[ORPG] Starcraft Universe

[Mille25]

I see you want to have buyable spells? Good idea for money sink, but aren't you going to add talents or a skilltree?

a skilltree is planned, but i dont know how it will look like and work later. i just dont want to give myself to much work and then dont finish it. i will follow aims that i can really archive at first, and when this basic aims are done i will focus on more and more. i hate maps that never get finished but promise sooo much.

From my experiences with Gaias Retaliation ORPG, I can just tell you that its a good idea not to have scaling spells, but rather force the players to buy new versions of their spells every x levels.
Do that or create a money sink by giving a % gold loss at dying, which is pretty effective, too.

i think i will force the players to buy the spells at npc, and improving this spells with a skill tree. wow uses this concept and it seems to be quite good, but i also dont want to create some wow clone, really not. we will see.

Adding a good money sink is the most important thing in a rpg map.

The new interface looks good, but the terrain is definitely awful. I hope the terrain is just a placeholder

yep the terrain is a place holder. like i said, i want to wait with terraining until the final game releases, because of the doodads. maybe i can also use more tilesets then or increase map size.

You should put the XP bar below the spell buttons.

i quite like it like this, its some unique style imo..

Also, you are still missing some important parts of the UI:
The weapon quickslots for fast changing during battle such as some menu buttons that allow you to access the game sub interfaces: Inventory, Spells, Talents, etc.

will come later

thanks for you interrest and feedback guys!
btw: i did a multiplayer test today, results will come this evening. it will be really interessting believe me

greez

 

[Mille25]

Update 13.5.2010

New UI, Chat- and Message-Box

hello again, even if i hate to double post here is some update that i really wanted to show you
i just finished the new chat and message box.
i just didnt like the normal chat of sc2, addicionally i wanted my game messages to be displayed seperatly and not together with normal chat messages.

the chat and message box can be hidden with the game options menu.
watch the vid to get an idea how it looks like/works

PS: the video quality is better now because i used fraps, i think its better for ingame vids only more fps now!

Screens:

 

[mjllonir]

For that chatbox, is it possible to move the messages closer in together? And for that option that says to save caharacter every 60 seconds, will that produce lag?

One last question, did you manage to figure out a way to revive the hero yet? If so, I want to know how XD. (Trying to find out myself, not working out so great right now...)

Asides from that it looks INCREDIBLE!

 

[tagg1080]

One last question, did you manage to figure out a way to revive the hero yet?

He has the values saved, he can just reread them to "revive" you.

 

[mjllonir]

Oh, well I'm looking for another way to do it other than rereading values...some way....simpler.

 

[Mille25]

For that chatbox, is it possible to move the messages closer in together?

this may answer your question:

 

[elfian]

Now when I look at it, Starcraft II has better 3ps and fps graphics than WoW does. (rofl) Blizzard is getting owned by itself.

 

[mjllonir]

Very nice, now it loks better if you ask me

 

[CloudMax]

Now when I look at it, Starcraft II has better 3ps and fps graphics than WoW does. (rofl) Blizzard is getting owned by itself.

WoW was released over 5 years ago. it is quite obvious that the graphic is better in this game, specially when their goal of this game was to use "next-generation" graphics, etc, in the game. While in wow they do not want to improve the graphics, becouse the majority of players tell them that they want it to be how it is.

 

[elfian]

I know I know. But it's still ironic that WoW is the MMO that is more concentrated on details and Starcraft II is the RTS which is not so concentrated on details, yet Blizzard never improves WoW's graphics even a bit.

 

[CloudMax]

I know I know. But it's still ironic that WoW is the MMO that is more concentrated on details and Starcraft II is the RTS which is not so concentrated on details, yet Blizzard never improves WoW's graphics even a bit.

