My personal game mode ideas...

[mtf612]

I love this game, but I play it very differently. Most players play to get a high score, geting to the totems as fast as possible. I dont care about the totems, in fact I often avoid them. I prefer to fight the creeper to the death! Here arte a few, easy to program in, game modes I thought up.

1) Green Light! - You have a limited time to cover the map in as much green collector squares as possible. The more collecting, the higher your score. (Only the actual green spots count, not the amount of collectors)

2) Hero - You must battle to the creeper to the death. There are no totems on the map, and the creeper spawns have health. Ti damage a creeper spawn you must kill all the creeper around it.

The names are changeable of course!

I really like these game types as I play the game as if it were those game types.
These game types would require limited programing and would work with all existing maps!

What do you think???

[Vinkor]

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who beats every level after covering as much ground in green as possible especially like getting the emitter ground green and capping all emitters possible.

[UpperKEES]

I think it sounds good! Before I started playing for high scores I played both above game modes as well (often combined). When they become official goals of the game I would definitely play like that again. I like a competitive element during play, that's why I switched to playing as intended.

Of course these game modes require additional high score tables as well, so don't underestimate the amount of work involved, but I hope this idea will be considered. This game has so much potential!

PS: Name for second mode could also be 'Exterminator'.

[Cheesecake]

2) Hero - You must battle to the creeper to the death. There are no totems on the map, and the creeper spawns have health. Ti damage a creeper spawn you must kill all the creeper around it.

   That's no way to get on the highscores table!!!

[UpperKEES]

2) Hero - You must battle to the creeper to the death. There are no totems on the map, and the creeper spawns have health. Ti damage a creeper spawn you must kill all the creeper around it.

That's no way to get on the highscores table!!!

Of course there would be different tables for this game mode indicating the time it took to cap all emitters.

[Karsten75]

2) Hero - You must battle to the creeper to the death. There are no totems on the map, and the creeper spawns have health. Ti damage a creeper spawn you must kill all the creeper around it.

That's no way to get on the highscores table!!!

Of course there would be different tables for this game mode indicating the time it took to cap all emitters.

What you have to consider is that the game has no built-in method to discern that an emitter is capped. Devising a method to decide if an emitter is capped might be a lot of work. For instance, what if you have a blaster firing at the emitter, but the blaster is being degraded (I've played maps like that). Is this emitter considered capped off?

[Krell]

Yea, it sounds nice but it would be extremely hard to implement, though the green light one would be a nice add-on.

[UpperKEES]

What you have to consider is that the game has no built-in method to discern that an emitter is capped. Devising a method to decide if an emitter is capped might be a lot of work. For instance, what if you have a blaster firing at the emitter, but the blaster is being degraded (I've played maps like that). Is this emitter considered capped off?

I'm not exactly sure what you mean with a 'degraded' blaster, but I was under the impression that the program already could determine whether an emitter was capped or not. See here, where Virgil also talks about (similar) alternative victory conditions.

But even if some code is needed to determine such a thing, I think that's up to Virgil. Lately I see a lot of responses to (in my eyes good and bad) suggestions where people say that it will be too much work to implement. If these responses come from moderators with inside knowledge or people with a lot of development experience I have no problem with that, but now it looks like quite some people have the source code on their home computer and are able to determine how much work certain implementations will be. Some completely new features might turn out very easy to code, while some -at first sight- minor improvements could be a lot of work. Don't get me wrong; I don't want Virgil to get overwhelmed with numerous suggestions while I know he's very busy at the moment trying to keep everybody happy and working on the expansion pack as well. I just think he's man enough to decide for himself, so maybe people should restrict themselves to indicating whether they like a certain idea or not. Just my 2 cents....

[Karsten75]

You make a valid point. But note that V himself acknowledge that he would have to implement a "sealer". I think many things have evolved in the game since Virgil released  it. In *all* his maps, you can cap an emitter with a single blaster. In fact, you can position a blaster right on top of the emitter, which could control the emitter without losing health. Now there are many maps where this is not possible and where, if you put a blaster on top or near the emitter, while it will certainly limit the output of the emitter, it will also lose health (degrade) and eventually be destroyed. I'm not sure if this is a design by the map author or a side effect, but in these cases you have to swap out the blasters ever so often if you don't want to get overrun by creeper.

If we are talking about retrofitting the idea of sealing to existing maps, then you have to ask yourself how will that impact playing those maps?

I don't have a problem with new modes in the game, I also at one time fought to destroy as much creeper as possible (and sometimes still do). So yea, that would be interesting. But do I really think that I want that in CW1? I don't think so. I'd rather we move on to the expansion pack or to CW2.  

And it bears pointing out that implementing many game modes sometimes leads to overkill. A good example is Gemcraft Chapter 0. If you compare that to the original Gemcraft, it had a lot more modes for every level. After a while, it became a terrible slog to fight through all the various modes. I think I'm one of the very few that can say they fought every level in every mode and obtained every single amulet possible. And I was bored to death by the end of it.

[UpperKEES]

Oh, I understood that the sealer would replace the blaster after being build, so you could use it somewhere else.

And I always thought that the reason some blasters got damaged during capping, was that this emitter emitted more than the 4 damage a blaster can do with one shot. You can solve this with 2 blasters.

I agree that 10 game modes like in GC0 is an overkill, but I could easily live with 2 or 3 modes, especially because a lot of people seem to love to play that way. On the other hand: I can also live with the idea that these modes become available in the expansion pack or CW2. :)

[JACKL]

About the whole it would be a lot of work to implement the sealer effect? Wouldn't it be easier to have a program that where if there are 2ish squares of creeper,the emmiter starts losing health?like a reverse blaster degrading,where the emitter gets weaker till it blows up like a blaster out of health.Or after the emitter is capped it has a health bar,in witch depletes over time....or maybe a advanced weapon that goes into a emitter via collecter lines that destroys the emitter.like a portable mine that auto targets a emitter close to a blaster/collector/relay/other various wepons,and destroys it.

[UpperKEES]

All your ideas sound a lot more complicated than just build a red square on top of the emitter that seals it.

[Karsten75]

Actually, I kinda like the idea of an emitter being destroyed over a reasonably long period of time by blaster fire. Serves the purpose nicely of returning the planet to human civilization.