I love this idea, and I love playing Would You Rather in the car. I'll try to think of some stuff over the next few days and send you a list of absurd questions.
I just played this with my wife, two players new to the game. Seems like you've got a fun game here, and I like the concept of slowly building your base out, expanding, and exploring.
I have a couple of simple suggestions for you. Our biggest problem with the first play through was understanding the basics, even though we watched the tutorial. During the tutorial, you could have the SCV unit actually move to the forge/refinery and collect the resources and drop them off at the command center, and you could do this with rocks as well. A little demonstration would reinforce the text. Second, I think you should force the status bar ON for both forge and refinery so you can always see how much they've got available, and maybe even consider hiding the health bar just to emphasize the resources. Finally, it seemed like we were getting vespene a little too slow. Not sure if this is less of a problem if you get a good build order, but we weren't generating enough vespene for the amount of defense that we felt we needed to keep the expansion refineries alive.
Anyway, thanks for getting this into NA. Good work!
I’m hosting a contest for SC2Mapster.com to promote the release of this fantastic new tower defense game!
Are you an elite tower defense master? Do you have what it takes to become the wealthiest tycoon? Then try your hand at the Tower Defense Tycoon: Millionaire Contest!
It’s simple: Be the first person to complete Tower Defense Tycoon with a final score of over $1,000,000!
To cash in on this contest, you must save a replay of your successful attempt. Send the replay to me, you can PM me here at sc2mapster.com, or you can e-mail me at [email protected]. If you’re the first person who can accomplish this, you’ll win the top prize! The second and third people to do this will also get a little something, so don’t despair.
1st Prize: $100 (U.S. currency), and a 1-year curse premium membership (WINNER: Andrenden)
Each prize will be sent to only ONE person. The money can be sent to the winner via pay pal, or I can issue it through something else like an e-mailed Amazon gift certificate. Winner’s choice.
As you may have guessed by now, given that the top prize is one hundred actual U.S. American dollars, this is challenge is not easy! I will leave this contest going for as long as it takes, but I’ll post back here with some hints in a few weeks if no one has won yet.
UPDATE 5-13: This contest is now closed! I have a winner for all ranks, but I'm still sorting out the second and third prizes. Just in time too, the next update will be adding more difficulty that also increases your final score so it will be much easier to breach 1 million in v1.11.
Today I am very proud to announce the public release of my first custom map: Tower Defense Tycoon!
Tower Defense Tycoon is an FFA survival tower defense for 1 to 6 players. In the game, you operate and manage a tower defense theme park, where you need to construct towers, build up your park, attract spectators, and raise admission rates. Each night you must entertain your visitors with explosive tower defense shows and score bloody kills to impress the audience and attract new visitors.
Tower Defense Tycoon is a completely solo project, and it has been my only focus in the Starcraft map editor since the beta began. That puts the game’s development time at just over 2 years. Whoa! I have been developing the game with only one simple goal: To make it the coolest tower defense that Starcraft has ever seen!
Below are some highlights of my favorite features in the game. If nothing else, please check out my trailer!
A STORY-DRIVEN ADVENTURE
This game features 50 levels of story-driven adventure set in the Starcraft universe. Your journey sees you through the humble beginnings of your park, unforeseen dilemmas, unexpected disasters, and up through to the game’s epic finale.
BEYOND ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS
There are no damage types vs. armor types that you need to memorize. There are no air towers, hero towers, or detector towers. There is no rock-paper-scissors formula for you to worry about. Every tower is effective for every level!
Each tower has been designed with strengths and weaknesses, and it’s up to you to find the best way to use each type of tower. There are 18 different types of towers in all. You’ll find your familiar favorites such as the obligatory freezing tower. You’ll also encounter new kinds of towers that you’ve never seen before, like the Splitting Tower that divides units into two, or the Auxiliary Tower that can transfer kill credit to another tower, or the Solar-Powered Laser that charges up and becomes more powerful the less it attacks.
