I have to agree with this. But only because it's a battle you can't win; and probably shouldn't be able to, all things considered. It does suck to compromise on vision to accommodate playability (something I'm rarely able to do myself), but usually 'vision' is just a product of perception of what playability itself is supposed to be, anyway. You're really not compromising as much as you think, therefore.

If you understand my meaning.



As for the warp gates, just like Gear teleports in AG, those would fall under what I like to call the "tertiary" category. That basically means that you shouldn't rely on it to compensate for "primary" gameplay inadequacies (like the map's overall pace). It might be able to be made work for that purpose, technically (and theoretically), but it adds another learning curve hump and potential layer of awkwardness before it can become useful in practice. Just like things that make tutorial explanations (nearly) required before they can be understood (let alone adopted into strategy), you generally don't want that.

But I'll leave it to your creativity to figure out what you're going to do.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 11 2009, 5:10 am by Tuxedo-Templar.

Hmmm... Why one needs fuel to cost minerals at all? Make it mineral-free with the time being it's only cost. That way you should not bother about a way to activate fuelling and make it automatic. This simplifies much things.

but for those units that use more fuel as it is and usually the slower ones lose more time because they need to fuel up? That doesn't seem right at all. Where as a unit that can survive on minmal fuel can do so much more and move arround faster. This unblances consuption rates very badly.

Time required for fueling and fuel consumption rate are parts and parcels of ships overall balance. Fuel consumption rates differ a little from ship to ship, who said time for fueling should be the same?

I guess the initial idea of varying fuel consumption rates was equalization (by fuel) costs of flying certain distance. By the way, why not to make vice versa with certain fast ships having a very high fuel consumption rate and certain slow ships having a very low fuel consumption rate?

@killer_sss: If I did the Warp thing as Robo Facility, Shuttles would be fast & free for cycling your destination. (Shown with a ping).
The reaver would be used at the end as the button to warp to where you've selected by spamming shuttles.

@Tux: Er.. for the 'good games being rare' argument, i'll post that at the end.
About the idea of warp gates, my only motivation is the fact that I currently don't use the Protoss Robotics Facility. It's for the lulz.
However, I like your theory of "primary" vs. "tertiary" for maps in general. Just saying I'm not trying to fix game speed with this. It would be an option of trading minerals for faster travel basically, although would have some tactical uses as well.
I think the only really slow part of the game is at the start when everyone wants to mine minerals. I might increase the starting money, which is currently 31 minerals (just shy of being able to make an extra spawner) Or I might trigger a large meteorite sequence for the beginning of the game.

@Wormer: Versions prior to around 1.30 or so had the fuel "flipped" like that. I didn't like it. I suppose I could consider making it equal (*its impossible to make perfectly equal the way it's triggered right now but I could get it close with lots of testing.)

@Tux, @UnholyUrine, @anyone: About the good games being rare thing.

Because Tux quoted it again, I will repeat, that I, the creator, do not have some superior ability to have good games.
If you host, the noobs who refuse to read leave.
If I host, the noobs who refuse to read leave as well.

As for popularity defining if a map is good or not... well...
Lots of the maps I consider good, are difficult to have good games with. Not just Astrogears. BattleCruiser Command, Galactic Conquest, Armored Core, and some RPG's which are not guilty of having majorly slow gameplay or excessive walking without doing anything else. I would kind of argue my Great Wizards map too. Great Wizards is probably more "okay" then "good".
On the flip-side, some popular maps are bad. Custom Hero Wars mostly comes to mind. I mean not all bad cause CHW is addictive but theres just so many flaws.

When a map is popular AND good, you have Temple Siege. However just because its popular doesn't mean it's good, in my opinion.
It's good because it IS, Actually, Good.

Edit: Maybe we need a thread dedicated to defining what makes a map good.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 11 2009, 3:50 pm by Tank_7.

I just throw ideas in. How about building shuttle at the destination point to select exit?

@Wormer: I was hoping not to prevent teammates from using the robos. They would not become all yours.
I could, as someone suggested, scrap the Warp Gate idea in favor of using a Robo w/ shuttles only for fuel, so then there is a free slot in the dropship for a new ability. Maybe a missile turret in your ship could be something. After all, I just wanted to use the robo because its available, which was what led to the Warp Gate idea.

