One of the most popular aspects of CW2 was the AntiCreeper. So it naturally makes a strong return in Game 3. But, there needs to be some interesting way to make it… hence what I call the ‘AC Economy’. In Game 3 you need to build Ore Mines on Ore Deposits. Similar to CW2…. but, you also need to build a processing facility. This AC Refinery will receive Ore Packets from each Ore Mine and happily convert the Ore into AntiCreeper. When needed by units, the refinery will dispatch AC Packets to their destinations. Simply, effective, and much more ‘physical’ than an abstract off screen stash. All of this is in keeping with a main theme of Game 3; “Keep it on the map“. Check out this week’s screen shot carefully. You can pick out the Ore Mines, Ore packets, and an AC Refinery.
Is there a limit as to how much the refinery can store?
Currently it is 1000 units of AC.
Awesome! I was wondering if the anti-creeper will be upgradable in this game? In the last one it obviously wasn’t and I always thought it seemed just a little underpowered (Whenever I’d use it it just seemed like the normal creeper decimated it. Unless I had around 3 times the amount of anti-creeper).
Being able to make more is basically the upgrade. Creeper and AntiCreeper are just opposites of the same thing (literally positive and negative numbers). So if you throw 100 units of AC at 50 units of Creeper, you’ll win.
So makers have to stay with the network and use energy? I liked them when they didn’t need energy. Just build them and power the ore rigs or collect the artifacts, or neither if the map maker was kind enough to seal off a maker with a powerful emitter. Out of curiosity, why do the red drones have cyan energy bars? And when are the packet speed structures coming?
I have been saving every pre-release screenshot in a folder title “CW3 evolution” and it’s really come along visually and technically since the first 3 screenshots. Pulse cannons now look 100% better, mortars look tougher with grey/red instead of orange/red, berthas are more sci-fi and less 18th century. In addition, there’s now drone settings for lazy people, anti-creeper implemented, omnidirectional repulsors… You sir, are currently my favorite game designer.
Makers (temporary name I probably will change) are actually immobile in Game 3 and something that you build on top of a killed Emitter. They then turn energy unto AC at a rate similar to the old Emitter.
The red drones are carrying AC bombs. Hence the color of their Ammo bars.
Upgrades (speed and otherwise) will be getting their own attention in due time.
Cool to hear… I like to go back and look at the sequence of screen shots as well.
Awesome! i love the physical aspect, but will their be a way to just “dump” the AC, or is the only way to use it by some sort of weapon?
There will definitely be other units that use AC. One of them will be the primary way of spraying AC onto the map. The plan right now is to combine the CW2 maker with the CW2 repulsor to make a ‘Spray Gun’ in game 3.
This looks awesome. I can’t wait to see how it plays!
Thanks for the mention on Twitter btw…
Yeah, I hope to have a beta up in a month or so. And there are a few surprises coming in game play that should be pretty interesting.
Not much to do with the news itself, but just heard you were making a third game (Previous owner of the two games as well).
And i believe you were once trying to get it on Steam, but didn’t hear back.
Did you keep it up, or did you just give up? They’re bit busy, but persistance can really pay off.
I submitted each previous game a few times but just never got anything back. All other stores (with the exception of Desura) jumped on the games immediately. But, you know…. I like steam. I buy games there myself from time to time. So I’d like to see Game 3 there and will definitely submit it 5 or 6 times 🙂
It annoys me to no end to see a game like “The Graveyard” on Steam, but not a game like yours 😛
Oh well i hope they do let you put CW3 on Steam, i’ve heard they’re generally a bit less restrictive once you’re finally in, so maybe they’ll allow you to release CW1 and 2 as well at that point.
Is the beta going to be a preorder thing?
I wouldn’t mind if it was on steam, so long as you don’t HAVE to get it by steam. We bought Mount and Blade: Warband from a disc, and it was a link to the steam thing, meaning that the disc was harder to use then the download, I hope you don’t do something like that.
Oh no…. it would just be another option. You’d still be able to get the game on my site or other stores as well. Of course this is all theoretical since you can currently get the games only on my site and stores _other_ than steam.
Looks like you won’t have to rely on Valve soon 🙂
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/07/09/steam-greenlight-announced-lets-gamers-vote-indie-games-on-to-steam/
Hope you put it up there and try to start a campaign for it.
