ST's War TD 1.3

[Moderator]

15:22, 13th Aug 2010
ap0calypse: Approved

 

[Shadow_BH]

For the 1.00 Release:

http://www.pastethat.com/STWAR_CHANGELOG

I apologize for the errors the original 1.00 had, and I've reuploaded and deleted the broken version, this should work very well =) I hope people enjoy the game.

 

[ACdestinydream]

-testing map, will review when im done =)-


edit: tested the map, after the first game, i dun wana play it anymore, because there are many points i dont like.

1. spirit wolf costs 10 lumber which gives 2 income and grunt costs 20 lumber which gives 4 income. what about the rest? i wouldnt want to summon a pirate for 100 lumber which only gives me 13 income. this makes everyone in my game spam summon only spirit wolf and grunt for income. it should be the other way around. pirate should give me 21~30 income, not 13 income.

2. it was pretty laggy. it had so much delay after playing for less than 10mins - a bad sign. fix that.

3. i only used gul'dan, but i hated it. the ultimate tower (warchief) was weaker than the warrior tower. the upgraded version of warrior tower wins the upgraded version of warchief. inbalance.

4. the loading screen didnt tell us much except common sense. it tells me i need to get a tower builder for me to build towers to start the game. so whats it trying to tell me? im stupid?

5. commands were messed up. i chatted with my friends and when the sub-commands came out, i accidentally said 'shit' and the no champions mode was selected. wow.

-edit 2-
6. theres another point i forgot. after selecting the difficulty, it doesnt tell me what is the current selected difficulty. it just continues playing.

overall, i give it a score of 2/5 because of so many errors and a vote for rejection. i dont see much good points here, even they are good points, they are essential for a td.

 

[SpiritBreaker]

I couldn't really try it, because whenever I host it, there's a desync. I'm always in game state #2 and the rest in game state #1.. I don't know why, this only happens very rarely to me, but everytime I host this, we get desynced.

 

[Shadow_BH]

-testing map, will review when im done =)-


edit: tested the map, after the first game, i dun wana play it anymore, because there are many points i dont like.

1. spirit wolf costs 10 lumber which gives 2 income and grunt costs 20 lumber which gives 4 income. what about the rest? i wouldnt want to summon a pirate for 100 lumber which only gives me 13 income. this makes everyone in my game spam summon only spirit wolf and grunt for income. it should be the other way around. pirate should give me 21~30 income, not 13 income.

2. it was pretty laggy. it had so much delay after playing for less than 10mins - a bad sign. fix that.

3. i only used gul'dan, but i hated it. the ultimate tower (warchief) was weaker than the warrior tower. the upgraded version of warrior tower wins the upgraded version of warchief. inbalance.

4. the loading screen didnt tell us much except common sense. it tells me i need to get a tower builder for me to build towers to start the game. so whats it trying to tell me? im stupid?

5. commands were messed up. i chatted with my friends and when the sub-commands came out, i accidentally said 'shit' and the no champions mode was selected. wow.

-edit 2-
6. theres another point i forgot. after selecting the difficulty, it doesnt tell me what is the current selected difficulty. it just continues playing.

overall, i give it a score of 2/5 because of so many errors and a vote for rejection. i dont see much good points here, even they are good points, they are essential for a td.

Response: (By Numerical)

1.This is because your objective is -TO WIN THE WAR- more powerful units, means they will be more effective at beating the enemy. This is INTENTIONAL. It is NOT a bug and it is not an OVERSIGHT. Stronger enemies = more powerful pushes = better chances at winning.

2. I'm not sure what would be causing you the delay, I will look into it if there is something that is making you lag, it might have to do with the ordering of units, if this is the case I will fix it but it in no way makes the game unplayable, as many people are playing the game fine with over 100+ autohosted games. I'll still look into the movement triggers to see where and if there is an issue.

3.He is not weaker. You are completely mistaken. Firstly, if you use hedges to actually build a maze, you find that his range is MUCH larger than the warrior tower, therefore he ends up hitting more units, and he deals more damage in general. Secondly, and which is more important, is that his ultimate ability is designed to create units to fight in the war, which helps your TEAM PUSH. But maybe you didn't catch that, and winning the war = the primary objective of the game.

