There's a new update regarding Heart of the Swarm from Blizzard here. Here's some of the cool new changes that we can expect for HotS:
- Multiplayer resume from replay
- Global Play
- Multilanguage support
- Clan/group system
- Unranked matchmaking
- Multiplayer replay viewing
In addition, the Patch 1.5 Beta should be beginning Soon(TM).
Tower Defense Tycoon by SkrowFunk
Tower Defense Tycoon is an FFA survival tower defense for 1 to 6 players. In the game, you operate and manage a tower defense theme park, where you need to construct towers, build up your park, attract spectators, and raise admission rates. Each night you must entertain your visitors with explosive tower defense shows and score bloody kills to impress the audience and attract new visitors.
Tower Defense Tycoon is a completely solo project, and it has been his only focus in the Starcraft map editor since the beta began, which means this game is 2 years in the making!
TDT Millionaire Contest
Quote:Are you an elite tower defense master? Do you have what it takes to become the wealthiest tycoon? Then try your hand at the Tower Defense Tycoon: Millionaire Contest!
It’s simple: Be the first person to complete Tower Defense Tycoon with a final score of over $1,000,000!
To cash in on this contest, you must save a replay of your successful attempt. Send the replay to me, you can PM me here at sc2mapster.com, or you can e-mail me at [email protected]. If you’re the first person who can accomplish this, you’ll win the top prize! The second and third people to do this will also get a little something, so don’t despair.
- 1st Prize: $100 (U.S. currency), and a 1-year curse premium membership
- 2nd Prize: 6-month curse premium membership
- 3rd Prize: 3-month curse premium membership
Each prize will be sent to only ONE person. The money can be sent to the winner via pay pal, or I can issue it through something else like an e-mailed Amazon gift certificate. Winner’s choice.
I've really enjoyed :D
I'm going back to it right now!
Well said.
I have enjoyed this map for 2 hours(one game) in my first time playing it as hard mode.
But then i tried to play again because i wanted more challenge and as i went up difficulty, i think there was none -_-!.
Challenge = fun.
Karawasa - "Some people have played through it many times, going for 6 to 10 hours of play time."
What can we do 1 game takes about 2 hours, 3 games is almost like 6 hours
I really like this TD Tycoon as i commented 3 times now, but what im really trying to say is i hate it how the difficulties are almost the same thought there would be a huge challenge(fun). IMO this TD is ez But then i have played a lot of TD games way back wc3, i see a lot of new players and some of them played more than twice, on a normal and easy mode and ending up failing.
i guess they just don't know the concept of TD, there is no fun on ez maps.
i thought overkill was like 300%+ hp or something -_- but it felt like its all the same.
@SkrowFunk: Go
Just to give my opinion about the popularity system and such... I don't really think having a polished map alone is enough to make your map popular. My Ikari Warriors project was almost completely ignored by players until v2.0 was announced on the front page of SC2Mapster. The official trailer went from 30 views to 2000 in barely 2 weeks right after the announcement. The map was bookmarked by a few users almost instantly, and there are 4 or 5 websites sharing the trailer all over the world (from Spain to China)... The feedback was encouraging as well, but it's just that my map got totally swallowed by the huge amount of maps on BNet.
I don't know if my map sucks or not actually (though I know using WASD movement doesn't help), but I know (from feedback) players would like it to be for 4 players or more (instead of 2 right now). What I also know for sure is that without advertisement (from SC2Mapster or whatever), or events like your contest, our maps don't even exist to the public. Even creating threads on the official Blizzard forums doesn't help. Which is why I'd like Blizzard to do something about it, because some really awesome maps are already available and deserve to be showcased more often than once a month.
E-sport is great but I personally don't need to be informed weekly about all the events occurring, I'd rather see Blizzard promote a few custom maps to show they actually care about us. Now that the global play is coming, I hope it will help us promote our maps better. I know for sure my map is really expected in the US (half the viewers of the official trailer are from there), so I think global play is a huge step forward for us all.
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Karawasa, I've never stopped complaining about the popularity system. I built my game as a FFA specifically because the popularity system is so bad, and I don't like how it strictly limits game design. That being said, I was mainly hoping for one good HURRAH up the popularity list. Since there is no competitive mode yet, I don't expect it to stay there. Either way, since the game can be fun playing alone I think it won't be ruined by falling down to a lower popularity level.
