Bow & Blade RPG

[Masken]

This is a map i've been working on. It's not complete and i could really use some feedback.

It's a medivial type map where 5 kingdoms strife for supremacy. You're there to create your own kingdom and conquer the world. Features the world's simplest save/load feature (to make, prob not to use) according to me.

You choose between 5 different heroes:
-Warrior
-Leader
-Smith
-Battle Medic
-Trader
Yes i know some skills are crap and should be banished from the base of the earth, but it's beta.

Please give Feedback and ideas. I'll be forever grateful (in form of +rep).

Pics:

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[Svenski]

Sword of a thousand truths! lol!

Well your CPU AI trigger 'Unit creation' creates massive amounts of point/location memory leaks, probably the source of the massive amount of lag I was getting while testing your game. There's probably a lot more leaks than just that trigger (actually yeah, all of your battle triggers seem to add a lot to it as well), but that one seems to be the worst.

Read this thread about leaks: Things That Leak

If you don't remove the leaks, I could imagine your game becoming unplayable after 15 minutes or so with massive lag.


Anyways, about the game. I like its simplicity and structure, being able to run around and battle other units in these isolated arenas, battle against the towns and stuff. In the long run, if you drastically improve the terrain, variety of abilities, variety of items to choose from, and add more elements of strategy, it could be a pretty fun game!

Personally, I also think you should rework your battle system somehow so that you don't ever have to wait for someone else's battle to finish. I don't have any idea how long battles might take when you're level 40, maybe too long to wait for? Just a thought.

A few other questions:
Can you battle other players?
Can you level up any way other than battling stuff? It was hard to level up at all, being level 1, with no abilities, and having to battle against either a hero that was level 10 or a level 1 hero with an army at his side.

Hopefully you get something useful out of my comment

~Svenski

 

[Masken]

1. You are able to battle other players

2. Perhaps i should add like a training ground on some locations to take tou to like lvl 5?

Will begin anti leaking triggering immidialtely

Things i might add:
-Arena - Battle other players (and bots) and show them just how good you are!

-Training ground - Train to become the greatest warrior in the world (of Bow & Blade) - In Beta stage

-an ingenious way to solve the battle issue - Thinking auto resolve for bots. - In Beta stage

-Fix to leaks -in progress...

-Unit spawn in proportion to heroes and/or ''buildings'' - Balances things out a bit

 

[Svenski]

Your updates all sound really good!

Auto-resolve for bots would work pretty well. I wasn't sure on this, did you have the arenas designated by the different kinds of bots (like, robber = forest, etc...) ? If you could forgo that designation and instead just teleport each battle to a random 'open' arena (one not in use) that might work better. Then just make sure you have as many battle areas as max players in the game, and there will always be an open battle area.

One other thing I was thinking; I like the lack of fog-of-war. I'd say keep it that way ;D

 

[Masken]

I made different battle locations with different terrain for the realism so you don't fight in the snow when your'e in the desert. The battle triggers are therefore based on where you stand when you attack, but it also makes the system very delicate. Changing the terrain in unexpected ways can have fatal consequenses.

 

[Svenski]

Ah, got ya. Yeah I dunno, with a bunch of players in the game if everybody is randomly hangin out in the desert and wants to battle all at once, who gets to go first? Second? Third? How long would they have to wait? Granted this might not happen very often.

Not saying you should change the terrain or anything, but it's a good idea to have good mutli-player compatibility with systems like that. Unless you are more focused on making the map good for solo players and battling against the bots.

 

[Masken]

Since the fights in general lasts about 10-30 second, it would be very odd if they managed to do such a thing. The current beta map (the one uploaded) featured the lords fighting in the battlegrounds. There are about 5 lords and 3 bandits in every region, when it gets real heated (all fighting at once) only then can there be such a holdup, so yes. If all five players decide to fight five different lords in the same region it could take some time.

Saw my most friekiest sight. I was beaten by a novice fighter (only just) and afterwards it ussed the set up camp ability. How comes it knows what it does sice it's based on a random, non regen ability??
EDIT: Seems i looked at the duplicate ability, my mistake.

New release aswell (look up) featuring the training ground (awaiting you opinion), auto resolce function and a fix to most leaks (i think).

 

[Svenski]

Just on the subject of clearing up those leaks...

