Followers of the CW series are more than a little familiar with Spores and Phantoms. These were flying/ethereal enemies that required specialized defenses. In the case of CW1, you build SAM sites. In CW2 you build Phantom Coils. In Game 3, Particle Beams are your salvation. Spores in Game 3 also originate on the map (rather than off the edges). Like in CW2, you can use this to plan your defenses…. and offensive maneuvers. After all, why sit there and shoot down spores all day when you can instead go maraud a Spore Tower instead?
Ooooh I’m guessing that the blue crystal shard things are where you put the ore mines? I was also wondering will this game have multiple part levels? Like say you do whatever your objective is and then another one pops up and the map expands or something?
Yep, those are (current graphics for) Ore Deposits. There are two sitting on the right side of the screen just waiting for me to put ore mines on them.
Not sure about the level extensions (supcom style). The big maps can already be pretty large and you can attack them in sections many times.
So any chance that we see any anti-creeper?
There is anti creeper in the game. If you look through some of the old pictures you can see it spread out around his buildings and such (It looks about light blue and rather thin)
Check previous blog posts for several shots involving AC.
When is the expected release date?
This year if I’m lucky.
you mean if we’re lucky 😉
Keep up the good work.
Grouse. Can’t wait.
Is that ore, on the right there? The blue stuff?
And are Spore Towers just spore-specific spawnes?
Yeah, the crystal looking stuff is and Ore Deposit.
And yep, Spore Towers just charge up and fire off Spores every so often.
Looking very good, I’m really looking forward to this. Tell me though; will you be able to build anti-creeper “makers” on spore towers? So you can have anti-creeper spores fight for you? Not sure what purpose they would serve, but it would be awesome to be able to use spores for good as well as combating them
I doubt it about building on top of Spore Tower remains. In fact I am likely switching to turning former emitter sites into “power zones”. Spots that will give weapons extra abilities when parked there.
What will happen with Makers then?
They will return to the bit bucket in the sky. They aren’t needed to make AC….
I liked the Idea though.
so do the spore thing come out of a gate like in 2
It’s more of a tower that ‘blossoms’ open.
Is that cyan thing at the bottom a spore tower, a special emitter, or something else worse than either?
That was left over from an emitter I destroyed. It’s the core… and in the current build. I will likely be replacing it with a power zone.
I see some of the guns are overheating. Does this affect performance or is it just looks.
Just a visual indicator of the weapon’s activity. Useful to knowing which guns are doing the most work.
How much time does it take them to cool down? The longer this indicator lasts, the more it will be an indicator of ‘average’ activity of a gun. My thoughts are, one minute firing constantly to reach full heat, one minute inactivity to cool down?
They change pretty quickly. It can be good when you have several units parked near each other to tell which is doing the most work.
awww i loved the idea of the emitter husks being used in your favor 🙁
They still are… just called something different. The ‘power zone’ (or whatever lore based name I come up with) would be left when the emitter is destroyed. You can then build or park a unit on that spot and it will get enhanced capabilities. Imagine a mortar that can fire 4 times as fast and 4 times as far? Or similarly for a Pulse Cannon. Or, maybe you just want a super shield, or even a super reactor…
How many typical units (pulser-sized) do you anticipate fitting in this zone?
It’ll also be pretty wicked for titans . . .
If emitters are close together, will these power zones stack once the emitters are gone?
First go will just be a single unit big. But I could experimenting with a 3×3 standard unit area.
I like at least 3×3 more – you can make a very powerful hardpoint this way, hold the ground you’ve captured easily, and still be able to include some reactors to help boost your production, and advance into enemy territory quickly.
In my opinion, this is the most important aspect – not power where the power zone is located, but being able to progress from there more powerfully. Having ‘power zones’ able to affect things like reactors and relays can help you push forward more quickly.
I’ve added abilities to most units currently. With fixed power zones that can’t move I have made the upgrades pretty intense. For instance a reactor gets 10x production. A storage Pod gets 20x storage. Relays and Collectors get 2x connection distances. Most weapons fire with twice the range and 3x-4x the rate.
maybe the size or strength of the power zone could be based on the power of the emitter
In the middle top I can see a box moving across the power line. What is that? It’s almost right on top of one of the collectors so I know it’s not something on the ground
That’s an Ore Packet. It is headed for processing so it can be turned into AC.
I like the power zone idea. Build a weapon on it for when it’s at the front line, and replace it with a reactor or drone (I’m assuming it affects drones. Why wouldn’t it?) when you push forward.
Question: the number is on the command node is the stored energy? Or is it something else?