The feedback I've gotten on the game is that it's really fun, but it's long and the story is boring after playing it many times over. To that end, I guess I just wanted to make a fun TD story and try something completely new. I'm not here to make a game with infinite replayability, and I'm so happy that people are enjoying it on their first play through. The game takes almost 2 hours to beat, and I can tell you that I play most new custom maps for less than 2 hours. Some people have played through it many times, going for 6 to 10 hours of play time. There are many commercial games I've paid good money for that I don't feel like playing for 6 hours, so any amount of time that people enjoy it is a success.
So yea... im back, i did tycoon map 2 times -_- easy and overkill. I went different build and gotten 300k ish on easy so g@y.
Then i went on overkill difficulty again i have gotten 802k this time. http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/194/tycoonsc2overkill.jpg/
The difference about the overkill is i had auto missiles as main and it gave me 37 population and on easy i had no auto missiles, those 5% that gives mineral are so great i had like 7+ drones and likes 10+ boosters with 3+ each kind of support towers.
Over all, Tycoon TD is fun, nice and well made game, but after i beaten it on easy hard extreme and overkill(x2) I'm not going back, i have enjoyed it the most when i first played it.
If you add a scoreboard like in Gem TD, people might go for the highest score, but with no scoreboard i only see the game to beat it and not go for 1mill+ score.
I'll play it again if there's something new and interesting things added.
Relish the popularity while you have it. I'm willing to bet you will be complaining about the system a month from now. It will go down sooner rather than later.
I couldn't agree more with the last two points you made about how it plays (solo and multi) and the bit about polish, I honestly think that is the key factor in what makes a map popular.
I played for just over an hour, hers is my feedback, take it or leave it....
All the npc convo gets old fast. Maybe its cause I am playing at 1am but the text was going by too fast and after about 10 minutes I just stopped caring to read it. I really think this could be improved by possibly getting some voice acting going.
There needs to be something more significant when and how the spectators arrive. I hardly noticed when I got more spectators until I started getting bored and just looking around.
The special events are neat and I really liked them and how they mixed things up a bit. Same for the boss levels. However, I feel there should be a way to counter - act/ nullify some of them. Take the terratron for example. He does that AOE tower stun. IMO, that's just random and bad.
Blood towers (spine crawlers) was an awesome tower idea, love it!
Overall, it was fun for about 30 minutes, then I got bored. Will probably never play it again unless asked by a friend or if I get tired of the other 12 maps on the first few pages.
So uhh, ive played this game for three times now.
First time - Hard Difficulty beaten w/ replay i think my score was like 400k ish
Second time - Extreme Difficulty beaten w/ replay i think was score was like 600k ish
Third time - Bankruptcy Difficulty beaten w/ replay and my score was 818k. http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/713/sc22012050817561459.jpg/
so uhh i cant imagine if i try to go on easy difficulty -_- another 1:49:55 wasted
i'd send a replay but you want 1mill+ I ain't going to try easy to get 1mill+ xd.....
This map is very fun specially at the start, because it's new and stuff but when it gets old for me that 1:49:55 play time is -_- lol.......
It's pretty easy(for me) can't believe if you really spend a year + making this map it will go down if you don't add like saved stats like hard completed etc or like new skins or w.e, like the ones on gem td.
So when is it on EU?
I would have tried it, but it wasnt there :(
"Its more look like an attempt to push this map on top of popularity list. Cheap trick."
The contest is for fun, I don't think it's going to do much to help push the game to the top of the popularity list. It's just on SC2mapster.com, and I don't think many people from the site have played the game yet. Also it's not cheap. ;)
The map seems to be rising in the popularity charts on its own very quickly.
Thanks for all the support!
@TDT:
This sounds hilarious. Can't wait to try it :)
Based on the article, I think the updates mentioned will be released close to HotS, not within the patch 1.5 update.
Its more look like an attempt to push this map on top of popularity list. Cheap trick.
What's so special about Tower Defense Tycoon? It looks like just another defense game? Well, it is!
