Hey Ducky, thanks so much for that bug report. I fixed the "You have died" text and the improper healthbar numbers, and added a little bit of ending text to let people know that more content's coming.
And I'm not even joking when I say that I'll consider "Raynor's Bizarre Adventure" for the title. It's very fitting...
Wow, thanks for such great feedback and even attaching a replay - that's super helpful. I'll be looking forward to checking it out!
I've been meaning to add "Reroll tokens" as a rare drop from enemies (or maybe just bosses). I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
Right now fairies have an attack and also automatically regenerate nearby allies' Health. I think you're right, replacing the auto-regenerate with an active skill, and then maybe adding one more offensive skill, like an enemy debuff or something would be cool and give fairies a little more to do.
The game ends after defeating the forest boss because that's the last level I've finished making. I'll be adding more over the next month to try and get as much content in before the contest ends as possible. I should probably add a screen thanking players and letting them know more content is coming soon so that things don't end so abruptly.
Maybe I'll up the rate by which health powerups spawn. I don't want to up peoples' inherent Health regen too much since some items already do that (and I want them to feel special).
Thanks again for all your help, and especially for the replay!
(I've published an update that fixes almost all the issues that theUltragon brought to my attention, much thanks!)
Hey Funkyuser, I've found that there's a tough balance to strike between catering to widescreen vs non-widescreen monitors on things where you can't move the camera. I made sure that everything was reachable and playable on non-widescreen resolutions, but I agree it doesn't always feel natural when you have to click the very edge of the screen to continue. I'll try stretching those triggering zones a little.
Regarding the Harpy Cliffs, I think the issue is not that it's too difficult, but that the difficulty compared to the first part is so much higher. I published an update which lowered the damage of all the harpies and lessened the health on the tougher ones - hopefully that should help.
As far as the difficulty of the game goes, some people find it super easy and some find it frustratingly difficult. I'm thinking the best way to reconcile this is to keep the game at a lower level of difficulty so as to not scare away new players, but then to create a harder difficulty version (an Expert Mode) people can choose who want a challenge. Maybe if you beat the game on the normal difficulty, a message tells you to give Expert Mode a try, and there could be possibly an extended ending or (more likely) one extra dumb joke at the end.
Difficulty scales up (kinda) with more players. Right now each enemy deals +33% more damage to players for every additional person in the game over 1, but people become fairies and can help out when they die to compensate. I haven't played enough team games to know whether or not this is a good system, but if you have any feedback let me know!
Also, the most common negative feedback I've heard is about the red flash when you take damage. I've toned it down and made it only appear around the edges now, but if it's still too annoying I'll get rid of it 100%. Please let me know what you think!
There should be range indicators for all your weapons, I'll double check the shotgun and whatnot to make sure I didn't mess something up there.
I've heard from others the harpy cliffs are too hard for where they are in the game so far, so I'll rebalance that. I wanted to ramp up the pace of the game after the first level but it's looking like it's too much difficulty too fast.
The checkpoints are a tough point for me. I might add a checkpoint after the harpy cliffs before the orc village since it is pretty tough. I know no one wants to be "punished" for failure, but at the same time I don't want the game to be a walk in the park. So it's a fine line.
The re-rolling will be limited. It's only unlimited right now because the game's in testing stages and I want to make sure myself and others can try different things out with some consistency. So consider it a debugging tool for now!
I've been thinking about dialog length and I've come to the conclusion that having the dialogue play a little longer but unpausing the game a little sooner would work well. I'll make it so that people have ample time to read everything.
I'll tone down the screenshake and red flashes when you take damage. I wasn't aware of a bloodscreen effect in the editor, I'll definitely check it out, thanks!
The Blademaster shrinking is to make up for some weird visual things that happen when I use his spinning animation. I know it doesn't look very good, but to leave him normal-sized would make the entire screen get taken up by the wind effects. It's kind of a catch-22.
At first there was a split in paths you could take after beating the first boss, with the path on the right being a little secret. Problem was no one would go there, so I made it required. I might put in some dialogue or a hint to go right so it doesn't seem so weird.
Thanks for the bug report about the flyer helpers during the Harpy fight. Definitely a bug I'll fix.