IMAGINATIVE LEVEL DESIGN
Almost every level in the game offers a unique challenge that is not repeated in any other level! No matter what your tower defense strategy is, there will be levels that challenge you in unexpected ways.
INCREDIBLE BOSS FIGHTS
Every 10 levels you will face a “Main Event,” a highly scripted boss round that has major implications for the story. Each of these Main Events will introduce something new to the tower defense genre, so even the most seasoned tower defense veterans will find something new here. These boss rounds are incredible, and you’ve never seen anything like it in a tower defense.
BUILD YOUR PARK
In addition to your tower defense strategy, you’ll need to build up your park to make it run successfully. Build a restaurant to increase your park’s popularity, build an admissions booth to raise your admission rates, build a hotel to retain your visitors across multiple days, or build an advertising agency to promote your towers and attract more visitors. You know what’s better than a bloody kill? It’s a bloody kill with fireworks! Build a pyrotechnics factory to make your impressive kills even more impressive. And there’s more! It’s up to you to build the facilities that will work best for your park.
Get some popcorn, it’s trailer time!
Are you a tower defense veteran? Have you been playing tower defense maps since the original Starcraft? Have you seen the best and worst that the tower defense genre has to offer? If so, then you are my target audience for this game! The story includes a ton of tower defense meta-humor, and I also attached my loading screen for your entertainment.
Coming soon: Competitive mode! This mode will be one part tower defense, and one part social experiment. I plan to develop this once Blizzard has made improvements to custom game matchmaking.
If you have suggestions, comments, bugs, or if you just like the game, please drop me a line so I can make this the best tower defense ever!
Doing some online b.net tests with my map, and I noticed that the button "+A.I." is available at the top of the lobby. Adding AI doesn't make sense for custom games. Is there a way to disable this button?
Edit: So far, I've been doing data to get the interceptor beam to look right on the wraith unit. So far so good.
Slow down there, champ. This is an odyssey, right? If you really want to take this to completion with an awesome game, find yourself a notebook or open a google docs. Get all your ideas on paper and get a very clear design ready before you begin. I've spent days to weeks doing designs before beginning any map that I have worked on, and I think it pays off.
The first map I made was pretty good, and by the time I thought it was mostly done I realized it was missing a few key aspects of gameplay. I went back and retroactively added in the extra stuff and it made the game better, but by the end the game didn't feel like it was built quite right because of all my "bandaid" additions. Your game will fit together like a warm snuggly puzzle piece if you have everything roughly outlined before you start designing skills and units.
AFK mode is a bad idea, and the only reason you're considering it is because AFK'ing is one of the biggest problems with this genre. There are no consequences if a player goes AFK and ruins a team game. Often a player is going AFK in a game they don't care about and they'll never play it again, and playing with random people that they'll never see again.
I think it's an unavoidable problem with any team game, and adding a way for a player to be played while AFK or gone is less fun for everyone. If it's even possible to have a computer controlled player then you're either really good with AI or your game isn't engaging enough. Ever play Mario Party with bots?
In my opinion, the best solution is to either have a game that is FFA, or make it so that a player leaving or AFKing from a team doesn't have guaranteed game ending consequences.
I think you'd be giving a player too many duties to micromanage a hero ship and also build towers to defend. Autopilot mode is never a good idea. I think this stuff would work better if each team has shared control and shared resources (at least shared control and resources for towers in the base). This would alleviate the AFK problem because having 2 vs 4 would just mean you have less people to help manage the base and ships, and would be even more effective at fixing AFKers if each team had only 1 hero ship that had shared control... though not sure how that would work exactly.
Making another dota could be another way. Sotis is pretty pathetic comapred to original dota and cityoftemepest is quite different from it, so Im sure well polished dota game would triumph over sotis.
