Because as you just said yourself, this is how it goes in Spain. I can only talk about France but it's a completely different matter, I was only able to get jobs when I was still a student. You're right about mobile phones games as far as I can tell, though browser games are done by a lot of amateurs now and it tends to apply to phone games too... So even about that, it's not as easy as it seems to get a job (again, in France). Video games companies here are dying, whatever they say. Our government had to put something in place to help these companies, by reducing taxes and encouraging innovation (we have very strong copyright policies, which applies to video games in addition to the music copyrights and such).
Most of the small developers cannot afford to pay you for the job, so they tend to choose the guys who have a really good portfolio and are ready to work no matter what happens to the company. There are too many demands and not enough jobs available, which is why it's slowly dying. My last year of study was almost entirely devoted to making a video game with my classmates, and even such a game project in our portfolio wasn't enough to get hired. We all have good resumes, but only 5 guys out of 20 have a job now (4 years after graduating), and 2 of them found their job out of France... Reality hurts.
Videogames are a growing industry that demands qualified people, so yes, you'll have work. The only question you should ask yourself is how much would you like to work in that, and if you won't get bored easily. Just that :).
I'd suggest NOT going for programming or art degree first. Level design covers them all anyway, not at the same level of course, but you'll learn way enough of both to be able to work in the video game industry. If that's your "big dream", aim directly at it. If you want to get better in some field (let's say art), you could still learn it afterwards. Don't try to do both, it's a waste of time and, IMO, you can't be good at both. These are 2 completely different fields and it's better for you if you specialize later, after acquiring some experience.
Be careful though, the video game industry is flooded with gamers who think that because they play a lot, they're able to do a game. Companies can be really tough about recruiting people just because of this, which means you'll have to prove why you are better. As Alrik said, having a small project done completely on your own is a really good card to play during an interview. If you can start working on it right now, I'd suggest you do. This will give you some time to polish it. Try to go in games conventions a lot, and keep aware of which games and which technologies are out. The more you anticipate, the better. You can also give your resume in these places, there are often a lot of people from video games companies who are here in that purpose. You'll have to make the first step if you want to be noticed.
Anyway, just to give my point-of-view as a level designer (which I am... or should be, at the moment), you must be aware that level design and game design careers are almost dead ends. These kind of jobs pay well, especially after 3 or 5 years, but the hard part is to start because too many people wants to join game companies. Video games suffer a really bad reputation in society, you must be ready to work for free in the beginning because many companies are dying. I've come to a point were I had to choose between creating my own company (can't afford it), or leave my country to find a job. I'm leaving my country pretty soon, and if it fails, there are really high chances that I'll switch to a completely different career. You MUST know that, being a level or game designer is only worth when you have experience, and it's extremely hard to start your career. Seriously consider a secondary option in case your level design career fails.
To be completely honest, I don't care anymore about the BNet players... I totally agree with you, most of them are morons that won't understand a thing, and I kind of gave up playing SC2 (melee or not) if not playing with friends. I'm making maps for my own pleasure now and if my maps become a bit popular (here or not), it's good enough for me...
I started to build the map anyway, in the worst case it will still help me understand how abilities are made (and I'm also learning how to import models in the process). I've done 70-80% of the groupie spells (with custom sounds, icons, and probably custom 3D effects too), I'm laughing my ass off each time I launch a test. :D
I'll probably record a video just to show what it is... It seems I'll also have to modify a few things though, some abilities are not that necessary and I'll need to improve the gameplay a bit... But so far, it's still funny.
It's really easy to do (once you know how, of course!) via triggers... You'll simply have to hide the frame of the UI displaying the warp gates icon. In order to do this:
set a Map Initialization trigger with the action "UI - Show/Hide UI Frame"
set the action parameters like this: "Hide Pylon Button for (All players)"
The Pylon Button is the part where warp gates (and ONLY warp gates) are displayed when you own at least one). It works 100%, I used it in my Sand Worm Survival map to hide the super warp gates respawning killed units... :)
Maybe we could do our own Micro Tournament? From what I saw during the EU map night 2, we pretty much all suck at micro so it could be fun to train our skills in this, just between members of sc2mapster (and/or people on the private chat channel)... I find this map interesting but I hate its players, I'm fed up with the jerks always calling everyone a noob when he loses. Anyway, if Micro Tournament is not welcome here, what about making our own Tournament map? It won't be ready for next week obviously, but maybe we can make something very simple so that we can compete in our own map (...talk about advertising sc2mapster, huh!).