That’s temporary in the build I used to take this image. I’ve gotten rid of separate AC refineries and just moved the conversion center inside the Command Nodes. So in this screen shot it shows the amount of AC that is stored inside that Command Node.
So are AC refineries coming back, or are you moving away from the refinery concept, towards something else?
Refineries as a separate structure are probably gone for good. Command Nodes serve the same purpose is a cleaner way. So ore has to be sent from an Ore Mine to one of the Command Nodes. There it is refined and stored. AC packets get dispatched from the CN’s…
RIP refinery. July 8, 2012-July 14, 2012. We hardly knew thee.
Well, I can certainly see the ore easily in this one (Which I had trouble with in the previous picture), but where is this spore tower you speak of?
Offscreen. There’s nothing onscreen that hasn’t been identified.
judging by the tails on the spores they came from one that would be off screen
Yeah, they are off the bottom of the screen when I took this screen shot. I wanted to take a zoomed in shot, else you would have seen them.
Are the particle beams one-shot kills, like CW1, or are they DoT, like CW2 phantoms?
I like the CW2 method better . . . requires more planning and strategy to manage if there is a danger of spores overwhelming your defenses.
And I notice that the lower right spore has a visible health bar, which wouldn’t occur if it were a one-shot. Way to ask a question I could answer myself.
Yeah, the means have to work on the Spores for a bit. A single beam can take out a single spore, but two beams are a lot more comfortable. They also use energy faster than they can continuously recharge. So very similar the the CW2 model.
very cool, I think it gives the game a bit more complexity, plus you avoid the thing where in CW:1 you saw the spore timer and then a minute before the attack you just spam SAM site every-where and it gives another objective to go for with the towers.
Yeah, I think it is the best of each of CW1 and CW2 when it comes to flying enemies.
Virgil since the spore tower’s are shooting creeper spores they should consume a bit of the surrounding creeper as to construct there payloads. Or they are simply emitters with the ability to shoot spores…. or some version of the gateway….
This are just some random ideas I had:
1 What if the texture for emmiters changed the stronger they are.
2 Would there be a way for the emmiters to become stronger over time on the story missons so you cant just sit back and build up your defenses?
3 From what i have inferred from the story the emmiters don’t create the creeper they just transport it and if this is true what if your buildings around an active emmiter took DoT very slowly (due to the energies from the parralel reality they use to communicate with the loki) so you cant just station defenses nearby and you have to focus on taking it out as fast as possible or you lose all your stuff.
4 what if instead of just boosting weapons or creating AC destroyed emmiters acted as a *gateway* to the alternate reality for you to build a weapon similar to the dark beam from CW2.
5 if you dont like #4 what if you could utilize the *gateway* (if im correct in #4) for some kind of micro rift similar to the ones in CW2 so you build one of these at one emmiter close to you CN and one at an emmitter you’ve destroyed on your front lines.
The destruction of Spore Towers and emitters will definitely give you something… I’m just exploring different things at the moment.
Are you putting any more intelligence into the spore attacks? Previously they seemed to target any random player unit. What about edge-detection or route a path with the least resistance?
Do you imagine spores to be more like homing missiles or trebuchet shells? If the former, why not buff up the AI? If the latter, would they hit high points or do early collisions? Or what about both, depending on the spire?
Making them too smart can increase the frustration factor. Their primary purpose is to provide a minimal, but orthogonal attack vector for the enemy. Too smart, and the minimal threat they pose becomes much more intense. But, I hear what you are saying and will experiment with a few options…
I happy that you are sticking to lasers instead of going to back to ground to air missiles. I found the lasers much more reliable and didn’t go flying around the map before hitting a target.
Hey Virgilw,maybe you would have to set-up some sort of shield on the planet you visit before leaving? Its like mission dont ends when you kill all creep and destroy all emmiters.you would have to build ” CreepNet ” idk,and that would create a large shield over planet that would protect creeper from gettin in to that planet again.
I dunno about that one. The biggest problem I saw with CW1 is that once you knew you would win, the game became a grindfest. I’d rather see ways to win the game without having to finish the map, rather than make players do more after the map’s already mopped up. Like the Totems.
that would be cool, maybe a special mission type?
Some worlds may require something like this. Not so much to protect the world, but to gain access to other worlds.
oh I know, that auto happens at the end of a mission as some kind of animation, the shield goes up and the ship leaves the planet shooting some kind of beam that opens rift space
I mean, that shield would prevent creeper getting into that planet again
I know what you mean like in cw2 where colony prime was being attacked by “1000 source worlds” the shield would protect that from happening
Yeah you got the idea,to prevent the invasion
How much will the game cost?
