Released version 0.300 on HotS Beta.
The Caves are opened...

edit:

Updated to version 0.301 on HotS Beta.

I changed the damage system to work with "real" values (= floating point values like 0.532) instead of integers (= 1,2,3,...) as final damage amounts. Basically this is only interesting for resistances.
In addition to that, spells are now damaging the target for 25% of the spell's damage instead of dealing no damage, if the attack "missed" due to the chance to hit calculations. The spells that could be blocked before are still block-able.

I made these changes to help the Sorcerer in the early phase of the game. Also, this should encourage other classes to use a few spells here and there, if they managed to learn some. Spells are now reliably dealing damage instead of using a hit or miss mechanic.

As a result, a few monsters in the catacombs and caves like the Lightning Demon or Spitting Terrors' acid pool that spawns on their death might be too strong now.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Dec 17 2012, 12:40 pm by Ahli.

So I have a question. I was wondering how exactly you do get into HotS Beta without having pre-ordered HotS? If that is the only way you can, then I guess I wont be able to play the cave portion of the map.

Good work on getting them finished though, I am sure many players will be enjoying the new content you made.

I got into beta because I was one of the most active persons in my region's Blizzard forum mapmaking-wise. Also, I followed an invitation to Gamescom 2012 (in Cologne, Germany) by Blizzard in order to talk with their German community managers about editor and to give some arcade feedback. So, I was lucky.

Atm, I've the impression that there are like 50 people worldwide using HotS arcade. Not many arcade beta testers that published maps there are currently in HotS beta.

But my transfer is good for this project and the editor as I can implement/alter things much much faster and I find bugs/problems in the editor and hots which can be seen here.

I guess they are still randomly inviting players to the beta. Make sure you have the beta thing enabled in your battle.net account settings. Without it, you won't even be considered to be chosen. But the chances that you randomly get into a beta are small.

Pretty much every beta I ever got in was because of my previous work:
- SC2 beta due to old SCBW mapmaking friend
- D3 beta due to SCBW mapmaking friend & this project
- PoE beta due to SCBW mapmaking friend & this project
- DOTA 2 beta due to SCBW mapmaking friend
- SC2 1.5 Arcade Beta due to ... I don't really know, maybe this project, maybe Blizzard's mapmaking forum activity, maybe luck
- SC2 HotS beta due to activity in Blizzard's mapmaking forum and maybe this project

So... I could argue that I get into betas because I started SCBW mapmaking for battle.net 7-8 years ago and never stopped.

edit:
The easiest way to get into HotS beta is to preorder it. If you can't get into it, you might want to wait and play a better version of my map in 3 months. It's only ~12.5 weeks

edit:

news:

I'm working on sockets and gems.
- Sockets are displayed on mouse-over over item's picture in the UI
- every equipable item can have sockets
- I'm using D2 runes and gems as a base, but I need to alter it as I don't use the same gameplay mechanics
- Sockets can already spawn on items

TODO for gems/runes:
- add socket generation code to unique item spawn
- implement logic for gems/runes to be added into socket slots properly (it will use the crafting UI with the green star)
- add socket display feature to party player inspection window
- add gem/rune drops
- add effects for gems/runes
- add effects to item tooltip generation logic
- add UI to upgrade gems and runes & its logic

I might add a few new possible effects into the game like extra gold from monsters...

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Dec 23 2012, 4:17 pm by Ahli.

I have a few questions for the diablo tristram community and for the creator.

Is there any guarantee that our characters and items will transfer over to heart of the swarm and other future updates?

Is there a list of all the items currently in the game? I like to see how my items compare to the most epic items in game.

Is there a forum or channel or website for the players to talk about trades?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 27 2012, 9:39 am by muzzy.

There is no guarantee that I won't ever make a total reset, but I try to avoid such a scenario.

The base items are very close of being identical to diablo 1.
There are only a handful of unique items right now.
The magic affixes are comparable to D1's ones with much more loose occurrence rules on items. So, for example, you can find armor/helmets/rings/amulets that gives you life steal.

