This week’s images shows off the zoom capabilities of the game 3 engine. Currently, there are three zoom levels and you can access them with a flip of the mouse wheel or from the keyboard. I’m also showing a ‘tiny‘ map this week. These small worlds may only take a few minutes to secure… or they might pack an unexpected punch.
Looks great! Question though, how is navigation handled when zoomed? (I’ve always loved ‘mouse at edge of the screen’ movement?) but I guess arrow keys?
Bump scrolling for sure when in full screen. You can also use the WASD keys.
Any chance one could package several maps together, so the player can download them all at once? If maps can be this small, it would be nice to mass download them. And I think you mentioned something about multi-planet campaigns taking the place of individual maps, any news on that?
The way maps will be hosted and access by players will be different for game 3. More details when I work them out, but I plan for the experience to be fairly seamless.
Wow, switching from air/flash to adobe seems to have enabled some much cleaner graphics. How’s the frame-rate in comparison to cw1/cw2?
same 30 frames per second
I target 30 fps, but I can do much, much more per frame.
switching from air/flash (adobe) to Unity you mean,
The graphics can be clean and nice in “air”, but now we are in a different engine that give us the opportunity to draw units in a different way. In CW2 we only used Vector graphics (which almost can be as good as any other) but it is very difficult to draw cool vector units instead of using Photoshop. The units you have seen so far will be improved!
Ok so those green things are collectors, the blue thing is the “base”, are the orange things the “blasters”?
Yes, those are Pulse Cannons. They are very similar to Blasters in CW1. The graphics are likely to change as well.
What is the difference between Pulse Cannons and Blasters?
Pulse Cannons fire a projectile instead of a beam. The projectile moves very fast, though. Also, Pulse Cannons don’t turn their barrels instantly. They rotate around and have a slight momentum.
wait, so if they don’t move instantly how much does that effect the game in a pit fight? (your on the bottom and have to fight your way up)
speaking of pit fights, i have a challenge to you- build a pit fight map and shows us the battle!
There also seems to be a mortar among the orange things.
Yep…
any chance of having timed or conditional messages in this game? So you can continue the story without counting on the player picking something up at the right time? I could see something in story mode like commenting on a big emitter erupting, something breaking lose, it could be cool.
Something like this might happen. It would be associated with ‘events’ that are defined in the mission.
loving all the different textures on the ground layers
So from these pictures we can tell that: the pulse cannons fire an explosive projectile, or creeper mist is now orange and explosion-y (which is sad, because I liked the lasers, but I’ll get over it after mission 2 or 3); there are some weird red pixels on the command node, indicating Virgil has a weird cursor he forgot to delete from the image, Virgil made a mistake when creating the unit’s icon, or the command nodes use energy like tech domes and ore rigs; the game measures time in fractions of a second now, at least to the nearest tenth; the strange space background seems to be what is displayed when the game’s map doesn’t entirely fill the window; the ammunition bar for blasters and mortars will be very difficult to tell apart from the weapons themselves at a glance, unless it receives an outline or the weapons change to a less red color; command nodes differ from Odin City in the sense that they no longer have an onboard collector; and Virgil is being mean by not showing us the blue special tab. D:. One question: do command nodes get to fly around the map like the liberation ship and Odin City, or are they rooted in one spot? Also, are we limited to only three, and will we be allowed to set a one node limit in custom maps? And finally: is CW1 ever getting updated with the Evermore survival mode?
I apologize, that was three questions.
– This red pixels are of an energy bar that is almost empty.
– Time is measured in frames internally, but I show it is seconds on the display
– Yes, each map appears to be floating in space (representing the world you are playing on)
– The ammo and health bars will be improved. They are simple lines currently.
– Command Nodes can fly around, have internal reactors, and there is some limit to the number of them on maps. 1-10 might be a reasonable range.,
– I don’t know if CW1 will get an evermore mode anytime soon… I’m putting 101% of my energy into CW3, so the best place for that might be CW3…
Okay, two things:
1. You mention a map size in this one. Does this mean that this creeper world will have the capability to throw absolutely massive maps at the player?
