First up, through June 1, 2012 CW1 and CW2 are both available for only $4.99 each! It’s a good time to convince any hold-out friends to join the fight…
Now, for this week’s picture from game 3. Air Power… no good Commander ignores it. To the contrary, it can save your butt when used effectively. In this shot you can see I have a Command Node that’s fighting an Alamo style defense. Sure, I could retreat. I could lift that Command Node off and fly it over to the safety of my main base. But that’s not how I roll. The Creeper can have that hill when it takes it from the ruins of my destroyed Command Node… and not a frame before.
To keep my Command Node’s position from being overrun, I’ve sent in some air power to let the Creeper know the fight won’t be easy. I’ll be building an assault force soon, and maybe a Bertha Cannon or two… but for now, my ‘Alamo’ needs a little destructive help from above.
I’ve launched a number of sorties made up of Strafers and Bombers. The Strafers lay down a line of shots that clear out thinner Creeper as they fly, and the Bombers drop ordinance that punches deep. You can also see in this image that I have defined attack vectors. Rather than circling around a single target point (which you can still do), I have ordered my aircraft to deliver their gifts along specified attack vectors. When defined, aircraft will orient their flight paths so they travel along this vector and fire their weapons only along this line. This can be very useful when you want to lay down destructive force in a more controlled fashion.
so, is there any chance of having “modes” for these:
1. planned route (what it shows above)
2. specific target (center + radius defined by user)
3.autopilot (airships attack the densest creeper, or whatever they do best on)
4.defense (air-power attacks automatically target closest creeper to network/base), perhaps only for strafers
Yes, there will likely be the two attack modes (circle attack, and line attack) plus some automation control. You could set the aircraft to ‘auto launch’ which would mean that it would repeat its last attack run after returning and rearming. There might also be a ‘Seek and Destroy’ mode where it identifies its own target(s).
Have you yet defined how the AI chooses what to destroy? Perhaps the closest creeper to its base or, within a limit, to anyone of your structures?
Not yet defined, but it would probably be controlled by a ‘mode’. The mode might make it pick densest on the map, highest elevation, closest to a structure (there could be lots of ties), etc.
That looks awesome, good work.
The creeper looks more liquidy than ever. Good stuff.
I’ve got a question or possibly suggestion: does the Thor get a successor in this game? Not like the game breaking super weapon, but a titan that can hover over an area and deliver a lot of damage from a single “super” laser, about two or three times as powerful as a blaster and a little bit faster (or whatever works for balance) but needs to either land and recharge or hover near the network (so flying away is like disconnecting it).
I’ve not really thought much about a thor like weapon. If there is anything like it, it will definitely not be a game ender. It would just be a Titan weapon. Your idea of a flying platform that has to recharge is close to a similar Titan weapon suggestion that I got on the forums.
That’s nice!
now, do those two command nodes share energy between each other, or no?
Nope, they are isolated from each other and don’t share energy. The one at the Alamo is really starving and pretty much unable to defend itself.
Now this is a really cool change and a great improvement!
A question, though. Will you be able to drag the start/endpoints of the run paths, like how Supreme Commander lets you drag waypoints around?
More or less. Right now if you click the pad, the aircraft, or either defined endpoint you can then redefine a path. You can drag a path over the old one, or only keep one end the same, or change both ends. I may try to change it so that if you click an endpoint, you literally just move that endpoint.
Being able to drag the endpoints would be useful in situations where you want to change the direction of approach, for one thing. And if you make a mistake in positioning one, you won’t have to do the whole path again.
And is it just me, or does this game seem to have much higher Creeper intensities than the first game did?
Bigger maps allow greater densities. In CW2, there could be enormous densities because of confinement. In Game 3, higher terrain levels and wider spaces also allow really large densities.
That’s pretty cool!
It’s almost a shame that we don’t have the right perspective to properly appreciate the wall of Creeper that’s about to crash on us.
well i would disagree. those of us with super-imagination can put ourselves right next to a turret- or on a aircraft. allow me to help you think of this in a cool short story involving this picture
“bomber 3 taking off over”
“this base island. head to north-east of Alamo island for bombing run of mark 6 angle.( the bomber north east heading south-east)
“roger that,bomber 3 in route to area”
in route, you feel anger against the creeper below you for all the lives-including your friends- it has taken. thanks to your tech, you are able to all the way around you. now on your run, you gladly squeeze off 1 bomb as a test run. you watch it fall into the blue ocean of death- and a single creeper drop welcomes it in,just like water.
you smile to yourself as you count down in your head
3…
2…
1…
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
your bomb hits right on the spot, a gaping hole in the creeper is visible for just a second- and there is a lot of steam.
“computer, display number of bombs left”
your display shows 29 bombs left. he he he >:)
This is honestly my most anticipated game of the year. Keep the screenshots coming!
You and me both 🙂
WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is epic!
i would deploy a third node along the far south island- use all energy and supplies to patch up that hole between the 2cd creeper hole and the 3rd. once done the 3rd zone would be more aircraft attack friendly. once done, take a few strafer drones and a single bomber and created a 2cd flood wall between the mainland and the 1st island right above the hole- and use it to force the creeper build up while harvesting the pit area for more energy. slowly and surely,this map is kill able. but i would most likely abounded your little stand at one point.
and thanks for the sale- i will mostly get CW1 because of this!
I did finish the map… next week, I’ll show a series of shots on what I did. That little hill became of ‘matter of honor’, and I refused to give it up.
oh how i wish i could help test D: just watching is making meh brain explode with each picture cause i think play the game in my mind. GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH -.-‘ curse me and my super-imagination
Only one question….