Also official link: http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight
Fascinating… and great news. I say it’s great because I know just how large and loud the Creeper Nation can be when motivated toward a cause. Looks like this will launch at the end of Aug… which is good since that is ahead of Game 3’s launch. But once they are ready and Game 3 is ready, it’ll be time to let slip the dogs of war…
Dang it, you beat me to it!
steam just anounced a new project that might help you in this
http://www.steampowered.com/greenlight
(“Steam Greenlight will allow developers and publishers to post information and media about their game in an effort to convince the Community that their game should be released on Steam. Greenlight piggybacks on Steam Workshop’s flexible system that organizes content and lets customers rate and leave feedback.”)
If you put it on Steam, please keep the Adobe Air version for purchase off the CW website.
Game looks absolutely incredible so far!
I have to say, the new shields and terraforming units are going to be fantastic additions.
I’d also love a complex tech tree though, upgrade-wise. It really makes a game much more re-playable if there’s a lot of customization through upgrades, especially if some levels really lend themselves to certain upgrades, so one has to try different things to win.
They are fun to play with… I find myself just messing around with them to try different strategies or to build a powerful fortress.
A lot of thought is going into the tech upgrades… And there is something else coming that I will talk about in the weeks to come. It should hopefully really extend the game concept into a whole new domain.
What kind of limitations will there be on mining the ore? How fast can it be mined? Is there any limit to how much each deposit can hold?
Currently, each deposit has an intrinsic production rate. Good ones might make 1 ore unit per second, whereas weak ones might only make 1 every 5 seconds or so. Each ore unit translates into around 10 AC units once refined (an AC unit will fill one cell 1 terrain units high).
So, the “makers” will not use ore? instead they will use energy that we produce to “re-activate” the old emitter to produce creeper in our favor (anit-creeper) is this right, or will they just use ore?
Correct. These ‘Makers’ are used to convert a destroyed Emitter Core (what is left after you take out an emitter) into something that can produce AntiCreeper. So after you take out an emitter, you can build one of these structures on top of the remaining emitter core. Pump energy into it and you make AC.
This is separate from Ore and Refineries. You can still make AC by mining ore and letting a Refinery do its thing.
ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Just as long as there’s still AC emitters in custom maps, I’ll be happy. Out of curiosity, if you destroyed an AC emitter and built a maker (which needs a better name, like “core converter” or something) on top, would it start producing creeper? Or does the code only let it make AC?
I probably won’t do that… though I could. If the maker did make Creeper, it would instantly kill itself.
This makes me happy. One of the reasons I wasn’t a fan of AntiCreeper in the previous game was because it was a largely finite weapon and couldn’t be depended on long term. Sooner or later you would run out of ore. It sounds like I’ll be making a lot more use of AntiCreeper in the third game.
Both Makers and Ore deposits are not finite in Game 3 (at least not right now). That means you can make as much AC as you want and don’t have to worry about wasting it.
so i assume that map makers will be able to start some maps with null emitters, like visiting previous worlds? or can we still do the AC emitter thing? (no makers involved)
You can still, and usually will, make most of your AC with ore and refineries.
That would be cool if there was a creeper structure that allowed all creeper (to a certain extent) to be manipulated so it can concentrate towards a certain direction instead of always being dispersed evenly. This could open up some new forms of difficulty. I can imagine creeper doing a tsunami effect by gathering a bunch of creeper out of firing range and then sending a massive flood of creeper in an attempt to break through the defences. I can also imagine creeper focussing towards sections where you have less defensive turrets. The ONLY problem that me (and probably many people had about CW was that once you have a good footing, it is impossible to lose unless you do something really stupid. The spore waves added a new type of danger because it could get you to neglect one type of defence or the other but it still didn’t mean much when you get a well defended fortress set up. This intelligence idea could get you to have to constantly alter your placement of defensive structures depending on where the next predicted attack will take place. You will have to reserve space for additional turrets that you might have to move around from one place to the other due to how powerful a collected burst could be. Not only will there be waves of spores that you have to worry about but you will have to keep an eye out for a possible creeper burst because, instead of just seeing a timer for each wave like with the spores, the burst of creeper would not be performed at even spaces apart or be shown by a timer. You would have to see the aproaching clump of creeper or see the tide go way out to know where and when the creeper will strike. Controlled clumps of creeper has to be connected to at least a thin layer of creeper. If you cut off the controlled density of creeper from other creeper, it will dissipate and lose control until it rejoins. finally, it would be more difficult to travel creeper uphill and will have to abandon some of its mass to progress. The only but major problem of putting this in CW3 would be the complexity of the algorithims you would have to develop to be able to have such an AI in the game. If it is too much, then I guess you could have a survival mode thing where more creeper is spawned as the time goes by. I have probably wasted so much time typing this. but I just like thinking about the game with that intelligence in it and I wanted others to imagine CW being like that too.