Maybe a DOTA game is good for popularity (maybe?), but it's not good for the soul. The age of DOTA as a custom map is done as far as I'm concerned. Great games like League of Legends and DOTA 2 are free to play, and avoid 90% of the problems that ruin 90% of the custom games (like AFKers and imbalanced skill levels between players). Besides, making a game like this that is good enough and balanced enough to get to the first page is going to be a NIGHTMARE.
In my opinion, you should focus on something that custom games can do well that other genres cannot! You've got 20-30 minute multiplayer matches, and you don't need to have an entire supporting game around your muliplayer. Pick something that would work well in these parameters and go for it. Here's my example: I have always wanted a competitive game where players are on teams, but can switch teams, change alliances, and backstab one another. A great player could be 1v3 and power up faster if they're holding their own, and then as alliances change throughout the game, they will be stronger for having done well as a minority alliance. Playing as 3v1 (or 4v1 or 5v1!) you'll have an easier time but your rewards will be a fraction of what the 1 player is getting.
That's new as far as I'm concerned. If it's not new, someone tell me what it is so I can go play it.
My goal for the next few days, weeks, months, or even years, is to build a starcraft 2 map that's praised by so many people, it reaches page 1 at the top of the list, right under the starcraft masters map.
I had this goal in mind the very day I downloaded the Starcraft 2 beta editor. It has taken me two years of consistent work and TONS of free time to finish my project (started in late April, 2010). Strap in, son!
I remember reading articles about psychological traps some games use to keep players addicted, I'd recommend reading them in order to understand how to make #1 popular map :D
For an interesting analysis of this game mechanic, watch this:
I've watched 3 of the 4 episodes so far and I think it's absolutely fantastic.
YOU CANNOT WATCH IT UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN ALL OF AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER!
You just won't appreciate the world as much, and Avatar is one of the best shows I have watched. It's pretty easy to find too, all of it is streaming on Netflix, and I have seen the DVDs for it at several libraries. If you're asking about Korra being good, it probably means you haven't seen Avatar.
Do it, watch Avatar, but heed this advice. The first season is good, but it feels more like a Nickelodeon adventure show (especially the first few episodes have a ton of goofy cartoony expressions that they do away with as the show goes on). While it's fun, I watched most of the first season in the background while map editing. By the time it gets to the end of season 1 and into early season 2 the show gets really addictive - like, when the episode ends you want to immediately see the next episode to find out what's going to happen next. Season 3 is incredible and ends with a 4-part episode that is essentially one of the most epic and incredible movies I have ever seen.
Korra seems like it could be better in a lot of ways, and definitely more refined. By 3 episodes in, it's better than Avatar was at 3 episodes in, so we'll see.
I'm preparing to publish my first mapping project within the next week. Obviously I will be posting it on sc2mapster.com, but I'd like to post noticed about it in some other places too. I have only ever used sc2mapster throughout my development, and I really don't know what any of the other mapping sites are.
Can anyone suggest other mapping websites that are active and worth it for me to post on them? Perhaps there are some sub-forums for map projects on Starcraft 2 websites?
The Portal 2 editor is nothing less than Hammer (aka Worldcraft, the editor used to create the whole Half-Life series). Like any 3D editor (Unreal or Farcry, just to name a few games), it's more complicated to design in 3D... especially when it comes to scripting and you have no choice but to write lines of code yourself. SC2 is the easiest and most intuitive editor I've seen in decades. Try creating maps with the Skyrim editor and see the difference.
Actually, I'm not sure this is the case at all. I haven't seen any hard specs yet, but that video implies that the editor will be an extremely simple level creator. Think more along the lines of Little Big Planet's level editor rather than Worldcraft.
For example, the full Portal 2 game has lots of rooms where panels are missing, you can climb up into the air ducts to see creepy stuff on the walls, or just go exploring through caves and catwalks. I think this editor will be restricted to only allow you to make those very simple test chambers, kind of like what you see mostly in Portal 1. I have the impression that you'd use the editor to lay out the level with various puzzle components, and then it would render into the full 3D test chamber for you. Something simple enough that anyone could do it.
