Lets talk about true Desert Strike history (and about why I prefer DS with conditions I explained here: http://www.staredit.net/topic/14271/#305781 ). Please note, that this history is only history from my eyes, so if you want to be added in this topic as a creator of some special version of DS - please post comment. Now I will talk only about "key" maps from my opinion, the maps related to me and the maps which I played most. Also this topic was created because of some interesting discussion here http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/player-zone/map-suggestions-requests/24883-desert-strike-with-bw-wc3-sc2-units/#p1 so I will also explain my opinion about gameplay of different Desert Strike variations. So let mortal kombat begin:

2007: The WC3 Castle Fight creators created Castle Fight (I dont know exact year, but as I remember - it was 2007)

July 2008: My friend showed me Castle Fight gameplay in WC3 and I decided to make it in BW

August 2008: first release of Castle Fight in BW by me. I created next idea:

group spawn in a single place
gas=money (faster income)
some buildings=specials
nuke (boom in DS)=civillians
bunkers+sunkens+cannons=attackers
special spawn triggers by giving buildings to neutrals and back and spawning units in "pool" (spawn buffer)

If you want - you can download and check my BW Castle Fight there: http://theleo-ua.livejournal.com/
Just host it on any server (I tried iccup, uswest, useast) and some people will join approximately in 1 minute. Please note, that first version of Castle fight had some different gameplay (in comparison to the last 7.31 version).


October (or November) 2008: NudeRaider played my BW Castle Fight, and created first Desert Strike on the planet. Here is the link to the latest offficial NudeRaider's Desert Strike: http://www.staredit.net/?file=2283

You can found defiler with name "idea: theleo_ua" in the center of this map. Also the forces named as "remake of CASTLE FIGHT".

And this map became most popular map in BW servers in 2008-2010. Any time you connect to batlle net (from November 2008 to December 2010), and press join - you will see "Desert Strike" as hosted game. Some people with NAT internet (they can host games, but no one can join to them) hosted games with names like "CREATE DESERT STRIKE PLZ!!!".

(please note that when I talk about popularity - I mean "Desert Strike" in general. NudeRaider's one was popular before the Queens one appear, then Queens one become most popular).

I really could not beleive, that my Castle Fight ideas will be turned (by NudeRaider) to Desert Strike - the most popular map (imho) of 2008/2009/2010! I should say big thanks to WC3 Castle Fight map makers, because precisely their map punched my brain to create SC version of Castle Fight in August 2008. Maybe they will create Castle Fight for SC2 in future. Also thanks to NudeRaier for playing my map in Autumn 2008 and creating the remake of it - Desert Strike:)

Also I should say that Nuderaider's DS meet most of conditions, described by me in this topic: http://www.staredit.net/topic/14271/#305781

But lets continue:


Spring (as I remember - it was spring) 2009: Queen-Gambit played NudeRaider's DS and decided to create a Queen one. Here is the example of Queen-like DS: http://www.staredit.net/topic/11001/0/

As I know - Queen-Gambit just take NudeRaiders DS, and changed landscape, balance, some triggers, fixed some bugs, added diagonal battle roads (instead of horisontal), changed forces name to "by NudeRaider / modified by Queen-Gambit" and changed critter's name from "idea: theleo_ua" to "Queen-Gambit" and "Clan WA - Hacking Losers" (btw - I dont know, who is clan WA, but it is really awesome to be as loosers in most popular BW map:) ). Also Queen-Gambit added "noob-friendly" features to the map: isolated platforms, silos, cannons near Fortess etc.

The most fun thing was that Queen's version became most popular DS (even more popular than NudeRaider's one). Every time I hosted Nuderaider's one, people said "host queen" or "host night". Another fun thing was, that most people know DS only as a Queen version, and even does not know it's mother (BW Castle Fight) and father (NudeRaider's DS).


June 2010: Devourer ported NudeRaider's DS to SC2: http://www.staredit.net/topic/11324/
But due to SC2 battlenet 2.0 map system it is very hard to find opponents to play it.