I'd suggest waiting for Corefight v2, that would be very interesting for a tournament. There is also Genetic Labs, it's also a Tug of War, well balanced and pretty easy to play. Catalyst is pretty good for tournaments, though I think it's for hardcore gamers (it's very hard to survive in the beginning). Room wars could be fine too, as soon as bugs are fixed. If MAD has made some progress, it's worth including in a tournament.
If anyone is interested, I have compressed a ZIP archive containing all the replay files from the games played during the EU map night #2... Can be very useful, especially in Pictionary to read the chat! You can find it on RapidShare. Have fun! ;)
EDIT: If anyone has the replay file of Blood Marathon, please share! I can't find it... :'(
I'm thinking about giving up my board game map (Smallworld) in favor of another minigame, much more random and funny to play, which I'll probably call "Paparazzi" or something similar. Please do not steal the idea, and feel free to tell me what you think about it... anyone willing to join is welcome to PM me or leave comments in this thread (especially 3D modelers and animators)... :)
The main idea: 2 teams, one is a group of celebrities/heroes (Jim Raynor and such), while the other team controls groupies (ie. fans of the said celebrities).
The goal for celebrities is to gather a certain amount of money, which can only be earned by successfully reaching places in due time (ex: a theater for a film preview, an interview on TV, etc...). If they fail in their task because they arrived too late, they will simply lose some money... The goal for groupies is to collect a maximum number of autographs from the celebrities. They will have to team up with the other groupies to find the celebrities and force them to sign an autograph. The celebrities will obviously lose some time while doing so, so they absolutely need to avoid being caught too often. The game ends when a celebrity has reached a certain amount of money, or when groupies have collected a certain amount of autographs (at least one from each celebrity).
Celebrity abilities:
phone call: lets the celebrity call for a taxi, which will bring him closer to his current destination (costs some money).
bodyguard: drops down a overpowered bodyguard that will protect the celebrity from groupies and fans (the longer you keep it, the more it costs).
private helicopter: the celebrity can use his own helicopter to move freely for a short period of time (does not last long).
disguise: the celebrity will just look like a normal civilian, but will only be able to move slowly (long duration).
look-alike: the celebrity can ask his look-alike to scout a place for groupies. This unit has no special skill but can be used to keep groupies busy by signing fake autographs. (last some time but reveals its position to all groupies before expiring)
Groupie abilities:
autograph: the groupie catches the celebrity and asks him for an autograph. (lasts a few seconds)
adrenaline: allows the groupie to run insanely fast for a short period of time, but slowing it down temporarily when it expires (medium cooldown).
girl power!: summons a horde of fans controlled by the groupie, which will help her block streets and/or watch for celebrities all across the map (very long cooldown).
bribe: the groupie can buy information from specific buildings (ie. celebrities targets), which will ping the position of the nearest celebrity (costs a lot of money).
photography: each time a groupie takes a photo of a celebrity (ie. casts the spell), she can sell the photo to earn money. The closer she was, the more money she will earn (short cooldown).
scream: the groupie can scream, which will slow down anyone in range and reveal disguised celebrities (and identify look-alikes as fakes). (medium cooldown)
There are different types of buildings, each allowing to buy upgrades/items:
book store: buying a newspaper will allow the groupies to know which building is the next target for the celebrity of her choice (costs some money). They also buy any extra autograph groupies have collected.
gun shop: the celebrities can buy smoke bombs to cast fog and cloak themselves for a short period of time. Can also buy a taser to paralyze a groupie for a short period of time.
hospital: safe spot for the celebrity, where he won't lose money if he doesn't reach his objective in time (but groupies will know).
monument: place where civilians can be hired by a groupie to join her (costs some money).
phone booth: allows a celebrity to earn extra money with quick missions (secondary missions not involving loss of money if failed), and also allows groupies to call for a taxi to move from place to place.
