Ahah! Brilliant feedback. Thank you very much. In response, I will say--
Terrain:
Variations in trees was something I did not consider, but I will try to address that. I mainly took inspiration from the Blizzard human/undead Northrend maps for mine, after looking at them and realising that Chapter One didn't fit at all (surprisingly, Northrend is mostly dirt!). Chapter Two, I will admit, is a bit of a hack. At the time, I was fairly pre-occupied with other things. I may go back and have another go at it some time, but Chapter Two is quite honestly very deserving of criticism.
On the strategy side of it, I designed these first few maps to be moderately easy (moderately, not 'first-time-player' easy). This means that anything other than basic enemies that attack head-on is out. In the plans I have for maps to come, enemies will be executing much more inventive strategies, I can promise. However.
If anyone wants to take a look at my AIs, they can, because I'm fairly sure they don't work as I wanted to--hence the reason the ghoul attacks in Chapter Two were eventually made into a scripted event, with them being spawned periodically as long as the orange player still had their crypt. Besides that, to account for the passivity of the purple undead base, the orange player has pretty much all of the ghoul upgrades plus unholy strength lvl1 already researched, so they present more of a challenge, but on my playthroughs and replays of independent testers, I have found that the ghouls swarm a little bit. Ok, a lot.
But I, and my playtesters (apart from one embarrassing replay) did not die while playing Chapter Two. Could you elaborate on any strategies you used/your playing style, so I can set about to fixing it up a little?
Finally, the last point in the terrain category, could you include some screenshots of places you thought needed special attention? It would be nice to know where to start on improving it.
Gameplay:
"A bit of a letdown somehow" is quite bland. Could you possibly elaborate further--which maps you enjoyed, how you played through the map etc?
Techtree should be unique--as much as possible, I tried to make the Nerubians as original as possible. "all I saw was human + undead" again, could you please elaborate? As a rule, I dislike the original human techtree and tend to steer clear of it, so specific examples would be nice, and according to lore, the Nerubians intensely dislike necromancy etc. Thus, I tried to make sure they did not copy the undead in any way, but if you feel I have, then I would welcome your feedback on the matter. I thank you for it, and will take a look myself.
Anyway, for example, were there any abilities you felt were, as you said "Human + Undead"-themed, or perhaps it was the units? Again, if I have specific examples, I'll know where to start.
On strategy again--the design of the first hero is to be used mainly as a damage-dealer/combat-supplement. His abilities focus mainly on disabling big opponents until the player is ready to deal with them. I don't know if that helps or not.
On the "maxing the food limit 5 times to beat" - the purple base was originally intended to be harder to defeat than the orange one. The AI does not account for the purple player to construct any more buildings (but they do cover units - replacements only, however) but it does allow the orange player to make up to about 8 ghouls and send them in with spawned necromancer/banshee combos. However, they cannot replace buildings--to my knowledge--or abominations, crypt fiends etc. This is meant to reflect the Nerubians' style of warfare so far--guerrilla, a war of attrition if you will. Later in the campaign, as the techtree is expanded throughout the maps and the Nerubians become a more dominant force, outright warfare will become a definite possibility.
However, I found that two squads of twelve evenly-split-up warriors and webspinners, plus Horus'aman, was easily enough to completely destroy the orange base with minimal losses, even during a frontal assault. The purple base was soon to follow, after gathering reinforcements. If you can, include a replay of your game, so I can see what you did and make adjustments to the map.
Item drops--yeah, I thought I might have been being a little sparing with those. Chapter one is damn hard to beat without doing it in a certain order, so I might go back and adjust the item drop tables and creep distribution.
Finally, on the units + upgrades. I don't know if you looked at the techtree in the editor, but all the units (save one any-tier Random unit and a ShopFlier) are there, as well as buildings. The upgrades section, too, contains a full set of upgrades--although I am open to suggestions here, as I do want to include a few more; it seems a little bare. If you just meant in the maps, then I reiterate one of my first points: the Nerubians are, at this point in the story, just recovering from taking a major beating by the Undead. Horus'aman's forces are supposed to be small and limited at this point.
Fear not, though. Chapter Four (in which the player must defend their base at Ner'itir from the undead for twenty/thirty minutes against multiple undead bases, as well as some optional quests and the introduction of the second Hero character in the story for use) will feature a more expanded techtree, with the player able to construct primary spellcasters and a few more upgrades. The upgrades in Chapter Two were intentionally lacking, as I did not want to jeopardise the limited nature of the Nerubian forces, while at the same time not wanting the player to feel like there was absolutely nothing to upgrade or do. I promise, there is more to come!
Visuals:
Ah, thank you very much! I was worried the cinematics might be a little jerky or bland, but it's good to hear that they are liked. I thought the voice acting might help out with getting a good rating here--as well as the fact that almost every campaign I've played has featured silent text-narration, which tends to annoy me. I thought I'd make it a little different.
It is also good to know that the voices weren't too repetitive. I was vaguely worried that someone would comment on that most of the Nerubian voices are only seperated by quite minor voice- and pitch-changes.
How did the SFX let you down, personally? Details, please, so I can fix it up and make it flashy. Do you mean cinematic SFX, or in-game such as projectiles etc?
Resource Utilization:
Thank you for the compliment! It's always good to hear someone say something nice about your work.
I actually did not intend for most of the music I put in to match up with the cinematics, but...what can I say? The Warcraft 3 - Heroic Victory music is useful in almost every circumstance. It lined up very nicely with the opening of the gate at the end of Chapter Two.
One thing I was a little worried about with the music, was whether or not people would mind there being no custom/new tunes included. I've had feelers out for custom music, but so far no takers. If you know anyone who'd be willing to compose a few Nerubian in-game music tracks, direct them to me!
As for the loading screens, they were intentionally left bare. I am still trying to decide whether to go with custom art (which may be difficult to acquire/have as relevant to each map), screenshots (which would be easier) or to go with the Warcraft-III-style map with markers, customized to match up with the Nerubian theme (which is probably the easiest option). Which do you think?
Polishing:
Huh. I've read some of the Aesthetics-esque tutorials, but I always considered the blizzard tooltips to be alright. That's easy enough to change, but again, could you include an example of what is considered to be a "good" tooltip (preferably from another project/map, not from a tutorial--I've already seen most of those, and tend not to agree) so I have a base to work from. Un-blizzard-like covers a very broad area...
Quest names should be more inventive -- I went with making the main quest/s of each chapter having fairly straight-forward, descriptive names, so that the player could tell at a glance, as well as remember without fail the purpose of the quest. I can change it, if enough people think it should be changed--I figured it would be a visual/textual aid to the player, but I can see your point.
Overall:
Thank you very much for your feedback. It was careful, considerate and constructive, and has given me a definite starting point on which to begin improving my maps.
Thanks again!
-SmokingGun.
EDIT:
If you could, it'd be nice to see an assessment of Lore or Story elements, too. I work quite hard and consider myself quite skilled with words, when it comes to that kind of things. It'd probably be refreshing to hear someone else--someone not quite so biased as I am, I admit--talk about it. Thanks for all your feedback!