No. Also, don't invest to much into trading as the current system is flawed and there is no ingame trading UI coded.

Improvements:
1. more bosses (solo bosses and party bosses)
2. more gold base drops or higher frequent gold drops
3. increase amount of quest to give the game more variety and more purpose for grinding
4. have higher level dungeons
5. add leggings slot? or glove slot?
6. increase inventory slot to a 5 x 10 grid or 6 x 10 grid
7. customize hotkeys for players
8. bigger dungeons?
9. increase monster spawn rate?

Glitches:
1. when i switch equipment, there is a small item description blob that doesn't go away unless i swap items or play around with item movement.
2. when a magma demon is killed, its body is expanded 10 fold and blocks 80% of my screen. it goes away when the body finishes dying

Let me know what you think about these improvements/glitches

I don't differ between solo and party bosses. However, more bosses might be good in higher difficulties once I finished normal. But maybe making the rare monsters more interesting would be a better approach.

In which area are you?
I only felt that you are poor only in the beginning phase of the game.

I will implement all original quests. After finishing the default game, I will look into adding custom quests.

Cave levels are available on HotS. Further dungeons would need to be added into a second map. Maintaining 2 maps using 1 system and expanding that system might become difficult, so it takes a lot of time until I add Hell levels.

I might do that some day in future. I would add the D2 slots. This would require heavy image modifications to keep the current inventory style.

That's something I plan to do. It requires me to alter the inventory screens.

Which hotkeys especially? Only the QWERT ones?

Make Blizzard allow bigger maps than 256x256.

Quite a few people already hate that monsters wander and respawn. So, I don't think that I will raise the respawns.

SC2 engine bug. I made Blizzard a small test map a few weeks ago because it's still present in HotS beta. It's likely that they fix it until HotS release.

I think I fixed it in my HotS version. It only appears with "low" model graphic settings. You could try to use "high" instead, if it is too annoying.

I just posted a short writeup about random dungeons in my map at sc2mapster.

You can find it here.

Bug report, 4 players:

- The zombie death animation's scale is twice as big I think.
- A player picked up a certain gem and it disappeared and then he got the error message "can't DrawItem because y is 6" everytime he'd do an action, and his inventory was bugged out. When we rm'd, he'd get a red error talking about "error loading item". The bug went away after 1 minute in-game of the rm.
- One of the players would take the town's portal to Catacombs lvl 1 but would end up in Cathedral lvl 1. It worked fine for the others.
- The "Party" menu still doesn't work.
- The Chest Quest in Catacombs lvl 1, the one with "Blood" and something else written in Red when you hover. Once we opened the room behind it (no idea how), the chest never showed its "Open" animation.
- I couldn't repair my "Dread Fletch - Composite bow" after a while somehow. (Happened after I applied a stone that changes it from Blue to Yellow item I think.)
- Sometimes my rogue chains about 10 attack animations rapidly after I killed a monster.
- Poisoned water quest couldn't be completed somehow. Maybe the TP counted as a monster?
- TPs are sometimes bugged because they stack each other. I would click someone else's TP, but yet enter mine.
- Rogue's "Lightning Trap" spell doesn't work.
- Blood Stone's death animation takes the whole screen because it is so big. Reduce the scale. They also reduce the lighting surrounding them and it looks quite dark. Not sure if it's intentional.

It was a real pleasure to play your map once again. Keep up the good work.
I wish you'd keep updating on WoL.

Here is the Rogue I started a few hours ago. She's simply too overpowered now, haha.


Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 31 2012, 8:20 am by payne.

I fixed these 2 days ago. You can use the high model settings to "fix" it for now.

"y" is a coordinate that determines where the item is within the inventory. 6 is not valid. Where did he pick up the gem?
The inventory tries to draw the item and fails. But it shouldn't "bug out" in that case. =/
Anyway, he shouldn't have had an item with y=6 within his inventory in first place...

Was that item in his stash before?
I think with gem, you mean a crafting material (stones & oil)?
Was he able to see it before? What did he do with it?

What the hell?
Well, I can try to look into it, but... that's really super strange.

