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    posted a message on [Closed Beta] Musical Races

    Equivalents are posted above.
    I did the best I could muster, but part of the beauty of Starcraft is that the race trees aren't that similar, that equivalent. Unfortunately, that means it doesn't lend itself well to this type of project.
    My goal in the end is to successfully throw all of the players off-guard, without leaving any of them completely screwed / defenseless.

    Posted in: Project Workplace
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    posted a message on [Closed Beta] Musical Races

    I put a catch into the conversion code. Since building "one" zergling produces two, zerglings are reduced by half when converted to another race. However, when converting to zerglings, units are doubled, so that 1 marine or zealot becomes two zerglings.

    Posted in: Project Workplace
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    posted a message on [Closed Beta] Musical Races

    @yukaboy: Go

    Thank you for your enthusiasm. The map is not currently on battle.net, as it needs some testing before it's ready to be released.

    "I'm looking for anyone to test this map, rate it, comment on it, and/or provide feedback and/or help of any kind. At this time, I am considering the map "Closed Beta", meaning I am only handing it out for people to play by request." That being said, I have sent you a PM with the map in its current state.

    Posted in: Project Workplace
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    posted a message on [Closed Beta] Musical Races

    I'm going to bump this. But just once.

    Posted in: Project Workplace
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    posted a message on I Quit, i would like Vjeux or Xara to upload my maps to EU

    I say everyone loses for having wasted your time arguing one way or the other.
    It's like arguing about politics. When it comes down to it, you have two options:
    Write your representative, who might pay attention if enough people complain.
    And vote. With Blizzard, as with any other entertainment medium, you vote with your dollar. Or euro. Or peso. Or yen. Or whatever you may.

    The bottom line is that it doesn't matter whether or not the popularity system sucks. There's a large contingent that believes it does, and Blizzard doesn't appear to be doing anything until we shell out another few dozen blocks of currency to see how they're going to screw us in Heart of the Sucker.
    There are other things that we can do with our time. There are plenty of other games to mod, and other ways to realize our work and ideas. Not making SC2 maps is not equivalent to stunting creativity, or not contributing to an overall online gaming community. It shouldn't matter to us how any of our members spend their time anyway, so long as they stop short of trolling our boards.

    The "Popularity" system is a misnomer. As it stands, the "Popularity" system is how our maps get played.
    The point we're missing in the argument is that we don't / didn't NEED our maps to be "popular", we just need them to be played. But people can only play the maps that are being played, and only the maps that are being played will continue to be played.
    It's a horrible system, and the flaw is not that our maps aren't on the front page, popular, featured, whatever. It's that if a map isn't on page one, it may as well not exist.
    Look at our OWN sc2mapster relative popularity list (I see NA, you guys may see different). Of the ten maps listed, four of them are straight up not played. At all. And that's not just right now, at this time of day/night. There have been several zeroes at the bottom of that list every time I visit the site for the last few days. Meaning if the map is a multiplayer map, and you want to play it, it is unplayable.
    Thus, effectively, if you release a multiplayer map that takes longer than five minutes to beat, it will be played for a few days, tops.
    At least with WC3, one could host their map and hope for people to find it and join. I agree, the system there wasn't ideal, but at least maps were playable.

    Bounty is completely justified, because if Ling Ling has no singleplayer mode, his map can't be played. He may as well have not done a single bit of work. I can understand ragging on him if his map "wasn't getting enough" plays, but as the system stands, the Galaxy editor is impeded except for creating 5-minute maps, or singleplayer maps.
    I'm surprised any of us are willing to agree to working under those conditions.
    And yes, we are mostly just hobbyists, working in our free time, but map making is very little play. Making a real map takes arduous, difficult work. Beyond triggers, and terrain, and the data editor, hunting for bugs and doing balancing isn't fun for anyone, it is work. And even if we choose to do that work voluntarily, we should be able to reap rewards for it.

    Posted in: General Chat
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    posted a message on I Quit, i would like Vjeux or Xara to upload my maps to EU

    (To the tune of "Video Killed the Radio Star")
    Popularity killed the map-makar
    Popularity killed the map-makar
    In my mind, and on my TV
    The forums cried about their apathy!