From the same team that brought you Airstrike comes a brand new and original entrant to the 2015 Rock the Cabinet contest: Death by Fantasy. Wargirl has brought some of her very best work, creating an ambitious and beautifully landscaped Fantasy setting for the game, and Moustro’s completely original soundtrack is worth a playthrough alone.
Death by Fantasy is an incredibly simple game to learn: no difficult opening menus, no frustrating UI or unnecessary complex controls. It is a rogue-like adventure game following Raynor and his crew’s infiltration of the world of Fantasy in order to assassinate the evil Hybrid Maar, who is in hiding somewhere on the planet. You will fight through aggressive orcs, overzealous elves, hostile wildlife, and anything under Maar's corrupting influence.
Throughout your search, you will receive a variety of upgrades, ranging from different guns for your primary attack to fantasy-themed accessories. Each upgrade is presented as a simple choice between two alternatives. These alternatives are chosen randomly on each playthrough, meaning no two games will look the same!
Want to play through the game with the long-ranged Railgun, using Corrosive grenades, Blink, a Flamethrower, and accessories geared toward upping your speed and DPS? Or maybe you’d prefer a playthrough with a Shotgun and stun grenades, using a lightning-powered sentry to cordon off dangerous areas and emphasizing survivability?
Give it a shot and let us know what you think!
Will you be able to defeat the legions of Orcs, Elves, and fantastical creatures who stand between you and your goal? Or will it be…DEATH BY FANTASY?
I had this problem once and I believe it is caused by the putting a tooltip on the image. If you make sure whatever tooltip is on the button instead, you should be just fine.
This sounds like really good advice! I've been having an issue in my own game where stunning enemies made them lose their "ai." I found a work-around by giving stunning behaviors a dummy effect once they end and then picking that effect up in triggers and basically redoing their attack command. This is a much better solution, way less messy!
I think it would be a good idea for Blizz to make an official statement about what qualifies as "Fantasy."
In the meantime, you can email them at [email protected] and ask about specifics. I sent them an email this morning and got a response late afternoon. I asked if a game featuring Terran units in a fantasy world against Warcraft units would be okay. They responded that it sounded like a risk and if another game was of equal quality but stuck to pure fantasy, it would be considered first.
So it's not as black and white as I imagined, but I would bet that asking them straight up would be the best way to know until they release some sort of official statement.
I agree with Ducky. One thing I really didn't like about the SC2 campaigns is that the Protoss felt like characters from a fantasy story.
The opening cutscene, as you may recall, for SC1 was just a Protoss ship blowing up a Terran one in space - it was very sci-fi. In SC2, the Protoss are always talking about doom and prophecies and whatnot. And Zeratul was all decked out in fantasy armor. And it turned out Kerrigan was created to bring balance back to the Force Universe...
Anyway, you could probably make a pretty convincing fantasy world just using Protoss and maybe some Warcraft units. Use words like "prophecy," "artifact," "void," and "destiny," and then maybe throw in a Leviathan and call it a dragon and you're good!
That's really great to see Blizz is hosting another Rock the Cabinet event! Wow, with even bigger prizes too.
I think it's great they chose to do it over the summer this time, but it looks to me like there's less of a time frame for this contest than last contest. And it was a really good idea to expand the concept to include all fantasy and not just Warcraft.
The problem I had in my map was in sound actors. Some of them were missing an event to destroy the sound once it was done playing, and over the course of the game they stacked up until the game couldn't handle it. I also had a problem with attachment actors, specifically when I tried to use Beam models.
There's just so many different actors in a game, especially if you make your own abilities and units. Actors for models, sounds, attachment points, visual effects, etc., and if any of them are missing an event to destroy them when they're no longer needed, they can build up to huge numbers over the course of a game. Until I found out that this could happen, most of my games couldn't be played past the 30 min mark over Bnet, but now they perform just fine!
I recommend using the "actordumplive" command just to know, 100%, if any actors at all are not being destroyed properly. You can check through all the actors' events in the Editor, but I always found actor events unintuitive, so I'd probably have a hard time spotting errors just by looking at them. But whatever works for you!
I've gotten some lag from triggers using "Effect Used" as the event. It usually takes a lot of persistent effects happening in order to create noticeable lag, though.
