Battle for the Dark Islands

[Moderator]

20:58, 5th Feb 2011
Cweener: Approved
See my post below.
2.5/5.

 

[Rao Dao Zao]

This is pretty cool. Nice choice of custom models (sympathetic to the rest of the in-game stuff, fancy that!), solid terrain, classic RPG format...

Trololo at going back to Gazletop without the lumber.
Some bugs:

• Blood Rage icon doesn't have a DISBTN.
• Captain Krom can die in the Murloc attack. I finished the quest by going to his exclamation mark above his fleshless bones. Maybe make the quest fail when he dies, or make him invulnerable and not join in the attack?
• Once you've handed in a quest to the shaman, you have to walk away and then back again to activate the next part of the quest. Maybe just run these together (since they're all compulsory main quest parts anyway)?
• Blood Thirst still has the Vampiric Aura text on its buff. :>
• Spirit Lodges can't do anything but still have rally points?
• Are you supposed to be able to go straight up to get to the demon worshippers before handing in your scroll to the shaman? You can get around if you go up from the bandits and round the base of the waterfall.
• You're never given an actual quest log to "go to Grom'tralkar".
• There's a shaman there with an exclamation mark, but I couldn't seem to activate any quest.

Some suggetions:

• Quest-giving text. It's long and you only give out items/actually start the quest when it's done. I'd say make it a short (skippable) cinematic and split the dialog into smaller parts. It was most obvious in the initial scroll quest, when the scroll didn't appear until the dialog decided it was finished.
• Gazletop's lumber quest: I finished up with... six lumbers. Make the bandits drop only one, or require all of them to be returned to win? It feels so... incomplete... to just dump it on the ground. Unless you drop so much to give options to playing as weaker characters than the Berserker?
• The Berserker felt like he had too little mana, but that could just be me being a bit cavalier with Shockwave around those damn Fel Beasts and their green beam of hax.
• The icon for the Demonic Talisman seems a little incongruous to its description. I see no dark glow!
• When you start to attack somebody, it tends to call down a considerable pile of enemies from nearby. Have you looked at the Creep Call For Help Radius in the Gameplay Constants? I would definitely consider reducing it, even just a little bit.
• The Demon Gate is a big sack of hit-points you're just thumping for ages once everyone's dead. Perhaps reduce it, or make it do something like keep spawning baddies when you're nearby?
• It's not made entirely clear which island is Grom'bolar. Avoid the transport ship entirely and just do a cinematic of get on boat -> travel -> get off?

Anyway, that's as far as I got since it's now bath time. As I said, this is pretty cool, so I'll deffo be playing the rest of it.

 

[andreioplst]

This is pretty cool. Nice choice of custom models (sympathetic to the rest of the in-game stuff, fancy that!), solid terrain, classic RPG format...

Trololo at going back to Gazletop without the lumber.
Some bugs:

• Blood Rage icon doesn't have a DISBTN.
• Captain Krom can die in the Murloc attack. I finished the quest by going to his exclamation mark above his fleshless bones. Maybe make the quest fail when he dies, or make him invulnerable and not join in the attack?
• Once you've handed in a quest to the shaman, you have to walk away and then back again to activate the next part of the quest. Maybe just run these together (since they're all compulsory main quest parts anyway)?
• Blood Thirst still has the Vampiric Aura text on its buff. :>
• Spirit Lodges can't do anything but still have rally points?
• Are you supposed to be able to go straight up to get to the demon worshippers before handing in your scroll to the shaman? You can get around if you go up from the bandits and round the base of the waterfall.
• You're never given an actual quest log to "go to Grom'tralkar".
• There's a shaman there with an exclamation mark, but I couldn't seem to activate any quest.