0
@zeldarules28: Go
I love this idea, and I love playing Would You Rather in the car. I'll try to think of some stuff over the next few days and send you a list of absurd questions.
0
The map just hit the 24 hour mark since I posted it, and it's now at 100 / 100 rating on Up & Coming.
Update: It's been just under 72 hours since I published the game. It's now at 4,000 hours played on page 1. :D
0
@A1win: Go
I just played this with my wife, two players new to the game. Seems like you've got a fun game here, and I like the concept of slowly building your base out, expanding, and exploring.
I have a couple of simple suggestions for you. Our biggest problem with the first play through was understanding the basics, even though we watched the tutorial. During the tutorial, you could have the SCV unit actually move to the forge/refinery and collect the resources and drop them off at the command center, and you could do this with rocks as well. A little demonstration would reinforce the text. Second, I think you should force the status bar ON for both forge and refinery so you can always see how much they've got available, and maybe even consider hiding the health bar just to emphasize the resources. Finally, it seemed like we were getting vespene a little too slow. Not sure if this is less of a problem if you get a good build order, but we weren't generating enough vespene for the amount of defense that we felt we needed to keep the expansion refineries alive.
Anyway, thanks for getting this into NA. Good work!
0
Hello SC2Mapster,
My mapping project “Tower Defense Tycoon” has now been released on battle.net (NA)! You can read up about it here on the main thread: Tower Defense Tycoon - Official Release Thread
I’m hosting a contest for SC2Mapster.com to promote the release of this fantastic new tower defense game!
Are you an elite tower defense master? Do you have what it takes to become the wealthiest tycoon? Then try your hand at the Tower Defense Tycoon: Millionaire Contest!
It’s simple: Be the first person to complete Tower Defense Tycoon with a final score of over $1,000,000!
To cash in on this contest, you must save a replay of your successful attempt. Send the replay to me, you can PM me here at sc2mapster.com, or you can e-mail me at [email protected]. If you’re the first person who can accomplish this, you’ll win the top prize! The second and third people to do this will also get a little something, so don’t despair.
Each prize will be sent to only ONE person. The money can be sent to the winner via pay pal, or I can issue it through something else like an e-mailed Amazon gift certificate. Winner’s choice.
As you may have guessed by now, given that the top prize is one hundred actual U.S. American dollars, this is challenge is not easy! I will leave this contest going for as long as it takes, but I’ll post back here with some hints in a few weeks if no one has won yet.
UPDATE 5-13: This contest is now closed! I have a winner for all ranks, but I'm still sorting out the second and third prizes. Just in time too, the next update will be adding more difficulty that also increases your final score so it will be much easier to breach 1 million in v1.11.
-Skrow
0
Tower Defense Tycoon - Official Release
Hello SC2Mapster,
Today I am very proud to announce the public release of my first custom map: Tower Defense Tycoon!
Tower Defense Tycoon is an FFA survival tower defense for 1 to 6 players. In the game, you operate and manage a tower defense theme park, where you need to construct towers, build up your park, attract spectators, and raise admission rates. Each night you must entertain your visitors with explosive tower defense shows and score bloody kills to impress the audience and attract new visitors.
Tower Defense Tycoon is a completely solo project, and it has been my only focus in the Starcraft map editor since the beta began. That puts the game’s development time at just over 2 years. Whoa! I have been developing the game with only one simple goal: To make it the coolest tower defense that Starcraft has ever seen!
Below are some highlights of my favorite features in the game. If nothing else, please check out my trailer!
A STORY-DRIVEN ADVENTURE
This game features 50 levels of story-driven adventure set in the Starcraft universe. Your journey sees you through the humble beginnings of your park, unforeseen dilemmas, unexpected disasters, and up through to the game’s epic finale.
