I read all blog comments… even if I don’t have a chance to respond, I do read them. So a number of questions come up from time to time on one topic or another. This week’s screen shot answers some of those questions. Some things are subtle, some not so much…
Ready for another mini status update? Yep, me too. Presently, I’m up to 21 hand crafted story missions and still going. The end of the story is in sight, but it’s clear at this point there will definitely be more story missions in game 3 then in either 1 or 2. Now these story missions are also special. It isn’t just that every mission advances the story, each mission also gives you something new and unique. I’ve taken great pains to come up with something cool on each mission so you can look forward to a unique challenge on each and every mission.
Platforms? Those will be Mac and Windows. Linux won’t be there at launch. I hope to bring it along later, but preliminary testing just indicates that Unity still has some issues. The issues may be things I can work around, but I’m not holding up the parade to fix them. I’ll swing back around after the initial release and address Linux concerns.
What’s next? Finish the story missions, add in Credits screen, fix a few last minute bugs, do promotional materials, update web site, rock the house.
Stay tuned….
Awesome. I love the expanded story missions. Hopefully closer release. what’s the thing in the middle?
If you look closely it looks like it’s shooting creeper at the four objects.
Is it shooting something or pulling something in by pellets?
Shooting because it’s spreading the creeper out in space, while the digitals keep it confined.
To me, it looks like it is repelling the creeper.
When creeper (from the digitalis) comes , it is pulling off the creeper into space.
I think it’s anti-gravity, as a response to Magnetar.
I think it’s CRPL with a custom image.
Creeper in the void?! Is nothing safe?!! Although I think we saw that in a previous video, is it just easier for Creeper to do now or is this Creeper special somehow?
probably a side effect of destroying the digi the creeper was on.
Actually I think that that the center device is throwing large amounts of creeper to those little islands, where it builds up and flows into the void, but I could be wrong.
That’d make sense, you’d probly be able to infect other worlds with the creeper once it gets ejected into space, probly like spores or something. I dunno honestly but it does make for some really cool challenges… creeper flowing freely over a non-existent surface? probly that machine is allowing it to do that. it also looks to be refueling and resupplying the spore towers near it.
Digitals carry creeper in the void and the machine in the middle is shooting creeper at the four objects diagonal to it, so the creeper spreads out.
*prepares to rock that creeper’s world* ^.^
That looks like creeper being jettisoned in the middle of void. Pretty cool – although by the looks of things there’s an enemy there in the middle of the digitalis that you’d need to kill. Curious how you’d nullify it.
It’s likely that you’d be able to use those small diamond shaped islands near it to build a nullifier (they’d definitely be in range, and you could use Guppies for packet supply on the southern island nearby and relays to reach the packets over). Or maybe you don’t have to nullify it at all.
21 story missions comlete you are realy fast;) hope the game come out in mid or late august;) Totaly love that you have somthing new per mission. One question have you some secret creeper types in the game that you havent showed us because you wont to keep somthing secret so we dont get some suprises;) I hope so cant wait for the game.
-TheSauronsservant
Can anyone clue me in on what benefit you gain from more than 1 Command Node on the same network? I’ve seen people do it once in a while but never have been sure why. Does it give you more energy than the equivalent area packed with reactors? Or maybe it has other benefits I’m not thinking of?
i’d say here would be possible benfits:
1:depending on where they land, they could expand a base more quickly
2: increased production max of packets
3: increased storage of anti-creeper
4: increased storage of energy.
it also allows the production of packets to be anywhere. Energy is transferred in an instant but packets take time to move. So if you have one command node it will be far from the front lines, but if you have 3 it makes fighting of different fronts easier.
Each node has its own storage of energy, so I assume that when your making more energy than using, you can store more in the network. Same with anti-creeper.
Wrong. They each have their own AC storage, but their energy is exactly the same if they are on the same network.
I think he(MiquelFire) meant that if you can store up to 20 energy per node, then with 3 nodes in 1 network, you can store up to 60 energy in total (which is divided equally to the 3 nodes).
Which is not true.
They do NOT add energy storage.
They add AC storage, but not energy storage.
Nope. It has 25 and when combined the nodes share a 25 reserve store.
That’s an odd decision. Why not?
I don’t know. Probably because of Forge upgrades. They combine there energy production (1.5 x 3) but not their energy storage.
But when all three are on separate networks, they don’t – can’t – share and the storage stacks, in a way. I guess it won’t matter but so much in late game when your reactor farms are pumping 200 energy/second, but it could still be an issue early on.
I know. I don’t know why it is….
There’s also the benefit of additional security. If you lose one Command Node, for example, your network isn’t just going to stop running.
I think that one of the things that excites me the most is that with terraforming I will be able to lay my collectors out in a perfect grid. Anyone else get annoyed when you have to offset them?
I hate to admit it, but yes. Alittle OCD about it too. I doubt were the only ones.
Yeah, building the “perfect” collector layout is now possible.
Straight lines, straight lines everywhere!
Me.(Or more likely, i like it being in a perfect grid), Although that was part of the challenge.
Absolutely.
Same here. It will be much easier to create grid like structures . Especially with new drag build system.
I actually question the usefulness of collectors when you get relay tech. Reactors will cover the energy problem more efficiently than collectors, and relays make packets travel faster from point to point. I suppose they’ll be more useful in the early game when you’re just starting up as a cheap source of energy, or perhaps when you’re limited to the number of things you can build, but I just don’t think collectors have that much of a long-term purpose if you’re allowed to build anything you want to.