If you have played wow since its beta release like i have, you will know for a fact that they make very small improvements on the graphics for every expansion that comes. If you did not notice it, you probably didnt play WotLK enough, or maybe didnt play it at all.
If you look at the difference of the original areas and then take a look on the terrain and texture in northrend you will see differences on the techniques they used, and the details. The details on the northrend terrain and textures is a lot better then initial release. And in Cataclysm they will retexture alot to have the same quality as northrend. Aswell as fact that the water looks alot better then before. If you do not agree, tell me in visitor comments or something, i do not wanna ruin this thread by talking about wow graphics

 

[cubanbkidd]

what do you exactly mean with "lag of custom UI"? you mean showing/hiding dialogs or reacting on dialog events? cant really see the point why this is laggy, in wc3 it worked very well but like i already said, i have absolutly no mp experience in sc2 right now.

i hope it will turn out good and not destroy my bubble of good orpg possibilites in sc2

greez
mille25

haha what you have no SC2 expierence and you can do all that with the GUI and bank system, howd u learn so fast? im making really slow progress, i have NO idea how to make a custom UI, or how to use the dialog boxes please help? or at least point me in the right direction

 

[.Forsaken]

I've got a feeling Mille's got experience with the WC3 editor - which helps a whole lot.

 

[CloudMax]

haha what you have no SC2 expierence and you can do all that with the GUI and bank system, howd u learn so fast? im making really slow progress, i have NO idea how to make a custom UI, or how to use the dialog boxes please help? or at least point me in the right direction

Check the tutorial section. I have a guide for how creating health bar dialogs.
If you have wc3 experience of the editor, you should understand it, and it explains how to create dialogs (custom ui)

 

[morguhl]

hi guy i also was thinking about a game like this but then i saw this one and i decided that its better xD but what i still want to know is : are you thinking about realeasing an demo version or so (maybe protected if possible that you mustnt fear about innofical versions) in the beta (maybe with the new patch?) would be great to test your map ^^

 

[CloudMax]

It is possible to remove everything in the trigger editor, but still have the triggers in the map.
This would make it impossible for "noobs" to steal stuff from him.

With this i mean that you can take the maps script, copy it, delete all triggers, and then paste back the script with help of MPQ editors, etc. That way the triggers wont exist in the GUI editor. And i am sure that there is ways to make the map "corrupt" and make it so that you cant open the map in the editor but still be able to play it.

 

[mjllonir]

LGTH is right on that one. I made my triggers unreadable. I think I'll post a tut but I figure that everybody should already know how...no?

 

[Mille25]

Update 18.5.2010

Save-System needs to be redone...

hi guys
i think after some days its time to inform you how it goes.

at the moment there are a bit less updates, because i didnt have that much time and i have to rewrite the entire save and load system, because of some limitations blizzard decided to make in multiplayer. in fact, i have to rewrite it all to savecodes, but i have no experience with this yet so i need some time to get into it.

my aims are:

• all characters and game settings in one bank file
• settings get saved for all chars, not individual, because it makes no sense imo (this works already, but not with the new system)
• more security
• smaller bank file

i will inform you from time to time how it runs, its a quite difficult process.

the most questions in this thread were already answered by other users, but some remain:

hi guy i also was thinking about a game like this but then i saw this one and i decided that its better xD but what i still want to know is : are you thinking about realeasing an demo version or so (maybe protected if possible that you mustnt fear about innofical versions) in the beta (maybe with the new patch?) would be great to test your map ^^

a demo version is planned, maybe with only one class and one starting zone, but i cant tell you more details, because the game is very far away from being ready to be played.

LGTH is right on that one. I made my triggers unreadable. I think I'll post a tut but I figure that everybody should already know how...no?

as far as i know blizzard plans some map protection by default, we will see how save this will be.

PS: i got a lot of pms from some guys asking me about UI and how i did it, please take some time and read some guides. its really not that complex and i dont want to answer the same again and again. if you got specific questions you can for sure ask me via pm or here in this thread. thanks

PPS: i already did a multiplayer test with some mapper a week ago, but i dont know if this is allowed yet so i cant post any more about this right now. but i can tell you it worked all very well, the systems seemed to be quite bugless so far.

greez
mille25

 

[Mille25]

Update 22.5.2010

Big update: Working attributes, talents and xp bar

after some time here is some big update today!
besides the bigger changes listed below, you might also notice some details like a working combat text and a new hero-statusbar. both is not final yet and not perfectly working.

