Since I don't think anybody noticed my map, I guess I'll have to "advertise" it here. I'll try to highlight the main features of the map as concisely as I can...


Items

They are, in my opinion, the most "outstanding" feature of the map; each item is represented by a transport (sword is a shuttle, armor a dropship, shield an overlord and helm is Yggdrasill). Each unit loaded into the transport represents an enchantment (each unit takes only one of the eight slots). Since there are 10 different enchantments, there are therefore 30745 different such items.

The enchantments loaded into a weapon are randomly determined and their number follows a normal distribution with a mean proportional to the level of your character and the enemy you are fighting.

Also, "unique" items will be incorporated into the game. They will not be represented by transports but will require you to be of a certain alignment to be used (alignment will be discussed later).

Aside from items you can equip, there are also potions. In all, there are 21 potions (19 are available now, 2 more will be implemented later). Potions can be blended together to obtain others. Every blend produces a potion. However, most blends will produce "odd mixtures": a potion that produces a random effect (including death).


Attributes

Players need to improve 4 different attributes (attack, defense, health and energy) and 6 different spells every level. Attack and defense are not increased with upgrades; attack reduces the shield points of enemies and defense increases your own (shield points do not regenerate at intervals; they are fixed at a certain value).

Unlike most games, all spells are not flashy ways of dealing damage. In fact, none deals direct damage; spells modify or restore your attributes temporarily.


Dialog

Dialog is interactive and requires you to make choices. For example, in the first quest a dying man asks you to retrieve a reagant that can save him. Once you retrieve the reagant, you can choose to give it to him or eat the reagant yourself (which increases your health). Although those choices will not modify the storyline in the long run, they will provide you with different rewards and enable you to equip different items (as discussed earlier: if you are "good", you will be able to equip good-aligned weapons and the same goes for evil).

The game involves a lot of reading, whether it's from talking to NPCs or reading journals scattered throughout the dungeons.


Boss battles

Bosses are not simply overpowered versions of the regular units. They have attack patterns which are often randomly determined. The first boss is fairly easy: he teleports to random locations of an arena where you have to chase him, running through bound-ish obstacles in the process. The second displays a more erratic behavior but is still fairly easy: he teleports to a random location of the arena then randomly selects one of spawning enemies, jumping to a region, destroying everything in a certain radius, and transforming into a "fireball" and chasing you for a time.

Rewards from bosses are far better than those you would get from quests, chests or defeating enemies.


Puzzles

There are a few easy puzzles though they are not the main focus of the game. In the first and third dungeons, for instance, you need to solve certain (very easy) riddles in order to unlock chests. In the second and fifth, there are four switches controlling four traps (traps are represented by explosions--you can run through the slower ones but some can only be crossed by using the switches); you have to trigger the switches you have uncovered in a certain sequence in order to gain access to the next switch,the end of the dungeon or a hidden chest.


Multiplayer

Though you can play with up to three other players, I strongly advise that you play in single player until you have mastered the game. The difficulty of the game increases with the amount of players (more monsters spawn, bosses have more health, you need to kill more creatures to level up and rewards are harder to get).

However, some features make cooperation very easy. For instance, several players attacking the same enemy will all get rewards of the same magnitude, regardless of who actually kills the enemy. Also, in that case, only the highest attack of the players currently attacking that enemy will be taken into account to determine the amount of damage dealt.


Please comment.
Download it here.

Alright, I haven't finished this yet, I just started playing. What i have to say so far Is that the dialogue is freakin great very... disturbing sort of atmosphere. Controls are pretty straightforward and the terrain is really awesome for installation with this sort of subject. Great job so far, looks really nice.

Great. I'm glad you've enjoyed it so far. I appreciate your comment and further feedback, whether negative or positive, would be just as appreciated.

I tried playing this with 1 player, and it was pretty difficult, and I died pretty early

I think the atmosphere is very good, and the dialogue is pieced together beautifully. I'd need to play this with friends before I can give you anymore comments.