Reactors are expensive and don’t produce as much energy as a collector. Trust me, it will still be your main unit.
From what I can gather from other videos, collectors produce an average of .2 energy if they’re placed quasi-efficiently. Reactors produce roughly .5 energy, regardless if they’re placed next to each other, which would *significantly* reduce the efficiency of collectors (would probably bring it down to .05-.1). Collectors would be useful for getting a base established quickly, but in the long run, they’re impractical- reactors produce more energy, more efficiently.
Reactors produce .3 or .4. I can’t remeber, while collectors produce .6 perfect. I’m not 100% sure pf these figures, but collectors produce more energy, and also weapons can connect. The game doesn’t last long enough usaully to the point of relays and reactors being the entire infrastructure.
I’m curious as to where you’re getting these figures, because after watching recent videos, I can honestly say that reactors give .5 energy and collectors give roughly .2 energy. If you don’t believe me, please watch the video under the post “Super Tower 2” (http://knucklecracker.com/blog/index.php/2013/07/super-tower-2/). You should be able to easily see that collectors give on average a bit less than .2 energy per collector, and reactors consistently give .5 energy per reactor.
A similar concept was in Creeper World 1. Using a basic memory scanner, I found that 1 collector whose area was maximized (at best possible efficiency) gave .18 energy, which means you’d have to have about 250 blocks powered for 1 energy, or that every 1 green block gives .004 energy. This is only neat math stuff, and all of this is insignificant if Virgil has changed this ratio in CW3, but it still shows that it’s doubtful Virgil would have made such a big balance change by making the collector produce over 3x the original energy production they had back in CW1.
But I digress. Back onto topic, collectors do not produce more energy than reactors, and saying that weapons can’t connect to reactors is insignificant, because you’d have a relay system branching to the front line. You’d have all your reactors as far away from the creeper as possible, not up close to the fight (this is arguably another reason the reactor/relay strategy is better in the long run, since you won’t lose energy right away if the creeper breaks through).
To back this up, watching back videos, many players ,both virgil and lich, tend to use collectors early, but then after they build a bunch of reactors leave the collectors behind.
Well, my figures are wrong. I checked in CW3 and a max collector gathers 0.2 while a reactor gathers .3. However, reactors are usually built in small numbers as the player finishes the map or the map doesn’t require the use of many reactors. There useful in the long run, but the long run isn’t usually that long. I build reactors, sure, but not in huge farms usually and relays are useful to span long distances or make distances shorter.
But relays cost 10 packets while collectors cost only 5, so in the front lines, collectors are better(but still using relays to get energy to them, just building them with long connections).
Sorry for double post.
The video you linked, in it the collectors aren’t using their full potential.
Just like in CW1, if the creeper surrounds you, there is little building room. Now, will you want to place another collector, or build up much more energy with reactors? Also, Super Tower 2 was quite awhile ago. The ratio may have been changed. Virgilw- could you post a ratio, or include it in the next video/picture?
I think making a wiki/description on stuff would be more user-friendly (like building range, PZ building range, fire range, PZ fire range, fire rate, PZ fire rate, collection, etc. (and the different levels of Aether Forge upgrades.)
I wonder whether CW has enough of a following now to make and maintain a decent wiki. It looks like there were a couple of half-hearted attempts on wikia (knucklecracker.wikia.com and creeperworld.wikia.com) but nothing substantial. I’m sure people who get OCD about optimising things would love to be able to find exact stats somewhere.
There is going to be an official wiki about Creeper World when CW3 comes out.
OK, go ahead. Build Collectors to begin your mission, make reactors, then relays, then destroy one by one your collectors. Good Luck !
I mentioned that strategy earlier. Reactors take more energy so collectors are a better beginner unit (just like you said)
YES FINALLY!!!!!!!
it’s time to kick creeper’s ass and chew bubble gum !
And I’m guessing you’re out of bubble gum?
Looks to me like the Creeper is terraforming…….. We got a problem…..
Naw. Digitalis can project itself into space (See the Aether vid, where it creeps along in some narrow void space and puts the mission’s Aetheric Forge in jeopardy). The creeper that’s working its way into void space may be the product of that scary tower in the center of the map, or maybe the result of the Digitalis dying and leaking creeper into the void.
None of that is to say that CRPL towers couldn’t terraform things; they probably could. But I do remember someone saying you can’t terraform void space.
Actually–I thought of this just now, thanks to those “you may also like” vids–CRPL language /can/ terraform. See the Vitreous and Resinous Electrical Fluid video, where CRPL is used to terraform ground cells.
CRPL Towers can terraform, but I’m pretty sure they can be used to change the void into terrain and back also. Remember the Magnetar picture? V mentioned that he used a CRPL Tower to round out the island.
Yea terraforming creeper is scary
Why would creeper need to terraform? Digitalis lays paths for creeper that do not take terrain height into account.
I think you might be on to something. I missed it the first time, but both the vertical and horizontal tips of those digi arms have slight malformations that look like it could be “building” as it grows. Could just be a coincidence, but it also might not be…
Pretty sure those are just the beveled edges of the creeper field.