1) Attributes

PLEASE NOTE: NOTHING OF THIS IS FINAL OR BALANCED. THIS IS ONLY ONE STEP CLOSER TO A FINAL RPG AND THE ATTRIBUTE SYSTEM!

• Strength: Each point increases damage done with melee and ranged attacks by 1.
  [*]Stamina: Each point increases maximum shields and energy by 5 and live by 10. Addicionally each point increases armor by 1%.
  [*]Intelligence: Each point increases damage done with spells and ranged attacks by 1.
  [*]Speed: Each point increases attack- and movementspeed by 1%. Addicionally each point increases all regeneration rates by 1%.

Each class will have different starting attributes and a different attribute increasement each level. Addicionally each race will have a special attribute boost, for example zerg could have 5 more stamina then the other races, while terran could have 5 more speed.

Note: all attributes listed here already work ingame for every class and race, only the increasement and starting amount is NYI.

2) Talents

PLEASE NOTE: NOTHING OF THIS IS FINAL. THIS IS ONLY ONE STEP CLOSER TO A FINAL RPG AND THE TALENT SYSTEM!

When your character gains a level, he will get 2 attribute-points and 1 talent-point.
If you press "T" the talent window will open, in witch you can spend your points.

• Attribute-Points: This points can be used to increase one of the four main stats (speed, stamina, ...). Because every player might focus different attributes, each character might be individual.
• Talent-Points: This points can be used to improve spells or learn new ones (talents). Watch the video to see how the talents work and how the rows get activated if you spend enaugh points.

With the talent system i try to make every character individual and different then others. For example you will only get 20 talent points or so, while you can spend up to 30 so you will have to decide what talents you want to leave out on the way to your ultimate.

3) XP-Bar

even if the xp bar is just one part of the ui i think its quite cool and important to show you how it works and tell you some details.

if you look at the standart xp bar of sc2 you will notice that it doesnt reset the xp to 0 if you get a level up. it always shows totalxp/maxxp. but i wanted to see how much xp the level itself needs to be completed and how much my hero has from this, so my xp bar resets on every lvl to 0. so my xp bar works a bit different from the normal one but i think it makes more sense.

4) Video, as always

Please watch 480p + fullscreen!

 

[elfian]

Um... later on, the ghost won't acquire and attack enemies by himself right? Cos' I think it would be much better if the player controls these things

 

[xXm0RpH3usXx]

i cant really say much about it, as i dont have any clue of how advanced or how difficult this is...
looks good! i think this is wow stylez, is it? ( i dont know, i never played it but think it was similar?) i might be wrong, so plz dont take offense

So now after this jibberish something important:
http://www.nchsoftware.com/capture/

its a free screen capture program (as long as its not used commercially and this isnt, is it?)
maybe u would like to try this one out to get rid of the fraps banner!

 

[Mille25]

Um... later on, the ghost won't acquire and attack enemies by himself right? Cos' I think it would be much better if the player controls these things

the combat system isnt implemented yet, i dont exactly know how it will look like later.

@xXm0RpH3usXx:

thx for the link.
i record with fraps cause i think it has better quality then the desktop recording programs. (in my other videos i used camstudio alot)

greez

 

[Mille25]

Update 25.5.2010

New concept --> Classes removed!

hi guys
a few days ago i had a quite cool idea.
why should there be any classes? why dont give every player all possibilities?

so i decided to REMOVE all classes from the game and start a new concept.
from now on, you can only choose your race when you create a character (zerg, protoss or terran). after that you can directly log in. after you logged in you will get your first spell point. this spell points can be used to learn a new spell. you get 1 spellpoint in ~ 3 levels and you can learn up to 6 (maybe 7) spells and choose from 24.

there will be three spell categories:

• offensive
• defensive
• support

with this new concept together with talents and attribute points i try to make it possible that EVERY character is unique in SU. For example you could play a damage dealer that can heal a teammate sometimes. or play a tank that can also do damage. you will also be able to unlearn spells and talents and try a different spec.