BEYOND ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS
There are no damage types vs. armor types that you need to memorize. There are no air towers, hero towers, or detector towers. There is no rock-paper-scissors formula for you to worry about. Every tower is effective for every level!
Each tower has been designed with strengths and weaknesses, and it’s up to you to find the best way to use each type of tower. There are 18 different types of towers in all. You’ll find your familiar favorites such as the obligatory freezing tower. You’ll also encounter new kinds of towers that you’ve never seen before, like the Splitting Tower that divides units into two, or the Auxiliary Tower that can transfer kill credit to another tower, or the Solar-Powered Laser that charges up and becomes more powerful the less it attacks.
IMAGINATIVE LEVEL DESIGN
Almost every level in the game offers a unique challenge that is not repeated in any other level! No matter what your tower defense strategy is, there will be levels that challenge you in unexpected ways.
INCREDIBLE BOSS FIGHTS
Every 10 levels you will face a “Main Event,” a highly scripted boss round that has major implications for the story. Each of these Main Events will introduce something new to the tower defense genre, so even the most seasoned tower defense veterans will find something new here. These boss rounds are incredible, and you’ve never seen anything like it in a tower defense.
BUILD YOUR PARK
In addition to your tower defense strategy, you’ll need to build up your park to make it run successfully. Build a restaurant to increase your park’s popularity, build an admissions booth to raise your admission rates, build a hotel to retain your visitors across multiple days, or build an advertising agency to promote your towers and attract more visitors. You know what’s better than a bloody kill? It’s a bloody kill with fireworks! Build a pyrotechnics factory to make your impressive kills even more impressive. And there’s more! It’s up to you to build the facilities that will work best for your park.
Get some popcorn, it’s trailer time!
Are you a tower defense veteran? Have you been playing tower defense maps since the original Starcraft? Have you seen the best and worst that the tower defense genre has to offer? If so, then you are my target audience for this game! The story includes a ton of tower defense meta-humor, and I also attached my loading screen for your entertainment.
Coming soon: Competitive mode! This mode will be one part tower defense, and one part social experiment. I plan to develop this once Blizzard has made improvements to custom game matchmaking.
If you have suggestions, comments, bugs, or if you just like the game, please drop me a line so I can make this the best tower defense ever!
En Taro, Tycoons!
-Skrow
0
Doing some online b.net tests with my map, and I noticed that the button "+A.I." is available at the top of the lobby. Adding AI doesn't make sense for custom games. Is there a way to disable this button?
0
Slow down there, champ. This is an odyssey, right? If you really want to take this to completion with an awesome game, find yourself a notebook or open a google docs. Get all your ideas on paper and get a very clear design ready before you begin. I've spent days to weeks doing designs before beginning any map that I have worked on, and I think it pays off.
The first map I made was pretty good, and by the time I thought it was mostly done I realized it was missing a few key aspects of gameplay. I went back and retroactively added in the extra stuff and it made the game better, but by the end the game didn't feel like it was built quite right because of all my "bandaid" additions. Your game will fit together like a warm snuggly puzzle piece if you have everything roughly outlined before you start designing skills and units.
0
@yukaboy: Go
AFK mode is a bad idea, and the only reason you're considering it is because AFK'ing is one of the biggest problems with this genre. There are no consequences if a player goes AFK and ruins a team game. Often a player is going AFK in a game they don't care about and they'll never play it again, and playing with random people that they'll never see again.
I think it's an unavoidable problem with any team game, and adding a way for a player to be played while AFK or gone is less fun for everyone. If it's even possible to have a computer controlled player then you're either really good with AI or your game isn't engaging enough. Ever play Mario Party with bots?
In my opinion, the best solution is to either have a game that is FFA, or make it so that a player leaving or AFKing from a team doesn't have guaranteed game ending consequences.