As mentioned in earlier blog posts, under $20, typical indie-dev pricing.
What if you made the AC maker/reactor/refinery/something works like you originally planed while in a power zone?
virgilw- Will the main ship(s) in this game get a boost from power zones?
I have two ideas
1-You could buy ( recruit ) scientists to research new technology, for example gauss laser for pulse cannons,or something like that,one research per time and as many scientists you put in this project,then faster they will research it.
2-There could be-Aerial Drones ( no i didnt took the idea from aerial spores ) it would be slightly bigger then standart drones,they would be firing purple ” experimentals ” that teleport creeper out of the level. I named it ” Displacer ” Cannon 😀
Hm. Didn’t Virgil say that the game’s theme would be symmetry between the player and the creeper? In that case… maybe this could be an ENEMY drone that cannot hit your structures (just like most weapons can’t damage emitters) and instead fires on AC.
First off I love your games, I come here almost every day for an update, I played the games on facebook then came home and got both games. At this point I tend to play CW1 when I am tired and need to relax before bed. I have always loved RTS games, more to the point I love taking my time and building far more than I need to win. .
That brings me to the two things I hate about your games. They both happen to be based on this theme, “I do not play games for a “score” to upload to some “leader board” hiding out on the interweb that I will never see”
I hate that there is a score, more so I hate that your “score” is based on how fast you finish a level. I want to cover the map with green, I want to have as many power plants as I can, I want to have over 300 extra power, I want to send a wave of 20 blasters and mortars deep into the enemy base. I don’t want some counter telling me how “bad” I am doing because I am not playing at lighting speeds. And honestly that is how it feels when I look down at that counter/score. “look right here to see how bad you are doing because you are taking too long.”
If Solitaire has an option to turn off the timer and score why doesn’t your game?
Even more than the above I HATE that at the end of my game you force me to choose to send my score to some magic leader board I care nothing about. Once I finish a game I tend to… play another level… You need to have an option to never even again be asked if you want to submit your score or you need to make the game automatically upload them.
I know that to some people these two things seem small but for me they are reasons to turn the game off… granted I keep coming back but sometimes I just close the program when it asks me to upload my score. In point of fact I just turned off CW1 after finishing one level so I could come type this up.
To amend something I said above. “at the end of my game you force me to choose to send my score” This should have said…
“…at the end of my game you force me to choose not to send or to send my score…” I know that you don’t force me to upload my score but you do force me to choose one way or the other.
It’s not so much this that annoys me as much as the fact that a lot of scores are clearly impossible/hacked, and yet they remain on the top 100 list, keeping actual legitimate players off. (I think the top score for loki is something like 30 seconds)
Although I must say, it really is a little unfair that score is based solely on completion time.
If you don’t like to compete on the internet, don’t. I feel the same way – I like having fun, not measuring myself against others, and yet this is one of my favorite game series of all time.
The score exists, but if you don’t like measuring yourself against the score, then you can only blame yourself when you do so.
Sorry for being so late to reply, I was on vacation.
The main point is not that “I don’t like to compete.” The two main issues are;
The score is based on how long it takes you to finish a level
That you cannot move onto the next game without clicking yes/no to submit a score you don’t even care about.
Lastly I said that there needs to be an option to disable that submit you’re score window or automatically upload them so you do not have to see it.
Are you planning on beta testing this game? I bought both of the other games as soon as they came out, and I was finding subtle bugs in random places alot. For example, when I first CW1, once i reached the spore levels and built a SAM or two, I noticed that occasionally a missile would be launched as the last spore was destroyed, and would circle in a corner of the map until the next wave of spores. A beta would help prevent this by exposing the game to the people who will actually play it, and testing it against the randomness of the casual player.
There is a beta. It’s people picked from the forums.
I tottaly agree with you,but there is ” Exit without submiting ” option in Creeper World 2. Therefore Its wery lame that people are tryng to get best scores, I Usualy turtle for 20-30 minutes, and then start attacking creeper.
Scores are what make the game strategic. You can play most levels that aren’t expert-level cautiously and slowly, and win, if you play it as a real-time game. If you want to play it like chess, though, maximizing strategic considerations, then time and score gives you a way to measure the success of your gambits.
I don’t like to measure myself against other players, but I do like striving for score sometimes, simply because it’s a different kind of accomplishment. It’s a much less forgiving challenge than simply winning the game, and thus a more rewarding accomplishment.