2. Slightly off-topic for this post, but I notice the “Terraform” Tab near the middle of the screen. Any hints as to what might be under that tab? Sorry if this has already been asked, I haven’t really had time to read the other comments lately.
– Yes, maps can be pretty large. Some maps may have 10 times the surface area of a CW1 map. There also can be maps that are really tall but narrow, or the other way around. There may also be maps that aren’t rectangular…
– That Terraform tab is what you use to tag terrain for modification. It allows you to paint the terrain in the ‘height’ that you would like it to be. All it takes at that point is Terp units and lots of energy.
So you’ve mentioned moving to different worlds and that you can do that without completing a map. So I was wondering if it’s possible that creeper will take back worlds that you already cleared or have some effect on the worlds you don’t completely finish.
Time will very likely not move forward on worlds you aren’t playing. That doesn’t mean I can’t pull some tricks like knowing how long it has been since you have visited a world and then do things based on how long it has been. So there might be a few things that can happen to worlds you leave…
Hmm. I’ve noticed that the Command Nodes don’t have fractal energy collectors built into them. Do they produce all of their energy internally? Can they produce while in the air?
The produce energy internally with reactors. So, they can make energy while flying.
If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, would you mind bring back the black bar for the depleted portions of health and ammo bars? I’ve found it to be a very useful visual aid in determining the status of my units.
Also, when you’re zoomed out at the highest levels, the sliver of an almost entirely depleted ammo bar seems like it’s very difficult to see.
I love watching how things progress through Alpha, or pre-pre alpha. lol
Whatever it may be, these weekly screen-shots keep me sane while waiting for Beta to start up.
Keep up the good work, and don’t feel rushed, nor should you rush it.
Quality over everything as an indie dev. 🙂
Quality I always try to keep high… but I’m still rushed to get as many ideas implemented as possible 🙂
So you removed blasters and added pulse cannons?
More accurately, I have not yet implemented Blasters in game 3….
So does this mean that the pulse cannons are somewhere between mortars and blasters in terms of splash, fire rate, and maybe range? I assume they can’t attack drones either (if they or a similar substitute (i. e. like the spores to phantoms) returns, of course)?
Hmmmmm…collectors look realy weird….
Are the explosions going to be final? I kind of liked the blue ‘poof’ of creeper being vaporized, and it was less vision-blocking (sometimes) than an opaque explosion animation.
There may still be a mist added. The explosions you see in the shots disappear pretty quickly and are animated. They are just effects of shells and things going off.
i really hope you add a remove-feature for those explosions and/or mist. they can really impact the game, though i did love finishing a CW2 mission with mist on and anti-creeper doing it’s thing.
It occurs to me that if fields are added to this game, 3 dimensional fields could be a possibility. :O (this being done by being able to edit a flat plane of a field box across multiple layers)
Difficult to show this to the player, though. The creeper colors are only densities, so being able to show elevation would require something new in the UI specifically for indicating creeper that is being artificially elevated. Things like this have a bad habit of looking out-of-place and artificial.
Welp, I have thought about variable ‘gravity’ on different parts of the map. It is all still a thought experiment, but the idea would be how firmly pressed the Creeper is. It would basically affect how dense the Creeper gets before it overflows higher terrain. Just a thought experiment at this point… there are probably some serious problems with implementing this efficiently.
In an accurate simulation, this would result in . . . some mayhem.
Dense creeper would constantly push into zones of less compressed (low-gravity) creeper, thrusting it upward until it poured back into the more-dense creeper.
In short, accurately simulated, in a mixed-gravity map low-gravity regions would always be driven (from the outer edge inwards) to greater height than surrounding creeper, but with the constant flow back into denser, high-gravity creeper (due to the greater height), it would never attain equal density.
I think the same gameplay effect could probably be shown with directional fields and the black hole/white hole spherical fields that have been mentioned in earlier comments to earlier blog posts.
Could there be a unit that when you click on it absorbs energy. The energy then turns into ” exploding packets” which is seperate then normal ’cause you can click on creeper then they go there and suicide to go boom.
Isn’t that basically what weapons do, in effect? You lose a packet to create an explosive effect on the battlefront.
Besides, you can’t transfer just a plain old packet to a place that’s not on the network, meaning you would have to manage to string two nodes across active creeper. This is kind of a tough task, without going over it.
