Or do it without the use of buildings entirely. But no, that's not what he's talking about.

There will be no buildings used to cast spells or choose heroes. That'll all be integrated into the UI. i mean when you take your hero to an outpost beacon and sit on it for 30 seconds to capture that outpost. We need a cool way to display how long you have left till it's captured, preferably more than text above it counting down from thirty.

Unless you're trying to avoid countdowns entirely, you could either show a progress bar that fills up over time in the UI itself, or you could do a simple (but cool looking) timer that pops up for everyone on the team rather than just the person capturing it. Other than that, I'm not sure what more you could do without a basic timer at some point.

Actor that displays a the progress to everyone (behavior with duration is a timer, else training progress [so I guess you can display both bars, raising and decreasing]).
You can make that visible to all players, too and I think you can force the display, too.

Maybe a flag that raises? Color that slowly changes (would need galaxy code + periodic actor messages that tint an actor)?

Hmm, those are some good ideas. What we really need is someone to make a map showcasing a bunch of those, as it's a fairly minor thing but there's plenty of people willing to help and right now we're too busy with more important things.

We've got some alpha terrain to show off and get some feedback on. It's not complete, but is still pretty good IMHO.

I assume the terrain texture blending will be redone and doodads will be placed at a later time, right?

EDIT:
Also, I may or may not have offered before but if you guys need help with anything specific that I may know about, I'm available.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 23 2011, 8:23 pm by DevliN.

There's some doodads there already, I believe. But yeah, there's still touching up to be done art-wise. What we're looking for is balance suggestions although suggestions to improve the art style would be good too.

Looks like the original ts v1

I like it.

@Devlin

Tell Jack's sister to stop being a stuck-up bitch
use whatever means possible

We'll keep you posted.

But, like I always say, any ideas offered are greatly appreciated.

Are the paths to the left south outpost balanced?
The middle left of the picture (the bridge and the land path left of the bridge) looks like it could be moved a little bit to the right.

I -really- don't like the middle. Seems way too small and not very dynamic (two cliffs lining up along side of it?).. The whole map seems really linear; maybe try to round it out next time you edit it?

Terrain looks extremely nice. i like it a lot. Seems vey cool.

Have you guys checked the balance of the terrain in terms of running around and such? After taking a closer look, some of the south-west region looks like it has tighter choke points from the north while it is wider from the east.

It ain't much of a choke point to me to be honest. But then again I haven't gotten the map and actually run out with a unit or something. But all i know is it looks nice. There is so much shit that looks extremly nice. I'd actually want to see this shit and test it. I'd also be free to help you guys out with anything you may need for the map, just let me know. And whats the map size? over 200x200? or below? It looks quite big imo.

Unless it was intentional, I've quickly circled a few places I was talking about:


Compare orange circles. The distance from the bridge to cliff in the north circle is much farther than the one in the south circle. The pathway is also much skinnier in the south circle in comparison.

Compare the red circles. The water next to the bridge in the north circle is so small, whereas the water area in the south is about 5x larger. The distance from the north-west starting area is also closer to the north bridge than the the south-east area is to the south bridge.

Compare the yellow-green circles. I started each circle at the middle cliff's north and east ramps, encompassed the paths to those ramps, and circled around the paths that lead to the center ramp. There's a clear difference between the two.

Also I just noticed that there a small path next to the bridge slightly east of the northern red circle. That path doesn't exist in the south, making it easier to get to the center area or the rest of the map from the northern side.

I also really don't like how the bottom outpost looks so secluded. Could you try to make the island's transition from whole to island a little smoother? Right now, 80% of the map is a lot of dirt, and then that tiny part completely breaks off with water everywhere.

This is what I personally want changed, and I'm talking to imago about that now.

We haven't play tested it much together. I assume imago's done some of that, but keep in mind this is a rough draft to a certain extent. He ripped out the entire island area and redid it because we didn't like what was previously there, so it'll be a bit imbalanced.

What's the reasoning for having the "Building Area" on the right??

Yea, just rotate the cliff's like 90degrees in middle so it looks more like m3.4, won't be as linear.
Fix chokes on bottom lane, especially near entrances to bases, too easy to gank, escape routes are way more spread than need be.
Looks like a mimic of ts7 more than v1, roughly..

The terrain setup was a slight problem with TS. If we're using SC2 as an excuse to remake it, or at least make some changes, I would do the terrain over. There were imbalances in TS because it was corner to corner and would have been better if it were left to right. I don't actually have SC2, so perhaps things are different now, but just mentioning it in case they aren't.

You should get SC2, or let someone give you SC2 as a gift.