Dota, LoL, Hon etc are team games. That is why you are raging.
Garena is a piece of shit in Australia, filled with noob chinese inhouse teams, who solely exist to take out as many "pubs" as possible - but these asses will never be seen in a real tournament.
If you find yourself raging at feeders, don't play it. The standard for the most part on the Australian Garena servers is pretty high, a few might feed here and there, but for the most part its high, because it is mainly Chinese and Vietnamese players who do nothing but play Dota. They never go out, never fuck girls, they come to our country to study, stay in their rooms and play Dota all day.
Now, when we move onto the Singaporean Server, that is another story. Every single team picks every single hero, a pure all stun and disable team. That is not fun, we took one look at the games and we were literally fuck that, Imma head back to the AU servers. At least on the AU servers they random heroes as a majority, if a Inhouse team picks an all stun team, people are literally fuck that, and leave, without even playing. Then you get those same noob inhouse fks who call you out on being scared? It is one thing where it is AT against AT, if you go AT against Pub solely to kill and dominate you have no penis indeed.
Each region and game has a different category of people, and different types of gameplay. For LoL - I presume because I have never played LoL - that the fact that it is a 'free' game, it is filled with stupid noob kids who were still in diapers when Dota was invented, and comparing that to HoN where you have to pay before you can get in the door, I presume the standard on HoN is a lot higher - having actually played HoN.
The declining XP + Gold idea is a good idea, but after the 1st death? a 2nd death streak isnt a feed. At three and over is better IMO.
As been said numerous times, Dota/Hon/LoL already exists, abiet shittily, in the form of Sotis. The Sc2 engine is not suited to AoS maps, due to a difference in mechanics. If you want to play LoL go play LoL :)
Blizzard saying Premium Map = Original Content, Artwork and Assets ... as you said, if you are going to put that much money into something, you are better off on a different platform, ie iOS. Would Tofu not be considered a Premium Map because we still use their 'assets' in the form of 3D models, when all the other art is custom? tk tk tk.
The UI only looks as good as how much effort you put into it, what I did wasn't special, anyone can draw using the pencil, I just have a good eye for design. The colours I used are mainly #111111, #222222, #333333 in different patterns. You will need a good screen to distingush them apart though, on older monitors they might all look black.
The first rule of thumb is to design everything on paper first, no matter what I or Dryeyece is doing everything is on paper, it allows you to revaluate your throughts and polish your design before you invest too much work into it. This UI I designed way back in August last year, you can see a copy of the UI of the map I sent in to Blizzard's custom map competition; The basic layout is the same, but I used dialogs, in the end of the UI was really amazing with only using dialogs (dialog items, such as buttons etc).
I use transparent .tga files because the .dds plugin doesn't work with photoshop - this means my files are slightly larger but not by much.
I designed the whole UI, everything, in photoshop in a single file, then I went through basically cutting it out of the file, pasting it in a new file and saving it.
The code isn't anything fancy, I will post the code from the setting up of the background of the menubar at the top. I use top left anchors because I can move the image in Photoshop to top left, move it in photoshop to the correct pixel perfect position and then it will give me the coordinates so I don't waste time in the editor trying to figure out where it goes. The secret is obviously setting the background image of the dialog to blank.dds, after that you are sweet to import whatever custom art you want.
I have talked with Meph about Tofu and Smashcraft, and he is a smart cookie :) The maps are not competitors, and this he has admitted to me, regardless what people may suggest or what Mephs himself may say to his community (to unite it and bring it closer together - nothing like a common enemy). We actually get along really well and have long before Tofu was released so I am glad that announcing the project hasn't changed that.
There are always going to be people who compare the two maps, and Meph's label of Tofu as the "Smashcraft Killer Map" is a very smart advertising trick right out of my book, and it is obvious that through a few simple ideas that I was able, along with Sixen's help, build up a shitload of hype about a map that isn't even released yet - perhaps the most hype that has been achieved for an unpublished map so far. But this hype exists only within the map making community, we do not have that type of hype within the general community - that being said, as I mentioned before no matter what we release there are always going to be people that are not happy because we didn't do what they thought we should do.