    Posted in: General Chat
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    posted a message on Map Ideas Thread

    Second idea:
    Emocraft.

    The goal is to get your opponent to kill his/herself.
    "Health" bar is basically a boss bar labeled "will to live"

    Types of attacks:
    Poetry
    Music
    Movies
    Books
    Women (goth girls)

    Clothing options:
    Tight fitting or loose fitting
    leather or denim
    sleek sunglasses or bulky
    dyed hair / regular hair

    Available themes:
    Grim Reaper
    Vampires
    Werewolves
    Zombies
    Mummies
    Aliens
    Lunatics
    Suicide
    Murder
    Prison
    Meatgrinders / Wood Chippers
    Drugs

    Available Wording:
    Level of sophistication: Simple, Normal, Elitist
    Era: Elizabethan, Modern, Post-Modern
    Subliminal message (typically carries an extra theme)

    maybe killing off musicians (like cobain) depresses them

    The more hip you are, the better of all of the above you can get
    Work jobs to earn money, honest work makes you less hip
    sales from successful works will also profit you

    Make selections on what tactics to employ with attacks, for example clothing to wear, wording to use, themes, etc.
    Using too many themes makes your stuff shallow and gimmicky
    Using the wrong ones makes your stuff uncool

    Multiplier bonuses for "trending" when you do a lot of cool stuff all at once?

    Sell drugs. Don't get busted, or you'll do time. It'll make you less hip, and your enemy will be able to build up a sizable attack.

    Personal attacks:
    Steal/sex mother/sister/girlfriend/ex ... /father/brother/uncle?
    Steal / vandalize property
    Publicly humiliate
    Subvert friends
    Kidnap / replace pet / friends
    Replace wardrobe / music (ipod) / dvd collection
    Personal tragedy (loved one dies)

    Game will have two victory ratings:
    Which player caused the other to kill himself first
    Which player was the most Goth / Emo
    Players who are very high in popularity / hipness can have multipliers applied upon death

    Posted in: Map Suggestions/Requests
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    posted a message on Map Ideas Thread

    I'm just going to dump some ideas to get the notepad files off of my desktop.
    Steal them whole, or in part. Let me know if you plan to make any of the ideas in (mostly) whole, I may be willing to help.

    First idea:
    Encroach TD of Strife
    Aeons + TD = Evolves + Rise of Nations
    The basic idea was to attempt to combine as many game modes as possible. More could be implemented, which would be good.

    Each team has a region that they can build in
    As they push their enemy's front line back, they can build in opposing territory, as their "buildable" region will expand into it.

    Units are built by the "evolves" player and run through the enemy's maze
    (deployed from the front edge of the team's buildable region)
    Units that get to the end of the mze do battle with the king (or the towers or something)

    Evolves players start off being able to build base unit of their race
    as time goes on, they unlock new unit types
    they can focus research on upgrading a certain unit type,
    unlocking abilities for a unit type (abilities that more than one unit uses, like burrow, unlock for all but take longer)
    or just putting more energy into unlocking new unit types at a faster rate

    Evolvers players can alternatively spend research upgrading the king.
    Giving him abilities (for vs aoe mostly)
    or boosting his stats

    TD players can build towers (course)
    towers can be assigned different weapons, or upgrades
    Base weapon does 5 damage
    Upgrades do +5 to armored, air, massive, etc.
    Or slow, immolate?
    Strong weapon just does +7 damage

    Posted in: Map Suggestions/Requests
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    posted a message on [Closed Beta] Musical Races

    Oh, no, I failed to mention: all of the units move as laterally across the build tree as I could muster.
    Battlecruisers would turn into Brood Lords,
    and Zerglings would turn into Space Marines.

    It's not the fairest scenario, but the point is to make it equally unfair for everyone.

    Posted in: Project Workplace
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    posted a message on [Closed Beta] Musical Races

    Below is a list of all unit conversion tables in the format
    Protoss -> Terran -> Zerg
    Any units or structures not listed are considered implicit (Vespene geysers, workers, etc.)
    I'm happy to discuss any alteration suggestions, but I'd prefer to keep it simpler, and "equally unfair for everyone" if possible.