This is the end of the history, and now lets talk about my playing experience with these maps:

1) Castle Fight 7.31.
Example in BW: http://theleo-ua.livejournal.com/
Example in WC3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHilW80ZQ24&feature=related

This map (I mean BW version) is less balanced, than DS, but for me it is more fun to play Castle Fight, instead of DS. DS is truly balanced, but it became boring after 3-5 games (and next 3-5 games I want to play only after a month or later).

Tha main diffenrence in comparison to DS: invulnerable workers with damage 0, only 1 worker at a time, less units (1 zergling x8 power instead of 8 zerglings), so less lags, different spells, buildings/units costs and properties, the map is 2x smaller (64x64) and the units spawned for all players at a time (not like player 1 units, after 45 seconds - player 2 units and so on). So if one player left the game - his teammate will receive all his buidings (except gas) and will have faster income.

2) Nuderaider's DS 1.2.4
Example in BW: http://www.staredit.net/?file=2283
Example in SC2: http://www.staredit.net/topic/11324/

Pretty balanced (much better balanced than Castle fight), has horizontal battle line (and only single line), it is possible to move to enemy base (and attack it) with drones, it is possible (for cpu) to attack human's bases by cpu units (of course it happen very rarely - cpu need A LOT of units for this).

Every player has worker limit 3 (maximum 3 workers per player). The worker limit at enemy base is also 3 (if 9 workers will come to enemy base - 6 of them will be removed, and only 3 of them will left at the enemy base).

3) Queen's DS
Example in BW: http://www.staredit.net/topic/11001/0/
Example in SC2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGM3FujHR_k&feature=player_embedded

Imho it balanced even better than Nuderaider's one (I mean BW versions), because of fixing of unit's AI and a lot of cost/properties changes. But - there is some buts:

a) Diagonal battle lines
b) Silos
c) Isolated platforms

I played a lot of different Queen versions (slow, fast, night), and should say, that this versions are good (expecially if we talk about balance and unit AI), but it is much better, if you have horisontal battle lines (especially for my mind - it really annoying for me to watch diagonal wars - I prefer to watch horisontal wars. Imagine, that your monitor rorating by 45 degrees, for understand, what I mean), no silos and no isolated platforms. Silos is bad idea imho because you loosing original map concept with single building. Same about cannons near main buiding - why first zerglings should be killed?

But lets talk about most important thing - isolated platforms:

A) The late game's gameplay become a "spell wars". Because even 500 units on the map cannot kill your base (I mean human's bases - not Fortress), so you can wait for spell. These spell wars annoying imho.

B) Fun with rushing enemies with drones

C) Special strategies with drone or cannon rushing (for example if enemy team goes fast gas). Also special tactics like "save 1000 minerals, and only after this build gas, because if you will be rushed after this - you can build 3 drones for defence".

D) Cannon wars. Permanent thoughts about defence.

E) Forcing enemy team to waste boom if he cannot counter your drone rush.

F) Unit control skills (with workers).

So we will not have this ABCDEF fun with isolated platforms.

4) Devourer's DS
Example in BW: http://www.staredit.net/?file=2283
Example in SC2: http://www.staredit.net/topic/11324/

Never played it due to SC2 battlenet 2.0 map system (it is very hard to find opponents to play it), so cannot say anything.

Your opinion? Are you found something new or interesting in this post?

I should have voted for 'Queen', but I voted before reading the content of the post.

I don't actually get the purpose of this thread. The first part of the post seems to be about you and your accomplishments (which also seeps into other parts where you mention you got credit for things or had credit removed), and then the second part gives basic brief opinions about the maps.

I read the thread on SC2Mapster, as well, and I actually don't know what your post even has to do with Taco's comments. His point was that most of your suggestions for the SC2 DS has been done already, so what's the point of making yet another one when it already exists. Start with a fresh take on it. Your large response, in my opinion, comes off as a large advertisement for obsolete maps (note that by "obsolete" I mean in comparison to SC2 mapmaking on SC2Mapster) that no one who plays the SC2 DS cares about. If anything, it helps back up his claim that it has been done before.

