I still think I am going to stand by my decision to keep the Command Beacon's cost increasing despite losing them all, I still think they should be used conservatively and strategically, not as supply depots for generating income, I want this to be important aspect to the player to not lose those Command Beacons because they are not easily replaced and to not build them carelessly.
@Grimshad, unfortunately there is no way to do infinite levels, I would have to add in every single level, which is a little bit of a pain. For now the cap is 12 but I will likely raise it in the future. I will probably add more abilities to choose from too. Any ideas of what you would like to see?
@AlwaysImagine, I had a number of bugs affecting the exp banks, but to my knowledge they are all gone now and my latest released are fairly stable. I can't guarantee you won't ever lose them again, but I can say things are looking good.
New update out, I added in a tutorial for new players, I don't believe it has bugs and I think I elaborated enough on most aspects to get players started and hopefully hooked, we will see! I also did alot of re-factoring and I think the game should be smoother now. Or at least I can look at the code easier! :)
Very nice, thanks for the bug reports, fixing the Command Beacons to cap out in a reasonable manner was difficult, took me sometime as there was no easy way to do this the way I wanted, but now it is fixed. Also fixed the attack upgrade bug. Updated difficulty on hard mode.
Closer to bug free? I hope so.
I will check on Stranded on Kydor and see how these objectives are done.
Went ahead and made max level at 12 since it seems better to be even. I will probably make max level 20 eventually but need more abilities first, I will do so around the time I make other commanders.
Sadly, I looked into the game mode lock when you go public and unless I am missing something, I think this is beyond fixable and something Blizzard has hard coded. I guess this just means the game host can't go changing his mind once he commits :).
I boosted the collector's hp back to where it used to be.
Was the 2 man fairly difficult?
I do play online with random groups, I will randomly join games and play, I often don't announce that I am the creator though unless I am asking questions that might give me away. I mainly do this when I have more time, otherwise I create specific situations I can test things in single player mode. This is just faster for me.
I brought back spectator UI and removed various parts of the UI including ability to ping that I don't want accessible. But most of it is there. Game difficulty and game day length is now live, check them out. They may not be perfect and may have bugs, I tested some but am too tired to do live tests on Bnet, if anything is broken I will fix it promptly when I wake up.
As is stands hard mode may be near impossible, but I am not positive of this, let me know, I want it barely beatable.
I decided to go ahead and start adding customization to the map, this update might take a while though cause I have to refactor and rework alot. I will allow the game host to be able to set up in the lobby the: game difficulty, game length.. and eventually I will give each player the ability to select from different Commanders like one would do for selecting a race.
In the meantime let me know how the balance is currently and look for bugs/balance issues/misspelled words. The current difficulty I will use for my standard difficulty.
Easy difficulty : no exp rewarded, good for starters
Standard : basically as it is now if not slightly easier, ideal for competitive pvp
Hard : Likely needs to be full on teamwork, for those who win there will be a big exp bonus. I will likely do achievements in the future too.
Standard day : 1 day lasts 4.5 minutes (as it is now)
Long day : 1 day lasts 6.5 minutes (4.5 minutes day, 2 minutes night)
With less bugs I tried the game out some in solo and reworked alot of units to be more scalable based on # of players. I played in single player and difficult remained fairly challenging. The big question is to wait and see how to scales with more people! Leave me some feedback to see if solo is challenging enough for you and how well my algorithms adapt with more players!
Thanks
Making the Sensor Tower make those close to it attack natives automatically is doable but would take more work than I think its worth when you can easily tell your soldiers to attack them one by one.
I have considered redoing the map before, but I am not sure I want to, it would take a lot of time and work to do so, time that I may not have right now. It is supposed to be cramped with 10 though, the idea is that there won't be enough space and obviously some bumping will have to happen. However, I do not want trapped units, whenever I find a spawn where its possible to be trapped I fixed it, so perhaps you are speaking of a spot I already fixed, but let me know otherwise, a Command Beacon should be full accessible for traffic to and fro.
I am glad the difficulty is at the "about right mark" its a tough mark to hit, as for the Leviathan, his health base is actually 20000 now, but it scales like the rest of the units based on # of players, thus 5% * 10 players = 150% increase making a max of 30 k hp. I do want the last boss to be very difficult hmm.. I will drop the base hp down to 18 k making it cap at 27 k with 10 players.
The resource icons is a Blizzard bug that should be fixed next patch.