We are going to release quick few-minute intro guides to all the heroes in the game before release, as well as make a mechanic video within the next few days. In hindsight we should have released the trailer with at least a few hero videos as the trailer existed merely to show off the UI and the eye-candy of big battles, not the gameplay itself nor the heros specific abilities. Alas, this is a map making community and the majority of people here are interested in the technical side of things, not the candy side - where as the vast majority of players are the direct opposite.
There is another video that I uploaded last night where Dryeyce introduces Morbius.
Mate, we know we have something awesome because so far everyone who has played it has been blown away, including Sixen. There is no way in he'll we could have got the support we did if we didn't have something good. We had to make the choice between what we release first and what will have to wait, we chose to release the Arenas first because it offers a huge amount of replayability, with the most minimal effort (engine wise). Once the Arenas are released we can move our attention to the other stages of the project.
There is not going to be one map, or even two - The Arenas and the AOS. There are many other projects we have planned that will use the same Mod and Engine. As stated in another thread it sounds like we are building a franchise which is true. There are storylines written out for the entire project, each hero and their background, and the background of each Arena, which will be published in due time.
The are two obvious reasons we can't expand too much upon what we have planned at this early stage, one is that if we announce something we want to deliever it, both Dryeyece and I have extremely high work ethics, and saying we are going to do something and then bail on it, is not something we want attached to our names.
The second reason is that if we announce things now, there is an extremely high chance people will copy the idea before we get a chance to release it, and by the time we release it, it will not be new.
You kind sir are obviously trolling, but I will bite. :) If you are sincere in not seeing any custom content then yeah, +1 glasses are in order, or a bigger screen mate.
It looks nice, could even say awesome. But due all the hyping you done it still doesnt impress me...cmon, It still seem just like a dota/arena game with minor changes. And Im starting to believe you are not going to deliver totally new "this is not starcraft" experience.
I was really expecting to see something out of normal, but I guess it will turn out to be just a decent/good arena game or whatever you want to call it.
There are always going to be people disappointed with whatever we do because we didn't do what they thought we should do - and I do not necessarily mean you. But as it stands, there are maybe about 5,000 unique people that know about this project - the main b.net crowd has no idea that any maps exist past the first couple of pages, or that our map making community even exists.
The very first time I loaded the game up after adding the new UI I went, Wow ... this is my game - this isn't Starcraft anymore. It is one thing watching the videos, it's another thing being in the game and moving the UI around, seeing it in action and it really looks like we stole Sc2's models and imported them into another game engine.
The style of gameplay that we have created has never really been done anywhere else, ever - so we don't have anything to compare Tofu to - to know if it will succeed or fail. But this is what most people want right? Unique gameplay that is not a clone of other maps - as it stands at this moment in the Sc2 Custom Map scene, it is mainly stagnant - due in part yes, to B.net 2.0, but also due to the part that the people who think up new ideas are immediately attacked by part of the community (I am not talking about Tofu) because it is not a cookie cut preformatted style of gameplay that people have got accustomed to. - but those who do clone other maps are also attacked because they didn't think of anything new, it is a catch 22.
We have a really cool project here; Is it game changing? Is it going to be the most played custom map ever? Is it going to revolutionize Sc2? Meh, who knows? who cares? As long as we are proud of what we have done mate, and we had a shitload of fun making it, and a shitload of fun playing it, it is all worth it in the end :)
When you acquire an enemy hero (either by dealing damage or clicking on it) it will show up on the right hand side in it's own area of the UI, which is not shown in the video - above the inventory, a little bit like the boss bar that Blizzard wrote for Starcraft II, but with a few added features. The UI is actually pretty customizable as it stands in this beta stage, over time I will add more functionality to allow people to customize it further to suit their playing styles - ie moving things and resizing things, but its one of those things that will come much later down the road, as I do not see the need for it at this moment.
Starcraft II's engine is not the best for this type of game, because of how the AI reacquires targets, and unselects your hero after specific commands are issued. To over come this we have enabled a work around, which is turned on by default but can be disabled via hotkeys or the menu, which will automatically reacquire an enemy hero, and automatically reselects your hero every game loop - which is why you never saw us selecting an enemy hero.
It is not an ideal system, but the action is so fast paced in a heat a battle, it is very very easy to loose control of your hero, hence why the above were implemented. But as with nearly everything else we have done, we are giving players the option to turn these features on and off.