I think it's far from being impossible to make, you're free to share ideas here if you want! ;)
You can set the paintbrush size, its over the colors.
Yes, my bad... I just saw it while watching livestream today.
The new UI for Final Frontier v2 looks great! :)
I pretty much agree with what TheAlmaity said above too. I just wanted to tell about a huge bug in Room Wars, there was a round were TheAlmaity kicked me out of the game without even understanding how. For some reason he had control over 2 rooms instead of just one, and I had my units in one of these rooms... So basically he had marines in the same room as me, plus the marines in his starting room. And he had control over the bunker too, so I couldn't even hide my units and lost them all in a blink... Seems like the leaderboard is still bugged by the way (about the rooms count), but I didn't check precisely.
About the suggestions for Snipers Promod, we also mentioned a better UI... If you can make the game go fullscreen, I think it would look better AND prevent being killed by people hiding in the south part of the map (they see units coming from above, while units coming from the top can't see them, because of the UI frames). You should definitely find a way to keep the items bought when our unit dies, because it happens really often (especially when I'm in the game xD).
About Core Fight, yes, definitely needs a boost in income. We only have control over a builder, so we spend most of our time waiting for the minerals. I personally don't mind about the camera shaking when our buildings are hit. I'm pretty sure you could prevent the lag by removing all those creeps (at least in the main bases, where they're a bit annoying) and removing half of the doodads between the lanes, since we never go there and won't really see the difference.
Anyway, the map night was really great (although I feel like I'm renowned for my noob skills in most games now... xD). Oh, and yes... We're definitely going to be as famous as Husky one day. :D
Hey guys,
After participating in the map night yesterday I thought I'd share some feedback on each map we played.
Pictionary
As always, bloody fun to play. We played both Identifictionary and Pictionary, I'd say I like Pictionary better but I'm not sure why exactly... It seems to be a shared opinion amongst players, something just doesn't work. I'd like to see an option to choose the size of the brush in Pictionary though, which is a very interesting feature available in Identifictionary.
Starlocks:
...FUCKING PARASITE! xD
The game is... fun, I guess... Actually, what completely ruined the experience in my opinion is that it uses QWERTY for the spells hotkeys... I'm using AZERTY, which made it pretty messy when I needed to use a specific spell at the right moment, so I probably lost miserably once or twice for no other reason than this. That's a problem happening very very often in custom maps, I think it's particularly frustrating in maps using WASD (why the hell do they use WASD or ZQSD, while there are arrows?!?). Maybe the spell selection screen should be smaller too, and make the spell "shop" more intuitive (having to click the button on the left side is just not necessary, just open the shop window automatically when the guy is killed and/or at the end of a round, and hide it when the next round starts).
Troncraft:
I expected this game to be boring. It's quite nice and simple, but I wanted to leave the game before the end because it was way too long and repetitive. Most of the time I just lost like a noob, crashed in the outer walls or miserably failed to dodge the first barrier I came across. This is just so frustating, especially when it happens in the first seconds. Let's be honest, it was not boring at first but losing constantly for dumb reasons made me want to (rage?)quit. The map is fine I guess (besides the lag), it's just definitely not the type of game I like, way too repetitive for me...
Card Shuffle:
I didn't know about that map, but I liked it a lot. Seems like there are exploits though (ie. glitches, bugs, or cheats... I don't know), which made the game imbalanced. I don't know what to think about this map, it has a lot of potential though. I prefer this map to any other card game so far, just because the UI is not made of huge buttons and you can really enjoy the battle and see clearly what's happening (thus finding a efficient counter to incoming waves without having to move your camera like crazy). In the first rounds, I had no clue what the difference was between each hero... probably because you don't really need to select your hero to spawn the creatures. Maybe you should make another bar in the UI showing the hero spells available, so that we can use them or upgrade them without selecting the unit.
