Enemies", or "The Next Battle", or "10 Things I Hate About Pillaging", or "While You Were Dying", or "My Big Fat Rocket Launcher", or "Violent In Red", or "Never Been Slain", or "Must Hate Zerg", or "How To Lose A War In 10 Days".
0
@SnyderGuy: Go
Looks closer to me, but you need to have your name and "presents" as the same color, style, and font. Maybe not necessarily the same size, though.
0
I am more mature than other people my age on the internet, until I start losing in League of Legends.
0
@Johnboy8078: Go
Didn't read post, but I'm pretty darn handsome.
0
@zenx1: Go
It's a Starcraft 2 map, DUH. It has a zealot in it.
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@DrSuperEvil: Go
Yeah I know. I'm making a single player version of my map for private distribution to some friends, but my published multiplayer game will have soundtracks removed.
One thing I wanted to leave in was 2 minute segment of a soundtrack from a movie that's over 25 years old, and play it during the end game sequence about an hour into the game. I've wondered how much Blizzard would care about that. Would they take my game down? Would they ban me? I really want to do it, but I'm not sure it's worth the risk.
0
Oh god, I remember when I used to be able to get home that early. Good times.
Maybe you can set something up this weekend. I can help if I don't find something cooler to do this weekend (no offense ;).