I should also add that the specific and focused user-selected firing points are also something that is already done by air units, and by the artillery piece Virgil showed us earlier.
Creeper pipeline progress ?
Very little, I was told more info to come on that.
I’m starting work on this soon, but it will likely be a couple of weeks before I have any news.
So far, I am liking everything. I also have an idea for the energy bar ( a red circle surrounding the structure might work). I know to be patient, for you should never rush great work.
Would there be an option to lower the sound of the explosions of weapons?
For example I found the sound that the rocket launcher and the mortars made in the previous games annoying after a while.
There will certainly be a ‘sound effects’ volume.
He means that he likes the sound of blasters, they have a good volume. but the mortars are too loud for him. so it would be nice to change the volume of the explosions, but not the blasters.
i know you have a pile of qquestions above, but ill add to the stack anyways 🙂
1. how much gross does knuckle cracker related items make per year? also, how much of that flies into your pocket 😉
2. so from previos comments i have heard this: blasters might still be put into CW3 along with pulse cannon. is this true?
3.will it be possible to continue a mission if something ‘gamechanging’ occurs?
ex: you win, all pods are destroyed, a capsole is destroyed.
1: I don’t usually kiss and tell. But, the games are pretty popular. Both CW1 and CW2 have exceeded the unit sales thresholds for what are considered indie game ‘successes’. And they have done so mostly through direct sales.
2: Maybe…. but the differences in the two weapons is minimal.
3: I’ll put it this way, worlds don’t go away just because you leave.
Can I ask why you’re considering using the blaster with the pulser? The two weapons seem pretty much identical except for aesthetics.
They might be worth using if they had different properties. The blaster has been for shallow creeper in the last two games, so perhaps the pulser could be made to dig a little deeper, kind of a middle-of-the-road between the blaster and the mortar.
Or perhaps using them together produces some sort of synergistic effect. One example might be to give the pulser a minimum range, and have its shots create some slight field-effects to trap some creeper in a black hole. That would pull some creeper back from the blaster’s maximum range so that the closest creeper is shallower, and the blaster’s destructive potential, aimed at shallow pools, is a little greater.
how to download it???
This game is in alpha right now, meaning that it’s not even prepared for beta-testing. There will be no download until it finishes beta and is made available for purchase.
Creeper world 3 isn’t available yet, not even in beta. This is all pre-alpha, the builds aren’t alpha yet. You can get CW and CW2 on the main site.
I assume you mean CW3, if so then you can’t. He’s still working on it, in pre-alpha status.
you can’t yet….
The reason this is an issue for me is because when I’m in an intense level in CW 1, I have to turn the mist off because in fierce firefights it blocks my view of what the creeper is doing.
And the mist is translucent. Opaque explosion animations are an order of magnitude worse in this regard, and I would probably keep them permanently disabled. My request in this regard is that you make the mist (if implemented) and the explosions able to be disabled separately.
Or at least have the option for a certain amount of alpha transparency on the explosions so we can still have some idea what the creeper is doing while banks of mortars and pulsers fire away.
I should add that this is one of those special-case problems, for when you have many weapons firing quickly in the same region. I recognize that the explosion animations dissipate faster than the blue mists, but I still worry about their opacity in intense situations.
There will likely be a performance option to turn them off.
I see a tab marked special… what could be in there???????
The ‘Terp’ unit and the “Bertha’ unit are there currently.
Are there still going to be speed pods and tech domes and everything else in the game (m-rifts etc.)?
There will be upgrades… but the system will be a bit different than CW2.
How about maps that start small but unlock as you accomplish or eliminate creeper/emitters…. aaah!
Not a bad idea…. I might imagine regions of a map that are grayed out until you do something. Then they ‘un-gray’ and havoc ensues.
exactly what i was thinking!! could be a nice change of page :]
alright there is 1 question that is bothering the heck out of me.
if u have 3 command nodes that are cut off from one another, how do you tell the energy status of each base?
Each Command Node has an energy bar on it.
What do you think of being able to click on a command node and being able to see the energy production/consumption in the network it’s attached to?
Or perhaps a top bar that shows the production/consumption for all command nodes? Just something to help the player quantify their energy use.