Snipers Promod:
It's fun... though I'm a bit disappointed to see that camping, teamkills and spawnkills exists, even in a custom map from a game that has nothing to do with FPS in the first place... but you can't do much about it. Fortunately for us, we knew each other so it's not much of a big deal if we don't play by the rules, but I guess it would have been a completely different matter if I joined a game with random guys I don't know. You can probably add a penalty for camping, which I think is the most important thing to prevent in such a game. About improvement, I'd suggest having more arenas to choose from. We know the map by heart now, and we pretty much know where to look for enemies and where to go when we want to sneak. It would be fun to have a few elements in the map that moves, for example a train passing through the arena (blocking sight and path until it crossed the arena, and killing anyone on its path). Basically I'd add more interactivity with the terrain to make it less predictable.
Blood Marathon:
I saw this map dozens of times without daring to try it... I should have. This is probably the map I enjoyed the most (with Pictionary), this is just completely random and the more players there is, the better. A few parts are really REALLY frustrating (the templar rushing at us is so hard to dodge, not to mention those damn creeps blocking the way!), but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I wish there were more circuits though, the map size seems to be done in that purpose and I'm eager to see how it goes.
Core Fight:
I really like the atmosphere of this map, this is something never seen before in custom games... but it seriously lags! My computer can't handle that much details, even when playing solo, and it seems like many of us yesterday were having issues about this. Besides, balancing is not working as it is now. We ended up spawning mass void rays in the last rounds, I'm pretty sure whoever already played that map once or twice does the same. This is sad, because the map has a lot of potential. I usually don't play tug of war maps, but this one is amongst my favorites (with Genetic Labs).
Vampirism:
Let's be honest, I don't like it. The main reason being I don't like the Warcraft universe anymore, and I'm not really fond of maps copying already existing maps to "bring back the old map, because it was bloody fun" (or whatever the reason is). I don't see the point in making Warcraft or WoW clones, I didn't buy Starcraft 2 in this perspective. Besides, the terrain looks weird, the vampires are completely OP (can you even lose as a Vampire, seriously?)... Well, let's make it short, I didn't like it. Sorry. It's probably not because of the SC2 conversion itself though, I guess I wouldn't have enjoyed this even if I was still playing Warcraft 3...
Zombie Master:
Quite fun to play, but I wonder how hard it is when you don't have a full house. The zombie masters have way too much power to lose, I'm pretty sure 4 zombies vs 6 survivors is completely in favor of the zombie masters. I'll probably play a few more games (as a zombie master, this time) to see how it goes, but this map is interesting even though I never really liked zombie games.
Room Wars:
The latest updates are really cool... but as I expected (I told that in the topic), the Thor is just OP. This is probably the only mistake made in this map. I love that you can buy banelings, and I probably should have kept my bunker to call reinforcements (I'm not sure it's how it is done, but I've seen players call down more marines around their bunker, so I guess it's how it works). Nice work, it's even funnier to play with members of sc2mapster. (but I still lose each game :D )
Sand Worm Survival:
It's my map... it's obviously so bloody fun and cool... :D
Jokes aside, I'm trying to figure out how to make it harder for Riders to capture a worm... I was thinking of a target spell that could miss the worm (more or less like a grenade stunning/slowing the worm, then you could jump on it), with a cooldown so that you can't cast it too often. And I also need to make it easier for the Terran players, especially when they are not all there. I have a real issue with this, because 1 Terran player can't win alone, and 4 Terran players can't lose... I'll either need to make the spawning pools much stronger, or find a way to improve the army composition of the Terran players, so that they can compete with the Worms AND the Riders at the same time, without owning them both. If you have any idea, check "Zealnaga's playground" in the Feedback section. :)
The Final Frontier:
As Mozared said while we were playing, this map must be a trigger hell. It also is a giant mess of windows, so confusing I had no other choice but quit the game... I don't know if it's because I was tired or not, but I think there are too many things to handle and it makes the game either boring or too hard to play. While you were all building an entire fleet, I was unable to build more than 1 colony ship, 1 fighter, and 1 battlecruiser... I don't really know what I did wrong, but this is just soooooo frustating to try to find a clue in this giant mess of windows, even with the tutorial advices on the side I completely messed up. I'll need to play it a bit more before I could give my opinion of this map, for now I'm just sure it was way too hard to handle around 2 AM, after drawing abortions and murders in Pictionary... :D
as long as stuff is playable it's fine :) We need more maps to play anyway. Kill off major bugs if you have any, add stuff that goes quickly, tell me the map names and i'll put it on the list.