I didn’t realize this at first – but I fear that you may be correct…
Figured out how to beat the map (from where the game currently is.) take over the bottom left island and emmit all enemies on the island. Once everything on the island is destroyed, place three emmiters as close to the void as you can to take those three nests away. Next, place an emmiter on the land the middle nest was to get a PZ emmiter if the range reaches another enemy spawn. If not, place a PZ relay on the nest which will pick up the blue helper (freeze?) from here, place an emmiter where the freeze was to finish off the game. http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRtyiYspGQNwX9hQPC5rtSGhTlXoWdShhsMYpnml8rgPNGAxI6R
Thank you so much for all of your hard work. I’ve not commented before, nor am I active in the message boards, but I’ve sunk more hours into CR1 and especially CR2 than I care to admit. CR3 looks amazing, and it’s clear that a lot of thought, care, and hard work went into it. The flexibility for custom maps appears to be incredible. While I can’t wait until release, I am thrilled you’re taking the time to make CR3 truly special.
btw its CW not CR. ( Creeper World)
sweet, so looking forward to the game, will help fill time while waiting for starbound, then eat up time from playing starbound, and from other games to!
wait… a new thing every mission!?!? yay!
I CANT WAIT!
(but I have to dont I?)
TIME TO INVENT TIME TRAVEL!
*future self appears behind me* here, keep this time machine and the credit for it!
21 story missions, each on unique? Thank you 😀 . What’s even better is there are enough hardcore community members to dish out their own story lines in turn.
Outside of the story-line, I’m curious if we will get some sort of Creeperworldpedia, a collection of all the lore and such about the game. This can help map makers make more believable campaigns, perhaps ones that continue after the main story line.
It would also be nice, if the CW1 maps be re-made (since they should be a lot more compatible with CW3).
The unit sizes are different and the physics of the creeper are different. Some of the betas are trying but it’s difficult.
This would be so awesome.
If you allow:
1 Command Node
Pulse Cannons
Mortars
Strafers
Beams
Collectors
Relays
Reactors
then you could probably emulate the experience best, but I wouldn’t know. Having the map change from 2×2 units offset by half a cell to 3×3 centered on a cell might mess some things up a bit on map layouts though.
dont sleep , dont eat , dont drink , finish the gameeeeeeeeeeee 🙂 🙂 🙂
Can the coding allow you to make landmass that moves…i.e. Asteroids that are covered in our favorite goo. Would be scary stuff If two landmasses ended up pulling towards each other over time and you had to build for the collision.
One word, CPRL.
Since it is possible to terraform, pull, repel, whatever. You could set it to “move” the islands over time by teleportation(or maybe you could literally move it, idk), along with the creeper on it, and since they are 2 landmasses that pull each other, that means that each also pulls in creeper the closer it is to the landmass.
Since CRPL can be used to create and destroy land, move and manipulate units and creeper, I think it’d probably be possible to make a sort of animation-like land movement system.
Imagine a small asteroid (large enough to protect from a nullifier you might place in anticipation of it landing) with a single high-power emitter on it slowly closing in on your planet. You have plenty of time to build up and prepare for it, and you fortify the beachhead beyond all doubts. But then, as the asteroid impacts, a shockwave of landmass travels across the planet; crippling your infrastructure, leaving ridges and fissures in its wake, and wiping out the immediate defenses as the creeper begins to flood your planet.
Fun stuff!
“This week’s screen shot answers some of those questions.”
NO IT DOESN’T! ALL IT DOES IS RAISE MORE! WHY YOU BEING MEAN TO US, VIRGIL? 🙁
That said, good to see a status update. And is it just me, or does the Forge look shrunken down? I could just be comparing it to the February video where it was Command Node size.
Bertha also i reduced in size to fit PZ
I wonder what will happen if you place forge on PZ?
I would guess the singularity cannon would be more powerful/easier to use/something like that(idk what exactly, since we haven’t seen it being used).
Maybe increased Aether production speed. Or upgrade cost reduction.
It would most likely improve the singularity weapon, not the upgrades. But hey, who am I to say?
Forge has been shrunk to the size of a Bertha.
You sure love your bold-highlighted text! Makes the text look like a sales page for crappy dating advice videos or conspiracy theorie documentaries 🙂
Well, if it’s an intended stylistic effect, I guess that’s fine, but I don’t really like it. It’s a bit distracting, and instead of drawing the eyes to highlights, it creates a lot of noise. Try listening to the radio and having someone randomly turn the volume up and down all through the newsreader. Not easy or pleasant, and the news needs to be quite interesting to make me put up with it. Which it is, on KC, but overall, I’d prefer a maximum of two bold text elements (words, parts of sentences or short sentences) per paragraph. That way, only the stuff that is more interesting than the rest stands out, not everything which is interesting. Heck, if you bold everything interesting, just open your news posts and close them .
ugh, noticed only now that the tags got stripped out. Meant to say open them with a bold tag and close them with a closebold.
You should make the first story mission a copy of the Chronom map for the release date.
Not a bad idea. But I would like to see a campaign that is the same missions as CW1, just, CW3-itized. I hope the Alpha and Beta missions are in the game too.
Rock the house? Is that something like partying down that I learned from Homer Jay Simpson?
Loving watching the game grow and improve as time goes on, but there is one thing I REALLY want in the game: Keyboard shortcuts and the ability to change the letters for those shortcuts. I’ve been watching during the videos and it looks like both you and lich are selecting units to place via the mouse which is really slow. I know there are a TON more units in 3 (which is awesome!), but a shortcut layout similar to 2 would cover the volume just fine. Say QWER for the tabs and the number keys for choosing units, and ASDF for unit control (if you must hardcode them). Please don’t leave keyboard control out in the rain or change the deselect key to space!
Oops. I meant please don’t change the deselect key from space to escape.
All keyboard keys are customizable via an in game GUI. You can have both a primary and secondary key for each action. So both Space and Esc can be Cancel, for instance. You can also use modifiers, so shift-x could be Destroy, or CTRL-S could mean save, etc.