But I've found it more common to have problems with actors not disappearing. I've had a couple of projects that lagged late-game until I found which actors weren't being destroyed properly. If you're interested in going down that route, here's some advice:
I'd suggest playing a game into the late stages via Test Document, and then typing "actordumplive" into chat. This will give you a list of actors that are still currently alive, deposited into the "alerts" folder for SC2. It's kind of dull to sift through, but if you find large numbers of actors that shouldn't be there, that may be your problem.
I'd also recommend before you do that, that you create a version of your map with all the doodads deleted. That way the only actors that should show up are the ones related to units that are alive.
Thanks for trying my game! Sorry it didn't seem to agree with you. The more people in the game, the faster-paced it gets. And I know you're more a fan of straight-up combat than the stealth element.
Of course I'd like to defend some of the criticisms you had, but I don't want to hijack your thread and I think it's probably a lot to do with the genre of the game. The one thing I'd say is that you picked the class with the longest cooldowns by far of any of the classes! The Demolitionist class is meant for support - the bazooka can fire past walls, the Airstrike can flush people out of defensive positions, and the remote mines control space. They're all on long cooldowns and the class plays much better in team games than FFA.
I think one of the classes with automatic guns with 3-4 second cooldowns would have been more entertaining for you to play. You can be a little more aggressive with those and make up for the lack of stealth with awesome micro.
But I'll take the feedback where I can get it! I'm going to aim to make the game a little faster-paced in smaller games, and maybe a warning somewhere that the Demolitionist and Specialist classes are more for support.
Hey Deadzergling, if you want to try a map and have some people available, look up "StarWorkInProgress" in the arcade! It's a map that Wargirl and I (and our composer friend, Moustro) are working on.
It's not finished but it's definitely playable. Only downside is that it's a multiplayer map without AIs, so you can't play it solo. But if you can find some friends (I think 3-4 players are enough to get the full experience, I wouldn't do 1v1 just yet) I think you'd enjoy it!
0
@DuckyTheDuck: Go
Hey Ducky, thanks so much for that bug report. I fixed the "You have died" text and the improper healthbar numbers, and added a little bit of ending text to let people know that more content's coming.
And I'm not even joking when I say that I'll consider "Raynor's Bizarre Adventure" for the title. It's very fitting...
0
@TheUltragon: Go
Wow, thanks for such great feedback and even attaching a replay - that's super helpful. I'll be looking forward to checking it out!
I've been meaning to add "Reroll tokens" as a rare drop from enemies (or maybe just bosses). I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
Right now fairies have an attack and also automatically regenerate nearby allies' Health. I think you're right, replacing the auto-regenerate with an active skill, and then maybe adding one more offensive skill, like an enemy debuff or something would be cool and give fairies a little more to do.
The game ends after defeating the forest boss because that's the last level I've finished making. I'll be adding more over the next month to try and get as much content in before the contest ends as possible. I should probably add a screen thanking players and letting them know more content is coming soon so that things don't end so abruptly.
Maybe I'll up the rate by which health powerups spawn. I don't want to up peoples' inherent Health regen too much since some items already do that (and I want them to feel special).
Thanks again for all your help, and especially for the replay!
0
(I've published an update that fixes almost all the issues that theUltragon brought to my attention, much thanks!)
Hey Funkyuser, I've found that there's a tough balance to strike between catering to widescreen vs non-widescreen monitors on things where you can't move the camera. I made sure that everything was reachable and playable on non-widescreen resolutions, but I agree it doesn't always feel natural when you have to click the very edge of the screen to continue. I'll try stretching those triggering zones a little.
Regarding the Harpy Cliffs, I think the issue is not that it's too difficult, but that the difficulty compared to the first part is so much higher. I published an update which lowered the damage of all the harpies and lessened the health on the tougher ones - hopefully that should help.
As far as the difficulty of the game goes, some people find it super easy and some find it frustratingly difficult. I'm thinking the best way to reconcile this is to keep the game at a lower level of difficulty so as to not scare away new players, but then to create a harder difficulty version (an Expert Mode) people can choose who want a challenge. Maybe if you beat the game on the normal difficulty, a message tells you to give Expert Mode a try, and there could be possibly an extended ending or (more likely) one extra dumb joke at the end.
Difficulty scales up (kinda) with more players. Right now each enemy deals +33% more damage to players for every additional person in the game over 1, but people become fairies and can help out when they die to compensate. I haven't played enough team games to know whether or not this is a good system, but if you have any feedback let me know!