0
@yukaboy: Go
I think you'd be giving a player too many duties to micromanage a hero ship and also build towers to defend. Autopilot mode is never a good idea. I think this stuff would work better if each team has shared control and shared resources (at least shared control and resources for towers in the base). This would alleviate the AFK problem because having 2 vs 4 would just mean you have less people to help manage the base and ships, and would be even more effective at fixing AFKers if each team had only 1 hero ship that had shared control... though not sure how that would work exactly.
0
WHO TOLD YOU THAT WAS MY PLAN! TOP SECRET.
Maybe a DOTA game is good for popularity (maybe?), but it's not good for the soul. The age of DOTA as a custom map is done as far as I'm concerned. Great games like League of Legends and DOTA 2 are free to play, and avoid 90% of the problems that ruin 90% of the custom games (like AFKers and imbalanced skill levels between players). Besides, making a game like this that is good enough and balanced enough to get to the first page is going to be a NIGHTMARE.
In my opinion, you should focus on something that custom games can do well that other genres cannot! You've got 20-30 minute multiplayer matches, and you don't need to have an entire supporting game around your muliplayer. Pick something that would work well in these parameters and go for it. Here's my example: I have always wanted a competitive game where players are on teams, but can switch teams, change alliances, and backstab one another. A great player could be 1v3 and power up faster if they're holding their own, and then as alliances change throughout the game, they will be stronger for having done well as a minority alliance. Playing as 3v1 (or 4v1 or 5v1!) you'll have an easier time but your rewards will be a fraction of what the 1 player is getting.
That's new as far as I'm concerned. If it's not new, someone tell me what it is so I can go play it.
0
I had this goal in mind the very day I downloaded the Starcraft 2 beta editor. It has taken me two years of consistent work and TONS of free time to finish my project (started in late April, 2010). Strap in, son!
For an interesting analysis of this game mechanic, watch this:
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-skinner-box
0
I've watched 3 of the 4 episodes so far and I think it's absolutely fantastic.
YOU CANNOT WATCH IT UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN ALL OF AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER!
You just won't appreciate the world as much, and Avatar is one of the best shows I have watched. It's pretty easy to find too, all of it is streaming on Netflix, and I have seen the DVDs for it at several libraries. If you're asking about Korra being good, it probably means you haven't seen Avatar.
Do it, watch Avatar, but heed this advice. The first season is good, but it feels more like a Nickelodeon adventure show (especially the first few episodes have a ton of goofy cartoony expressions that they do away with as the show goes on). While it's fun, I watched most of the first season in the background while map editing. By the time it gets to the end of season 1 and into early season 2 the show gets really addictive - like, when the episode ends you want to immediately see the next episode to find out what's going to happen next. Season 3 is incredible and ends with a 4-part episode that is essentially one of the most epic and incredible movies I have ever seen.
Korra seems like it could be better in a lot of ways, and definitely more refined. By 3 episodes in, it's better than Avatar was at 3 episodes in, so we'll see.
0
What's wrong with the battle.net custom map forum? Serious question; I don't visit it.
0
I'm preparing to publish my first mapping project within the next week. Obviously I will be posting it on sc2mapster.com, but I'd like to post noticed about it in some other places too. I have only ever used sc2mapster throughout my development, and I really don't know what any of the other mapping sites are.
Can anyone suggest other mapping websites that are active and worth it for me to post on them? Perhaps there are some sub-forums for map projects on Starcraft 2 websites?
Thanks!
0
Actually, I'm not sure this is the case at all. I haven't seen any hard specs yet, but that video implies that the editor will be an extremely simple level creator. Think more along the lines of Little Big Planet's level editor rather than Worldcraft.
For example, the full Portal 2 game has lots of rooms where panels are missing, you can climb up into the air ducts to see creepy stuff on the walls, or just go exploring through caves and catwalks. I think this editor will be restricted to only allow you to make those very simple test chambers, kind of like what you see mostly in Portal 1. I have the impression that you'd use the editor to lay out the level with various puzzle components, and then it would render into the full 3D test chamber for you. Something simple enough that anyone could do it.