1.45 is Out

-Rapid cycling of Base Shield Generators will now prevent most of the confusion regarding "Hey, I killed the gen, the base is still invincible"
-Hallucination deaths display when a player is about to get his arbiter out
-Observer death animation when a shield is about to engage
-Tiny change to starting base layout

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 11 2009, 4:49 pm by Tank_7.

I skimmed thru Killer's long ass post...

The only bum-steer really is the argument against the similarities between the scourge and the devourer... (the rest you really kinda just gave acknowledgment without really agreeing to it.. which means the ideas are okay but not what you'd like to see )

I don't know.. I guess I should play a bit more to see...
But I still stand against the # of ships this map has, too many.

@The Good games quote thing
I Think it really depends on the premise that you started with. I made Temple Siege with the goal to make it Fun and Playable for the public, but also making it cool, without cheap tricks, and a good game in general. I also planned it to be my final map for SC1, as I THOUGHT SCII was just around the corner (but in fact it was MANY blocks away :C)...
So what I did was, I made the game Fun, and THEN paid close attention to the details and polished the map...

I know I'm not really one to talk, but many of my maps (take Virus arena, and Fuel Tactics Arena) are very fun and entertaining, but aren't polished enough to be called "good". Which is why I arrived at the conclusion that, if you want to make a popular, and good map, you MUST make it fun FIRST. And not fun for yourself, but fun for everyone. ... And then you can polish the details...

On that note, I remember I made the rather oddball heroes first ... namely the Assassin, Summoner, Volt and the Light Mage... lols... U can kinda see where I was going with it. I was going for heroes with VERY Specialized roles, and then I toned it down with more balanced heroes to make it a balanced, and good experience.

We SHOULD make a post for this! .. I always find this to be the bane of many mapmakers. And though it really is only a philosophy, as Tuxlar said, I hope to inspire people to make more popular maps.

unholy each ship adds a row pretty much there are very few ships that are the same size. Each row adds customization. With 6 rows i can fit in realistically 5 units most combinations of barracks, engineer bays, starports, sci facilities, and factories. where as with 5 rows the most i could possibly fit is 3. i can fit in 4 more buildings the size of a supply depo with 6 squares.

This is not to say that i will do this it is only saying it can be done. One more row can change your strategy quite easily.
The reason there are so many size 5 ships is because each one has an advantage over the others. The wraith can cloak and shoot ground units. The valkery fires bursts and has splash dmg. The sair has 5 shield armor, dweb, and constant rapid fire.



I was thinking about tank and was wondering about torpedos. Right now you are not currently using the physics lab (pretty sure or its covert ops) I think the sci facility might suite this better for say 3 different options. a plain for 1 scourge slow reload, covert ops attachment for rapid reload 1 scorge, physics lab attachment for 2 socurges and a longer reload than the original sci facillity.

This would make it fun for mass surprising but you would be able to fire them as often especially if you got into an extended battle. Just an idea but i thought i would toss it out.

@killer_sss: Actually the valk has 6 rows as well.
Here's the ship sizes:
(5) Wraith, Corsair
(6) Valkyrie, Mutalisk, Fast Scout
(7) Slower Scout
(8) Carrier
(9) BC with Yamato, Overlord, Guardian
(10) BC without Yamato
(12) Infested CC

I like your idea of swapping the Science Facility and Starport. However, I feel this would allow too many scourges to be made. Currently if you want a big salvo, you just build more regular starports. This allows a BC to have 8 with 1 compression fuel tank, and a PS can have 10 or 11. Your proposal would make "instant kill" salvos too common. As it is, only wraith and sair can realistically be insta-killed, and only by a PS or the BC that can Yamato.

oh btw, i was just playing like 2 minutes ago, and if you run out of fuel, you can spam your way back to base and the same speed as if you could fly regularly, kidna failish eliminates need for fuel.

instead of ordering it to move to a location, why not just move it there?

Well, it remains to be seen how well players would put it to use. This map isn't AG, so things could very well be different. I'm just reciting what I learned from AG, where I often used tertiary features (like the consumable pylons, "quantum envelopes", "positron lances", etc.) to patch up shortcomings in the primary gameplay. The ideas were right, but the execution wasn't. I really should have revised the whole damn thing from scratch.