I was thinking about my Sand Worm Survival map but I'm really not sure at all... It works fine so far (I noticed a few bugs but it's rare), it's more a matter of the map being really imbalanced. And by "really imbalanced", I mean the game could end in less than 3 minutes if the guys know what they're doing... But if you really want to try it though, you're welcome... I always need more feedback anyway. It's a quick minigame (10 minutes max) so I guess it won't be a problem playing once or twice during the night! :)
Unfortunately not that much because:
A - The system to upload pictures on DeviantArt is (still) lame
B - I'm lazy to scan all the pictures I have and put them on DA
C - I have more pictures on Facebook but can't find the files anymore (+don't want to scan again)
:D
Anyway, the contest is a great idea... I actually have a picture with a marine+zealot+zergling (sort of) which could fit in such a contest, though I'd rather draw a better one if I have time...
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Because as you just said yourself, this is how it goes in Spain. I can only talk about France but it's a completely different matter, I was only able to get jobs when I was still a student. You're right about mobile phones games as far as I can tell, though browser games are done by a lot of amateurs now and it tends to apply to phone games too... So even about that, it's not as easy as it seems to get a job (again, in France). Video games companies here are dying, whatever they say. Our government had to put something in place to help these companies, by reducing taxes and encouraging innovation (we have very strong copyright policies, which applies to video games in addition to the music copyrights and such).
Most of the small developers cannot afford to pay you for the job, so they tend to choose the guys who have a really good portfolio and are ready to work no matter what happens to the company. There are too many demands and not enough jobs available, which is why it's slowly dying. My last year of study was almost entirely devoted to making a video game with my classmates, and even such a game project in our portfolio wasn't enough to get hired. We all have good resumes, but only 5 guys out of 20 have a job now (4 years after graduating), and 2 of them found their job out of France... Reality hurts.
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Quoted for truth.
Quoted for lie.
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I'd suggest NOT going for programming or art degree first. Level design covers them all anyway, not at the same level of course, but you'll learn way enough of both to be able to work in the video game industry. If that's your "big dream", aim directly at it. If you want to get better in some field (let's say art), you could still learn it afterwards. Don't try to do both, it's a waste of time and, IMO, you can't be good at both. These are 2 completely different fields and it's better for you if you specialize later, after acquiring some experience.
Be careful though, the video game industry is flooded with gamers who think that because they play a lot, they're able to do a game. Companies can be really tough about recruiting people just because of this, which means you'll have to prove why you are better. As Alrik said, having a small project done completely on your own is a really good card to play during an interview. If you can start working on it right now, I'd suggest you do. This will give you some time to polish it. Try to go in games conventions a lot, and keep aware of which games and which technologies are out. The more you anticipate, the better. You can also give your resume in these places, there are often a lot of people from video games companies who are here in that purpose. You'll have to make the first step if you want to be noticed.
Anyway, just to give my point-of-view as a level designer (which I am... or should be, at the moment), you must be aware that level design and game design careers are almost dead ends. These kind of jobs pay well, especially after 3 or 5 years, but the hard part is to start because too many people wants to join game companies. Video games suffer a really bad reputation in society, you must be ready to work for free in the beginning because many companies are dying. I've come to a point were I had to choose between creating my own company (can't afford it), or leave my country to find a job. I'm leaving my country pretty soon, and if it fails, there are really high chances that I'll switch to a completely different career. You MUST know that, being a level or game designer is only worth when you have experience, and it's extremely hard to start your career. Seriously consider a secondary option in case your level design career fails.
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Updated first post
short preview of what the groupie can do! Have fun! :)
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@Obatztrara: Go
To be completely honest, I don't care anymore about the BNet players... I totally agree with you, most of them are morons that won't understand a thing, and I kind of gave up playing SC2 (melee or not) if not playing with friends. I'm making maps for my own pleasure now and if my maps become a bit popular (here or not), it's good enough for me...