Goods ideas…. and not a waste at all. I too like thinking about alternate enemies and am spending a great deal of time doing so currently.
What if we had something like nexuses to make this happen? maybe have different variations of the nexuses, So you have a mobile one that’ll go around and avoid getting cut off from the CC, (controlled creeper) but anything can damage it. then we have a immobile one that you have to use a nullifier to kill.
What if a discrete enemy structure were to specifically create mobile field-points (like shields in reverse) to gather up creeper, and send them on a semi-randomized curving spline path that converges on a random player unit and vanishes?
The fields wouldn’t be discretely visible to the player, but the targeting of player assets and the directed motion of the creeper that originates from this structure would be.
With a little logic in field structure, you can use this for a number of effects, such as a broad ‘wave’ that orients itself on the spline path, or a series of field points following the same spline, to create a more directed and focused ‘spear’ of creeper to dig at a single point of your defenses.
what if instead of something like that maybe there would be a structure or type of creeper that could change its viscosity. ex. when away from your structures it spreads like it usually does but when it senses blasters it thickens at the fromt line pulling the creeper forward or if it encountered mortars it became less viscous and flooded toward your mortars rapidly. And i just had an idea for a new enemy: something similar to phantoms but it acts like a conversion bomb in reverse and it targets anti creeper (randomly or like the mortars where it targets deep pools) turning any anti creeper it hits into creeper no matter how deep. … so maybe it isnt such a good idea to use anti creeper as static defense 🙂
no matter what you half to use energy to make/maintain a weapon. In CW2, you needed to build and maintain the ore rigs to produce anti creeper( you also need to build a maker which takes energy too.)
NOW onto my question..
What is the number, 501, surrounded by green exepth the bottom right? You know, the —> direction mixed with the l
l
V direction 🙂
That is the AC Refinery. There are Ore Mines that send ore packets to the refinery. One they arrive, they are converted into AC. So I have 501 units of AC in the Refinery tank.
You said ore mines will produce at different rates but, will they do so at an infinite amount.
Yes, currently… and I will probably keep it that way.
Woohoo! One of my biggest gripes about CW2 was how weak anticreeper was because there was only a limited supply of ore and unless you spent the entire map stocking up on anticreeper for the push, mining/making anticreeper was pretty awkward. Especially so on the harder maps, where anticreeper was completely ineffective because you simply couldn’t make enough anticreeper to help, let alone make it fast enough.
Virgilw,there are severeal ” holes ” around the map,are these ore mines? It looks like a black hole
Those are ore deposits. Since this image was taken, the graphics have already changed, though.
Also,Virgilw have you been thinking about adding ” Tesla coils ” to special weapon list? Tesla coils would be pretty good you know.
By tesla coil you probably mean something that shoots an electrical arc. I’d have to think about what that does that is different than other weapons…
Yeah thats right,pretty simmiliar to phantom coils from cw2.
I think maybe it could act like an aoe blaster perhaps have a radius simaler to a sheild costing very high energy but it kills the amount of creeper a blaster does over every tile in range.
It could ‘conduct’ through creeper – perhaps at greater expense, it would destroy the same amount of creeper, without having to have the maximum amount of creeper in the AoE in order to function at maximum effect.
are there any ideas for new weps? or any modifications going into the old ones in the future?
Yes, you have not seen all of the units and weapons yet.
virgilw- will there be any weapon or special unit that you control with the mouse?
like the blasters for example, you could make it to where ever your mouse is,they shoot.(with it being in range of course)
and have you put any thought into a sniper? It could have long range and slow-medium fire rate. It takes out the densest creeper but only 1 block at a time.
Also, I would like to see a ‘kill count’ on units. When you click on them, it shows how much creeper it has disinigrated into the creeper mist it deserves to be.
Interesting thoughts on the “mouse fire”….
As for the sniper, only taking out a single cell regardless of depth won’t do as much damage as you might think.
The stats per weapon; That’s a really simple idea and the best one I’ve heard all day. I like it…
Another idea that could work in tandem with the kill count is small stat boosts after reaching a certain kill count. Basically using it like an experience bar.
I don’t know how well that fits into the CW universe, but I have always been a fan of this. It certainly encourages players not to think of every unit as cannon fodder.