Is there support for extra mouse buttons and programmable keys (as found on some gaming keyboards) too?
YES!
There is only one keyboard shortcut that is really important, and that is pause! 😀 (I am assuming it is ‘P’ in CW3)
Some time ago it was discussed, that it would be nice, to have a map that wraps around at the edges.
I was just thinking: CRPL can do that.
Somethis like (in pseudocode – we outsiders don’t speak CRPL yet)
if (Amount Creeper at (X,0) != Amount Creeper at (X,max Size) )
{
var mid = (Amount Creeper at (X,0) + Amount Creeper at (X,max Size)) / 2
Amount Creeper at (X,0) = mid
Amount Creeper at (X,max Size) = mid
}
Loop that over all rows and cols and the Creeper Alogrithm should do the rest.
It will of cause not be perfect, but it should work.
Cant wait to try that myself. Keep on the good work virgil
In concept that is fine. The numbers would appear to work. However I’m wondering how CPU intensive that would be.
Also, I think your if loop (Creeper amounta != Creeper amountb) would work just as well with a do while loop (loop continuously) since Creeper movement will disperse the Creeper and very little of the time would it be equal.
i will estimate 1 month to finish the essentals and about 2 weeks to finish the debugging
I have a question about the idea of “nodes” applying it to the 21 handcrafted stories to add replay value.
Would it be possible to put in missions that force you to make a choice so that when you replay it, and make a different choice on that mission, then you get a slightly different story, or path for the next mission?
I was thinking about creeper coming in fast to destroy 4 different “facilities”, but the player only has enough resources to save one facility, and have to let the others get destroyed while they build up more energy. Each of the facilities would represent a node to a different mission from the other facilities. This would create different combinations of missions. So even if the player finishes the game, they haven’t seen all of the missions, or all of the endings, or all of the stories, and will replay it in order to discover them.
Is something like this even possible? My idea was just that instead of going through a linear storyline that the missions themselves are like the net of nodes that you create when you fight creeper.
I have a suggestion. Personally, I think that Creeper world 1-2 were missing something: Enviromental factors, like trees, rocks, bushes, etc. I know you probably won’t add them into the game at this stage, but I think it would be interesting (I know this would be possible through CRPL, but it just seems like it wouldn’t be worth the time programming it). Regardless, I can’t wait for the game to come out!
sorry, didn’t mean to post there!
Terrain colors can be changed. If you have played CW: US , then you already know there is a map that is similar to a forest. The log forming a bridge over the creeper was the most memorable for me 🙂
I thought the same thing! I always wanted to terraform/bioform the map I won with my energy economy. It felt empty leaving the map a dead pile of rocks. So wanted to build a bunch of units that grew trees and filled the lower elevations with ponds, seas, and stuff. I’m aware of the issues with it and why It’s not part of the game, but I get how you feel. I do think the CRPL programming would totally be worth it after release!
maybe add in water and lava and stuff as extra hazards.
Something special for every mission? Epic!
It’s been a week. FEED US!
Someone needs a snickers.. =P
There won’t be one this week.
As long as you look at the glass half full, everything won’t be as bad! OPTIMISM TRIUMPHS ALLLLLL!!!!! Work on the game during the time you would take to update the blog, but you shouldn’t kill your self. The countdown to release is becoming thinner and thinner 😀
LIES!
Not lies, I was on chat with Virgil, and sadly, there won’t be a post this week.
Virgil himself told me in chat on the forums 😛
I see this as a good thing. He’s in the home stretch and can’t be bothered to make updates….he’s finishing the game! 🙂
(I hope…;)
Can I just say I’m going to die if it’s not released this year? That being said, if you do end up taking even longer, you might be open to more betas, so I guess I wouldn’t die, all I want to do is play the game. xD
I’ve been a big fan of this game for a long time. I play them all every couple days and have checked back to this site a few times a month. I’m wondering if there is going to be any demo or something you toss up onto one of the flash games sites?
The demo will be released after the game.
A flash game will come after the release but a downloable demo should be released when the game releases.
so……….next post is when?
Not one this week. Virgil’s putting his head down and going full steam to finish the game, so no blog post.
Too far away!
After the release of the game 😉
http://knucklecracker.com/
LOVE the update 😉
OMGOMGOMG!
i need to calm down, but this is driving me crazy!
Every day passes is one less day to CW3…
i was about to go crazy,
till i looked closer =P
Quoting virgilw:
“What’s next? Finish the story missions, add in Credits screen, fix a few last minute bugs, do promotional materials, update web site, rock the house. ”
We already got the site updated….what’s next? ROCK THE HOUSE !!!
We can only hope..
I wish we couldn’t only hope, cause that update has got hype builder screaming all over it. Hope it’s released this week, but if it isn’t, just release it sometime this century, k Virgil? 😉
On the left side of the picture on the “coming soon” sign there is a flying, grey thing, is that the third titan?
Was wondering the same thing.
Nice catch!
*gasp!* Please be spiritual successor to Thor please be spiritual successor to Thor…
I also noticed the words “Arc Eternal.” Will CW3 have anything regarding angles and navigation or eternity and other long time periods in it? Or will it be like CW2 and have nothing to do with that part of title, like the lack of redemption?
The title and the game have something to do with each other… won’t say anything else about that at this point 🙂
Creeper World – a lone Arc fights to protect itself from the creeper invasion
Creeper World 2 Redemption – You are the commander of an Arc ship to head out and fight back the Creeper invasion and there minions that can minipulate it.
