I find it sad that you encourage poor rating based on issues that are actually game issues and not map issues. It is true those issues can be avoided, but in the current case, the only suggested way to avoid all of this is to use a save/load system. So, if I embark on creating a map of a genre that doesn't need save/load system and the map takes over 2 hours to complete, then the map should be rated badly?
Yes since 95% or more of people do not have such time. If most people were to play such a map they would end up leaving, complaining that they lost their progress and then rate it badly. The few that do complete it and think the time they spent was reasonable will rate it well but they will be in the minority. A map has to be possible to play and to most people 2 hours is not possible.
or this:
Countdown Timer - Start ChallengeTimer_Tomb as a One-shot timer that will expire in 300.00 seconds
Actually this...
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Countdown Timer - Start ChallengeTimer_Tomb as a Repeating timer that will expire in 300.00 seconds
Although I am unsure if that is correct.
Periodic timers are bugged and not periodic events. You can turn a periodic trigger off and on and it is still periodic. You pause a periodic timer and it becomes "One-shot" when it is resumed.
Now, correct me if I am wrong, but the best maps (according to popular opinion) in this site take over 2 hours to complete. So these are poorly designed maps? Or do you claim that a coding issue is "poor design"? If so I'm surprised that a person with your knowledge does not differentiate "Design" and "Coding".
Actually the most popular map online "DotA Allstars" took under 1 hour to finish. Other popular maps like LoaP, Tower Mauls, DBZ Tribute, Vampirisim, Green TD etc all lasted under 1 hour mostly.
Then you get to a map like Hero Siege where after 1 and a bit hours either you had lost, or you were one of at most 3 people still playing (from a full house). This applies to all RPGs where after 1 hour mostly you had lost most of the people you started with.
From the outset of making a map you need to design for a 1 hour maximum play length under normal conditions (hard difficulties or special modes can go longer but those will not be attempted by most people). If your map runs longer than that for reasons (RPG, complexity, etc) you need some way of allowing people to continue where the left off. This responsibility is down to the map maker. Since everyone should know by now that the standard save/load system in WC3 is very buggy then they need to either work around that (make sure it works) or they need to use a save/load code to approximate the state (how most RPGs do it).
Blizzard already solved the problem with SC2 where you can save huge amounts of data to client side banks. There is no problem recording the state of 1,000 creeps, 100 quests and 3 heroes per player. If you keep using WC3 which is known to have a buggy in-built save/load system and no convenient client side storage then you need to design around that as a developer and cannot blame Blizzard for not updating a game they no longer maintain.
While I've used the in-built save/load countless times in the past, I can safely say that I've also completed it in one take a lot of times, so yeah - it takes no more than 3,5-4 hours to complete. Compared to certain RPG's in this site - that's nothing. You correctly clarify that it's a Dungeon Crawler.
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3,500 to 4 hours is a bit excessive... I take it you were playing in shifts? I mean most humans are either in hospital or dead after 100 hours of no sleep.
To be more (or less) serious though, by the stage you get to 3
.5 to 4 hours in a game you are likely the only one left playing. Normal people seldom have that much uninterrupted time to put into something. Such a map might be played as a LAN party or between friends but as a public map it is impossible since most people will join it unaware of the time required and so be forced to leave pre-maturely. Hence why some ability to resume state in a later session is important.
I was never aware of timers being an issue, but now that I know, I'll investigate and hopefully fix this. And yes, the map is 99% GUI.
Be aware that there are more than 2 things broken with the in-built save and load system. Timers running in periodic mode and array index 8191 are just two of them that I know for certain give problems. Unfortunately I do not know the rest but I do know that a lot of maps like SWAT Aftermath auto-kick you if you try to load a game since they break the map so badly the author did not want people even to try and play on after it loads.
Dr Super Good, If you never played SC for more that 1 hour before, then you have no right to tell "it is poorly designed".
I do not see how anything
SC related has got to do with this topic.
Sunken City is a great map with good atmosphere. Dungeon Cravler genre isn't something that should be completed in 30 mins.
I agree, which is why such maps need to make sure that there is some way to resume progress in a later session. You should not spoil the map but you should also make sure that it is reasonable to play.
Also you should never tell people what to do and how to rank maps. You have your opinion, I have mine one. Only because you dont like this map does not mean everyone should rank it badly.
I was? I was simply telling a fact that if the map has unreasonable time demands then it has a fault as a result of poor design. Something that has a fault generally gets lower ratings because it is less perfect than something with fewer faults.
Fixing the fault would be by either shortening the map (bad as it spoils the experience), or allowing people to resume from where they stopped (recommended for this sort of map). Until the fault is fixed however it should be reflected on the ratting negatively.
To the first question. I played SC for a long time and Spasorc can confirm this. I played it more than 40 times and had save\load crashes only in 2.0.3(or 2.0.2, cant recall correctly) because of bug (btw, I found the reason witch caused this bug and it was quickly fixed in the next version). Except version mentioned above, save\load works without any issues and I'm sure this isn't Spasorc's fault.
Well it is crashing now.
Guys suddenly my warcraft 3 has started to crash when i load a saved game in multiplayer, we play on LAN (2 players), im on windows 8.1 and my friend on windows 8,
we're playing Sunken city latest version (2.0.4)
As you can see here. Which brings me back to what I said at the start.
If the map is too long to complete in one sitting and lacks state preservation then you should rate the map badly and make a complaint against that map. Maps should be designed for 1 hour sessions at most, anything longer should only be for really dedicated fan-bases.
Which since the map maker and you admit that it is meant to have "state preservation" in the form of in-built save/load but currently does not (or it breaks from time to time) this thread is now about resolving the fault with the map so it does have state preservation and so does deserve a good review.