I wanted to make a game that was a very familiar TD with the classic track setup, so it surely does look like any other defense game. What makes it special is the attention I put into all aspects of the game. The appearance of the game is crisp and clean, there are no silly tower models or enemy models, and everything feels right. Even the terrain is fleshed out!
Each tower was carefully designed to have a specific purpose in a tower defense strategy, and I think that all towers have been balanced out well. The towers are fun, too! The game has an upgrade system that requires players to make hard choices about how to customize their strategy, and I hope that it makes the game more fun for replayability.
The spectators coming to your park, that's a new way to do something familiar. Many tower defense games will give you money in a lump sum after each level. In Tower Defense Tycoon, the money you earn is from the spectators paying admission to enter your park. This gives you options to spend your resources to try to attract more spectators, or to focus more on making your tower defense stronger.
Next, I wanted to make the tower defense levels to be fresh, funny, and exciting. I've grown tired of tower defense games that are just wave after wave of mindless enemies that walk forward, where the boss fights are just one tanky creep that trundles to the end of the track and leaks because the game is so poorly balanced. In Tower Defense Tycoon, most levels incorporate some completely new game mechanic that challenges you in new way. On top of that, the boss levels are a tier above anything else you'll find in any other tower defense map.
I also added some quality of life changes that I think are missing from a lot of games. For example, the tooltips are not overloaded with statistical information about each level of each tower. Also, I put in a dynamic hint system that only displays the hints for things that you haven't done on your own yet. The game is fairly complicated, but from observing strangers playing for the first time it seems that everyone is able to pick up the game quickly.
As far as the contest goes, maybe it's not for you! I put it there for people who are really digging the game, to give them an achievement/challenge to work for. Play the game, and stay for the contest.
Finally, I wanted to make a point about your concerns that the map community is dying. I think you're spot on in that it's mostly the difficulty of getting a map popular. Last night, Tower Defense Tycoon just hit page 1 of popularity, so that was about 2.5 days after release. The thing is, the only reason this happened is because I made a game that can be played solo or with others. In fact, when you play as a group you're basically all playing a single player game at the same time. I would NEVER make a large multiplayer or team based game in StarCraft just for the one reason that it's too hard to get people into the game, so the game never becomes popular.
While Tower Defense Tycoon is a familiar defense game, it's also just heavily polished, well balanced, and lots of fun. People can complain all day about how the popularity system is broken, but poorly built and unpolished games are the majority experience you'll get on battle.net.
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This is off topic but....I am starting to wonder if the map community is dying because of the current issues/difficulty of getting a map popular or if everyone is simple waiting for the map marketplace.
About the map...I don't see what makes this all that special. If its different in any other way than gaining spectators (etc) then it should be showcased in the video or mentioned in the thread, otherwise this just looks like another defense map with a contest.
About the contest...Don't know what it is with the curse memberships, maybe its easy and free to give out but I'd have to agree with zealnaga and say the prizes are lackluster (aside from the $100). I could see myself giving away or not even using the 2nd and 3rd place prizes.
About the update:
FINALLY the game will be global! The rest is also great, but this news is the best of all in my opinion... I just wish there was something else than e-sport and tournaments in their news though, because I think the custom maps community is dying from the lack of advertising. There should be a weekly "10 great custom maps to play" event (or video or whatever), to help the authors getting support and feedback for their maps. Right now, there is none and even our community here can barely do enough to help. Star Battle and the likes have been sucking the life out of the custom maps scene for more than a year now, that's enough! There are tons of other maps that are worth it, they just need to be shown to the average Joe! Blizzard, do something!
Tower Defense Tycoon:
Obviously a lot of effort has been put into this map... I'd like to play, I really wonder how it turns out when you have to make your kills "spectacular" to get more income. I like the idea, it's unique and that's what is needed to make a good TD map now that there are hundreds of these on BNet... Hopefully this one will be shared on EU before patch 1.5 comes out?
Millionaire contest:
I have no interest in this contest, like any author on SC2Mapster I already have a curse premium membership (which is more than I need, to be honest)... Although I think winning a HotS copy (for 3rd place) or Diablo 3 (2nd place) instead of a Curse membership would clearly make it worth.