so overall there will be four ways to customize your character

• race (every race has a special racial ability and has other starting attributes)
• learn new spells (spell points, 1 point all ~3 lvls)
• improve spells/other things with talents (talent points, 1 point each lvl)
• improve attributes (attribute points, 2 points each lvl)

because of this new changes i reworked the ui a bit.

i hope you like the new concept! i would really like to hear some feedback from you!

some pics:

greez
mille25

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I still think that this is by far the most promising project that is currently being developed. However, I can't say that I am happy about the changes to the gameplay you are planning to make:

First: I like the idea of not having classes. Go on with that! But: There should be more "trees" than just offensive, defensive and support. There should be at least 2-3 different schools of "magic", 1-2 different melee trees and at least one tank tree.
If you want to keep your 3-tree system, then at least make sure you can diversify your character enough and have lots of prerequisites, or you will end up in balance-hell!

Also, remember to give your items stat requisites and level requisites, to prevent "casters" to take heavy armor, etc..
Also, I recommend making spells buyable, not learnable and make only talents learnable via level up. That way, you have a leveling money sink, which is very important for gameplay and can make some additional raredrop-spells.

Another suggestion: I feel like Zerg is not a suitable race for a RPG, both lore-wise (being a swarm intelligence and all) and gameplay-wise. What will be the enemies if Zerg are a playable race?

I suggest the following races:
- Ordinary Humans
- Psi-connected (basicly the Ghost race)
- Ordinary Protoss
- Dark Templars (Being outlaws and all, it would fit making them a separate race)
- Protoss-Zerg-Hybrids (ref. sc1 campaign)

 

[B_Light]

thats a nice idea but i want to know : depend on what skill i have chose, will the model of my unit change?

 

[Mille25]

I still think that this is by far the most promising project that is currently being developed. However, I can't say that I am happy about the changes to the gameplay you are planning to make:

First: I like the idea of not having classes. Go on with that! But: There should be more "trees" than just offensive, defensive and support. There should be at least 2-3 different schools of "magic", 1-2 different melee trees and at least one tank tree.

in my opinion "magic" doesnt fit into the starcraft universe. for me its more an technical and biological environment. warcraft is magic for me, starcraft not so much.

If you want to keep your 3-tree system, then at least make sure you can diversify your character enough and have lots of prerequisites, or you will end up in balance-hell!

at the moment im planning that every spell is leanrable from all trees with every level. but i might also add level requironments to it, we will see (so for example the more mighty spells will be learnable at high levels only).

Also, remember to give your items stat requisites and level requisites, to prevent "casters" to take heavy armor, etc..

i havent developed any items yet, but my plan is that there will NOT be any "caster" requironments, since there are no classes. instead of that every item will be usable especially for special spells, for example items with much intelligence could be usable for support spells while items with much armor are good for the defensive spells. the player can wear all items he wants, but he must dedice if the stats on that item make sense for the spells he learned.

Also, I recommend making spells buyable, not learnable and make only talents learnable via level up. That way, you have a leveling money sink, which is very important for gameplay and can make some additional raredrop-spells.

this is planned.

Another suggestion: I feel like Zerg is not a suitable race for a RPG, both lore-wise (being a swarm intelligence and all) and gameplay-wise. What will be the enemies if Zerg are a playable race?

I suggest the following races:
- Ordinary Humans
- Psi-connected (basicly the Ghost race)
- Ordinary Protoss
- Dark Templars (Being outlaws and all, it would fit making them a separate race)
- Protoss-Zerg-Hybrids (ref. sc1 campaign)

good point, sadly i havent played sc1 or the sc1 campaign yet so i dont know much about the starcraft storyline. maybe i will learn something with the sc2 campaign

very nice feedback zwiebel, thats exactly what brings me forward!

thats a nice idea but i want to know : depend on what skill i have chose, will the model of my unit change?

at the moments there are no plans to change the model of your character.
you must always keep in mind that you can mix the spells like you want to, so i dont see a sense in special "caster" or "melee" models.

greez
mille25

 

[xXm0RpH3usXx]

dont be too picky with the word magic...
its put into "" on purpose i think, which means he doesnt mean magic in particular, but magic in genereal (which could be seen as talent or anything that is somehow equivalent)

 

[mrzwach]

Psionic Storm seems to be pretty magical to me.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

dont be too picky with the word magic...
its put into "" on purpose i think, which means he doesnt mean magic in particular, but magic in genereal (which could be seen as talent or anything that is somehow equivalent)

This.