The Tactician's turrets are already pretty good and have great range, I feel if they got the upgrade they would be too good. I believe the upgrade should say that it only applies to buildings by the Engineer too.
It seems like the map is finally leveling out to be around where I wanted, now to address the issue of time, I have considered making the days longer before but it will increase the total length of the game substantially. A hour game seems a bit long for someone, I hope to keep the game time at about a hour. What would you suggest for me to change the daytime length to>?
I also have considered a suggestion given to me before about a period of the game, likely midway, where there is an extended day, probably 6 minutes instead of the standard 3 where I would probably give boosted cash received from pvp or something along those lines. What do you think of this idea?
Also do you like or dislike the possibility of me allowing the cloaked pvp units to attack other players without the person making war? This would in turn create a bit of a tactical spy game. Its just an idea for now. Let me know your thoughts.
Sorry, I had to redo alot and forgot some of the previous bugs I had fixed like the alliance vision, its fixed again. I also added in another turret per Core, I am working on a dialog based tutorial that might help guide new players but its a pain as dialogs can't easily be made for each player, each dialog is global. Still fiddling around with it trying to make it the best way I see how. I envision a dialog at the start asking the player if they are new, if they click no, it disappers, if they click yes it will more or less pop up directions on how to do a cookie cutter start up and survive the first night. These directions will be in a pop up to the right of the screen and text based.
Also, The ending shouldn't be glitched at all, what makes you say it is?
Anyways I am releasing what I had done, it hasn't all been tested as of yet but I didn't do anything major that would causing mass chaos aside from fixes of annoying things. If anything is to be bugged still is that the natives might pop out during the day still, if this is the case please let me know as I re-factored the trigger for it.
I have to go out and do a social thing, I will be back to work on this later tonight, thanks for the feedback!
This is too long to fit into one help box on SC2 so here will be the newest update:
-Commander's EXP is only saved IF you survive to the last boss, you only get the exp bonus if you survive through killing him.
-Native creatures will try to attack and destroy the 4 City Cores, once destroyed they will begin spawning extra within the city. The idea is to protect these.
-Units with detection for cloaked units has had radius reduced to not make cloaked units completely useless.
-Command Beacons now function more as intended. You can only build a limited number (3). You can be able to build more by researching the upgrade and by killing other player's command beacons.
-Slight health upgrade to skirmisher.
-Fix to Gargoyle (Brood Lord) that was damaging units inside bunkers.
-Fix alliance bug that allowed people to attack you without going to war, it will now be automatic. May be issues now with being allied and splash damage making war, if this is the case, let me know.
-Fixed Commander exp bugs causing reset level 3
-When players die now, their UI will be removed so they cannot harass other players through pinging. However they may still stay and watch.
-Fixed another bug causing natives to pop out during the day.
-Turrets for the City Cores.
-Slight Increase to funding center cash.
Thank you for sharing your ideas! I decided based on your thoughts that I will only save exp in two situations:
1) You survive until the Soul Collector comes and you die, you will keep the exp earned up to that point.
2) You kill the Soul Collector, you will also get a fairly substantial bonus based on the starting number of players.
I will also make a Objective tutorial for the help menu
As for the difficulty, the cores now have 4 auto turrets each, that should help some, I will play some today and try to make balance adjustments where needed. I would like to keep the price points where they are, but if it is looking neccessary I will drop prices or raise income. Let me test it out a little bit to get a feel on where things are weak.
I do see your points, but first! I tested the units from within buildings and they should fire, very slowly but should fire, its like at 15% normal firing speed. Unfortunatelly it doesn't show muzzle flashes though, I haven't figured out how to fix it otherwise. But just incase something broke it, I will test it once I get everything else back up and kicking. Also I originally intended the Command Beacon price to continously rise and never fall, kind of adds to the strategic element of them rather than make them as easy to place as supply depots.
I did alot of price adjusting way back when and I do like the price points of most things, there might be some adjustments here and there, but I think your real issue lies with that the natives are too difficult this version. I foreseen that difficulty would rise greatly, I wanted it to be more challenging than it was. I may have taken it through the roof though. I have to really get in and play it some to fine tune it. My ideal goal would be to see a game of 10 players, have 2-3 mischieve makers killing off weaker players and by mid game everyone trying to struggle along and protect the city cores. By the end of the game the city cores should die and I imagine of the 10 perhaps 4-5 are left by time the boss arrives. After some epicness perhaps all 4-5 come through, but I think its more realistic to only see the top 4 achieve victory. Before the patch I sat ina game of 10 maxed cash and max ammo with 3 command beacons most of the game. So I think I hit the two extremes, just have to balance it some. I will be working on it alot later today.