Creeper World 3 Arc Eternal – (Info Missing untill launch)
Creeper World – a lone Arc fights to protect itself from the creeper invasion
Creeper World 2 Redemption – You are the commander of an Arc ship to head out and fight back the Creeper invasion and their minions that can manipulate it.
Creeper World 3 Arc Eternal – My guess: The Arc is named the Eternal and the command nodes are extensions of it.
Is it just me, or is this man a genius?
were is the fog machines i Love them u got to have them in 3
I’m getting antsy as the game grows nearer. There’s so much about it I want to play around with, but honestly, I think my favorite thing about the game so far is that collectors can reach 6 spaces instead of 5. No more networks with tons of wasted space, or networks with inefficient collectors that only reach 4 spaces. And of course it’s made even easier with the ability to throw down a huge line of things at once. I am so looking forward to this 😀
I always put them closer together cause I was being obsessive about the space I was wasting!
He hath spoken on Twitter!
“#CreeperWorld 3: Currently working on the final story mission. Old friends/enemies make returns.”
The time is near, but it is not this day. Nor do I believe that it will occur before the sun rises on the second or even the third day. Alas, my heart grieves.
And so, the wait for the most exciting game in this part of the internet contiues…
I think it would be pretty cool if some people scripted in fog of war into some big maps.
The fog of war is an interesting idea that could greatly influence game play, here are some thoughts on how it could work (this is just speculation base on what I’ve observed here, NOT access to the program) and how it would influence game play and the story/plot of maps:
A CRPL core with a script that checks each cell of the map for range to a player unit. Those cells where the range from the any player unit is greater than the visual or scanner range (whatever term you decide to use to explain it) that is set in the variable to the script, has a image applied to it, the “fog” on a z co-ordinate above the others so that it obscures what lies beneath (see video about adding flashing light to a CRPL unit in “Turbo mode” when it detects a player unit within a certain range).
How it could work in the plot of a mission is for the map maker to place one player unit on the map as a scout so that you can see where to land the command node. The CRPL could be off map, or described as a creeper jamming unit that when destroyed allows you to see the whole map (there could be some hints in the mission intro about some strange readings coming from the, for example, North East quadrant of the map).
NOTE: Term “Creeper Jamming Unit” is used to indicate that it is a unit on the maps that prevents the usual orbital scanners working by jamming the sensors, and it is on the creepers side or of creeper origin. The jamming unit could however have been created by the inhabitants of the planet that were there before the creeper as part of their defence systems, and not by the creeper, but that is connected with the story of the map, as far as the game mechanics are concerned would be a creeper/enemy structure. If is not used to imply that it has a jamming effect on the creeper.
I think even if a destroyable jamming unit is on the map, the script might have to be attached to a non-destroyable unit that is off the map so that the script creating the “fog” and detecting the existence of the jamming unit would still be running to remove the obscuring image once the creeper jamming unit destroyed, unless that would happen anyway if the object the fog script was attached to was destroyed.
Exactly which units the scrip detects the range to is another thing to consider, no doubt it could look at specific types of player unit, so you might want weapons to be the only ones that can feed back information to the commander or it could be all units. However I think the script might detect flying units (strafers, bombers and guppies) differently to landed units (landed guppies at the end of their supply run is another variable to consider) as it might be able to get the location of the base but the location of the airborne unit might be a different type of variable. The airborne units disappearing into fog could be explained by the jammer influencing the units’ ability to feed back info to the base, but would still allow player to send strafers and bombers on raids blind or to where creeper appears to be flowing from onto the areas of the map that can be seen.
Another interesting variation would if the lifting of the “fog” was only related to weapons with ammo or connected to the network, this would prevent player spamming the map with weapons to see the tactical situation. If network connection is not a requirement of lifting the “fog” (simpler script I presume) then, unconnected weapons could still return a signal if there was not creeper to use the ammo of the weapon was disarmed whilst having ammo, all so long as it isn’t destroyed. Also if energy ran low parts of the map might fade and the player wouldn’t know what was going on except perhaps hearing the explosions of killed units. An interesting prospect to fight against, especially if you’ve remove under-utilised weapons from the rear of your infrastructure (where you’d only keep weapons to allow you to see) and a spore gets through were you can’t see and you don’t know where (or even if) your power has been hit or network cut. I think it would be sensible for the Command node always to lift the fog over a reasonable radius (have a sensor/visual range) around it as well as weapons, but there’s no reason to suppose that collectors, reactors or relays would necessarily have sensors, since the orbital ones (i.e. the view in other maps) normally don’t require them to. Alternately infrastructure units could only lift the “fog” over the centre cell of the unit so that they show up as part of the network (and you can find and select them), but not what’s around them, of course keeping weapons in the vicinity would allow you to see what around.
Some issues are that these maps would have reduced re-play value since the player could remember the topography of the map and the situation of the creeper and emitters, then adjust their strategy accordingly, but I think it would still be a good feature to add for some maps to give the player a sense of exploration and a different challenge on the first play. One issue is the landing site, as mentioned above this could be identified by one player unit (or more) acting as scout placed by the map maker allowing you to see a suitable, alternately the map could be designed with a lot of terain noise or hight variation, so there are only one or two selectable landing sites (cruel map makers might make one of these in the middle of a creeper pool), a hint as to where these landing areas, or indeed just suggested landing areas on more open maps that don’t restrict landing terrain, might be might be in the into text to reduce player frustration (these might come from colonial archives of the planet). Another issue might be the thumbnail map giving away some information about the map, such as terrain and emitters and other creeper structures show up on the DMD screens at least (not sure about other maps), however the player would still have limited information whilst playing the map. There is also the issue of the processing load of such a script, however it could be limited to running every one or half a second.