And about the missing requirements for items and spells: I can just tell you that this will seriously mess up your balancing. People will sooner or later develope weird class mixes that are simply overpowered compared to the classic rpg roles.

For example: I equip my character that is specced entirely on healing with the best armor ingame. I can now both tank and heal and might even be able to generate more aggro than any real "tank" because of heal-aggro (at least if you are going to implement the concept of threat to your map, which I really recommend you to).

Never give the players ultimate freedom. To much freedom always ends up with having no freedom at all, as there will be "roxxor builds" sooner or later. Classic RPG roles are vital for ORPG gameplay. At least if you do not intend to make this game a hack&slash dungeon crawler.

 

[CloudMax]

Obviously there will be one way to abuse the fact that you can customize this much.
This is probably the very reason to why all classes cant do everything.
Just take like every single RPG as an example, casters just does not use heavy armors, and it is pretty much the same with all range classes. This is for balancing most of the times.

There will always be a combination that beats everything else by far if you can customize all you want, it is sad but true. I do like the idea of customization and all, but i do not think it would work out : /

 

[Mille25]

This.

And about the missing requirements for items and spells: I can just tell you that this will seriously mess up your balancing. People will sooner or later develope weird class mixes that are simply overpowered compared to the classic rpg roles.

i think it would be quite cool to see some wild class mixes. id never say that i want the people to play the classic rpg roles, thats my concept. but you convinced me to include some spell learn requironments. so it will be like this: in each of the three trees there will be weak, medium and very mighty spells. to learn the mighty spells you will have to spend a minimum number of spell points in that tree ---> you can still make class mixes, but the spells wont be that powerful then. how it exactly will be balanced i will only find out by trying it.

For example: I equip my character that is specced entirely on healing with the best armor ingame. I can now both tank and heal and might even be able to generate more aggro than any real "tank" because of heal-aggro (at least if you are going to implement the concept of threat to your map, which I really recommend you to).

every item will be useful for a special role, but not for all. so if you for example say you want to be a tank + healer and equip with much armor and stamina, your heals will be very weak because you wont have much intelligence, while your live will be very high because of your high stamina ---> the effect would be very small. but like i already said, you convinced me to use spell requironments

Never give the players ultimate freedom. To much freedom always ends up with having no freedom at all, as there will be "roxxor builds" sooner or later. Classic RPG roles are vital for ORPG gameplay. At least if you do not intend to make this game a hack&slash dungeon crawler.

well said. we will see how the concept will work out finally.

much thanks for your very useful feedback guys! i read everything and i will try to take care of all of it!

greez

 

[Mille25]

Update 29.5.2010

Working on talents and spells

hi guys
currently i am working on the talents and spells to get it working and a bit interesting

for the spells i already startet some excel document with ideas, but its still nothing implemented in the game. however i already made my first tests in a spererate map and at least im able to trigger spells right now so there is not much in the way any more to all who missed it: the spell system got changed a bit to avoid imba class mixes. there are tier0, tier1 and tier2 spells right now. every of the three trees has 8 spells, while the upper 4 are tier0 and dont need any spellpoints spend in that tree. then the next row are the tier1 spells which need at least 2 spellpoints in that tree and below this row there are the tier2 spells which need 3 spellpoints in this three to be learned.

for talents i also started collecting ideas. while the talents are not yet implemented, i updated the attribute system and you are able to reset your attribute points right now. i also reworked the design so it looks a bit more final right now

everything you see in the screens below is already working

 

[takakenji]

looks very nice and promising and you obviously have some experience

 

[elfian]

Needs at least 1 spent attribute point.

No?

 

[tagg1080]

resetted is not a word...

"Your attributes have been reset."