There are a lot of gameplay mechanics that are unique to Tofu, that were not shown off in the video, simply because we felt we didn't want to spoil everything for when people try the game. The video was mainly about showing off the visual aspects of the game, namely the UI and a few abilities, aka, eyecandy - it is not a technical video, those will come, but as I said before, at a later date.
We have a release schedule of what is getting released at what dates, the game has been designed to evolve over years - not because we couldn't code it and release it on time, but merely so we would not overwhelm new players with too many ideas at once, which would then all become stale eventually. If we release it in chunks, say a few ideas here, a few ideas there, every few months, it allows people to continue to be surprised and enjoy what we have created.
As for the overhyping, time will tell. I actually really like playing it, not because I created it but because its the type of game I like to play. I think the majority of people should enjoy the game, and of course there will be a few where this game is not for them.
The release date is twice as long as half the time it takes to complete it to a level we are happy with for release :)
Trust me when I say we are going to release hero and arena guides soon - Fullachain you are spot on when you say this is a teaser.
I kind of agree..... All I saw was psi storm spam.... couldn't make out what any of the abilities do.....
So i cant really say it was all that impressive. The video I mean. Maybe a video highlighting the aspects of the map and some of the more unique abilities would go a lot further in my book.
Not really a fan of "rock paper scissors" mechanics.....
It was mainly due to the fact that I was Moomba for the video, one of his most useful abilities is Thunderstorm, which either I or Dryeyece will explain in detail later on.
There will be a Tutorial video for each hero once the game is released, for obvious reasons such as balancing changes, it would be unwise for us to spend time doing this now only to change something before launch. But it is definately something we already have planned,
Pretty much every game that is not a Heads/Tails game, has a Rock Paper Scissors mechanic to some degree.
Dota has a similar mechanic, but in reverse. Strength (High Hitpoints) can absorb Intelligence (High Damage|Disable Spams) but is weak against Agility (High DPS), Intelligence can disable Agility, etc, and I dare say Starcraft II itself uses this idea in it's melee matchups. RPS is a basic part of balancing any game, which has more than two variables, to what degree - that is a different matter.
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Dota, LoL, Hon etc are team games. That is why you are raging.
Garena is a piece of shit in Australia, filled with noob chinese inhouse teams, who solely exist to take out as many "pubs" as possible - but these asses will never be seen in a real tournament.
If you find yourself raging at feeders, don't play it. The standard for the most part on the Australian Garena servers is pretty high, a few might feed here and there, but for the most part its high, because it is mainly Chinese and Vietnamese players who do nothing but play Dota. They never go out, never fuck girls, they come to our country to study, stay in their rooms and play Dota all day.
Now, when we move onto the Singaporean Server, that is another story. Every single team picks every single hero, a pure all stun and disable team. That is not fun, we took one look at the games and we were literally fuck that, Imma head back to the AU servers. At least on the AU servers they random heroes as a majority, if a Inhouse team picks an all stun team, people are literally fuck that, and leave, without even playing. Then you get those same noob inhouse fks who call you out on being scared? It is one thing where it is AT against AT, if you go AT against Pub solely to kill and dominate you have no penis indeed.
Each region and game has a different category of people, and different types of gameplay. For LoL - I presume because I have never played LoL - that the fact that it is a 'free' game, it is filled with stupid noob kids who were still in diapers when Dota was invented, and comparing that to HoN where you have to pay before you can get in the door, I presume the standard on HoN is a lot higher - having actually played HoN.
The declining XP + Gold idea is a good idea, but after the 1st death? a 2nd death streak isnt a feed. At three and over is better IMO.
As been said numerous times, Dota/Hon/LoL already exists, abiet shittily, in the form of Sotis. The Sc2 engine is not suited to AoS maps, due to a difference in mechanics. If you want to play LoL go play LoL :)
@Maknyuzz: Go
Blizzard saying Premium Map = Original Content, Artwork and Assets ... as you said, if you are going to put that much money into something, you are better off on a different platform, ie iOS. Would Tofu not be considered a Premium Map because we still use their 'assets' in the form of 3D models, when all the other art is custom? tk tk tk.
0
Pencil tool in Photoshop, 1 pixel at a time.
The UI only looks as good as how much effort you put into it, what I did wasn't special, anyone can draw using the pencil, I just have a good eye for design. The colours I used are mainly #111111, #222222, #333333 in different patterns. You will need a good screen to distingush them apart though, on older monitors they might all look black.