Also, the most common negative feedback I've heard is about the red flash when you take damage. I've toned it down and made it only appear around the edges now, but if it's still too annoying I'll get rid of it 100%. Please let me know what you think!
0
Hey Ultragon, fantastic feedback - thanks!
Couple responses to your points:
There should be range indicators for all your weapons, I'll double check the shotgun and whatnot to make sure I didn't mess something up there.
I've heard from others the harpy cliffs are too hard for where they are in the game so far, so I'll rebalance that. I wanted to ramp up the pace of the game after the first level but it's looking like it's too much difficulty too fast.
The checkpoints are a tough point for me. I might add a checkpoint after the harpy cliffs before the orc village since it is pretty tough. I know no one wants to be "punished" for failure, but at the same time I don't want the game to be a walk in the park. So it's a fine line.
The re-rolling will be limited. It's only unlimited right now because the game's in testing stages and I want to make sure myself and others can try different things out with some consistency. So consider it a debugging tool for now!
I've been thinking about dialog length and I've come to the conclusion that having the dialogue play a little longer but unpausing the game a little sooner would work well. I'll make it so that people have ample time to read everything.
I'll tone down the screenshake and red flashes when you take damage. I wasn't aware of a bloodscreen effect in the editor, I'll definitely check it out, thanks!
The Blademaster shrinking is to make up for some weird visual things that happen when I use his spinning animation. I know it doesn't look very good, but to leave him normal-sized would make the entire screen get taken up by the wind effects. It's kind of a catch-22.
At first there was a split in paths you could take after beating the first boss, with the path on the right being a little secret. Problem was no one would go there, so I made it required. I might put in some dialogue or a hint to go right so it doesn't seem so weird.
Thanks for the bug report about the flyer helpers during the Harpy fight. Definitely a bug I'll fix.
Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it!
0
Death by Fantasy
battlenet://starcraft/map/1/262742
Created by rut
Terrain by Wargirl
Soundtrack by Moustro
Supports 1-4 Players
From the same team that brought you Airstrike comes a brand new and original entrant to the 2015 Rock the Cabinet contest: Death by Fantasy. Wargirl has brought some of her very best work, creating an ambitious and beautifully landscaped Fantasy setting for the game, and Moustro’s completely original soundtrack is worth a playthrough alone.
Death by Fantasy is an incredibly simple game to learn: no difficult opening menus, no frustrating UI or unnecessary complex controls. It is a rogue-like adventure game following Raynor and his crew’s infiltration of the world of Fantasy in order to assassinate the evil Hybrid Maar, who is in hiding somewhere on the planet. You will fight through aggressive orcs, overzealous elves, hostile wildlife, and anything under Maar's corrupting influence.
Throughout your search, you will receive a variety of upgrades, ranging from different guns for your primary attack to fantasy-themed accessories. Each upgrade is presented as a simple choice between two alternatives. These alternatives are chosen randomly on each playthrough, meaning no two games will look the same!
Want to play through the game with the long-ranged Railgun, using Corrosive grenades, Blink, a Flamethrower, and accessories geared toward upping your speed and DPS? Or maybe you’d prefer a playthrough with a Shotgun and stun grenades, using a lightning-powered sentry to cordon off dangerous areas and emphasizing survivability?
Give it a shot and let us know what you think!
Will you be able to defeat the legions of Orcs, Elves, and fantastical creatures who stand between you and your goal? Or will it be…DEATH BY FANTASY?
0
I had this problem once and I believe it is caused by the putting a tooltip on the image. If you make sure whatever tooltip is on the button instead, you should be just fine.
0
@FunkyUserName: Go
This sounds like really good advice! I've been having an issue in my own game where stunning enemies made them lose their "ai." I found a work-around by giving stunning behaviors a dummy effect once they end and then picking that effect up in triggers and basically redoing their attack command. This is a much better solution, way less messy!
0
I think it would be a good idea for Blizz to make an official statement about what qualifies as "Fantasy."
In the meantime, you can email them at [email protected] and ask about specifics. I sent them an email this morning and got a response late afternoon. I asked if a game featuring Terran units in a fantasy world against Warcraft units would be okay. They responded that it sounded like a risk and if another game was of equal quality but stuck to pure fantasy, it would be considered first.
