Arena #1: (Will take entries for other arenas)


Essentially, you can pick a race. You will then micro with that race's units. The catch?

You don't know what units you will get. Or rather, you don't know which of the 16 combinations of units you will get.

Each player has 16 "slots" of units. They are located at the bottom of the screen map, where you have a dragoon hero in the slot that belongs to you. Within each slot is a selection of units of your own race, Whenever you build a unit with your production buildings, it is placed in one of the slots (To make Guardian/Devourer/Lurker, use the Creep Colony/Spire). You have an Edmund Duke hero near the top right. When it is sieged, your units are placed randomly in one of the slots. When it is not sieged, it is placed in the last slot that a unit was placed inside, OR if your Dragoon is standing on a light green squares near a slot, the slot that the Dragoon is adjacent to. You may not have more than 40 units in one slot, so kill weaker units with your dragoon if you hit the limit.

You start out with no upgrades or techs and must research them as appropriate. You may start a round with the civilians (all players must move their own civ), or wait for the countdown to finish. Once a round starts, each player receives all units in one of the slots randomly, and they will be placed in a large arena to duke it out. Last man standing wins (Allied Victory works).

Sample Screenshots:


UPDATE 1:
-Probe death/invincibility bug fixed.
-Probe limit decreased to 8.
-Map Limit now much more unlikely to be reached.
-Replaced civilian slot toggle with a siege tank to allow hotkeyed slot switching.
-Zerg can now build sunken and spore colonies at the normal price.
-Starting unit combos changed.
-Kills 2 Cash revalued.
-All players will receive money on the end of a round, allowing players who are behind to catch up slightly rather than be stuck.
-Carriers/Reavers no longer require minerals to build interceptors/scarabs. .
-Zerg now builds 1 at a time even with all larvae selected, as opposed to having to select individual larvae to build less than 12.
-Bunker glitch fixed.
-SCV build glitch fixed.
-Income changed... again.

UPDATE 2:
-Fixed Zerg Egg Crash bug.
-Fixed Siege Tank Transfer bug.
-Fixed Liftoff Terran dupe bug.
-Fixed infinite devourer/guardian bug.
-Fixed multideath bug (may put it back in as a feature, I like the effect)
-Fixed round loss bug.
-Fixed instant repair bug.
-Modified supply caps.
-Modified round start system; a countdown timer will auto start in the event that someone is AFK.
-Fixed CC not invincible bug.
-Probe limit lowered to 4.
-Costs revamped. Units now only cost minerals.
-You can no longer use Recall to glitch units out. The spell had no use anyways.
-Zerg available supply modified.

UPDATE 3:
-Fixed bunker garrison bug.
-Units now start with full energy and hangar count.
-Dark Archon spell costs changed to compensate for lack of energy.
-WAVs added.
-Costs tweaked.
-Unit build times decreased.
-Brief tutorial/instructions provided.
-Rounds will now automatically start.
-Arena redesigned.
-Spawns are now random.
-Nuclear missile cost fixed.
-Suicide area now marked clearly.
-Scanner sweep energy cost reduced.
UPDATE 4:

----------BIG PATCH----------

-Zerg units made in a cluster will now be individually placed into slots rather than as a group, to aid with placing units in random slot.
-There are now three arenas with distinct terrain: 1 = flat ground, 2 = hill in middle, 3=ring of high ground.
-The arenas are now cycled every round.
-Default starting units have been substantially revamped for more balance.
-Some costs have been altered.
-Map revealers removed, meaning you are now affected by the fog of war. When you die, you enter observer mode for that round. Players' vision is reset to normal at the end of the round.
-[Dark] Archons can now be purchased by making Citadels of Adun and Templar Archives, respectively. Your archon purchasing probe is located to the left of your Nexus.
-Unit purchase between rounds is now limited. You can now only purchase up to 30 Control/Psi/Supply of units per round. (Devourers and guardians are only 2 food LOL)
-Income tweaked.
-Interface slightly improved.
-Fixed nuke message spam.
-Fixed larva kill bug.
-Fixed non-disappearing units exploit.
-Fixed no-win glitch.
-Fixed instant win glitch.
-Fixed AI spellcasting/shuttling/sieging glitch.
-Fixed disappearing siege tanks glitch.
-Units now start with 60% max energy instead of 100%, for balancing reasons.(120/200 without upgrade, 150/250 with)
-Fixed scarab move glitch.
-Fixed a crashing bug.
-Fixed vision glitch.
-Fixed stasis invincibility glitch.
-Fixed some typos.
-Fixed building nonremoval glitch.
-Fixed ZOMGLOLMASSARCHONSSPAMADINFINITUM.
-Fixed endless minerals.
-Fixed random units dying for no reason.
-Guardians and other sprite-using units will now be less likely to misfire.
-Rounds are now timed for 6:00 maximum; if no player has won by then, the player who controls the most units will automatically win.
-Added Banning system: 3 banners are required to eliminate player. (P1 starts with 3, all other players start with 1)
-You can now choose the creep colony morph type with a civilian.
-Creep colony cost increased to compensate for change.
-WAVs changed slightly.
-Optimized some triggers.
-Unit recycling improved to make hitting the map limit more difficult.