So maybe I'm missing something due to the lack of structure in the OP, but I guess I don't quite understand why this is in SC1 Theory and Ideas, and what you hope to gain from this discussion.

I bet you voted for night:)


Purpose of SC2mapster thread is this: http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/player-zone/map-suggestions-requests/24883-desert-strike-with-bw-wc3-sc2-units/#p9
(9th comment)

Purposes of SEN thread are next:

1) Just information about DS history (not complete of course, due to millions of different versions, but with main things). The main "readers" supposed to be DS players, who like to play DS, but dont know how it comes to this world. Even comments to this are not necessary:)

2) Opinions: I explained my opinion about all main DS maps, and I want to hear others' opinions about this (also I created poll).

The "history" and "opinions" are combined, because imho it is much better, when you read not only opinions, but understand, why and how they are created. I think this way opinions transformed to something like "more full picture", than opinions only.

But, of course, the main purpose of this thread (in SEN) - is just a history. Opinions and discussion is just a second lower priority purpose.


Opinions about my ideas, opinions about readers' preferable maps and preferable gameplay. "History" part does not need a discussion imho (unless you have strong reasons to discuss it).


Please note, that I dont think that I must have a credits or else. You will laugh, but I very impressed, when saw, that Desert Strike said that idea is taken from my stuff. I dont thought so, so if NudeRaider would name that defiler like "map by NudeRaider", maybe this thread (and other all my threads about DS) would not appear. Only that defiler (btw it was kakaru in first versions) made me thought, that something in this map is really my ideas, and I really impressed because of this.

Also you should notice, that Queen took Raider's map and worked with it, but Raider does not worked with my map - he made his DS from scratch. If you compare Queen version to Raiders version - you can easily find some exact triggers and parts of the map, but if you compare my CF to Raider's DS - nothing is the same (even players' colors and hypertriggers), only some global ideas are the same.



The answer is this: http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/player-zone/map-suggestions-requests/24883-desert-strike-with-bw-wc3-sc2-units/?post=8
(comments 8 and 9).

If you still think, that "my post has nothing to do with Taco's comments" - then we have different opinions of the forum threads/comments purpose.


Becasue it is about "vintage" maps and general gameplay of DS maps (the general gameplay ideas does not care, BW this or SC2). SC2 and WC3 maps are linked just for comparison and for make a more full history of DS.


Anyway, thanks for the constructive opinion.

NudeRaider's older versions were sort of fun, Desert Strike Malinaz and Desert Strike Ultima-X had quite good AI.
I say "older" because Revolution was sort of.. meh.

But I'm a fan of Desert Strike Night Fixed due to its polishedness and the quite good AI.
It's also relatively fast paced in contrast to Queen's versions that just bored me to hell and took an hour to end.

Lanthanide's contributions to DS aren't on the post D=

I haven't really provided much in terms of raw ideas, though.

I'm simply not very good at coming up with good ideas from scratch. But I am *very* good at examining something and coming up with ideas on how to make it better, improve it and add player-friendly elements to make the map nicer to play (such as a boom cooldown so your team can't use 2 booms within 3 seconds of each other).

My changes in DS Night Fixed have generally all been iterative, and the only big change from Night is allowing players to build in each others bases. But so far I haven't really seen anyone doing this at all - I guess they don't understand it or see why it would be beneficial (I would have thought spawning medics with the zerg force would be an obvious application, for example).

the new version lets people build in eachothers bases?
medics are too slow to keep up with the zerg ground troops.

Maybe not in a pure speed race, but once the zerg units stop to fight, the medics will catch up. Also depending on the team makeup, the terran medics may spawn in the center of the zerg mass, which will slow down the units behind them.

The propagation of new or creative ideas isn't the only form of contribution.

m.0.n.3.y contributions to DS aren't on the post too.