Interesting attack upgrade system, but there's a glaring drawback that when playing multiplayer the attack upgrades have to be shared, which in my opinion is bad enough to force single player or change the system itself.

The atmosphere is very good. I like the use of sound effects a lot, and the writing adds a lot to the map. The terrain is very creative even if it isn't entirely clean. One thing I did not like was that you did not mute non-trigger sounds. It is annoying to hear unit speech every time I build a unit at my gateway or my stargate. I don't want to have to change my sound options just to play a map. Also, why are all those burrowed units visible?

The equipment system impressed me a great deal. It is very innovative and has a lot of potential. The variable damage via shields is an idea that has been floating out there for a while now, but this is the first time I have seen it put to good use.

Your interaction system is inconsistent though... Why is it that sometimes you build a scout to choose [option 1] and other times you build a carrier instead? I also recommend playing a sound and clearing the screen of text after someone exits a conversation.

I also wish that you would consolidate the item/equipment/attribute area a little better. It takes up so much space, and it is annoying to have to go back and forth between them whenever I get items. I ended up hotkeying the areas with shift+f2, f3, f4, but there are only 3 location hotkeys and you have 4 screens to keep track of.

The main problems that I had with the game are that it is incredibly frustrating. I had to restart several times because I got a bunch of worthless drops. In most of my games, I'd get repeats of equipment, too much gold, or not enough potions. There are too many fights that you cannot avoid, and the fighting is incredibly dull. You basically stand there and exchange blows for 10 seconds. It would be nice if I could avoid fighting if I am low on health, but the enemies spawn right in front of you and chase you down if you try to run.

Puzzle/adventure games are naturally slow and methodically paced. I am a fan of adventure games, so I'm fine with the exploration and the thought-heavy elements of your map. However, when you add in battles that take too long and bound-style obstacles that make you sit around waiting for an opening, it becomes slower than I can bear. I recommend the following things to help make it less frustrating:

• Have enemies that are preplaced so you can avoid a fight if you have to ...OR...
• Make it so that enemies won't chase you if you want to run away.
• Allow certain traps to be shut off permanently. This is so the player doesn't have to walk through the same obstacle 10 times while he's trying to figure out a puzzle.
• Change the unit stats a bit so that battles aren't so long/punishing.
• Reduce the role that randomization has on the map. Having to restart simply because you are unlucky makes you wonder if it's all worth the time and effort.

I think you have created a map with a very solid foundation, but there are issues that take the fun out of the game. These are just one person's opinions, though, so take from it what you will. I hope I don't come off sounding like a jerk here because I really respect the work you've done. It's certainly cooler than anything I've ever made

The game is much more difficult in multiplayer. Playing with friends won't really help.

Attack is only shared if you're adjacent to someone. If several players are attacking different creatures at different places, they keep their respective attacks. However, since venturing away from the party is nearly impossible, I'll have to change the system so that all attacks will be summed instead of only taking the highest in consideration; I'll also have to increase the health of enemies in proportion to the amount of players.

Unit sounds are muted. There must be something wrong with your sound settings.

By default, making no scouts (then confirming by making a carrier) selects choice 1. Also if there are X choices and you make more than X scouts it will select the last choice by default. It's not inconsistent, it's just meant to handle errors.

I understand what you're saying. I personally could not assess the difficulty of the game well since I already knew exactly where to go, how to solve puzzles and so on. I'll only place bound-obstacles around optional chests or in areas that you won't have to go through too many times. As for the enemies, I'll lower their stats a bit(but not too much since I personally never found them to be difficult when using the right amount of potions and spells). I'll also try to stop them from chasing you.

Also, you said that you found the inventories to be difficult to access but you don't have to look at most of them. For potions, you only have to make units in your gateways to use the most important ones (rebirth and restoration are not acessible through it but they are seldom used anyway). If you really want to access your inventories alot quicker though, you can always hotkey your cocoons (the "give item to player"s). For spells, you can just order the spell in question to move to your location without ever having to look at it.