Some suggetions:

• Quest-giving text. It's long and you only give out items/actually start the quest when it's done. I'd say make it a short (skippable) cinematic and split the dialog into smaller parts. It was most obvious in the initial scroll quest, when the scroll didn't appear until the dialog decided it was finished.
• Gazletop's lumber quest: I finished up with... six lumbers. Make the bandits drop only one, or require all of them to be returned to win? It feels so... incomplete... to just dump it on the ground. Unless you drop so much to give options to playing as weaker characters than the Berserker?
• The Berserker felt like he had too little mana, but that could just be me being a bit cavalier with Shockwave around those damn Fel Beasts and their green beam of hax.
• The icon for the Demonic Talisman seems a little incongruous to its description. I see no dark glow!
• When you start to attack somebody, it tends to call down a considerable pile of enemies from nearby. Have you looked at the Creep Call For Help Radius in the Gameplay Constants? I would definitely consider reducing it, even just a little bit.
• The Demon Gate is a big sack of hit-points you're just thumping for ages once everyone's dead. Perhaps reduce it, or make it do something like keep spawning baddies when you're nearby?
• It's not made entirely clear which island is Grom'bolar. Avoid the transport ship entirely and just do a cinematic of get on boat -> travel -> get off?

Anyway, that's as far as I got since it's now bath time. As I said, this is pretty cool, so I'll deffo be playing the rest of it.

Thanks for your helpfull reply and let me answer a few questions:
1. You use spirit lodges to revive. It works like an altar.
2. The walk away thing is sort of universal for all quest givers. It's just how it works.
3. For some things i am just too lazy to change them. I will probably change them eventually.
4. There's a lot of NPCs with exclamation marks. It's just that the quest giver has the mark from the start, not activated by some trigger. Will probably fix that.
5. No, you were not supposed to be able to go directly to the demon worshipers. Will probably fix that.
6. I know that there's no actual quest log to go to Grom'tralkar. It was never really supposed to be a quest. However Nazgrel will only give you quests if you have done the demon ones.
7. Actually from my tests it seems that the Shaman is the weakest Hero. I've tried improving his spells, and he's somewhat better now. And the Warlock is the strongest thanks to his Life Drain, it seems to me.
8. Let me add another bug: The Berserker doesn't have an animation for Bladestorm. I blame the modeler.
9. About the Creep call for help; i left it at that so it would be more challenging to players. In my tests the map seemed a bit too easy. However, if you so sugest, i'll reduce it.

Anyway, thanks for your feedback! A Beta is not a Beta without its bugs, don't you agree?

 

[Rao Dao Zao]

1. You use spirit lodges to revive. It works like an altar.

That explains it. I never died. :>

9. About the Creep call for help; i left it at that so it would be more challenging to players. In my tests the map seemed a bit too easy. However, if you so sugest, i'll reduce it.

It's a fair point. As the Berserker at least, I've not had much trouble with everyone and their aunty descending on me. Might be a different story for the other classes, but Berserker definitely needs a nerf.

A Beta is not a Beta without its bugs, don't you agree?

Considering some of the betas I've tried in the past, you're already streets ahead. Everything I've come across so far has been completely minor, barring some apparent end-game breakages. And I know just how tough it is to bug-test the end-game of an RPG, so I can't bag you for that.

 

[Arisato]

the map is bad but good
Terrain 3/5
Gaming 2/5
Fun 2/5
Spells 1/5
Sucks that an rpg doesn't have any cool spells

 

[Evillizard]

Make a quest givers/npcs neutral if they are not supposed to attack, or allied to hostile. I used the invulnerable quest giver to kill the murlocs.
I would work on making custom abilities, an idea
Wolf Charge, just kind of like the charge in WoW
Trigger
a unit casts an ability
condition:
unit equal to Wolf Charge
Action:
wait .70 secounds
move (casting unit) to position of (ability being cast)

the ability would be based off of shock wave, and have the missile of blade master mirror image, or make a dummy with the raider model, and go like
Trigger
(trigger and condition same as one above)
action:
create (dummy raider) at position of casting unit
order (last made unit) to move to (target location of ability being cast)

Turn off collision for the unit, have it increased speed, and give it the "locust" abiltiy to make it unselectable.

Just an idea.

Edit:
Played a bit of the map, it is pretty fun. I'm decent with triggers and terrain if you want any help.

 

[Cweener]

Hmmm 2.5/5 and approved. But JUST barely.

The terrain is sloppy is some ways...The edges near the water look erratic, just smooth them over with the smooth tool.

Example

Also, there's some inconsistency with bridges terrain height! Some smoothing could fix this as well!

examples

The triggers are also pretty leaky and inefficient. We have a tutorial section, just look up how to fix these problems.

The gameplay was pretty fun though, no complaints.
Well thought through game design, and well executed.
Cool imports as well.