"Your attributes were reset." -> sounds funny to me. (Feels like a strange tense to put the sentence in)


If your English isn't good then have someone read through all your stuff; it will help you.

 

[Mille25]

hehe sry for my bad english guys, it has been fixed.

tomorrow there will be a big update, i just finished the talents and it works very well. be prepared )

 

[Mille25]

Update 31.5.2010

Working talent system

big update today:
ive got a working talent system for you!

the screens and the vid should be quite self explaining, i hope you like it.
please keep in mind that the talents can change everytime and nothing is final. all shown talents work.

if you have any suggestions/questions/critics for talents feel free to post!
If you want to post some ideas for talents i would be very thankful, but always keep in mind that there are no classes so all talents should be useful for each playing style. also keep in mind that talents should be passive.

[YOUTUBE]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-M-IXToHuY&feature=player_embedded[/YOUTUBE]

Ingame screens:

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Some suggestions for the talent system:

1) Resets should cost gold, depending on your level, or people will end up respeccing for every boss in upcoming dungeons.

2) Lucky revive seems weird to me. There shouldn't be a skill that encourages dying. Nobody would specc it anyways. Maybe change it to a talent that absorbs one fatal blow instead, with an internal cooldown of 60 seconds.

3) Don't forget to give your "if your life/mana drops below 10% ..." talents an internal cooldown to balance them out. You might increase the chance to procc to compensate for the loss of efficiency. Also, I think 10% is a little bit low, if you ask me, especially if this talent is meant as a life-saver. You should have it proc on the 15% or 20% limit instead.

4) Do not have non-scaling talents. Never increase something like damage or armor by a point value. Always go with a percentage. Remember that damage is (if you dont change the way armor works) superior to attack speed. Damage increase should be a little bit lower than attack speed increase.

5) Don't forget talents that improve spellcasting (like spell casting time reduction or % to get mana on spelldamage dealt and stuff) ... it's fine if you want to add different talent trees to the different "roles" though, because warriors wouldnt care about spellcasting talents.

6) You should add talents that improve other values of your hero: Crit-Chance, Spellpower, Evasion Rate, Resistances, etc.

 

[Mille25]

Some suggestions for the talent system:

1) Resets should cost gold, depending on your level, or people will end up respeccing for every boss in upcoming dungeons.

the resource cost of resetting talents/attributes will increase with each level, i absolutly agree here

2) Lucky revive seems weird to me. There shouldn't be a skill that encourages dying. Nobody would specc it anyways. Maybe change it to a talent that absorbs one fatal blow instead, with an internal cooldown of 60 seconds.

im also a bit curious about this talent. but imo its to good, not to bad. i would definatly skill it if id play. but the talents will change several times until the demo anyways.

3) Don't forget to give your "if your life/mana drops below 10% ..." talents an internal cooldown to balance them out. You might increase the chance to procc to compensate for the loss of efficiency. Also, I think 10% is a little bit low, if you ask me, especially if this talent is meant as a life-saver. You should have it proc on the 15% or 20% limit instead.

very good point, forgot that, thanks.

4) Do not have non-scaling talents. Never increase something like damage or armor by a point value. Always go with a percentage. Remember that damage is (if you dont change the way armor works) superior to attack speed. Damage increase should be a little bit lower than attack speed increase.

also very good point. at the beginning i wanted to make all talents be percentage values (whats definatly better) but then i heard from robbepop that the scaling seems to be a bit strange. for example if you create a buff that increases max hp by 10%, it will always increase the hp by 10% FROM THE STARTING AMOUNT IN THE EDITOR, not from the current amount. so i decided to make the bonusses fixed values. (i havent tested this myself but i have enaugh stress with banks atm)

5) Don't forget talents that improve spellcasting (like spell casting time reduction or % to get mana on spelldamage dealt and stuff) ... it's fine if you want to add different talent trees to the different "roles" though, because warriors wouldnt care about spellcasting talents.

ok, you are right here, anyways there isnt any spell yet so i dont know how it will look like later.

6) You should add talents that improve other values of your hero: Crit-Chance, Spellpower, Evasion Rate, Resistances, etc.

also good point, anyways, none of this is implemented yet, so it will need a bit time to come up.

again much thanks to zwiebel for his very good feedback!