An additional issue I’ve just thought of is the creeper depth reading you get under the mouse cursor, the player would still be able to mentally plot the terrain and creeper (and even to some extent the emitters (which would show up as pulses in the reading)) from this, however having the fog would still present the player with an additional challenge.
If it is possible to create a fog of war as described and it proves popular it could be included as an option in the DMD setting (but please only as an upgrade, not before release) this would reduce the impact of the re-playability of such maps (if they are easy to create then it has les of an impact that they are one play wonders), however numerous community members would be able to easily convert a DMD to a custom map and add a fog of war script if one were to be written. Also so long as I don’t commit any major blunders or suffer avoidable major setbacks I don’t tend to replay CW1 and CW2 maps to get a higher score once I’ve proved I can overcome the challenges and beat them.
Singe Virgil reads all the posts before approving I had better firstly apologise to the community members for taking up his valuable pre-release time exploring the idea of a fog of war in CW3, hopefully you found it interesting, and secondly to wish Virgil well for the release, I’m really looking forward to it.
I honestly do not know how to respond. I hope you had a much fun making that novel as I did reading it 🙂 Very interesting points and views!
I had alot of fun reading that, although i have a suggestion:
instead of having the fog of war be a picture over the map, how about it is void? this would solve a few problems you described above. to reveal the map, you tell the CRPL core to build the terrain. depending on how down into the game we can get with the CRPL core, you could run a simulated creeper flow within the CRPL core on the terrain, and as the map is revealed build that creeper onto the built terrain. If we can’t get that far into the underlying game processes with the CRPL core, then you could basically build two maps, one off-screen with the terrain and the emitters/enemy buildings, and the other that the player can “see” and plays on. as the player reveals more and more of one map, the other map is copied exactly onto the map the player is playing on. Creeper level is shared between the maps, so the player killing creeper on one map reflects onto the other map.
A way to solve the replayability problem might be to make the terrain randomize on loading of the map. CRPL checks to see if gametime is equal to 1 second and then takes all terrain except starting terrain, and randomizes it. also randomizes enemy structure positions. something like this will keep replayability intact.
hope you like my ideas!
don’t take them as insult plz, because i’m not trying to offend.
have a nice day everyone 🙂
Sevy Ride
Arya Stark – “Stick’em with the pointy end.” <3 🙂
I like the fog idea better. But maybe add in some other things too, like spores can be seen above the fog.
Possible intro for mission:
:person1: we have a situation here sir.
:person2: What is it?
:person1: The key to stopping (some kind of superized creeper) is on this system, (systemname). But the surface of the planet is covered in fog. We will have to scan using our units from the ground, and use that to build up a readout.
:person2: lets get cracking!
:person3: we have a suitable landing zone cleared of fog, sir, but we don’t know the strength of the creeper.
:person1: Send down node 1.
Note: I think the best way to do it would be to have a command node already on the ground, so you can have a start without guessing.
just to clarify: when i say the void is there, the void would act exactly like the fog does, it would just solve the problem of being able to mentally recreate the ground by mousing over (also knowing where the creeper is)
Anyone else checking back every hour to see if the “coming soon” as changed to “purchase now”?
Heh. Just twice a day
Not quite every hour but yes. I’m sure he still has to de-bug as well so I don’t think it’ll be soon.
With that said, I really do wish he proves me wrong.
he has always said we would get a 2 week warning. I took that as my warning and will check back in a week and a half
I’m hoping to be able to play this weekend. It is the last before the start of the semester
Totally nearly every hour, depending on the day, every half hour even.
He post another update its been too long…
I imagine the next update might be the release announcement.
And I’m just fine being in the dark another few days if that’s the case.
Next update will probably be that the game has been released. He is just doing the finishing touches to everything now, so there probably isn’t anything more to update other than everything is done.
Fingers crossed that it’ll be before my week off in a week and a half!
How do you know this? Are you one of the fabled Beta Testers, come to save us from the evils of Time and Boredom?
Anon, even if he isn’t, I know I’m not, the chance that he is just doing the finishing touches is very large. He did post a status update a few weeks ago telling us how close he was, if you estimate the time that it would take to do all the stuff he talked about, then yes, he is most likely doing the finishing touches. I did not estimate this stuff, since at the time of this writing I’m just too busy to estimate it.
I wish I was a beta tester! I would pay Virgil just to beta test this game. Hell, I’d pay more than the final release price just to get beta or even alpha access.
Considering what this last update was, it is pretty safe to say there isn’t anything more he will demonstrate or show us. Taking that into account, the only thing he will probably tell us now is the release date/that the game has been released.
What would I like to see in story missions? Every mission can lead you in a different path, depending on the outcome. Ever play Starfox 64? Your next mission depends on what happened in the last one. This would grant replay value for not just the game (i.e. skirmish mode) but the campaign mode as well.
Question.
Is there a way to run one mission from another one using CRPL and to transfer some data i.e. like running method with parameters.
Another idea is a global directory where you could store on one mission and while starting next map mapmaker would be able to read them.
That would be pretty cool. In an early view at CRPL we saw units moving to various positions to change the map. Maybe we could have a “register” in the corner of the map that acts as a way to change settings of a map within it.
ie. If a blaster is detected on squareX than you could double the amount of creeper generated by some units.