Can you try to give me a hint what could be wrong with it?

It's a placeholder. It's the pedestal of blood. It should be a pedestal that has an increased blood level within it after each added blood stone. Atm, it looks 3 times like a chest.

You added a curse magic to the item.

Maybe I will look into it and try to avoid it.

Never happened before. TP can't count as a monster. It's most likely that you missed the last monster behind some rocks.
I've a global variable that saves the monsters in the unit group. When the dungeon is loaded, the created monsters are added to it. After each kill, the remaining monster count is checked.

Hmm, I will see what I can do about it.

How "doesn't work" it?
Atm, it's supposed to set a trap on the ground that has a small prepare time (animation that makes it bigger). Then, after an enemy comes close to it, it charges (animation, green waves around) and then it hits units around. I intended adding a lightning from the trap to the hit monsters, but that was buggy and I didn't make a workaround, yet.

Great bow.
Well, then you will see a few more things in March... like sockets, gems, caves, more reliable spells...

Also, I think I enabled replays... can I have them? It might give me some hints what is going on.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Dec 31 2012, 10:53 am by Ahli.

I tried to ask him questions, but he couldn't remember. They were not playing the game with the "tester awareness".
He picked up the "gem" in some Catacombs level, near the bottom left I think. It was either from a monster or a chest I guess. That's all I know about it.

"Inspecting" the first player, I think the menu disappeared and I had to press two times the "Party" button to show the menu again. You are probably having a trigger that hides the dialog without changing a "Button State" variable.
For the second player listed, it would show my own inventory.
Third player had dropped I think.

That's what I thought, but it didn't mention anywhere that the item was now non-repairable.

I think it happened mostly after killing archers.

Maybe a spawned monster through chest might bug things out? Or a summoning spell (no idea if we had any)?
We were 4 players and ran everywhere in it for quite a while, and I swear there wasn't a single monster left.

The trap would be dropped, and would expand, but then it'd do nothing and disappear.

We played for many hours. Good luck finding stuff in there.
http://www.mediafire.com/?ucqxxtsjfstrxny

I watched the replays and spotted a few things.
- The dark passage bug is really strange. I made a few changes to make the code more reliable and not dependent on item creation code to finish. Sadly I can't check for trigger errors in replays as far as I know.
- The item display error item dropped from another player's kill and he died. But I can't change the current time in the replays because its crashing sc2 for some reason. But that doesn't explain how it received that value. I'm clueless right now. =/

Ahli, what would you think of adding "partial repairs" for people how don't have enough money to repair their item-down-to-1-durability-that-would-cost-thousands-to-repair?

Hmm, I could do that I think.


^ potion models, gems

Sockets only show when you hover over the item.


^ a gem is as complex as in D2

The gems' character level requirement is used in the item, if the item's one is lower.
Gems raise the sell value and buying price, but they aren't used to calculate the item repair costs.

edit:

^ now with socket amount within the tooltip and in name, if there is nothing that blocks it in the name

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jan 3 2013, 9:51 pm by Ahli.

What are blood stones used for?

In the above reply, what are the different colored stones (blue, green, purple, grey, red, gold)?

Blood Stones belong to a quest that is started in the same level.

The colored stones in the screenshots are gems that can be inserted into socketed items to add/improve the properties of an item.
The second screenshot shows the tooltip of one.

How can a player obtain those gems to change/improve items?

They will be dropped by monster.
Some NPC will be able to upgrade the gems. I'm not sure which one I should give that interface.

Updated to version 0.302 on HotS Beta.

edit:

news:
- I improved the speed of the hero page switching in the load hero menu. Heroes will be loaded during loading screen now, so that one is slightly slower.
- Fixed some more bugs, mostly during the main menu like trigger errors due to hotkeys or you were able to drink potions of your hero that you looked at in the loading menu.
- I made small adjustments to the level loading and unloading to hopefully make them more even and unloading maybe slightly better in performance.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 9 2013, 6:59 am by Ahli.

can we play this game in heart of the swarm beta?

If so, will the characters carry over from the beta to heart of the swarm?