The first rule of thumb is to design everything on paper first, no matter what I or Dryeyece is doing everything is on paper, it allows you to revaluate your throughts and polish your design before you invest too much work into it. This UI I designed way back in August last year, you can see a copy of the UI of the map I sent in to Blizzard's custom map competition; The basic layout is the same, but I used dialogs, in the end of the UI was really amazing with only using dialogs (dialog items, such as buttons etc).
August 2010: http://www.dogmai.org/mapcontest.jpg
February 2011: http://www.dogmai.org/tofudialogs.jpg
March 2011: http://www.dogmai.org/tofu.jpg
I use transparent .tga files because the .dds plugin doesn't work with photoshop - this means my files are slightly larger but not by much.
I designed the whole UI, everything, in photoshop in a single file, then I went through basically cutting it out of the file, pasting it in a new file and saving it.
The code isn't anything fancy, I will post the code from the setting up of the background of the menubar at the top. I use top left anchors because I can move the image in Photoshop to top left, move it in photoshop to the correct pixel perfect position and then it will give me the coordinates so I don't waste time in the editor trying to figure out where it goes. The secret is obviously setting the background image of the dialog to blank.dds, after that you are sweet to import whatever custom art you want.
0
There is ...
If you are talking about custom UI like in Tofu / Project TMA then it is done by dialogs, with a little help from sc2layouts, but 99% dialogs.
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@alexbis: Go
The marketting was meticulously planned, even up until this point everything is where we it should be. All will be explained in due time.
0
That is the way to hit the general map playing population. You have to remember what age group you are dealing with on Battle net.
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@Dryeyece: Go
Speak for yourself o_O
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@DrHu: Go
I have talked with Meph about Tofu and Smashcraft, and he is a smart cookie :) The maps are not competitors, and this he has admitted to me, regardless what people may suggest or what Mephs himself may say to his community (to unite it and bring it closer together - nothing like a common enemy). We actually get along really well and have long before Tofu was released so I am glad that announcing the project hasn't changed that.
There are always going to be people who compare the two maps, and Meph's label of Tofu as the "Smashcraft Killer Map" is a very smart advertising trick right out of my book, and it is obvious that through a few simple ideas that I was able, along with Sixen's help, build up a shitload of hype about a map that isn't even released yet - perhaps the most hype that has been achieved for an unpublished map so far. But this hype exists only within the map making community, we do not have that type of hype within the general community - that being said, as I mentioned before no matter what we release there are always going to be people that are not happy because we didn't do what they thought we should do.
We are going to release quick few-minute intro guides to all the heroes in the game before release, as well as make a mechanic video within the next few days. In hindsight we should have released the trailer with at least a few hero videos as the trailer existed merely to show off the UI and the eye-candy of big battles, not the gameplay itself nor the heros specific abilities. Alas, this is a map making community and the majority of people here are interested in the technical side of things, not the candy side - where as the vast majority of players are the direct opposite.
There is another video that I uploaded last night where Dryeyce introduces Morbius.
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Mate, we know we have something awesome because so far everyone who has played it has been blown away, including Sixen. There is no way in he'll we could have got the support we did if we didn't have something good. We had to make the choice between what we release first and what will have to wait, we chose to release the Arenas first because it offers a huge amount of replayability, with the most minimal effort (engine wise). Once the Arenas are released we can move our attention to the other stages of the project.
There is not going to be one map, or even two - The Arenas and the AOS. There are many other projects we have planned that will use the same Mod and Engine. As stated in another thread it sounds like we are building a franchise which is true. There are storylines written out for the entire project, each hero and their background, and the background of each Arena, which will be published in due time.
The are two obvious reasons we can't expand too much upon what we have planned at this early stage, one is that if we announce something we want to deliever it, both Dryeyece and I have extremely high work ethics, and saying we are going to do something and then bail on it, is not something we want attached to our names.
The second reason is that if we announce things now, there is an extremely high chance people will copy the idea before we get a chance to release it, and by the time we release it, it will not be new.
You kind sir are obviously trolling, but I will bite. :) If you are sincere in not seeing any custom content then yeah, +1 glasses are in order, or a bigger screen mate.
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There are always going to be people disappointed with whatever we do because we didn't do what they thought we should do - and I do not necessarily mean you. But as it stands, there are maybe about 5,000 unique people that know about this project - the main b.net crowd has no idea that any maps exist past the first couple of pages, or that our map making community even exists.
