Verdant Skyway
As a Dominion Commander your mission is to uncover ancient Xel'Naga artifacts on a jungle world held by Protoss forces.
Those of you who played my previous maps know that some people encountered an issue with the enemies not attacking. The issue seems to be caused by playing the map via the "test document" option from the editor. Until release or I publish, the work around seems to be to drag the map file onto your sc2 exe icon. Thanks to Ultraling for this tip.
Also, you may know that I error on the side of my maps being WTF-hard, so feedback is appreciated. I feel this level is easier though due to playing Terran, who have beastly base defenses. There are some cheat codes listed in the trigger editor too if you get stuck.
Otherwise, enjoy and thanks for playing!
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_ForgeUser4347922 Owner
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Posted Jun 9, 2010I'm a EU player, and yes it looked exactly like that, I got messages like that where there were ment to be objectives or dialog.
I started the game offline (dragging the .sc2map file on the the sc2.exe)
Edit : I just tried one of your other maps, a protoss one, I get the same kind of messages
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Posted Jun 8, 2010Enbee and Neruz- Are you non-US players? Did the errors look like this?
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Posted Jun 8, 2010Excellent map, challenging enough, took me 3 goes to nail the base part of it.
Though instead of getting dialogs and objectives I just got a lot of "Param/Value/xxxx".
The base part seemed to work well with me putting down 3 planetary fortresses + turrets on the left hand side, with 10 or so scv near it on autorepair, then just rallying my army right(MMM+raven/viking), occupying bases as I go along.
The end bit seemed a bit harsh, it wiped out my army without much trouble, but luckily after that it went for my planetary fortress/turret line, which occupied it long enough, being chainrepaired for me to get out a viking fleet.
Props on the map, I like a challenge!
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Posted Jun 7, 2010Really cool maps! :) And you're right, they are WTF-hard :P I managed to get to the beacon in the stealth part, but then I get bashed defending the base. Checkpoins would be really great, but I guess we have to wait for the game release to do that.
Or is there a way (command) to skip the first part of the map and go directly to the part where you get your Terran base? Edit: lol, just found the cheat command which does exactly that. Nice :D
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Posted Jun 6, 2010Hrm, that's odd. Haven't seen that or received any other reports of it. Did it say what trigger it was in reference to?
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Posted Jun 6, 2010Hum... just getting tons of "Param/Value/xxxx" on every map... even while draging map file into sc2.exe...
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Posted May 31, 2010Holy crap, I think you nailed it Ultraling. I remember the test document method of playing maps being unreliable back in sc1 days, but I didn't know there was currently a way to play sc2 maps normally. I never knew about the drag and drop method. But sure enough, the attack waves recommenced!
Big thanks for the tip, and for the compliment :)
I'll spread the word.
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Posted May 31, 2010Hey Prozac,
I discovered your single-player maps over the weekend and I find them brilliant, especially terrain-wise. I haven't beaten any of them yet (difficult) but not impossible. I like this level of difficulty. Saves would be nice to have but it's not something you can fix. :) I'll provide feedback if I can beat them.
Just going out on a limb here... I think I found your problem for the AI waves not working, but maybe it's just me. I noticed when I was running my map from the editor, the waves would not be created or sent to the player's base. However, I ran the map normally (dragging the map file to the .exe) without altering the triggers and the waves were working fine. Is this your problem or is it something totally different?
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Posted May 30, 2010On a side note, I'm finally experiencing the AI attack wave malfunction. Tried a lot of different methods to correct it but no dice. Might be a matter of waiting for release, to either correct it if its a bug or to see how blizzard scripts their AI.
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Posted May 30, 2010Thanks for taking the time for in-depth feedback, zoot. I'll try to respond in kind, point-by-point:
Difficulty seems to be my Achilles heel when it comes to gameplay design. I think it comes down to assumptions on play styles. Single-player maps to me have always been turtling until I've reached as many troops as my current resource situation allows then pushing out. I get the impression from player feedback that some people try a multiplayer approach and want to push out sooner and my maps don't accommodate this.
Anyway, I have to ask for some clarification: what unit comps did you feel were necessary vs which were too difficult? What did your base defense consist of? Personally, I tried thors/marines in one game and banshees/vikings in another and both worked pretty well. I guarded each entrance with two bunkers and 4 siege tanks, with some missile turrets at the east entrance. If you have the means of posting your replay it might help me see the limitations you encountered more clearly, but no biggie if you can't.
The air the enemy sends comes kind of late, so I could see that being a curve ball after being used to stalkers and zealots for the most part. The DT's might be rough too.
The forces to the immediate east and west of you are meant to be token forces to wipe out in order to expand. Perhaps nerfing them and buffing the more challenging forces if needed will make the difficulty more consistent throughout since the expansion-guarding teams won't be missed when killed?
As far as the end game surprise: I have the adjutant warn you that a fleet is coming when you take the 6th of 8 obelisk. So the question is was the warning buried in the heat of battle, did the trigger not work, or were you simply not expecting as big a fleet as the one that arrived? And as you noted, once game saving is possible it won't be as big an issue either.
Anyway, thanks again for the consistent feedback. I'll take a look at it again in between my current map-making. Sometimes it helps for me to come back to it later after I forget a few things so I have a perspective closer to the first time player :)
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Posted May 30, 2010Overall, I'd say that this map is more challenging than your last. However, so much of whether or not you have an easy or hard time with this map depends more on your unit composition, as opposed to just how good your raw skill is.
I think that a potential issue with both this map and your last is that its difficulty is really wonky. At the start, it can be very difficult to attack one of the enemy bases while ensuring that you have adequate defence in your main base. Since you only have one base, you really need to make every unit count as much as possible. However, once you defeat, say, even two enemies, then the game becomes a LOT easier.
This map mitigates this problem to an extent by the surprise at the end. Here I was rolling over the remaining Protoss bases and thinking how easy it was, when that big fleet shows up. Then, instead of being all complacent, I had to suddenly scramble and be frantic, throwing up missile turrets as quickly as I could. I lost all my bases except for my 4th expansion, which I had completely swamped with Missile Turrets by the time the remainder of the Protoss fleet arrived, and I was able to clean it up.
Even though I was able to win, that surprise almost killed me, and it would have been very frustrating to have lost there, considering that you can't save games (for now), and it takes a long time to get to that stage in the game. I would have been frustrated if I had to restart :p.
At the moment, the map feels way too hard if you've never played it before, but relatively easy to beat once you've played it and understand how the waves work and where the enemies are. Ideally, what you'd want is a challenging, but not-too-difficult experience the very first time you're playing it, instead of having these two extremes.
So, here are my suggestions:
1) Make the start of the game less difficult. Maybe don't have some of the waves activate until later, and have the adjutant warn the player when an enemy wave departs its base. Hopefully, the player will be able to defeat one nearby enemy early in the game and safely secure an expansion. This might better allow the player to go for the strategy of their choice.
2) Throw curveballs in the midgame, not just at the end. If you make the start of the game less difficult, then the midgame will need a little buffing. To spice things up and keep things interesting, a scripted event or two in the midgame would be neat.
3) Make the ending less harsh. The ending currently is possibly a little too rough. If you're not prepared for it, it could potentially kill you. And once you know about the ending, then it's going to be easy to handle anyway.
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Posted May 29, 2010-
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Posted Jun 4, 2010If the attack wave triggers DID work, then keep in mind that the game is defaulted at normal difficulty. There is no way I know of to change the difficulty at the moment. Upon the game's release, however, there will be 2 more difficulty levels. :)