    Zealot -> Marine -> Zergling (x2)
    Stalker -> Marauder -> Roach
    Dark Templar -> Reaper -> Hydralisk
    High Templar -> Ghost -> Infestor

    Sentry -> Hellion -> Baneling
    Immortal -> Siege Tank -> Queen
    Colossus -> Thor -> Ultralisk

    Warp Prism -> Medivac -> Overseer
    Observer -> Raven -> ???
    Phoenix -> Viking -> Corruptor
    Void Ray -> Banshee -> Mutalisk
    Carrier -> Battlecruiser -> Brood Lord

    (Buildings)

    Pylon -> Supply Depot -> Overlord
    Gateway -> Barracks -> Spawning Pool
    Forge -> Engineering Bay -> Evolution Chamber
    Robotics Facility -> Factory -> Baneling Nest
    Robotics Bay -> Factory Tech Lab -> Ultralisk Cavern
    Cybernetics Core -> Armory -> Hydralisk Den
    Twilight Council -> Barracks Tech Lab -> Roach Warren
    Stargate -> Starport -> Spire
    Fleet Beacon -> Fusion Core -> Greater Spire
    Templar Archives -> Ghost Academy -> Infestation Pit
    Dark Shrine -> Starport Tech Lab -> Nydus Network

    Photon Cannon -> Bunker -> Spine Crawler
    Photon Cannon -> Missile Turret -> Spore Crawler

    Posted in: Project Workplace
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    posted a message on [Closed Beta] Musical Races

    Musical Races is a game mode, which starts off like melee. After several minutes, each players' units will be randomly changed to its equivalent in a new race.

    Embed Removed: https://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=16228510&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1

    Thanks to currdevil, Ugrana, and HeyRevolver for testing.
    Thanks to RodOfNOD for trigger suggestions.
    Thanks to onetwo for suggestions regarding the video.

    This has been developed from the start as a Trigger Library, rather than a stand-alone map. As such, it can be ported to any map by any player relatively easily. Yes, I understand this will hurt my "map"'s popularity. Sucks for someone who cares.

    The maps demonstrated in the video were (unintentionally in order) 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3. The first map was HeyRevolver's "Blood Gulch" map. Nag him if you wish to see more (the "to melee" conversion of the map was done by me, it's not his fault the resource placement is stupid).

    I'm looking for anyone to test this map, rate it, comment on it, and/or provide feedback and/or help of any kind. At this time, I am considering the map "Closed Beta", meaning I am only handing it out for people to play by request. Because the "gamemode" can be published on any map, I figure that people can play privately (for now), hosting the library on their favorite melee map(s) with various names.
    PM me if you want into the Beta, and/or reply to this thread. I'll make sure that (unless you request otherwise) everyone in the beta is mentioned on this thread.

    The current state of the map, and triggers and features within is "in development". The core mechanics have been tested quite a bit, and I am satisfied with their stability.
    The following features are currently being debugged:
    -Unit construction after change
    -Unit research after change
    (It is intended that any units that you were building continue to be built in their new race form, but this is currently very buggy)

    The following features are planned for the future:
    -Completely custom ruleset. Change how often change occurs, whether or not players see a timer to the change, which players are affected, and more.
    -Regional Randomization. Rather than picking whole players, the game will change all units controlled by affected players within a given region (can be either explicitly defined, or random, and size is definable).
    -Per-unit randomization. Each unit will pick a random new race.

    I have honestly been listing away from SC2 mapping, so I am hoping that some hype infusion into this project will draw me back. Feel free to ask any questions, even to troll me, as bolstering of any kind to this thread will be appreciated (wtb thread subscription, vjeux).

    Thank you.

    Posted in: Project Workplace
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    posted a message on [Download] Bovine Intervention (Blizzcon Entry)

    The UI and implementation of sounds in said UI in this map is exceedingly impressive.
    The sidescroller bits ain't bad, either.

    Posted in: Project Workplace
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    posted a message on Carrier in my Carrier

    Got it to work using a behavior (recommendation from IRC). I interpreted that to mean:
    Behavior -> Periodic Effect -> Issue Order -> Use ability
    It almost worked out well for the interceptors, as they could go about their business. But when they had to dock, they didn't seem to. So I wound up with a trail (that's the chain of blue wrapping around things).
    Lag ensued.