UPDATE 5:
-Fixed several glitches caused by killing units that were supposed to be invincible
-Fixed boundary errors
-Buildings are now removed upon round termination and refunded.
-Unit costs have been tweaked slightly.
-Box limit increased to 40.
-Building costs and build times changed slightly.
-Tutorial now easier to understand.
-NEW FEATURE: Winners of a round are given a civilian to purchase upgrades/powerups with. (More incentive to win)
-You may purchase any of the following: Additional larvae, additional energy, mineral pack, invincibility on spawn, amongst others. Some purchases are disabled (for now).
-Fixed several Unit Unplaceable glitches.
-Made terrain slightly more micro-friendly in several locations.
-Added a much more awesome arena contributed to by ImagoDeo. Thanks!
-Cute, harmless critters added ;o

CURRENTLY EXISTING BUGS:
-Drone cancel after round end for +1 win bug.
-Still no refund for overmaking units, since I have not stablized prices yet.

I still don't have measures in place to end scenarios in which neither player can kill the other (firebat vs. Corsair, science vessel vs. vulture, 18 medics vs. 1 medic, etc.), so you need to be the bigger man and suicide your units by moving them out of bounds.
___________________________________________________________

Here's a list of things that I would like to hear from anyone who is kind enough to help beta test this:
-Is the concept okay? Is the implementation okay? What part of the UI is cumbersome?
-Are there any game-breaking glitches/imbalances?
-Is Kills 2 Cash too generous/too cheap?
-Should I keep the build times at 6, or would faster times be preferred? (They will mess up the unit wireframes)
-What should be the actual unit costs? What would make it balanced? (They are at default melee costs at the moment)
-Do hotkeys break?
-Finally and most importantly, would you play this on your own if not asked to beta test?

[attach=6500]

Attachments:

Post has been edited 15 time(s), last time on May 25 2010, 2:53 am by Aristocrat.

Remember to offset your SCV and command center a little so that the tanks wont be shooting it
Or maybe replace the "random/not random" system with civilians instead of tanks?

That SCV should not be there to start with, lol. Should have added a trigger to kill and refund SCVs that are built there.

UPDATE:
-Fixed Zerg Egg Crash bug.
-Fixed Siege Tank Transfer bug.
-Fixed Liftoff Terran dupe bug.
-Fixed infinite devourer/guardian bug.
-Fixed multideath bug (may put it back in as a feature, I like the effect)
-Fixed round loss bug.
-Fixed instant repair bug.
-Modified supply caps.
-Modified round start system; a countdown timer will auto start in the event that someone is AFK.
-Fixed CC not invincible bug.
-Probe limit lowered to 4.
-Costs revamped. Units now only cost minerals.
-You can no longer use Recall to glitch units out. The spell had no use anyways.
-Zerg available supply modified.


CURRENTLY EXISTING BUGS:
-Drone cancel after round end for +1 win bug.
-Still no refund for overmaking units.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on May 14 2010, 1:36 am by Aristocrat.

UPDATE 3:
-Fixed bunker garrison bug.
-Units now start with full energy and hangar count.
-Dark Archon spell costs changed to compensate for lack of energy.
-WAVs added.
-Costs tweaked.
-Unit build times decreased.
-Brief tutorial/instructions provided.
-Rounds will now automatically start.
-Arena redesigned.
-Spawns are now random.
-Nuclear missile cost fixed.
-Suicide area now marked clearly.
-Scanner sweep energy cost reduced.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on May 18 2010, 1:32 am by Aristocrat.

Alright.