I started to build the map anyway, in the worst case it will still help me understand how abilities are made (and I'm also learning how to import models in the process). I've done 70-80% of the groupie spells (with custom sounds, icons, and probably custom 3D effects too), I'm laughing my ass off each time I launch a test. :D
I'll probably record a video just to show what it is... It seems I'll also have to modify a few things though, some abilities are not that necessary and I'll need to improve the gameplay a bit... But so far, it's still funny.
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@Sherlia: Go
It's really easy to do (once you know how, of course!) via triggers... You'll simply have to hide the frame of the UI displaying the warp gates icon. In order to do this:
The Pylon Button is the part where warp gates (and ONLY warp gates) are displayed when you own at least one). It works 100%, I used it in my Sand Worm Survival map to hide the super warp gates respawning killed units... :)
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That's what she said.
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Maybe we could do our own Micro Tournament? From what I saw during the EU map night 2, we pretty much all suck at micro so it could be fun to train our skills in this, just between members of sc2mapster (and/or people on the private chat channel)... I find this map interesting but I hate its players, I'm fed up with the jerks always calling everyone a noob when he loses. Anyway, if Micro Tournament is not welcome here, what about making our own Tournament map? It won't be ready for next week obviously, but maybe we can make something very simple so that we can compete in our own map (...talk about advertising sc2mapster, huh!).
I'd suggest waiting for Corefight v2, that would be very interesting for a tournament. There is also Genetic Labs, it's also a Tug of War, well balanced and pretty easy to play. Catalyst is pretty good for tournaments, though I think it's for hardcore gamers (it's very hard to survive in the beginning). Room wars could be fine too, as soon as bugs are fixed. If MAD has made some progress, it's worth including in a tournament.
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If anyone is interested, I have compressed a ZIP archive containing all the replay files from the games played during the EU map night #2... Can be very useful, especially in Pictionary to read the chat! You can find it on RapidShare. Have fun! ;)
EDIT: If anyone has the replay file of Blood Marathon, please share! I can't find it... :'(
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I'm thinking about giving up my board game map (Smallworld) in favor of another minigame, much more random and funny to play, which I'll probably call "Paparazzi" or something similar. Please do not steal the idea, and feel free to tell me what you think about it... anyone willing to join is welcome to PM me or leave comments in this thread (especially 3D modelers and animators)... :)
The main idea: 2 teams, one is a group of celebrities/heroes (Jim Raynor and such), while the other team controls groupies (ie. fans of the said celebrities).
The goal for celebrities is to gather a certain amount of money, which can only be earned by successfully reaching places in due time (ex: a theater for a film preview, an interview on TV, etc...). If they fail in their task because they arrived too late, they will simply lose some money... The goal for groupies is to collect a maximum number of autographs from the celebrities. They will have to team up with the other groupies to find the celebrities and force them to sign an autograph. The celebrities will obviously lose some time while doing so, so they absolutely need to avoid being caught too often. The game ends when a celebrity has reached a certain amount of money, or when groupies have collected a certain amount of autographs (at least one from each celebrity).
Celebrity abilities:
Groupie abilities:
There are different types of buildings, each allowing to buy upgrades/items:
I think it's far from being impossible to make, you're free to share ideas here if you want! ;)
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Yes, my bad... I just saw it while watching livestream today.
The new UI for Final Frontier v2 looks great! :)
I pretty much agree with what TheAlmaity said above too. I just wanted to tell about a huge bug in Room Wars, there was a round were TheAlmaity kicked me out of the game without even understanding how. For some reason he had control over 2 rooms instead of just one, and I had my units in one of these rooms... So basically he had marines in the same room as me, plus the marines in his starting room. And he had control over the bunker too, so I couldn't even hide my units and lost them all in a blink... Seems like the leaderboard is still bugged by the way (about the rooms count), but I didn't check precisely.
About the suggestions for Snipers Promod, we also mentioned a better UI... If you can make the game go fullscreen, I think it would look better AND prevent being killed by people hiding in the south part of the map (they see units coming from above, while units coming from the top can't see them, because of the UI frames). You should definitely find a way to keep the items bought when our unit dies, because it happens really often (especially when I'm in the game xD).