Falling Tiles > Temple Siege

Nothing beats Falling Tiles!



It pains me more than anything to say this, but after years of fighting against the creation of homogeneous maps under that very same pretense (that 'fun' is subjective)... it really isn't. At it's core, there's a distinct set of properties with any gameplay experience that can dictate whether it is 'fun' or not in a general sense. Fringe cases and exceptions exist, but even in these cases you'll find recurring patterns.

But by all means, do not take that as a sign to abandon uniqueness and begin watering down for the masses. Some of the best innovations come about through some of the most esoteric designs (take Portal, for example).


Yes! Moar nebulous philosophical meta-discussion ftw!



Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Aug 11 2009, 11:25 pm by Tuxedo-Templar.

Just played it.. good map. I enjoyed learning how to play. However, I don't really enjoy the whole stasis/shield mechanism at all. If I wanted to play arbiter cat and mouse, I'd go play some crappy lotr game. I recognize that something needs to allow slower ships to kill faster ships, and maybe making a trigger-based stasis that didn't last as long would do, perhaps making it weak enough that the shield counter isn't necessary. Secondly, having to unload, mine, load, turn it, move back, rinse, and repeat over and over to get the minerals I need is also not what I would consider fun; it's work, and I like playing and strategy making more than working. If you're into the whole balance-with-ground-attack thing, just make one button in the dropship to drop an item that automatically mines, which goes away once it dies, finishes mining, or the ship move away.

Honestly, I would say I enjoy everything else about this map, except for those two things which are annoying enough that I don't see myself playing it regularly. Good job, though, and I look forward to seeing what you do with future versions.

Also, I'm all for full vision, since I feel like that again would take out more of that "lotr constant recalling until heroes in advantage" type of strategy, but I will admit I have a bias in that I don't like that type of strategy as much as other people do

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Aug 11 2009, 11:33 pm by fritfrat.

What you could do to alleviate the task of actually having to mine would be to have mineral patches or whatever, and if you bring your ship directly over them you are able to gain them over time?

Do you guys play on east or west? because I really want to play this.

norm, i'd play with you if you do iccup, or i could try battle net but i kinda lag on bnet

1.46, an emergency fix

There was an old value for a refund trigger if you built a fuel tank outside on the main map. It gave you 4 minerals which was the price many versions ago. I just had a public game with people SPAMMING that in their HQ area for free money.

anything done about the move without gas problem yet?

Honestly this was an attempt at using the physics lab. It would be fun to push this where ever we could get an idea to adapt. If we found another mode for shields i wouldn't mind keeping it there either. If any ideas come up on what to do you could move it to the appropriate spot and take advantage of it.

While were on moving things if you do decide to add something (provided you change the refueling) we could maybe use the bunker or turret or the refinery. The refinery would be a fun one to mess with but would be complicated as you would need to build a turret first to create a gyser/refinery.

If you make a turrets free and the gyser appear and it cannot be created because it doesn't fit then you don't lose minerals, but when you kill the refienery if need be they gyser will stay there. If you start with the refinery when a turret is made you can kill any straight up gysers that appear but if you can't fit the refinery in the creator will lose cash.


Personally i like bombing the crap out of opponents scvs lol. Its quite fun. Makes them mad when the first time they mine 32 minerals and all there men die and they lose 4 scvs which is 4minerals to recreate lol.

i play on east usually 10pm central on up ill play this game.

Oh, i didn't know there was bombing of people, lol I haven't played the game yet, so I was just throwing out blind suggestions.

@darksnow: This is embarassing for me but I haven't seen anyone able to spam click that well yet.
The reason I order instead of move is because moving makes you dodge hits. Constant moving in hyper triggers is equivalent to invincibility unless splash damage is involved. If this really is an issue though I can make a timer so if youre out of your "stuck" location for more than 3 seconds straight youre moved back or something like that. Seriously I haven't seen anyone able to override hyper trigger order... I wanna see this lol. I've seen people "dance" alot but never actually win against 12/second hyper order. Even the "3 second timer" move I propose could buy time just a little bit, and maybe negate a Yamato.