4.It also tells you important information about sending units (which most people don't notice in past versions before I made a loading screen) and that if you leak they will attack your teams town hall, which people did get at first because it's a unique TD. Maybe you felt insulted by the first step, but that was not my intention, and the loading screen is in fact informative and I've gotten purely positive results from the information labeled there for people who are new to the game.

5.This is an issue that I'm addressing in the next version, it's because it's using substrings and I need to make it more conditional.

6.It does in fact tell you what the difficulty is, you can see a game message displayed to everyone, it says "Difficulty: XXXX creeps have been modified by : number %" right after the difficulty is chosen. It's not a "generic" system where it picks the most picked difficulty, it uses zero sum and calculates the modifier. Read the parenthesis text in the dialog box to see what the modifier does when you pick that difficulty.

----

So out of your 6 points, #5 is an actual issue, and #2 -MIGHT- be an issue, that hasn't been reported out of the majority of the games I've tested.

Thank you for the feedback however, and if you could please respond I'd appreciate it.

----

Also: You say you don't like the game for a few of those points, well most of the points you said are gameplay-intentional. It's not a map for you and it's unfair to say you think it should be rejected because it has a gameplay mechanic that you dislike.

Edit #2: Also wanted to point out that I will be looking into the defensive-aspect of balancing, because that might be what you were originally looking at, but that's only half the picture, it's also how effective is the tower at being able to affect the war.

Edit #3: I looked over the orc towers and compared them to the others, and you were right -- there was a mistake with the attack speed of him, I've since fixed it =) Also I've changed the game modifications to exact matches instead of substrings, so next version will have that fixed as well!

 

[Shadow_BH]

I couldn't really try it, because whenever I host it, there's a desync. I'm always in game state #2 and the rest in game state #1.. I don't know why, this only happens very rarely to me, but everytime I host this, we get desynced.

Are you hosting in a regular game without a third party program and are being desynced, or are you:

1.Hosting your own ghost bot

2.Playing on someone elses ghost bot

3. Hosting your own game

If 1: There might be a latency issue
If 2: Ghost isn't always perfect and occasionally people desync from games.
If 3: This shouldn't be happening, as there isn't a single local trigger in the entire map, so any desync's would have to be from something else.

Let me know which one it is! Thanks =)

I've also never had a desync issue or seen any out of the few hundred games with my ghost bot, or the few dozen times I've hosted without a third party program.

 

[ACdestinydream]

Response: (By Numerical)

1.This is because your objective is -TO WIN THE WAR- more powerful units, means they will be more effective at beating the enemy. This is INTENTIONAL. It is NOT a bug and it is not an OVERSIGHT. Stronger enemies = more powerful pushes = better chances at winning.

if this is intentional, then u are just making your own td unpopular. it will make people spam those low dmg low hp creatures for income and thus lag the system. what u wanted was -to win the war- and by making higher costing creeps get more income does so as people compete to make more better creeps for income and destroy the opponents.

2. I'm not sure what would be causing you the delay, I will look into it if there is something that is making you lag, it might have to do with the ordering of units, if this is the case I will fix it but it in no way makes the game unplayable, as many people are playing the game fine with over 100+ autohosted games. I'll still look into the movement triggers to see where and if there is an issue.

it lags when the wave appear as too much spirit wolves and creeps appear at the same time.

3.He is not weaker. You are completely mistaken. Firstly, if you use hedges to actually build a maze, you find that his range is MUCH larger than the warrior tower, therefore he ends up hitting more units, and he deals more damage in general. Secondly, and which is more important, is that his ultimate ability is designed to create units to fight in the war, which helps your TEAM PUSH. But maybe you didn't catch that, and winning the war = the primary objective of the game.

lol, u dont need the warchief's ability to push, after u saved up enough money for the warchief, the leaks were stronger than those given by warchief. oh, i tried this game again with gul'dan and found out it IS weaker. the warrior just kills all units that entered my maze while warchief took a hell of a time to even kill them.

4.It also tells you important information about sending units (which most people don't notice in past versions before I made a loading screen) and that if you leak they will attack your teams town hall, which people did get at first because it's a unique TD. Maybe you felt insulted by the first step, but that was not my intention, and the loading screen is in fact informative and I've gotten purely positive results from the information labeled there for people who are new to the game.

well, many people played this kinds of td before and would know how to play even without the loading screen.