This might be a bit complex. A details pane on a specific command node is most likely, as an overall production/consumption number would often be meaningless unless all networks are connected.
Considering that you might have as many as 10 nodes on a map, (A preliminary estimate for upper limits on command nodes was 1-10) having an on-screen location for that many numbers in the UI might be messy.
However . . . an overall power consumption could be useful, and a detailed breakdown when each command node is selected would give you the in-depth numbers for a specific network, when you needed data that was relevant to a specific network. (Like, “will this network’s node/storage be able to power those guns long enough to connect to the main network”)
^that sounds like a great idea but it will likely not happen 🙁
will there be any new modes or challenges(ex:u brought in survival)
there might be a challenge like no more than 100 energy or bertha only
Yes, I will be adding some new modes. Possibilities are emitters that ramp up over time, spawning emitters, earth quakes mode, etc.
What happens to a command node’s storage, when networks combine/break?
For instance, in the last screenshot, you had a hill that you WOULD NOT CEDE as a point of honor, but it didn’t produce enough power to defend itself.
When you connected that node to the main network, (which had tons of power,) what happened to its energy reserves? Were power reserves split evenly between nodes? Could one command node be set to priority power use, directing all power to that command node’s storage in case it was cut off again?
The internal storage of a CN is pretty small. At present it is only 10 packets large. When CN’s connect to the same network, the ‘electrical’ potential produced by all collectors and reactors is shared instantly across all CN’s and storage pods. Excess energy gets stored equally in all CN’s. If they get maxed out, then any additional excess energy gets stored in all connected storage pods equally. If those are all full, then the energy is just lost.
So, on-the-map storage actually produces packets instantly, and directly from energy, just like a command node, rather storing physical packets produced by the CN’s?
That being considered, it sounds CN’s are useful to getting off to a good start, but after they’re not really critical to protect. Their loss doesn’t end the game (Do I have that right?) and every capability they have can be replicated by other, relatively cheap structures. (Reactor/storage.)
Also, what happens when you try to terraform an area that has your base built on it? Do you fail to place numbers where a structure is built? Or do the terraformers simply not terraform areas with structures on them?
That second system could be useful, in some situations, for putting sections of your base “on stilts” as you create low-lying regions where creeper can flow safely, despite being amidst your base structures.
You can’t terraform land that something is sitting on, and you can’t put a unit on land that is tagged for terraforming. If you want to terraform the land under a unit, you have to move the unit first (even to tag it). You also can’t terraform land that units are set to move to.
will there be a nexus?
Worse….
O.O
It’s the end of the world as we know it… and all the other worlds too.
well that takes out all the glitchy fun :3
could you possibly make it to where you can tag the 9X9 blocks that a unit sits on and save the trouble of moving it? (you could make a 16X16 or 3X3 or whatever other units take up, or just have 9X9 i.e. blaster and mortar sized buildings since those types are most efficient.)
The terraform brushes are sized so you can do this. There is a 3×3 brush for instance (the default). So if you just want to create a pedestal for a unit you can do that with one click.
I think he wants the option to raise or lower a 3×3 pedestal in one shot, consuming 9 times the power, so you can lower/elevate units without moving them or destructing/rebuilding them.
For my part, I like it this way. This makes it an easy proposition (UI-wise) to put large portions of your base on stilts, creating areas that are deep and vast creeper-sinks, despite being deep in your energy network and filled with mortars-on-stilts. 🙂
Could you PLEASE release a demo.( I asked this last year on CW2 😛 ) Maybe just teh first two levels?
There will for sure be a demo of game 3… but only once complete.
Virgilw can you make some expansion for cw1?? Ive finished creeper world 1 already,as so as user space and creeper world 2. I realy want expanison for cw1
He is wright Virgilw! I also want some sort of expansion for cw1. Im looking forward to it.
What’s funny about your reply is that it was in my approval queue before I ever approved the parent message 🙂 I’ll interpret this as enthusiasm…
So, if you like CW1 you are going to really, really like CW3. You’ll have weeks and months of play time from game 3 with more varied worlds and missions than you know what to do with.
Are you going to release a teaser or dev video soon? I can’t wait to see more.