At the moment you have a positive feedback response giving the winner money each round he wins. This gives the winner an easier time to win the next round. I suggest removing this and rewarding the losing players money each round. To keep an incentive to actually win rounds, reward the player who accumulates x wins something (e.g. victory).

Also, it would be cool to limit the amount of units you can purchase per buying timer to something like 10 units. You could use this by making each unit cost 10 gas, and only giving the players 100 gas per round -unless you cannot do this and need gas for your triggers somehow. If not, then you'd also want to add in a max amount of minerals a player can accrue; you don't want a player making more money than he can spend per round if you limit the amounts of units you can buy in a round. The purpose for limiting the amount of units you can buy per round is just to lower the effectiveness of OMG SPAM LOTS OF GOONS, or spamming lots of any unit for that matter.

I also suggest adding in a "clear this slot" function for when players start maxing out their slots and can't buy any more units.

When a player morphs an archon or dark archon it is lost when the round is over due to the way your triggers are set up. Could you possibly modify the units on the boxes to match the amount of archons a player has? Say, a player gets one archon, remove two HT from box and replace with archon. Player has 2 archons, remove one more. The only time this would screw up is if one archon dies before another starts to meld, in that case, the player would still have their two HT. Instead you could possibly detect deaths of archons and at the end of the round modify the HT//Archon count for the box used that round.

I like being able to form alliances.

The vision of an observer when used in combat "flickers" for some reason. Say I have an observer over a player's DT. I would see that DT for about a second, then not see it for a second, then see it again. This happened the last time we played -although I can't remember if it did that throughout the entire map; this seemed to go away later on when my observer just plain constantly detected units -but I can't remember if it went away or not. I just ended up using scanner sweeps to make up for how sucky the observer detection was.

The random units reminds me of Squad Support, which was absolutely epic.

Have fun with this. It looks nice.

Also consider using more actual tree doodads for encouraged micro of placing units under them for cover.

Lastly, consider making all upgrades instantaneous except for armour and attack upgrades.

Do something about the controlable units in the slots (remember my valkyrie)... Maybe give every unit to neutral but the eggs that made SC crash before moving them.
Also, when a slot is full, I think you should move the unit to a slot with room and just give the error message once the sum of units there = 16*25+1 (+1 means the unit placer).

While you were AFK, l)ark_ssj9kevin said there should be a slot cleaner function... that's not a bad idea, uh?

Are your WAVs really compressed? Perhaps you still can greatly reduce the filesize.

Another thing... consider killing/removing non-offencive units once they're all that's left, like observer.
By the way, what would happen if there were only two spider mines in the field, each from a different player? =o

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on May 15 2010, 2:15 am by adeon. Reason: Oh, my english...

The slot cleaner thing is your dragoon; it has 25k attack, so it can 1-hit any unit in the slot. I can add slot cleaner and combine with refund, but I need to know if prices are balanced. The WAVs are MPQ wavs so they do not take up room.


Great idea. My trigger was actually originally set up like that, but I wanted to spam goons, so...

I'll restore the more minerals for losing players thing.


I have no idea how to detect if a player has only medics/only spider mines and stuff like that without massive triggering. I can add a manual round ending function. 2 spider mines... I hope that doesn't happen.

EDIT> Remember that this is only one of six or so potential arenas; this one is mainly flat ground to simplify things. I am open to ideas about thematic designs for other arenas .

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 15 2010, 3:00 am by Aristocrat.

Oh, remembered one detail: it'd be nice if you centered the screen to the base once the round is over.

Don't think there should be massive triggering. A single trigger with conditions "all players bring exactly 0 <unit> to tempfield", for <unit> is every offensive unit possible for zerg/terran/protoss (which I think is about 40), is enough, just kinda boring to do. This way you can also prevent special units like spider mines from glitching the game.

Just a thought: since the map is quite huge (in dimensions), you could enhance the dynamic by filling the grass field with more arenas - some smaller, others bigger, few convoluted, one empty ... something like that.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on May 15 2010, 3:23 am by adeon. Reason: typos -_-

Done.

Oh, I just realized that the civilians force a round to start. So we won't get the game stuck even in this release.

I'm kind of leaning towards keeping upgrade times as they are now, so we'll see what is done about that later.

As for Cecil's suggestion about the archon/dark archon thing, an archon is arguably much less useful than two HTs, so I need to price them separately. Zerg has creep colony to morph the Guardian/devourers, but what can I give P to price the archon/DA?