My intent is to make it a struggle and a difficult one, some may have to kill weaker players to get the cash to sruvive, of course the pvp in this game is not the same as some may be used to, it requires some tact and strategy. Marching your army into someone's base will wipe out both your armies and cause doom for both of you. However, there are particular units that can be used to weaken an individual to the brink of destruction and allow the opposing player to feed off the remains while claiming their funding centers. Of course with a strong alliance it might be a bad idea just running around and killing other players, it really is situational and requires some tact.
I hope to hit the sweet spot for the difficulty, unfortunately the only way to test some of the adjustments is endless hours of test runs under various conditions so its sometimes hard to hit the mark. I am working on it though!
I used the data editor pretty heavily for most things, I like to reserve triggers for what isn't doable with data editor. This is just so odd that this started happening, almost out of the blue. The majority of my damage effects are straight shot actor animation and apply damage effect. Some with have a set and/or search effects too.
Are the actor messages your refering to also in the default settings of damage effects? I may have left them as they are if they are default settings.
Perfect, that should be easily fixable AlwaysImagine, I will fix that tomorrow as I am working on getting the map back to what it should be. Its going to be a pain, but luckly I remember most of my changes! Thanks for finding that out for me.
And just an FYI the experience bug is still in teh version currently released. I fixed it in the version that got corrupted but that is not good to anyone else unless you like seeing your SC2 close do to Fatal Error exceptions! I will get this all fixed but please be aware that if your commander's EXP goes beyond 2400, it might reset, I am not exactly sure what will happen to it as there are a number of things I do to scramble the data so it can't be easily changed by someone deciding they want to max out their exp. But.. I had an error in my math operations that caused it to fudge and reset. I will fix this tomorrow.
0
I still think I am going to stand by my decision to keep the Command Beacon's cost increasing despite losing them all, I still think they should be used conservatively and strategically, not as supply depots for generating income, I want this to be important aspect to the player to not lose those Command Beacons because they are not easily replaced and to not build them carelessly.
@Grimshad, unfortunately there is no way to do infinite levels, I would have to add in every single level, which is a little bit of a pain. For now the cap is 12 but I will likely raise it in the future. I will probably add more abilities to choose from too. Any ideas of what you would like to see?
@AlwaysImagine, I had a number of bugs affecting the exp banks, but to my knowledge they are all gone now and my latest released are fairly stable. I can't guarantee you won't ever lose them again, but I can say things are looking good.
New update out, I added in a tutorial for new players, I don't believe it has bugs and I think I elaborated enough on most aspects to get players started and hopefully hooked, we will see! I also did alot of re-factoring and I think the game should be smoother now. Or at least I can look at the code easier! :)
0
Very nice, thanks for the bug reports, fixing the Command Beacons to cap out in a reasonable manner was difficult, took me sometime as there was no easy way to do this the way I wanted, but now it is fixed. Also fixed the attack upgrade bug. Updated difficulty on hard mode.
Closer to bug free? I hope so.
I will check on Stranded on Kydor and see how these objectives are done.
0
Went ahead and made max level at 12 since it seems better to be even. I will probably make max level 20 eventually but need more abilities first, I will do so around the time I make other commanders.
Sadly, I looked into the game mode lock when you go public and unless I am missing something, I think this is beyond fixable and something Blizzard has hard coded. I guess this just means the game host can't go changing his mind once he commits :).
I boosted the collector's hp back to where it used to be.
0
Was the 2 man fairly difficult?
I do play online with random groups, I will randomly join games and play, I often don't announce that I am the creator though unless I am asking questions that might give me away. I mainly do this when I have more time, otherwise I create specific situations I can test things in single player mode. This is just faster for me.
I brought back spectator UI and removed various parts of the UI including ability to ping that I don't want accessible. But most of it is there. Game difficulty and game day length is now live, check them out. They may not be perfect and may have bugs, I tested some but am too tired to do live tests on Bnet, if anything is broken I will fix it promptly when I wake up.
As is stands hard mode may be near impossible, but I am not positive of this, let me know, I want it barely beatable.