How do you win ‘Day 20: All Things’??
its really hard to kill that stupid nexus 😛
Check the forums… or even youtube. There are several different ways to win the map.
Wait a minute! Are theese screenshots of creeper world 3? or is it a new texture pack for cw/cw2? (this may seem stupid question,but i realy wanna know if cw3 is gonna come out or no)
Yes, there will be a third game in the series. These are screen shots from the development versions of the game.
i hope that you will continue after third game too 😉
BTW YAAY Sweden won ESC 🙂
Lol, good luck holding position…
Sounds like a great game, great graphics… keep it up 🙂
I usually turtle for 20-30 minutes (habit I can’t break) Until I have literally everything. Then I slowly take back all the territory. I am way to cautious. Is that still a viable strategy in CW3? I still nerd rage on day 19 of CW2.
Yes… you even have more options to do this. You can terraform walls all around your base if you prefer and let mortars help hold down the levels outside the walls. You can hold out a really long time this way while you build your forces.
looks great! i can’t wait for beta to come out! Any work on the creeper pipeline done?
Just a little bit of infrastructure work done. There are a number of models to explore, but I should have something going in a few weeks.
Terra forming the landscape down could be a clever way to uncover hidden relics like the gems tech and anti creeper bonuses
Yep, my thoughts exactly
Well, that would take a lot of work, a very different style game.
very…differant <:l well anyways…
1. how much will terraforming cost per block?
2.can u only terraform 1 layer at a time?
3. are there still scematics like the annoying survivor pods?
The cost for terraforming is still subject to tweaking. But it is cheaper than you might think. The cost is per block, per level. So you have to terraform a lot of terrain to make a difference. Hence, it’s pretty cheap.
You can have muiltiple Terps operating in parallel, but a single beam can only focus on a single cell at a time. The time to raise or lower a cell by a single level is brief, though.
I don’t have survival pods yet, but they are an easy thing to implement. I may include then as an option for custom worlds.
Hey will you make a video of what have you done,because i realy wanna see like the ” pre relase gameplay ”
I will be making a video soon….
is there a release date yet for this?
nice imagination billy, but I prefer to imagination it both from the bombers point of view AND THE CREEPERS!
creeper: hey ummm whats that?
the bomb keeps falling
creeper: is it getting closer!
bomb lands
creeper: oh its not a threat,
bomb explodes
creeper: OMG THAT HURT!
Agreed – highly anticipated.
I was wondering, have you considered build priorities, which would direct packets to units in stages according to the timeline along which you want your base to develop? For instance, you would be able to lay our your entire network, but make only a couple nearby nodes priority 1, to absorb the 20 starting energy, (thinking in CW1 terms,) then one more node priority 2, when energy is depleted and production is low . . . . then have expanding regions of priority 3, 4, 5, up to . . . whatever.
This would allow a player to lay out a LOT more construction, but also allow them to lay out the plan according to how it will be built – lower priorities would only receive energy when there is an excess that cannot be routed to first-priority tasks.
This would also be useful for making sure that key defenses get energy before huge build projects, without avoiding the pitfall of overbuilding altogether.
This is a good idea…. though I have to make setting the priority easy enough that it isn’t too tedious.
It does make for a problematic UI. My initial thoughts were to have a “raise” and “lower priority” button that would control groups of selected units, the prominent buttons that would probably see the most use, along with buttons that would set exact priority levels on a slide-out menu that would be accessible at need.
My thoughts were a very granular priority system, allowing for a great deal of planning ahead. For example: you could plan waves of construction, expanding your infrastructure from your base in specific stages of construction, while selecting specific weapons that would be first-priority even during construction. Though your weapons would never have the instantaneous resupply that would keep them happy, you could be sure your weapons would be supplied against less serious threats.
I have two problems with the idea myself – first, having that level of automated control over how your energy is handled may make things too easy for a player who can use it well. Second, I worry that a player who uses it heavily will be presented with stretches of time where there’s nothing for him to do but watch things be built.
Perhaps, because of those, only a single level of priority (an on/off priority toggle, like “deactivate”) would be wiser?
One thing that I love and hate about Mortars and Launchers at the same time is their targeting is always set to fire at the deepest Creeper. In CW2, this usually isn’t a huge problem, because you can move the Launcher to fire at shallow Creeper, but you have to deal with the network in CW1, making it difficult to hold a choke point without Blasters. Would it be possible to make it so Mortars have two fire modes: automatic (default, targets deep Creeper) and manual (you set a point on the map, and the Mortar shell always lands on the selected cell)? If the aerial weapons have multiple firing modes, I wouldn’t think an alternate firing mode would be difficult to program or too over the top on Mortars. I suppose you could apply this to Berthas too, but that would waste energy (unless you’re capping off a VERY strong Emitter).
Any thoughts on bringing mines back? Perhaps player-constructable compressed anti-creeper mines?
You said in earlier posts that you were thinking of repulsors/tractors in spherical (circular) shapes for this game. Do you have those working? I’d be interested to see screens of those in action.
do you think it will be possible to combine nodes to get new options
etc: more health, more production of energy
You know,that would be actualy cool to take role of bomber pilot
How do you get CW2 on sale? it still says $10 on the knuckle cracker store…
on another note, I am really looking forward to this game, and I think that the amount of time you spend listening to peoples’ ideas is phenomenal. Good work 🙂
I wish this game was out already how long has it been, by the juging of the comments idk 3 years!