You can buy archons without melding?

Using a similar mechanism as how I allowed zerg to buy lurkers/guardians/devourers I can do that, but I need an idea as to what would be appropriate for it.

UPDATE 4:

----------BIG PATCH----------

-Zerg units made in a cluster will now be individually placed into slots rather than as a group, to aid with placing units in random slot.
-There are now three arenas with distinct terrain: 1 = flat ground, 2 = hill in middle, 3=ring of high ground.
-The arenas are now cycled every round.
-Default starting units have been substantially revamped for more balance.
-Some costs have been altered.
-Map revealers removed, meaning you are now affected by the fog of war. When you die, you enter observer mode for that round. Players' vision is reset to normal at the end of the round.
-[Dark] Archons can now be purchased by making Citadels of Adun and Templar Archives, respectively. Your archon purchasing probe is located to the left of your Nexus.
-Unit purchase between rounds is now limited. You can now only purchase up to 30 Control/Psi/Supply of units per round. (Devourers and guardians are only 2 food LOL)
-Income tweaked.
-Interface slightly improved.
-Fixed nuke message spam.
-Fixed larva kill bug.
-Fixed non-disappearing units exploit.
-Fixed no-win glitch.
-Fixed instant win glitch.
-Fixed AI spellcasting/shuttling/sieging glitch.
-Fixed disappearing siege tanks glitch.
-Units now start with 60% max energy instead of 100%, for balancing reasons.(120/200 without upgrade, 150/250 with)
-Fixed scarab move glitch.
-Fixed a crashing bug.
-Fixed vision glitch.
-Fixed stasis invincibility glitch.
-Fixed some typos.
-Fixed building nonremoval glitch.
-Fixed ZOMGLOLMASSARCHONSSPAMADINFINITUM.
-Fixed endless minerals.
-Fixed random units dying for no reason.
-Guardians and other sprite-using units will now be less likely to misfire.
-Rounds are now timed for 6:00 maximum; if no player has won by then, the player who controls the most units will automatically win.
-Added Banning system: 3 banners are required to eliminate player. (P1 starts with 3, all other players start with 1)
-You can now choose the creep colony morph type with a civilian.
-Creep colony cost increased to compensate for change.
-WAVs changed slightly.
-Optimized some triggers.
-Unit recycling improved to make hitting the map limit more difficult.

I have just finished playing this map for over half an hour, it's just awesome! It seems like none of the micros are the same.

It may need to be balanced a little more and intro was a bit fast but other than that, good idea and good map.

It's good to see a game that doesn't give an advantage to the winner, in fact, it disadvantaged the winner by giving 500$ more to those who lost, meaning that those that will win only does by being better at micromanaging units.

Keep the good work coming.

PS: I usually hate micro games.

Ok, it was pretty cool for a micro map. You need to make it more obvious how to remove units and add units to slots using the goon. Otherwise, it was pretty good. I'd remove any buildings left over in an arena at the end of each round, BTW.

UPDATE 5:

-Fixed several glitches caused by killing units that were supposed to be invincible
-Fixed boundary errors
-Buildings are now removed upon round termination and refunded.
-Unit costs have been tweaked slightly.
-Box limit increased to 40.
-Building costs and build times changed slightly.
-Tutorial now easier to understand.
-NEW FEATURE: Winners of a round are given a civilian to purchase upgrades/powerups with. (More incentive to win)
-You may purchase any of the following: Additional larvae, additional energy, mineral pack, invincibility on spawn, amongst others. Some purchases are disabled (for now).
-Fixed several Unit Unplaceable glitches.
-Made terrain slightly more micro-friendly in several locations.
-Added a much more awesome arena contributed to by ImagoDeo. Thanks!
-Cute, harmless critters added ;o (Inspired by UnholyUrine's CTF ;o)

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 25 2010, 2:53 am by Aristocrat.

I love the Critter! When I'm about to die and my enemies runs after me, I make them go right beside it so it kills them. Works most of the time.

Added an animated GIF of sample screenshots and a quick new patch:

-You can now purchase gas.
-Strings recolored.
-Critter should behave more... actively now.
-Fixed noninvinicible stasis glitch...again.

Attachments:

Oh, so you did use it. I wondered why you didn't send me any PM back. =]

Edit - I'd be happy to help you beta-test if you need more testers.