So it's not as black and white as I imagined, but I would bet that asking them straight up would be the best way to know until they release some sort of official statement.
0
I agree with Ducky. One thing I really didn't like about the SC2 campaigns is that the Protoss felt like characters from a fantasy story.
The opening cutscene, as you may recall, for SC1 was just a Protoss ship blowing up a Terran one in space - it was very sci-fi. In SC2, the Protoss are always talking about doom and prophecies and whatnot. And Zeratul was all decked out in fantasy armor. And it turned out Kerrigan was created to bring balance back to the
ForceUniverse...Anyway, you could probably make a pretty convincing fantasy world just using Protoss and maybe some Warcraft units. Use words like "prophecy," "artifact," "void," and "destiny," and then maybe throw in a Leviathan and call it a dragon and you're good!
0
That's really great to see Blizz is hosting another Rock the Cabinet event! Wow, with even bigger prizes too.
I think it's great they chose to do it over the summer this time, but it looks to me like there's less of a time frame for this contest than last contest. And it was a really good idea to expand the concept to include all fantasy and not just Warcraft.
GL HF!
0
The problem I had in my map was in sound actors. Some of them were missing an event to destroy the sound once it was done playing, and over the course of the game they stacked up until the game couldn't handle it. I also had a problem with attachment actors, specifically when I tried to use Beam models.
There's just so many different actors in a game, especially if you make your own abilities and units. Actors for models, sounds, attachment points, visual effects, etc., and if any of them are missing an event to destroy them when they're no longer needed, they can build up to huge numbers over the course of a game. Until I found out that this could happen, most of my games couldn't be played past the 30 min mark over Bnet, but now they perform just fine!
I recommend using the "actordumplive" command just to know, 100%, if any actors at all are not being destroyed properly. You can check through all the actors' events in the Editor, but I always found actor events unintuitive, so I'd probably have a hard time spotting errors just by looking at them. But whatever works for you!
0
Hi Project_06,
I've gotten some lag from triggers using "Effect Used" as the event. It usually takes a lot of persistent effects happening in order to create noticeable lag, though.
But I've found it more common to have problems with actors not disappearing. I've had a couple of projects that lagged late-game until I found which actors weren't being destroyed properly. If you're interested in going down that route, here's some advice:
I'd suggest playing a game into the late stages via Test Document, and then typing "actordumplive" into chat. This will give you a list of actors that are still currently alive, deposited into the "alerts" folder for SC2. It's kind of dull to sift through, but if you find large numbers of actors that shouldn't be there, that may be your problem.
I'd also recommend before you do that, that you create a version of your map with all the doodads deleted. That way the only actors that should show up are the ones related to units that are alive.
Good luck!
0
Thanks for trying my game! Sorry it didn't seem to agree with you. The more people in the game, the faster-paced it gets. And I know you're more a fan of straight-up combat than the stealth element.
Of course I'd like to defend some of the criticisms you had, but I don't want to hijack your thread and I think it's probably a lot to do with the genre of the game. The one thing I'd say is that you picked the class with the longest cooldowns by far of any of the classes! The Demolitionist class is meant for support - the bazooka can fire past walls, the Airstrike can flush people out of defensive positions, and the remote mines control space. They're all on long cooldowns and the class plays much better in team games than FFA.
I think one of the classes with automatic guns with 3-4 second cooldowns would have been more entertaining for you to play. You can be a little more aggressive with those and make up for the lack of stealth with awesome micro.
But I'll take the feedback where I can get it! I'm going to aim to make the game a little faster-paced in smaller games, and maybe a warning somewhere that the Demolitionist and Specialist classes are more for support.
Thanks for the vid!
0
Hey Deadzergling, if you want to try a map and have some people available, look up "StarWorkInProgress" in the arcade! It's a map that Wargirl and I (and our composer friend, Moustro) are working on.
It's not finished but it's definitely playable. Only downside is that it's a multiplayer map without AIs, so you can't play it solo. But if you can find some friends (I think 3-4 players are enough to get the full experience, I wouldn't do 1v1 just yet) I think you'd enjoy it!
0
@abvdzh: Go
Wow that is an awesome ability! I hope you won't mind if I dissect it and end up borrowing some of how it works in my next map.