    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10363853/Screenshot2010-10-24 18_15_32.jpg

    If anyone wants to edit the map, I've uploaded it to my dropbox:
    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10363853/Rawr.SC2Map

    Posted in: Off-Topic
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    posted a message on CRC - The Sorcerer's Defense
    Quote from RileyStarcraft: Go

    So next it became Alchemy Defense. Here the components were aether, mercury, vitriol, sulfur, and aqua. Towers were based on alchemical compounds, processes, or creations. For example, combining Aqua and Vitriol gave "Aqua Fortis" which was an acid-type tower. Gameplay wise this was a massive improvement over tarot D but ultimately too arcane for most people to understand, especially with the number of combinations I was planning on having. Also, it became difficult to find unique names things, and the sort of strength-weakness relationships the ingredients had didn't really make sense and was absolutely unintuitive. (Mercury beats vitriol? Uh, okay, that's easy to remember.)

    I finally went to using elements because they're an established gaming vocabulary; people understand them immediately and can even intuitively guess at their weaknesses and strengths. I still think the alchemy version would have been cool, but I don't think it would have been a very popular map.

    I agree, it would have undoubtedly been harder to learn and less popular, but it's always nice when games can make some effort to teach as well. And we could learn chemistry AND latin :P
    One thing that could be done to make any of it pretty easy is to just create a chart. I think they had one for Pokemon or Magic... Basically, you color-code whatever the things may be, tarots, elements, chemicals, and then you just have colors with arrows.
    Red -> Blue
    ^ - - - - - - v
    Green <- Yellow
    You could display that in a dialog box that you could toggle on and off, for a quick reference as to what does what. As it stands, you could probably substitute any of the elements for a translation (to any foreign language, or different word set) and based on the colors alone, players would be able to follow what's going on.

    On to the map itself, why I originally posted.
    In summary, I think all I wanted to say was this:
    In a day and age where Tower Defense has become not just a map or mod, but a full-on game released in hundreds of variations by hundreds of developers, available on almost every platform, the general gameplay of Tower Defense has become more or less outdone and overused.
    As such, I've personally avoided most of the TD maps on battle.net, but having gotten the all-time best score on DarkRevenant's rating system, I had to check this out.
    Sorcerer's Defense reminds me what I originally appreciated most in Tower Defense games, and does it excellently.
    The selection of towers, and "element" style design works off of the most basic chess-originated elements of Strategy gameplay. Choosing which units will serve you best against your opponent(s), and complimenting the towers to each-other makes it that much more interesting. The fact that you're dealt random building blocks means that the user has to learn the mechanic, as opposed to memorizing a strategy, which enriches the experience that much more.
    The "mazing", or leading units through a path of your creation, adds a puzzle element to the strategy game. Unlike other games I've seen, which use a single, linear path, the need to "circle" the four gates takes a very simple and easy to understand concept, and allows the player to use it as a tool to make their puzzles that much more intricate. In the end, the combination of puzzle and strategy play makes for a deep and very enjoyable experience.

    The casual difficulty could be beaten by practically anyone, which makes for a well-placed introductory to lure players in. I quickly learned the hard way that normal wouldn't be nearly as forgiving, but after picking up the strategies, managed to master it as well. Attempts to tackle the higher difficulties have proven the map's replay value.

    Posted in: Map Review
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    posted a message on Carrier in my Carrier

    It worked out that Fallout distracted me. I just went to try it, and turns out I have no idea how to make an instant effect ability autocast. I can't even think of any to look at, since everything is targeted, and being "Target Ally" or "Target Enemy", I'm assuming Passive (instead of Offense or Defensive) is what's needed. I'll probably try again a little later, but in the mean time, I'm open to suggestions, and links to how tos on the forums (which I couldn't find) :p

    Edit / annex: Yeah, I got nothin'. I've played around with the hallucinate ability, and cannot get it to auto cast. I can't even get it to allow movement. Another chapter for my big book of "things Blizzard probably only put in the editor to screw with us", as I can't even find a proper explanation on Sc2mapster...

    Posted in: Off-Topic
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