0
I decided to go ahead and start adding customization to the map, this update might take a while though cause I have to refactor and rework alot. I will allow the game host to be able to set up in the lobby the: game difficulty, game length.. and eventually I will give each player the ability to select from different Commanders like one would do for selecting a race.
In the meantime let me know how the balance is currently and look for bugs/balance issues/misspelled words. The current difficulty I will use for my standard difficulty.
Easy difficulty : no exp rewarded, good for starters
Standard : basically as it is now if not slightly easier, ideal for competitive pvp
Hard : Likely needs to be full on teamwork, for those who win there will be a big exp bonus. I will likely do achievements in the future too.
Standard day : 1 day lasts 4.5 minutes (as it is now)
Long day : 1 day lasts 6.5 minutes (4.5 minutes day, 2 minutes night)
0
With less bugs I tried the game out some in solo and reworked alot of units to be more scalable based on # of players. I played in single player and difficult remained fairly challenging. The big question is to wait and see how to scales with more people! Leave me some feedback to see if solo is challenging enough for you and how well my algorithms adapt with more players! Thanks
And let me know if you see more bugs!
0
@EaZyAZN: Go
What do you mean specifically by adding objectives?
0
Making the Sensor Tower make those close to it attack natives automatically is doable but would take more work than I think its worth when you can easily tell your soldiers to attack them one by one.
I have considered redoing the map before, but I am not sure I want to, it would take a lot of time and work to do so, time that I may not have right now. It is supposed to be cramped with 10 though, the idea is that there won't be enough space and obviously some bumping will have to happen. However, I do not want trapped units, whenever I find a spawn where its possible to be trapped I fixed it, so perhaps you are speaking of a spot I already fixed, but let me know otherwise, a Command Beacon should be full accessible for traffic to and fro.
I am glad the difficulty is at the "about right mark" its a tough mark to hit, as for the Leviathan, his health base is actually 20000 now, but it scales like the rest of the units based on # of players, thus 5% * 10 players = 150% increase making a max of 30 k hp. I do want the last boss to be very difficult hmm.. I will drop the base hp down to 18 k making it cap at 27 k with 10 players.
The resource icons is a Blizzard bug that should be fixed next patch. The Tactician's turrets are already pretty good and have great range, I feel if they got the upgrade they would be too good. I believe the upgrade should say that it only applies to buildings by the Engineer too.
It seems like the map is finally leveling out to be around where I wanted, now to address the issue of time, I have considered making the days longer before but it will increase the total length of the game substantially. A hour game seems a bit long for someone, I hope to keep the game time at about a hour. What would you suggest for me to change the daytime length to>? I also have considered a suggestion given to me before about a period of the game, likely midway, where there is an extended day, probably 6 minutes instead of the standard 3 where I would probably give boosted cash received from pvp or something along those lines. What do you think of this idea?
Also do you like or dislike the possibility of me allowing the cloaked pvp units to attack other players without the person making war? This would in turn create a bit of a tactical spy game. Its just an idea for now. Let me know your thoughts.
0
@EaZyAZN: Go
Sorry, I had to redo alot and forgot some of the previous bugs I had fixed like the alliance vision, its fixed again. I also added in another turret per Core, I am working on a dialog based tutorial that might help guide new players but its a pain as dialogs can't easily be made for each player, each dialog is global. Still fiddling around with it trying to make it the best way I see how. I envision a dialog at the start asking the player if they are new, if they click no, it disappers, if they click yes it will more or less pop up directions on how to do a cookie cutter start up and survive the first night. These directions will be in a pop up to the right of the screen and text based.
Also, The ending shouldn't be glitched at all, what makes you say it is?
Anyways I am releasing what I had done, it hasn't all been tested as of yet but I didn't do anything major that would causing mass chaos aside from fixes of annoying things. If anything is to be bugged still is that the natives might pop out during the day still, if this is the case please let me know as I re-factored the trigger for it.
I have to go out and do a social thing, I will be back to work on this later tonight, thanks for the feedback!
0
This is too long to fit into one help box on SC2 so here will be the newest update:
-Commander's EXP is only saved IF you survive to the last boss, you only get the exp bonus if you survive through killing him.
-Native creatures will try to attack and destroy the 4 City Cores, once destroyed they will begin spawning extra within the city. The idea is to protect these.
-Units with detection for cloaked units has had radius reduced to not make cloaked units completely useless.
