@Payne: their are a couple reasons why I want to keep it single-player.

Call me old fashioned (or perfectionist) but the design brief I set myself for this project was to make a really fun map that doesn't require more than one player. Furthermore, I have limited the tileset to 152x176, the reason for this is to reuse regions and areas for multiple quests and plot events. I am aiming for around 3 hours of real-time gameplay per run through, and this is assuming the player starts at level 0, and completes 75% of the side-quests. Additionally, I am considering a 'Hard-Core' mode, where, like in Diablo 2, if you die, it is game over. The real challenge will be to utilise the space available in the map, to create a diverse plot-line and quests that change the surrounding... Such as outposts becoming infested, you clear it out, then SCVs rebuild it and colonists repopulate it... Or, if it is infected for too long, then the Protoss come and purify it and the radiation creates new enemies and mobs etc... Purely examples at this stage however.

Another, sort of arbitrary reason is that whenever I played an online RPG for Warcraft 3 - my memory of it was me being a low leveled nooblet, and then the other players all being level 100 with godlike inventory and 30,000 hitpoints... I just didn't enjoy playing in that sort of environment. In the rare occasion where their would be another nooblet playing with me, they would get bored and leave :s.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 2 2010, 9:55 am by Cardinal.

Quick update:

This is the intro music for the beginning cinematic. I am using the first 50 to 60 seconds of this song by The Aliens, it is called Daffodils and is on their album Luna. If you like what you hear, I'd definitely recommend checking them out, particularly this album and Astronomy for Dogs.

as long its top down there should be absolutely no reason that it shouldn't Payne >:O Btw i went naked this Halloween

Status report. Gonna keep this brief

1. Alpha release (for SEN only) will have 7 playable missions. All missions offer a choice in:
a) how to do the mission and
b) you get to pick your reward for completing said mission

2. The ammunition system is looking great. Dual wielding two pistols will make the gun twice as effective (duh) but also eat up twice as much ammunition (duh duh)

3. I've added a custom user interface... nothing major... just a status and health bar.. I don't want you using that minimap to see how I've created so much content in such a small map ...

and now on to the not so good stuf..

1. Turns out that creating stackable items is a pain in the giblets. I might resort to a temporary workaround in which quest items, and ammunition are handled like Items, but do not show up in your inventory. You'll just get a boring counter integer variable instead...

2. Balancing... this is where you lot come in! With all these weapons, ammunition types, different mobs, different drops, mission rewards, a night/day system, needing to sleep etc... ALL of this needs rigorous playtesting and balancing...

Usually when I make a map I like to perfect each new implementation as I go... But in the last week or so, it has become painfully apparent that if I were to continue doing this - the map will be ready for Starcraft 3. So, my new methodology is implement, design and implement some more. The initial balancing and first coat of polish will be added just before I go to alpha and the rest of it will come after Alpha.

I plan for Beta to have 25 'missions' in total.. I call them missions because quests sounds a bit dated.. 7 of these are 'Main Missions', the other 18 are separated into Jobs, Tasks and Side-Missions (side-quests)... I intend to create between 2 and 3 hours of game-play in this map. I'm afraid to say a little bit of this time (maybe 10%) will be taken up with cut-scenes and cinematics. They're cool tho, so don't worry.

The Beta release will be to test the additional features and missions, and also to balance the final outcome of the game.

Without getting everyones hopes up, I have set the Alpha release for January-ish 2011... and a Beta in March 2011...

Take note: Cinematics get extremely annoying and makes the replay value decrease if you force players to watch them multiple times.
Solution: Use Banks to determine if the player has already seen the cinematic. Or you could simply add a "Skip Cinematic" option.

Just play NOTD, a map on B.Net, a few times, and you should understand. (Though I haven't played this map for a while, when I used to play it a lot, it had a few cinematics that were really annoying and kinda useless.)

Oh, 90% of them you can skip, of course.... nothing is more boring than repetitively watching a cinematic...

I use a lot of camerfa objects when you are talking to npcs and discussing quests or even buying/selling items. I didn't want the map to be 3rd person, or top down - but i still want to show off the awesome terrain!

Any updates?

You should probably put some hidden godly weapons in the game

Oh.. don't worry.. you can hack into a Dominion Security Terminal and that unlocks an Ion Cannon as your weapon ... a big fuck of huge satellite that orbits the planet unleashing stupid amounts of damage

Oops.. not so secret now, it'll still be hidden though

Ummm... EPIC WIN

Edit : you should start to class weapons as certain items can be mistaken

What do you mean 'start to class weapons'?

You mean the Tooltips are misleading?

Any ideas on how I can make it clearer?

Note: I typed this up as a rough draft. I also tried to avoid as many spoilers as possible (and as such, it looks pretty bland/generic).

Description : Pistols, bigger is better
Class : Pistols
Damage : 1337

you get what I'm trying to do here