PS: dont be scared to post shorter feedback. every feedback is good, if its a question or a long post doesnt really matter for me. every post gives me motivation, especially in this "hard" times of bank limits and editor bugs

some update will come the next days.

little map overview:

 

[AKAIMAX]

I think resetting first time should be free and every time after should cost cause first time would be used incase they made a mistake or something putting the talents in.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Ouch! 3 megs of code? Looks like the SC2 editor is even more of a mess than I thought. Good thing I retired from mapping and focus on other stuff now.

 

[Mille25]

I think resetting first time should be free and every time after should cost cause first time would be used incase they made a mistake or something putting the talents in.

yeah, also i good idea.
maybe the cost increases for every reset by X minerals.

PS: i would really like to say "save system redone" right now, but it still doesnt load in multiplayer, because the banks are much more retarded than i ever thought.

nevertheless, the new save system works perfectly in singleplayer and only needs one bank file, thats already some improvement. also, talents get saved now and options get saved for all chars together, not individual because it made no sense imo. addicionally the new save system is much saver against cheaters.

if blizzard doesnt change something for the bank limit, i will have to limit the maxplayers to ~ 8 and the charslots to 1. there is no other way, because the amount of data thats loadable at the moment is just to less to make a 12 player rpg with 5 charslots for each player possible, sad but true.

more infos why the save system doesnt work atm you can find here: http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/...647/sc2-bank-files-critics-167005/index5.html

PS: ive updated the main post a bit and you can now find my project on mapster: http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/orpg-starcraft-universe/

 

[Mille25]

Update 4.6.2010

Some small changes + MP tests

hi everyone!
work still goes quite good. the last days i spent on details and testing.

you might have noticed, that on some screenshots the chat and msgboxes were to big for the resolution and the expbar was above them:

this bug accured because the dialog system is based on pixels. to avoid this issue i added a new option setting that allows users with smaller screen resolutions to use "small chat and messagebox". this should fix the problem.

addicionally i added a chat frame to the charlist screen that allows you to chat while looking at your different characters. i also changed the standart ui color from green to blue because i think it looks fresher.

new screens:

addicionally i did some multiplayer testing. the tests turned out VERY good and the bugs were very small and easy to fix (e.g. the double chat messages in the chat box above xD). it couldnt have been better. at the moment there can be up to 4 characters for all players together, more isnt possible with the save system at the moment, but at least we could already play a bit!

 

[Zwiebelchen]

To be honest, I really suggest you to limit the amount of players to 8 anyways. 12 players is just overkill in terms of lag and delay especially for arrow key controls.

Usually, ORPG games in battlenet work like this: You get your group of people beforehand and then create a private game. Only 5% of all orpg maps are hosted public, because public games usually will not have the joined players match your level.

From my experience of Gaias Retaliation ORPG in Warcraft III, I can give you the following recommendations:

- Balance the solo content for Singleplayer. This is useful, because people will be able to level up without help
- Balance the outdoor bosses (at least if you plan to make some) for 2-3 players
- Balance dungeons to 4 players and allow 5 players to enter the dungeon at the same time
- Allow a maximum of 8 player slots in the game

After lots of testing, this has proven to be the best way to balance a map.

I don't quite know the general restrictions of the bank system, but would your save system be MPI if you restrict the map to 8 players (which you should do anyways)? Why should you be limited to 1 character then? I mean; you could always store all your player's heroes to the same bank file after all. That way you need 8 banks, one for every player, but players can still load and save as often as they want.


Ah, just one thing I saw from the screenshots: So Robbepop joined your team? Great. I always thought that GoH was one of the best RPGs in the wc3 scene.


EDIT: I read your SC2 bank critics thread: So you are limited to 80 variable slots? That's fine, if you ask me. You can always compress your stored integer values to a base and exponent system like people did in the past with WC3s save and load codes. Are you able to store strings into banks? If so, it's even easier, as you can simply write all your data into a single string and encrypt it with a chiffre.
However, I do hope that SC2 banks allow strings. If not, then saving items will be much more trouble, as Integers are limited to +/-2 million and thus allow only a limited amount of data. Like that, even compressed it wouldn't be enough to store all your ORPG data in 10 integers per player.