There are a lot of DS versions, based both on Queen's and NudeRaider's ones, but imho they have no such global changes like "Castle Fight >>> Raider's DS >>> Queen's DS" - they only have cosmetic (boom cooldown in "Night fixed" or user interface at the start of the game in "DS ultima") or balance (costs/units/unit propertiers) changes. And I cannot say, that for example "Lanthanide's version is most popular today" or "m.0.n.3.y's version is most popular today" - I only can say, that "Queen-based versions are most popular today".

If you dont agree with me - please post in comments, what I should add and where.


If you told this to me, then I didnt get what you mean - could you please reexplain this in details?

Put LegacyWeapon's Sand Castle Wars on the list. Such a good map. Too bad he only map it to promote open mapping, and encouraged everyone to steal it and make their own completely lame and rigged versions.

NudeRaider made some good modifications. At least I liked it. He worked on that map before he created desert strike.

I like nude's DS the best, but as far as what he did to SCW's - it was an abomination.

Never played it and dont know anything about it. Could you please tell me:

1) Month and Year of the first map release

2) Short explanation of the gameplay and differences from DS

3) The reason, why this map is related to desert strike history (is this map had any influence to Raider's DS ?)

4) Any other information, you want to see in the start post

That's strange, because the more popular versions (DARK and DARK², others were NOT by me, just based on mine) of my scw mods encouraged use of player controlled units - particularly workers - to invade the enemy spawn area, which is also the main difference from my ds versions to others.

So did you just not like the entire DARK aspect (adding fow + revealer units) or are you referring to my method of fighting the unit limit which regularly destroyed games? The latter I wasn't happy with either btw. It was just a lame compromise to keep the game going.

Desert Strike is not related to SCW. Even though having similar game play the idea came in fact from CASTLE FIGHT. Despite this I named some early test versions Sand Castle light because I haven't come up with a name at this point but the file had to have *some* name and that's the only idea I had at the time.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 7 2011, 8:25 pm by NudeRaider.

First DS I had - was 0.98, so now I downloaded your "first" (not first, but closest to the first one) verison on DS from this post http://www.staredit.net/307148/ , opened it, looked to it landscape and triggers, and it reminded me the nostalgy when I made first ver of Castle Fight one. I dont know, what exact ver you played before creating DS, but I attached my first ver 1.0 (only zerg one) and earliest ver with 3 races (1.3) - you can compare. If you want - you can laugh about hypertriggers again (I noticed, that version 1.3 has incorrect hypers, so I need to copy "wait" 62 times, but I copied "preserve" by misclick).

BTW - nice landscape changing "Castle Fight >>> Sand Castle light v0,6.scx >>> DS 0.98"

P.S. Never played DS/CF: NudeRaider - nice joke

Attachments:

Pretty much. Except I don't know what you're talking about encouraging worker invasions. Worker micro - harassment was my favorite part about sand castle wars, and yours made it damn near impossible. That's my biggest gripe with it actually. I might have really gotten into DS if it had more of it.

Oh you mean that you need detection for the classic tank-tower variety (there's now also a sieged, uncloaked variety)? I'm not sure if you gave it a fair chance then. Because cloaked tanks are simply too expensive to be used to single handedly stop an SCV attack. Also Science Vessels are fairly cheap considering they completely counter them and the tech is the only expensive about it, or if you have an ally building it for you (or with the money you stockpiled while microing).

Also the fow gives you the chance to sneak in SCVs and/or probes using dropships. The enemy will know it only when you're already flown past their defenses. I've had plenty of interesting battles where both players built various tanks and tried to break through enemy lines and kill the other worker, etc. Yes, my changes expanded worker battles from pure micro to micro + tower battle and if that's your problem I can respect that. Can't make them all happy.


I just wanted to see the poll results so I chose something that didn't change the result.

I remember there was an uber glitch where i could get buildings on the bottom most part of the map... good times.