Actually, that is possible, but it’s done in a less complex form. It might be possible in that more complex form, but until the game is released, only the betas can tell us.
I’d say the easiest way would be to save these data in the map file itself and give mapmakers ability to access settings from another map file.
this way we could create our own campaigns (player needs to have this map downloaded and needs to pass it before playing the next one)
It’s shaping up to be another weekend without CW3. My vigil yet continues. I will stand firm!
Hrm, it’s been taking Virgil an average of a little over a day to create a mission, and he announced that he had started working on the last mission about 5 days ago.
That last mission must be quite a doozy!
Or he’s just debugging.
Well don’t forget, the first missions are easy and simple, thus not super complex or difficult to make. As you add more units you will have to playtest more extensively, thus add more time to the later levels. The last level will probably be the hardest to make and most time consuming.
Also, the levels play time probably increases as you move on.
Frankly, I’m surprised he was pumping out levels that fast. I would have thought making them “just right” would have taken longer. Then again, perhaps when he said he “finished” levels, he meant they were mostly done, just needed testing and tweaking, but the general design and flow were “finished”.
I must reply you on that
Did you ever observed in both games that the final mission wasn’t the hardest?
I mean : In CW1 (My opinion) I don’t think Loki it’s the hardest, i think the hardest is Tucana. Tucana is more harder than Loki Double Down without Thor, belive me (tucana on double down is even harder)
Same for CW2 : (Again my opinion) It’s not All In , it’s Horror (mission 13 obviously 😛 ) where you need to be fast to save the shuttle from the east of you, then go fast for the south-east one.
@anyone I’m right?
I agree on horror, but I really didn’t have much trouble with Tucana, even my first time through. took some time, but I was never really in danger of dying. Although, I’m not sure what I would label as the hardest in CW1.
Ok, yes there are exceptions and my comment was not meant to be exhaustive or taken literally. I think we can both agree the later missions ON AVERAGE are going to take longer to make.
Also don’t forget, Virgil now has a map area 16x larger than the original game and I would hazard a guess that it is a solid 8 times larger than CW2 map size (don’t forget that CW2 looked much larger, but that is mostly accounted for the fact the entire game was mostly zoomed in to a much closer camera angle. For instance, the space a blaster took up on the screen was SIGNIFICANTLY larger than the blaster found in CW1.)
The first missions will probably not use the largest available maps to help keep from new players being overwhelmed. The later missions will definitely get bigger until near the end when map size will max out.
This is the begginnings for theories of great plot twists in the final battle of epic proportions!
Maybe at the end, we and the creeper become the same.
“No! I must kill the demons” he shouted The radio said “No, John. You are the demons”
And then John was a zombie.
I have a copy of that saved on my hard drive. If the Internet ever implodes, then I can still share it with the world via carrier pigeons and the sneakernet.
Or, we will all be UNDONE
Virgil, will you be announcing the release time, on the blog beforehand, or should we keep checking back to see if it is suddenly available?
I agree with nrjp, I would really like to know this. I’m not trying to ask when the release date is, I just want to know if you’ll announce the release a week or so before you actually release it. Like, perhaps you could get all the way done, and then you could just announce that it will be released, oh, the saturday after the blog post that you announced the release. If it’s saturday, that would be awesome because I wouldn’t have any school that day.
I will probably announce the release date a little bit ahead of time. Thing is, when I’m done I won’t wait long to release it. But knowing when I will be ‘done’ is very difficult to estimate even this close to the end.
Understandable. I would prefer to get it as soon as it is done and it be a surprise, than know that it is done but that I have to wait. Good luck with the work that remains.
we have just entered Q4 of the year can you narrow down your possable release not give an exact date
Well, when he says “this close to the end” and the website has changed, I think it is safe to say by the end of September. But personally, I would be surprised if it did not come out in the next 2 weeks.
Does anyone know if this game will be released on Steam?
Here’s a post from the forums:
“I won’t launch a greenlight page till CW3 is ready, and when I do it will be for CW3. CW3 is where the buzz will be and is the game that shows the best to first time potential players. But, we are getting close… I promise.”
That’s from virgil earlier today. So it looks like it will be on Steam Green Light after it is finished. I imagine once he gives his formal announcement of a release date (oir just releases the thing right when it’s finished), he’ll also throw it into Steam’s GreenLight program.
The “I would buy it”-button will not survive this day!
Force everyone to click it!
That’s just the point. We wouldn’t have to force anyone to click it. All we have to do is make sure they know that it’s there to be pressed, and they’ll do the rest. A game as great as this definitely needs to be widespread.
IN CW3 I have seen so many OP weapons, what if you use them at the smaller levels? You would win in a minute. Or is it an restriction for the big weapons?
It’s probably a restriction, He made a video at one point showing that you can restrict certain features like certain Weapons, Buildings and even commanders.
On small maps, there is no point of using the large weapons as they take too much space and energy, on large maps you can build huge reactor farms to supply your Bertha, but on small maps there is not enough space for everything. It’s probably possible to use a single Bertha or other big weapon but before you build them, supply them with ammo, and fire them enough many times to make a difference, you could easily win with just regular weapons. Also weapons like Bertha are not really that OP as comparing to drone in CW1 Bertha does less damage(looking at map cleared/map size), it simply looks so much more powerful as it is powerful compared to other weapons.
Just an FYI since the website update i cannot get onto your sire with my phone. Its an Android…just an fyi
looking forward to the game!
I don’t have a problem getting to it on my GS3.