6.It does in fact tell you what the difficulty is, you can see a game message displayed to everyone, it says "Difficulty: XXXX creeps have been modified by : number %" right after the difficulty is chosen. It's not a "generic" system where it picks the most picked difficulty, it uses zero sum and calculates the modifier. Read the parenthesis text in the dialog box to see what the modifier does when you pick that difficulty.

played it again, im sure it doesnt, after picking difficulty, it went straight to game. also, include a text to tell people that the wave wil lstart on the 1st wave, i didnt have a clue.

So out of your 6 points, #5 is an actual issue, and #2 -MIGHT- be an issue, that hasn't been reported out of the majority of the games I've tested.

no, most of them were points to help u improve the game and the rest were real bugs.

Thank you for the feedback however, and if you could please respond I'd appreciate it.

ur welcome

----

Also: You say you don't like the game for a few of those points, well most of the points you said are gameplay-intentional. It's not a map for you and it's unfair to say you think it should be rejected because it has a gameplay mechanic that you dislike.

its not about the mechanics, it doesnt give me the fun-factor u see. i dont feel fun playing this game; i felt it was trying to kill me with lags and inappropriate texts and those stuff...

Edit #2: Also wanted to point out that I will be looking into the defensive-aspect of balancing, because that might be what you were originally looking at, but that's only half the picture, it's also how effective is the tower at being able to affect the war.

thats what makes a td fun. good balance, no bugs, fun filled waves...

Edit #3: I looked over the orc towers and compared them to the others, and you were right -- there was a mistake with the attack speed of him, I've since fixed it =) Also I've changed the game modifications to exact matches instead of substrings, so next version will have that fixed as well!

good luck then.

 

[Shadow_BH]

Okay, I'll respond to each of your responses from 1 - 10:

1.You have a point here, especially when it ties into the lag of later in the game, and my original intention was to make something weak but super cost effective, so say if you were really hurting for money you could take the tradeoff of not doing much in the war but being able to at least not leak. Any suggestions for that? I totally see the point you have of increasing incentive and increasing money earned, so I guess maybe I'll rescale income earned, (like for example the cost penalty of sending stronger units isn't so detrimental, but still SLIGHTLY less cost effective than the first units) and add in a builder ability that allows you to increase your income without sending any units. (Which would be cheaper overall than any unit spawned.)

Comments on this idea? Or perhaps a different suggestion?

2.This may have to do with the way I set up the AI triggers for war units, and it might just be because I've made the ordering section too fast on the periodic timer, but at the same time rescaling units would help the issue as well.

3.Yeah, like you saw later in the post, I did fix his attack speed. Although leaks are your enemy, so anything the warchief will summon wont beat a leak head-on, (and of course, why should much of anything-- leaking is the worst thing you can do in a TD) But in an ideal situation where both teams aren't leaking, and the only thing factoring in the war are players using abilities and sending units, the added summons help. (Or at least help stall the opposing units)

4.True, the first step is for those who have never played a TD before, but the rest of the information can be helpful, especially the Warning information and the third step.

5.Hmm, you didn't see the message? I'm 100% sure it's there, and I can post the trigger as well as an in-game screenshot showing you how much things are modified by. It appears prior to the "Good luck" message, about 30 seconds before. In response to the first level: Did you read the timer in the top corner? It says "First Wave Begins:" <-- I figured this would be a good enough indicator.

6.Alrighty

7. Thanks for being polite =D

8.By inappropriate text you mean the loading screen right? Or was there something within the game that seemed out of place as well?

9. Thanks, and yeah I'm hard at work repatching the towers.

10.Thanks for your comments, I hope you stay around and give me some vital feedback! =D

 

[ACdestinydream]

let me give you some good ideas for TD now...

Okay, I'll respond to each of your responses from 1 - 10:

1.You have a point here, especially when it ties into the lag of later in the game, and my original intention was to make something weak but super cost effective, so say if you were really hurting for money you could take the tradeoff of not doing much in the war but being able to at least not leak. Any suggestions for that? I totally see the point you have of increasing incentive and increasing money earned, so I guess maybe I'll rescale income earned, (like for example the cost penalty of sending stronger units isn't so detrimental, but still SLIGHTLY less cost effective than the first units) and add in a builder ability that allows you to increase your income without sending any units. (Which would be cheaper overall than any unit spawned.)

Comments on this idea? Or perhaps a different suggestion?

what u want to achieve in the game is to make strong enemies clash with strong enemies, so i will still stongly suggest to you that you have to give the stronger summons more income for weaker ones becuse i dont really see a point in a mass attack + lag war.