About Core Fight, yes, definitely needs a boost in income. We only have control over a builder, so we spend most of our time waiting for the minerals. I personally don't mind about the camera shaking when our buildings are hit. I'm pretty sure you could prevent the lag by removing all those creeps (at least in the main bases, where they're a bit annoying) and removing half of the doodads between the lanes, since we never go there and won't really see the difference.
Anyway, the map night was really great (although I feel like I'm renowned for my noob skills in most games now... xD). Oh, and yes... We're definitely going to be as famous as Husky one day. :D
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Hey guys,
After participating in the map night yesterday I thought I'd share some feedback on each map we played.
Pictionary
As always, bloody fun to play. We played both Identifictionary and Pictionary, I'd say I like Pictionary better but I'm not sure why exactly... It seems to be a shared opinion amongst players, something just doesn't work. I'd like to see an option to choose the size of the brush in Pictionary though, which is a very interesting feature available in Identifictionary.
Starlocks:
...FUCKING PARASITE! xD
The game is... fun, I guess... Actually, what completely ruined the experience in my opinion is that it uses QWERTY for the spells hotkeys... I'm using AZERTY, which made it pretty messy when I needed to use a specific spell at the right moment, so I probably lost miserably once or twice for no other reason than this. That's a problem happening very very often in custom maps, I think it's particularly frustrating in maps using WASD (why the hell do they use WASD or ZQSD, while there are arrows?!?). Maybe the spell selection screen should be smaller too, and make the spell "shop" more intuitive (having to click the button on the left side is just not necessary, just open the shop window automatically when the guy is killed and/or at the end of a round, and hide it when the next round starts).
Troncraft:
I expected this game to be boring. It's quite nice and simple, but I wanted to leave the game before the end because it was way too long and repetitive. Most of the time I just lost like a noob, crashed in the outer walls or miserably failed to dodge the first barrier I came across. This is just so frustating, especially when it happens in the first seconds. Let's be honest, it was not boring at first but losing constantly for dumb reasons made me want to (rage?)quit. The map is fine I guess (besides the lag), it's just definitely not the type of game I like, way too repetitive for me...
Card Shuffle:
I didn't know about that map, but I liked it a lot. Seems like there are exploits though (ie. glitches, bugs, or cheats... I don't know), which made the game imbalanced. I don't know what to think about this map, it has a lot of potential though. I prefer this map to any other card game so far, just because the UI is not made of huge buttons and you can really enjoy the battle and see clearly what's happening (thus finding a efficient counter to incoming waves without having to move your camera like crazy). In the first rounds, I had no clue what the difference was between each hero... probably because you don't really need to select your hero to spawn the creatures. Maybe you should make another bar in the UI showing the hero spells available, so that we can use them or upgrade them without selecting the unit.
Snipers Promod:
It's fun... though I'm a bit disappointed to see that camping, teamkills and spawnkills exists, even in a custom map from a game that has nothing to do with FPS in the first place... but you can't do much about it. Fortunately for us, we knew each other so it's not much of a big deal if we don't play by the rules, but I guess it would have been a completely different matter if I joined a game with random guys I don't know. You can probably add a penalty for camping, which I think is the most important thing to prevent in such a game. About improvement, I'd suggest having more arenas to choose from. We know the map by heart now, and we pretty much know where to look for enemies and where to go when we want to sneak. It would be fun to have a few elements in the map that moves, for example a train passing through the arena (blocking sight and path until it crossed the arena, and killing anyone on its path). Basically I'd add more interactivity with the terrain to make it less predictable.
Blood Marathon:
I saw this map dozens of times without daring to try it... I should have. This is probably the map I enjoyed the most (with Pictionary), this is just completely random and the more players there is, the better. A few parts are really REALLY frustrating (the templar rushing at us is so hard to dodge, not to mention those damn creeps blocking the way!), but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I wish there were more circuits though, the map size seems to be done in that purpose and I'm eager to see how it goes.