The very first time I loaded the game up after adding the new UI I went, Wow ... this is my game - this isn't Starcraft anymore. It is one thing watching the videos, it's another thing being in the game and moving the UI around, seeing it in action and it really looks like we stole Sc2's models and imported them into another game engine.
The style of gameplay that we have created has never really been done anywhere else, ever - so we don't have anything to compare Tofu to - to know if it will succeed or fail. But this is what most people want right? Unique gameplay that is not a clone of other maps - as it stands at this moment in the Sc2 Custom Map scene, it is mainly stagnant - due in part yes, to B.net 2.0, but also due to the part that the people who think up new ideas are immediately attacked by part of the community (I am not talking about Tofu) because it is not a cookie cut preformatted style of gameplay that people have got accustomed to. - but those who do clone other maps are also attacked because they didn't think of anything new, it is a catch 22.
We have a really cool project here; Is it game changing? Is it going to be the most played custom map ever? Is it going to revolutionize Sc2? Meh, who knows? who cares? As long as we are proud of what we have done mate, and we had a shitload of fun making it, and a shitload of fun playing it, it is all worth it in the end :)
Relax mate, it's all good.
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An introduction to Pyro, an Armoured Type Hero has been released.
Tell us what you think :)
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When you acquire an enemy hero (either by dealing damage or clicking on it) it will show up on the right hand side in it's own area of the UI, which is not shown in the video - above the inventory, a little bit like the boss bar that Blizzard wrote for Starcraft II, but with a few added features. The UI is actually pretty customizable as it stands in this beta stage, over time I will add more functionality to allow people to customize it further to suit their playing styles - ie moving things and resizing things, but its one of those things that will come much later down the road, as I do not see the need for it at this moment.
Starcraft II's engine is not the best for this type of game, because of how the AI reacquires targets, and unselects your hero after specific commands are issued. To over come this we have enabled a work around, which is turned on by default but can be disabled via hotkeys or the menu, which will automatically reacquire an enemy hero, and automatically reselects your hero every game loop - which is why you never saw us selecting an enemy hero.
It is not an ideal system, but the action is so fast paced in a heat a battle, it is very very easy to loose control of your hero, hence why the above were implemented. But as with nearly everything else we have done, we are giving players the option to turn these features on and off.
0
There are a lot of gameplay mechanics that are unique to Tofu, that were not shown off in the video, simply because we felt we didn't want to spoil everything for when people try the game. The video was mainly about showing off the visual aspects of the game, namely the UI and a few abilities, aka, eyecandy - it is not a technical video, those will come, but as I said before, at a later date.
We have a release schedule of what is getting released at what dates, the game has been designed to evolve over years - not because we couldn't code it and release it on time, but merely so we would not overwhelm new players with too many ideas at once, which would then all become stale eventually. If we release it in chunks, say a few ideas here, a few ideas there, every few months, it allows people to continue to be surprised and enjoy what we have created.
As for the overhyping, time will tell. I actually really like playing it, not because I created it but because its the type of game I like to play. I think the majority of people should enjoy the game, and of course there will be a few where this game is not for them.
The release date is twice as long as half the time it takes to complete it to a level we are happy with for release :)
Trust me when I say we are going to release hero and arena guides soon - Fullachain you are spot on when you say this is a teaser.
0
It was mainly due to the fact that I was Moomba for the video, one of his most useful abilities is Thunderstorm, which either I or Dryeyece will explain in detail later on.
There will be a Tutorial video for each hero once the game is released, for obvious reasons such as balancing changes, it would be unwise for us to spend time doing this now only to change something before launch. But it is definately something we already have planned,
Pretty much every game that is not a Heads/Tails game, has a Rock Paper Scissors mechanic to some degree.
Dota has a similar mechanic, but in reverse. Strength (High Hitpoints) can absorb Intelligence (High Damage|Disable Spams) but is weak against Agility (High DPS), Intelligence can disable Agility, etc, and I dare say Starcraft II itself uses this idea in it's melee matchups. RPS is a basic part of balancing any game, which has more than two variables, to what degree - that is a different matter.
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@Qancakes: Go
1.38, my bad :)
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@Bounty_98: Go
<3 Wuv u2.