-Command Beacons now function more as intended. You can only build a limited number (3). You can be able to build more by researching the upgrade and by killing other player's command beacons.
-Slight health upgrade to skirmisher.
-Fix to Gargoyle (Brood Lord) that was damaging units inside bunkers.
-Fix alliance bug that allowed people to attack you without going to war, it will now be automatic. May be issues now with being allied and splash damage making war, if this is the case, let me know.
-Fixed Commander exp bugs causing reset level 3
-When players die now, their UI will be removed so they cannot harass other players through pinging. However they may still stay and watch.
-Fixed another bug causing natives to pop out during the day.
-Turrets for the City Cores.
-Slight Increase to funding center cash.
0
@Grimshad: Go
Thank you for sharing your ideas! I decided based on your thoughts that I will only save exp in two situations: 1) You survive until the Soul Collector comes and you die, you will keep the exp earned up to that point. 2) You kill the Soul Collector, you will also get a fairly substantial bonus based on the starting number of players.
I will also make a Objective tutorial for the help menu
As for the difficulty, the cores now have 4 auto turrets each, that should help some, I will play some today and try to make balance adjustments where needed. I would like to keep the price points where they are, but if it is looking neccessary I will drop prices or raise income. Let me test it out a little bit to get a feel on where things are weak.
0
@Grimshad: Go
I do see your points, but first! I tested the units from within buildings and they should fire, very slowly but should fire, its like at 15% normal firing speed. Unfortunatelly it doesn't show muzzle flashes though, I haven't figured out how to fix it otherwise. But just incase something broke it, I will test it once I get everything else back up and kicking. Also I originally intended the Command Beacon price to continously rise and never fall, kind of adds to the strategic element of them rather than make them as easy to place as supply depots.
I did alot of price adjusting way back when and I do like the price points of most things, there might be some adjustments here and there, but I think your real issue lies with that the natives are too difficult this version. I foreseen that difficulty would rise greatly, I wanted it to be more challenging than it was. I may have taken it through the roof though. I have to really get in and play it some to fine tune it. My ideal goal would be to see a game of 10 players, have 2-3 mischieve makers killing off weaker players and by mid game everyone trying to struggle along and protect the city cores. By the end of the game the city cores should die and I imagine of the 10 perhaps 4-5 are left by time the boss arrives. After some epicness perhaps all 4-5 come through, but I think its more realistic to only see the top 4 achieve victory. Before the patch I sat ina game of 10 maxed cash and max ammo with 3 command beacons most of the game. So I think I hit the two extremes, just have to balance it some. I will be working on it alot later today.
My intent is to make it a struggle and a difficult one, some may have to kill weaker players to get the cash to sruvive, of course the pvp in this game is not the same as some may be used to, it requires some tact and strategy. Marching your army into someone's base will wipe out both your armies and cause doom for both of you. However, there are particular units that can be used to weaken an individual to the brink of destruction and allow the opposing player to feed off the remains while claiming their funding centers. Of course with a strong alliance it might be a bad idea just running around and killing other players, it really is situational and requires some tact.
I hope to hit the sweet spot for the difficulty, unfortunately the only way to test some of the adjustments is endless hours of test runs under various conditions so its sometimes hard to hit the mark. I am working on it though!
0
Thats what I was thinking, but if its not triggers.. I really didn't change much with the data editor.. hmm
0
I used the data editor pretty heavily for most things, I like to reserve triggers for what isn't doable with data editor. This is just so odd that this started happening, almost out of the blue. The majority of my damage effects are straight shot actor animation and apply damage effect. Some with have a set and/or search effects too.
Are the actor messages your refering to also in the default settings of damage effects? I may have left them as they are if they are default settings.
0
Perfect, that should be easily fixable AlwaysImagine, I will fix that tomorrow as I am working on getting the map back to what it should be. Its going to be a pain, but luckly I remember most of my changes! Thanks for finding that out for me.
And just an FYI the experience bug is still in teh version currently released. I fixed it in the version that got corrupted but that is not good to anyone else unless you like seeing your SC2 close do to Fatal Error exceptions! I will get this all fixed but please be aware that if your commander's EXP goes beyond 2400, it might reset, I am not exactly sure what will happen to it as there are a number of things I do to scramble the data so it can't be easily changed by someone deciding they want to max out their exp. But.. I had an error in my math operations that caused it to fudge and reset. I will fix this tomorrow.