I will definitely be doing some videos… I just want to move things a bit further along first.
Here’s a question. Is there any possibility of rebuilding CW 1 in unity so that it can use old maps, but new maps could be made using some of the capabilities of unity? (Like larger maps and the 10 terrain levels?)
CW1 maps and rules are just different enough to not work in CW3. In particular, the way diagonal movement of creeper has changed. Plus the weapon and damage systems in game 3 are also different. Besides, many authors of CW1 maps might enjoy ‘remaking’ their old maps on a different scale or with updated features.
I’m not actually looking for CW1 maps in CW3. I’m actually wondering whether CW1 could be rebuilt (Recompiled? Whatever.) in unity, rather than the maps being ported to CW3. With a few tweaks to the map editor, it might breathe some life into the classic if new maps could be made with more greater map size and the extra terrain levels.
not without a lot of work, methinks.
A few posts back, you posted about various tweaks you were experimenting with, such as ‘max capacity on a line’. Can you elaborate on some of the network tweaks you’re implementing and/or considering?
Nothing ‘kept’ so far. Just experiments…
Even your ideas or experiments on this subject quite interest me.
when transforming can you make a wall that is several levels tall and goes strait up or do you have to make mountains with sloped sides?
You can make a wall that goes straight up.
Both cw1 and cw2 runed very good on my pc,becouse my pc supports unity….whel i see you changed unity to 3d….its shame that i wouldnt be able to play creeper world 3 becouse everytime when itry to run 3d games it shows me error- Couldnt run the game bla bla bla,install direct 9 and make sure you have the latest video drivers installed. So could you make creeper world 3 for unity? Okay with smaller maps and all,but i realy want to play creeper world 3 IM DYNG TO PLAY IT!!!
You have it backwards… game 3 is in unity, it was 1 and 2 that were in flash and didn’t use any 3d acceleration. That said, even if I were to make another game in flash, it too would also use 3d acceleration (Adobe has recently added that). So you will start to see a growing number of games in flash that use 3d acceleration. But, game 3 is definitely being done in unity.
SO that means i will be able to play creeper world 3 ! omg!!! yes yes yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Quote from you: when itry to run 3d games it shows me error- Couldnt run the game bla bla bla,install direct 9 and make sure you have the latest video drivers installed.
Why do you not just install direct x and your latest video drivers is my question???
I ready for more updates!! 😛 I’m totaly ready for anything you can tell us!!!!
I understand but the thing is,that my pc dont supports unity and i wont be able to play creeper world 3…thats realy sad….but i can still play cw1 and cw2. I didnt enjoyed cw2 becouse it was way too hard in my option especialy anoying was that creeper gravity. Cw1 was very good in my option so iwould want some expansions for cw1.
Virgilw i have some problems registering at knuckle cracker.-
1) Leave the answer to this question blank-what question?!?! what do i have to leave!!!!
2)What is 40 times 2? i wrote 80
3)Type the following in the answer field: ABC123 i typed in ABC123
4)What is the third letter of the alphabet? i typed in c
5)At this site, what does the ‘C’ in CW stand for? WHAT DO YOU MEAN?!?!? WHAT C? CREEPER? OR WHAT!!!??
1: Don’t put anything in the field… Leave it blank.
The rest you have correct.
here is the site you need that tells you everything possible about CW3!!!http://knucklecracker.com/blog/index.php/2012/06/pict-of-the-week-zoom/#comments
lol ok so on to my question
do you think the blaster rmake might be overpowered?
if it explodes, it can take out dense creeper but it fires fast. You will need some serios balancing with that 😉
New picture with update soon???
1. should generate a uestion or you half to make it up.
2.good
3.good
4.good
5.yes…creeper… as in creeper world
Leave the answer to this question blank- i would understand if there would be a question like what was your first pets name but there is nthing! its just an empty title!!!
i havnt signed up either, but i think i figured it out…ur reading it wrong! here is how you should read it
Leave the answer to this question, blank.
as in dont put anything. You must have thought the line to put something was a question blank as in a line ________________________________ <like that
Same thing for me……
Virgil i have a feel that you just dont read my massage!!! I will ask again-will you make an expansion for cw1?