I’m good with my nexus 7.
I can view it on my android 2.3 (samsung phone). The page sometimes doesn’t load, but if I refesh the page, it comes up
Any day now!
Ha… I’m sorry, that literally made me LOL. It just struck me with its simplicity and directness.
I’m working from 8 in the morning till 10 at night and going just as fast as I can. I’m pouring all kinds of insanity into the final story mission, since it may be my last. So hang in there…. I’m trying to.
Hah. I was about to make some kind of silly comment about how I choose to believe all the time between now and… 10?… days ago when you announced you’d started work on the final story mission was all being spent on the final story mission.
But it turns out that’s actually true.
I’m looking forward to that mission.
you got this Virgilw! keep up the awesome work! we all know you are working tirelessly on this and we all appreciate the great work you are doing
Well if you do make a fourth installment, don’t announce it so early. Nobody can take a year of begging to release the game, and not come out 99% dead in the end. In fact, its been more than a year since the first reveal. 19 months is it? Maybe its up to twenty.
My point being don’t announce your games so early into development!
May be your last?! ARE YOU LEAVING US VIRGIL!
nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. I will be sad if Knuckle Cracker stops making games.
Now don’t be ridiculous… my last ‘CW3 mission’, not my last game 🙂 Of course even that isn’t entirely true… oh, I’ve said too much already.
Hrm, have you gotten tired of making a new engine from scratch with every game?
…because that seems like it would be a lot of work.
Considering the idea of an expansion pack?
Oh thank God, you scared me.
Also, you’re such a tease.
Now I’m not saying I would kidnap you and lock you in a room with a computer, food, and water, but I wouldn’t say that’s a bad solution either.
I do agree with an expansion pack idea to an extent. If it’s something like a bonus campaign, I wouldn’t pay money for that. The custom map community is awesome and they could – will – do that for free. If it’s something like new weapons and enemies and physics, I would pay money for that, but only if you could toggle between “classic” and “expanded” and have separate scores. Even then CRPL takes that away to an extent.
DLC is okay in my opinion, but it depends on how you do it. GTA IV added two entire campaigns through DLC, plus new vehicles and weapons within them. Cost $15 each to download. That’s what developers should be doing, not the CoD-esque plan where you pay $60 over the course of the year for 16 maps for your $60 game. I don’t think four maps every few months is worth the same as a campaign, especially since that’s essentially $10 a month plus $5 for Xbox LIVE (and PS+ for PS4 now) to play online and they more-or-less disappear when the next game comes out.
And finally because I’m already in rant-mode, Indie devs are the handful of awesome people in an industry that has potential but just isn’t using it. Look at CoD and Battlefield. Any sports game. Apparently Halo now. Assassin’s Creed. Arguably Nintendo, but at least Mario Kart 8 has some gimmick unseen in previous games instead of guns that look different. They all started off as good games that stood out above the rest, and now they’re becoming the same thing every year. If Hollywood’s failures this summer say anything, it’s that we as consumers are getting tired of the industry’s repetitive [bad words]. I don’t want to hurt Michael Bay’s feelings and say explosions are bad, because they aren’t – they’re awesome, but sometimes I want something with a lasting impression. If we can get Bioware to work with Valve (but not let the latter set the release dates, of course), then something awesome will be made.
Wow that got off-topic fast. You can ignore the last paragraph and a half, normal people.
Well since V usually was against such practice, it’s far more likely that if there were a DLC for CW3 in the future, there is high probability that it would be free for people who bought the game, and only make this game more attractive for new potential buyers. Because if the main aim of V was squeezing as much of our money from us as he can, there would be a paid beta 😛
Because he’s a wonderful person of course. Although he could do a paid beta (full price of game plus full game when it’s released would be acceptable), but beta testing sucks. The job description sounds like, “WOO-HOO! I get to play video games all day and get money!” but in reality it’s more, “I hate this glitchy piece of crap. I’m never touching it for fun. Really? Another bug report?! Kill me now…” Maybe not that extreme, but it’s only games, not fun.
Possibility of a different line of games… He said too much indeed! Now I must go sit in a corner and think of what kind of games he would like create! From what he said… oh nevermind I will just wait.
I am horrified. Truly horrified. May Odin protect us from the Loki menace. 😀 Anyway enough of that lulz and I must say thank you for not just making the game awesome but putting so much work into a single mission. It will certainly be quite the monster of a mission and I hope it will be far more difficult than the last two were.
Wow… sounds EPIC!
Keep it at…if our encouragement doesn’t help…the promise of cold hard cash will.
X)
😀
🙂
8:16, you better be on the ball! 😉
Any news to report on the progress?
uhgg
I got a new computer screen, and I now can see the true texture of the creeper. It is so beautiful, I can almost forgive it for all its done. Almost.
Heh. Almost.
Plz release soon.
-______________-
Quoting Virgil from a Twitter post:
“Knuckle Cracker @knucracker 22 Aug
Writing so much CRPL for final mission that I entered CRPL commands for game source (C#) and wondered why it wouldn’t compile ”
That’s gonna be THE BIGGEST FINAL MISSION EVER FROM THE CW1 2 3 and MAYBE EVEN 4
I LOOOOOVEEEE it
That’s assuming he does CW4, which we all really hope he will.
If you need someone to help you test on Linux, drop me an email. I’ve tested a few people’s Unity games on Linux, and I intend to buy CW3 as soon as it’s out – for Windows, if you won’t be releasing for Linux yet (if it won’t work in Wine, there’s always virtualization).