2.This may have to do with the way I set up the AI triggers for war units, and it might just be because I've made the ordering section too fast on the periodic timer, but at the same time rescaling units would help the issue as well.

making cheaper units having less income than stronger ones work as well.

3.Yeah, like you saw later in the post, I did fix his attack speed. Although leaks are your enemy, so anything the warchief will summon wont beat a leak head-on, (and of course, why should much of anything-- leaking is the worst thing you can do in a TD) But in an ideal situation where both teams aren't leaking, and the only thing factoring in the war are players using abilities and sending units, the added summons help. (Or at least help stall the opposing units)

people does not summon buildings for creeps, only creeps for buildings. this means i will only summon warchief only because he was the strongest tower, not because he had summons.

4.True, the first step is for those who have never played a TD before, but the rest of the information can be helpful, especially the Warning information and the third step.

less text on the loading screen and more pictures please.

5.Hmm, you didn't see the message? I'm 100% sure it's there, and I can post the trigger as well as an in-game screenshot showing you how much things are modified by. It appears prior to the "Good luck" message, about 30 seconds before. In response to the first level: Did you read the timer in the top corner? It says "First Wave Begins:" <-- I figured this would be a good enough indicator.

saw it, sorry.

6.Alrighty

7. Thanks for being polite =D

no comments

8.By inappropriate text you mean the loading screen right? Or was there something within the game that seemed out of place as well?

im sure i saw wrong spelling texts on the tooltips once...

9. Thanks, and yeah I'm hard at work repatching the towers.

add more variety, its quite boring, and try to increase the castle's hp as well, increase it by at least 5x, cos then u will be able too survive to wave 30 and summon more stronger creeps.

10.Thanks for your comments, I hope you stay around and give me some vital feedback! =D

i will =D

 

[Shadow_BH]

If the map's community stays alive long enough I'll increase castle HP + add more tiers of summons, but I would first need to rebalance the existing gameplay of the creeps, like you said motivate people to send the WTF PWN creeps instead of the weak ones for money.

 

[Cweener]

approve
3/5

 

[Brambleclaw]

I think most of the points have already been said. But oh well.
1. I like the map its quite fun, the idea of the mazer units upgradeable to hedges is kinda funny. The leak idea is also good. But i fear that leaks are stronger then the creeps im sending.
2. Could you find a way of making it less laggy with spam creeps.
I.e If you wanted you could have a choice of Senders. So you can specialize.
Incomer 150% income 50% unit str
Pusher 50% income 150 Unit str
Inbetween 100% Income 100% Unit str
Or somin or just have 2 senders one for income one for pushing so u dont have to spam
Or somin. Overall i liked it apart from the lag.
4/5

 

[Goatmilk]

Played twice last night versus a friend, and this map is pretty fun. It does need some better balance with the lumber prices for creeps, and maybe lower price for the guardian tower too. It seems to be hard to find the right balance between getting more income and spending lumber to get some gold, but I suppose you'll get the hang of it after a few matches.

P.S I played as human (Paladin) and undead, both seemed good though undead seemed to lack any good cheap tower specific to their race - the human one with 1200 range, stun and aoe dot was waaaay better than the banshee with a slow on long ass cooldown. Both the "hero" towers were awesome though, ressing mobs to fight (even though their damage is always 100, the hp they had was nice later on) and the extra gold/lumber on kills from human.

Overall good map with potential.

 

[Shadow_BH]

Updated the original map. There was a major revision based on feedback in this thread that came out 2 months later.

I recently updated it again this week.

 

[Goatmilk]

Did you fix positioning of the guard towers (at town hall) to be equal? Only played one game with new version and didnt get to check that, but I remember one of the towers were placed better than the other one. And whats with those champions? Some times one of them have 2 auras + passive crit, while the other one might have 0 or just 1 aura and a crit. Really?

Oh and the Naga's siren tower pops the "spawned" message sometimes, but never spawn anything.

 

[PachaXD]

sts map

what happened with ur maps? arent u going to finish st´s orpg? it is just one of my favorites and would really like to plya it on last phase please work on them just a bit!

 

[PachaXD]

st´s orpg!!!

what happened with ur maps? arent u going to finish st´s orpg? it is just one of my favorites and would really like to plya it on last phase please work on them just a bit!!! please!!