Thanks for your feedback everyone. I'll do my best to fix the issues you've been facing.

This is fun, but hard as heck Still trying though

I agree on the randomness. If you don't get an armor or health potion in the few first drops you can't get any further. The bounds are annoying, really. The puzzling is a matter of taste, but too long for me though. Unit speech isn't disabled. The whole inventory block is huge. Also the info on level up says you get +1%HP, should say +50 because I thought it would be 5(stupid I know ). Well that's for the bad things, I pretty much liked everything else.

This game is god damned impossible... I really think you should start with more hp, and dieing to the bound traps makes you lose 1 shield!!! That sucks!! I'm terrible at bounds and i don't really see why its in here but... as Gigins said if you don't get armor or a health pot you are dead. Why didn't you use the DT hero Zeratul?

Put a preserve in the mute unit sounds trigger. Loading a save file will have it default to unmuted.

This map is so awesome even though its extremely difficult. More of the reason to play with 4 people. Lots of professionalism here too.

I just updated the game. In response to your comments, I made it much easier. The following things were also changed:

-Attack in multiplayer is summed instead of taking only the highest score into account.
-Obstacles are now only present in optional areas or those you only have to pass through once.
-Enemies do not chase you if you run away.
-Spells can be used with barracks.
-Every point in energy yields 2 gas and each spell costs 1 gas to cast.
-Unit sounds are now muted 100% of the time.
-Your current choice is indicated by the shield points of your stargate.

Also, to those who had trouble with the bound-obstacles, note that their location is always indicated by landmarks (odd shadows on floor terrain and dead marines on substructure). I hope that helps those with no coordination whatsoever.

Thanks for your feedback and especially to qpirateking who actually gave me ideas to make the map better.

Ok here's a few things you need to fix.

• You can lift off barracks. Instead of having 3 stacked barracks just have 1 and remove/create it as it's lifted. But since the only buildable tile is unwalkable, you'll get the building exit blocked message all the time. Maybe Punish lifters this way. Or maybe use robotics facility for spells, only bad side is that you'll have only 3 options.
  
• You can lift off Science Facility. Since upon lifting SC renders the tile buildable you can actually land back on those stacked building. But you can't land on the very bottom tile of the map, so the covert ops doesn't connect back on and you can't build ghosts. Just place it in a clear place and do the remove/create thing.
  
• Protoss Forge, Protoss Fleet Beacon, Terran Science Facility, Terran Cover Ops, Protoss Templar Archives and Terran Academy has their default names. Change them to "Buildings" or null or whatever, just don't leave them default.
  
• Ocular Implants, Moebius Reactor, Titan Reactor, U-238 Shells and Caduceus Reactor can be researched. Disable them.
  
• Why did you make the map 256x256 if you're using like 5% of the space? You should change it to 256x64 or 256x96.

You're right. I just forgot about those things. They'll be fixed in the next update.

I intended to make more levels but I'm currently busy with another project. After several weeks I usually lose interest in a map and start making a new one, even though the first isn't complete. I guess I could make more levels as soon as I'm finished(or lose interest) with my current project and only if some players manifest interest in it.

Anyway, if those were the only issues you noticed then I'm very happy since they're not very important and don't really affect the gameplay in any way.

I like the whole hero equipment system (attack/defense) using the air units. It's very flexible. Cool beans bro. I know when i play fallout I usually try to press all the options that don't end a conversation first. It's just a think i do. I like to read all of those things. Good job on doing this (not really a lot of options but the option exists so it's better than nothing ;0).

Haven't beat it yet but having the units re spawn because I'm going back and fourth in a stage kills it for me. I also don't like the amount of bounding in here but other people like bounds so yea, I'm just not one of them.

Also I don't under stand what the barracks is called. Apparently HLN = heal?

Mute unit speech isn't working after save, still.
The skip intro is kinda hard since the screen is constantly centered, so is the cursor.

Only when you play singleplayer. Use an empty LAN game.