In your unit creation trigger you do this:

• If (All Conditions are True) then do (Then Actions) else do (Else Actions)
  • If - Conditions
    • (Number of units in (Units in Region 013 <gen> owned by Player 6 (Orange))) Less than (Player 6 (Orange) Food max)
  • Then - Actions
    • Unit - Create 2 Recruit for Player 6 (Orange) at (Center of Region 013 <gen>) facing Default building facing degrees
    • Unit - Create 1 Infantry for Player 6 (Orange) at (Center of Region 013 <gen>) facing Default building facing degrees
    • Unit - Create 1 Archer for Player 6 (Orange) at (Center of Region 013 <gen>) facing Default building facing degrees
    • Unit - Create 2 Spearman for Player 6 (Orange) at (Center of Region 013 <gen>) facing Default building facing degrees
    • Unit - Create 2 Axeman for Player 6 (Orange) at (Center of Region 013 <gen>) facing Default building facing degrees
  • Else - Actions
    • Do nothing

A lot.

What you have to do to remove the memory leaks is set up a variable for each spawn point like this:

• Set Center_Region_13 = (Center of Region 013 <gen>)
• //Do this at map initialization

• If (All Conditions are True) then do (Then Actions) else do (Else Actions)
  • If - Conditions
    • (Number of units in (Units in Region 013 <gen> owned by Player 6 (Orange))) Less than (Player 6 (Orange) Food max)
  • Then - Actions
    • Unit - Create 2 Recruit for Player 6 (Orange) at Center_Region_13 facing Default building facing degrees
    • Unit - Create 1 Infantry for Player 6 (Orange) at Center_Region_13 facing Default building facing degrees
    • Unit - Create 1 Archer for Player 6 (Orange) at Center_Region_13 facing Default building facing degrees
    • Unit - Create 2 Spearman for Player 6 (Orange) at Center_Region_13 facing Default building facing degrees
    • Unit - Create 2 Axeman for Player 6 (Orange) at Center_Region_13 facing Default building facing degrees
  • Else - Actions

This way, the unit creation action doesn't have to create a point each time you spawn units, it just uses that already existing point variable. Also you don't ever need to use the action 'Do nothing'. Just FYI.

To destroy a point variable from memory you use this action:

• Custom script: call RemoveLocation(udg_Center_Region_13)

Anyways your systems and triggers still need a lot of work. As I was testing this time there was a lot of crazy stuff goin on like my camera was panning all over the place randomly when doing battles and something seemed broken with the computer AI battles (like they weren't actually happening) and there were some kind of battle placeholders all over the map (exclamation mark unit models) that weren't really doing anything and it just needs more work before it's playable.

 

[Masken]

Yes, i made the auto resolve function for bots so they wouldn't take up the battle areas and the do nothing is an old habit i have since long back (age 10 perhaps) when i did not know exactly how triggers worked, i've stopped making the do nothing now anyways, it's a remnant of the past. The exclamation points i made for te auto battles themselves so you could see them fighting, that is not complete and could use some tips on how to remove them properly.
EDIT: Know a way (i think), will begin work shortly.

How far had you played when the panning begun? Was it due to the extra heroes you gained perhaps?

BTW. You will be added to some honor list for being so helpful

 

[Svenski]

Hmmm I'm not too sure. That panning didn't happen right away I do know that much. It was after a few battles. I don't think I gained any extra heroes though. It was weird. You'll have to give me some time before I can test again more thoroughly (got lots of stuff goin on right now ).

Seems like the tough thing about mapmaking is that you've designed things such that everything will happen the way you want it to. The trick to making a really good game is to make the game allow for some flexibility and creativity from the players, and account for all those possibilities in your script and triggers. To make this easier, I find it really helpful to host my game on bnet and test with people who've never played before. People who don't know your design intent will try to do things differently than you want, you'll discover all kinds of things about multi-instance-ability and multi-player-instancing, and you'll learn more about how to make it obvious to the players how to play the game [with like, in game tips and tutorials and stuff].

Maybe you already knew all that. Anyways, read through some of the tutorials on this site about triggering and download some spells and example maps to actually see how other people do stuff. You'll learn a lot of simple techniques that are amazingly useful.

 

[Masken]

I agree completely. Minor stuff going on:
-Replacing the exclamation point with text saying Battle! Which fades after a certain ammount of time.
-The training ground is being worked on. Adding a trigger which restores your hp and mana after each fight.
-The neverending quest of leak proofing.
-An idea for a better endgame (currently you get some lords who ruins the game for you by killinng your units), thinking that the lords will ''recruit'' units too. Will probably be added when i make the more fair unit creation system.
Will release shortly (hopefully)

 

[Svenski]

Will release shortly (hopefully)

take your time

 

[Spoontoobig]

Screeniez...

 

[Masken]

Small update (look up). Auto resolve system up and running properly (hopefully). The training ground is still being tested (test plz and give feedback). Only the one near p1 (red) is enabled.

Added screenshots too.

Thinking of adding a dirt terrain battleground (between village and forest battle place). Then I could use all terrains in the map for terraining, beutification is on it's way.

So much work and so little time...