 

[BestZero]

Ok, I like on how you grayout your icons to make it look like unavailable. Problem is I also want to do that on my map but I have been toying with it but no such luck. May you tell me on how to do that?

I've been trying to change the dialog button color to gray or something else but didn't look like yours, also is it unclickable or you just change its color or something?

@below me: wow! thanks for a light-speed reply, both needs to be met at once!

 

[Mille25]

@above me: enable/disable dialog item is what you are searching for!

PROJECT ON ICE


Sad news: i wont continue developing this map until blizzard changes the bank file limitation. At the moment its just impossible, even with 64 bit systems or whatever, to create an rpg that saves heros, inventory, quests, talents, spells and so on. and without all that it just sucks. ive thought about it and decided that i will go this way. ive tested all this bank sh*t all over again, always with the same result. Addicionally there are currently a lot of other issues of the editor that are just annoying and stop me developing. I dont say this is dead, but im just pissed. Sorry guys!

 

[Robbepop]

hiho,

i really hope that blizzard will rethink the function of those banks which can actually so less information that they can be nearly just used for short score values - and that was it...

if you are a mapmaker who plans an RPG you have to base your save system atm like mappers in wc3 had to do it - you need to make save codes which the annoyed players can write down to save their information... sad story but true.

not only RPG projects suffer from this fact!

Robbepop

 

[mrzwach]

Mille, heres a few ideas:

Make less talents. Try having all of them only have 3 points, and make leveling up less frequent to compensate. Additionally, change it from having individual quests to "quest sets", which would be 10-15 quests combined together, and completed/not completed as a whole. This would greatly save on space, and could be done without really affecting your quest system that much.

Another thing you could try is having the genned codes in the bank be too long to load, but then have the players copy paste them into the chat. This would pose the problem, however, of noobs not doing this and thusly breaking the game, and would be somewhat annoying. This would be a leap ahead of current WC3 systems, however, where you need to transcribe codes from screenshots and such.

Alternatively, you could limit your RPG to 8 or so players. Would suck, but better than nothing.

Really, its unfortunate you can't just use freaking variables with banks. If you could, you could use the second solution only have it create a new bank each time, incrementing an integer by 1 each time so they don't overwrite and break the game. Sadly, pretty sure this would not be an easy fix for blizz to do, as the way they made banks is kinda silly. Just hoping they fix it for release. :\

 

[Mille25]

you know, exactly thats what i cant accept. im sick of all this limits and workarounds. MAYBE it would be possible by using 100 workarounds and make all more simple (less talents, quests, spells, ...) but its about the principe here. i just want to make blizzard (and for sure all others) think about it. the editor gives us so much possibililities, and we again just cant use them because of this simple limit.

without limit:

• 12+ players
• 5 charslots
• 100 quests or more possible
• a lot of custom skills
• at least 12 talents
• a lot of items and inventory slots
• ...

with the limit

• maybe up to 8 players maximum (i would say we cant even have so much)
• 1 charslot
• quests have to be limited as hell
• less spells
• less talents
• itemslots have to be very limited because of savecode length
• ...

for me its not an epic rpg any more then. its no much better than wc3 was, just because of this bank sh*t.
not to mention all the other problems, like EVERY IDIOT can delete ALL banks that he wants because we cant preload special genereated bank names.

but i still have hope that blizzard knows about this issue or is at least reading the forums and sees whats going on. and i still hope that this is a beta issue that will be fixed on game release. if not i will stop the project and do little funmaps again, even if i REALLY hoped to have FINALLY the possibilites of creating a great rpg with sc2.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I can totally understand your decision, although its sad to see a very promising project dying. I agree to you that SC2 editor is a total disappointment. Let's hope blizzard fixes banks and the 2^21 byte limit.

As for me, I will wait for The Old Republic now, as SC2 is going to be one giant fail in terms of mapmaking.