Core Fight:
I really like the atmosphere of this map, this is something never seen before in custom games... but it seriously lags! My computer can't handle that much details, even when playing solo, and it seems like many of us yesterday were having issues about this. Besides, balancing is not working as it is now. We ended up spawning mass void rays in the last rounds, I'm pretty sure whoever already played that map once or twice does the same. This is sad, because the map has a lot of potential. I usually don't play tug of war maps, but this one is amongst my favorites (with Genetic Labs).
Vampirism:
Let's be honest, I don't like it. The main reason being I don't like the Warcraft universe anymore, and I'm not really fond of maps copying already existing maps to "bring back the old map, because it was bloody fun" (or whatever the reason is). I don't see the point in making Warcraft or WoW clones, I didn't buy Starcraft 2 in this perspective. Besides, the terrain looks weird, the vampires are completely OP (can you even lose as a Vampire, seriously?)... Well, let's make it short, I didn't like it. Sorry. It's probably not because of the SC2 conversion itself though, I guess I wouldn't have enjoyed this even if I was still playing Warcraft 3...
Zombie Master:
Quite fun to play, but I wonder how hard it is when you don't have a full house. The zombie masters have way too much power to lose, I'm pretty sure 4 zombies vs 6 survivors is completely in favor of the zombie masters. I'll probably play a few more games (as a zombie master, this time) to see how it goes, but this map is interesting even though I never really liked zombie games.
Room Wars:
The latest updates are really cool... but as I expected (I told that in the topic), the Thor is just OP. This is probably the only mistake made in this map. I love that you can buy banelings, and I probably should have kept my bunker to call reinforcements (I'm not sure it's how it is done, but I've seen players call down more marines around their bunker, so I guess it's how it works). Nice work, it's even funnier to play with members of sc2mapster. (but I still lose each game :D )
Sand Worm Survival:
It's my map... it's obviously so bloody fun and cool... :D
Jokes aside, I'm trying to figure out how to make it harder for Riders to capture a worm... I was thinking of a target spell that could miss the worm (more or less like a grenade stunning/slowing the worm, then you could jump on it), with a cooldown so that you can't cast it too often. And I also need to make it easier for the Terran players, especially when they are not all there. I have a real issue with this, because 1 Terran player can't win alone, and 4 Terran players can't lose... I'll either need to make the spawning pools much stronger, or find a way to improve the army composition of the Terran players, so that they can compete with the Worms AND the Riders at the same time, without owning them both. If you have any idea, check "Zealnaga's playground" in the Feedback section. :)
The Final Frontier:
As Mozared said while we were playing, this map must be a trigger hell. It also is a giant mess of windows, so confusing I had no other choice but quit the game... I don't know if it's because I was tired or not, but I think there are too many things to handle and it makes the game either boring or too hard to play. While you were all building an entire fleet, I was unable to build more than 1 colony ship, 1 fighter, and 1 battlecruiser... I don't really know what I did wrong, but this is just soooooo frustating to try to find a clue in this giant mess of windows, even with the tutorial advices on the side I completely messed up. I'll need to play it a bit more before I could give my opinion of this map, for now I'm just sure it was way too hard to handle around 2 AM, after drawing abortions and murders in Pictionary... :D
Hmm... Did I forget anyone's map?
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It's for up to 8 players. About the category, hmm... it's pretty close to a team deathmatch.
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I was thinking about my Sand Worm Survival map but I'm really not sure at all... It works fine so far (I noticed a few bugs but it's rare), it's more a matter of the map being really imbalanced. And by "really imbalanced", I mean the game could end in less than 3 minutes if the guys know what they're doing... But if you really want to try it though, you're welcome... I always need more feedback anyway. It's a quick minigame (10 minutes max) so I guess it won't be a problem playing once or twice during the night! :)
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I updated my DeviantArt gallery with a few pictures...
Unfortunately not that much because:
A - The system to upload pictures on DeviantArt is (still) lame
B - I'm lazy to scan all the pictures I have and put them on DA
C - I have more pictures on Facebook but can't find the files anymore (+don't want to scan again)
:D
Anyway, the contest is a great idea... I actually have a picture with a marine+zealot+zergling (sort of) which could fit in such a contest, though I'd rather draw a better one if I have time...