Have you noticed significant performance changes since you switched to the current compiler? Does it support 64-bit and/or multiprocessing? Personally, I use an i7 that doesn’t have terribly fast individual processors, but a high collect rate with a large cache. On especially complex maps in CW2 I’ve seen my single core push forward with some precipitation.
Yes, Unity and Mono offer significant performance increases over AIR. And yes I can also produce a 64bit binaries.
So no more creeper flipping at 2^32? We have to wait for 2^64? I’m a fan of the maps with impossibly massive creeper densities where you have to wait for it to flip to anticreeper (unless you’re VERY skilled at speed runs) before you can do anything. I guess this can’t really happen in game 3 though since there aren’t any chambers for the creeper to compress without harming your base. Unless fields return and you can make “pipes” that lead to a single cell that lets it compress…
Virgilw,maybe there could be a weapon that opens a BLACK HOLE? But using this weapon would be very,very VERY dangerous becouse you will not know where the black hole will open,if you are lucky enought it may open right in the center of creeper acrivity and suck it in,tyhen after sometime ( about 5-3 sec. ) it will close. BUT BEWARE…if it will open right in the middle of your ” base ” it will suck in all your units, You could also upragade this weapon so it atleadst a bit may tell you where the black hole may open.
Random destruction of your base probably won’t be a good idea. But a directed weapon that acts as a Creeper ‘Sink’ is a good idea.
But isn’t that what the THOR did from CW1 ?
For the editor, i assume you there will be options to change the ground color/creeper color/unit design. How many layers of terrain are possoble in the editor currently?
There will be a range of options in the editor (creeper colors, and terrain texture choice). There are currently 10 terrain heights.
I have an idea for what the tesla coil should do: It should VERY slightly reduce the density of the entire mass of creeper in contact with each other per shot, instead of removing a bit of creeper in the area shot making it quite an effective weapon when you are being confined on a small island and everything else is dominated by creeper. That is, if creeper liquid is a conductor like water….
Tesla coil aside… I like the idea of a way to harm the Creeper a little bit over a large area…
I like the white outline on the AC!
It isn’t half bad… you can also toggle the opacity of the AC so that you can see where it is clearly, or get it out of the way so you can see the terrain.
What if tesla coils caused creeper to temporarily become solid where it hits it?
There may be another weapon that does this…
I too am curious about the BETA version. Is it going to be a preorder thing or is there some special person list you have to be on? I purchased both CW1 and CW2 (CW2 the moment it was available) and will absolutely buy CW3 when available.
The private beta has a small set of users selected mostly from the forums.
I am loving the pictures so far, I can hardly sleep at night I just want to get up and play cw3!
could you post a video of you playing through a level? That will at least let me sleep easier.
Idea for a level:
there is creeper every where and a small island is defending itself but will become over run, you have no control of this place. you use a kill all laser (1 use only on this level type) to clear out a spot big enough for a quick base and try to rescue the other base.
^ post a video of that please!
Not too much longer for a video…
___
😀
I have an idea-Bombers could carry a nuke,bomber will fly to your slected location , drop the nuke and after 10 seconds it will blow up,damage will be….hmmmm….about 3 berthas. + It would create a large crater on map. * ATTENTION ATTENTION,ONE BOMBER CAN CARRY ONE NUKE AT TIME. * After 10 minutes you can use the nuke again.
What are those things that are attacking the emitter?
Those are Bertha’s. Titan units that hit with a real punch.
Bertha’s!?! >=D Excellent! The Loki shall BURN!!!
Oh and what are Titan units exactly some form of ancient technology? Super Experimental weapons? O_o The very word “Titan” means thay should be weapon’s of massive power…
Ether way Press on Virgil by blaster’s shall cover you!
Also, I think that storage units should store any type of packets, and that can be specified, so you can store AC in it, and you can tell it to store, say, 20 building packets, 20 ammo packets, and 15 AC packets.
will there be a unit that favors attacking creeper that is being produced by emitters, or, ‘spawnkilling?’
And about the beta, there is a special person list type of procedure. It is all the people that are really helpful and active on the blog.(alothugh I have tried the blog and it is very confusing for me… I also wish there would be some sort of challenge to see whom can play the beta, For example,who ever has the most experience, or who has the most highscores, even who has created the most maps.)
I guess I will just have to start trolling the blog to get a shot at the beta :).
Forums are better. The blog is not very organized. That said, if you start posting meaningless stuff, you also won’t get accepted. Best thing to do is try to join the MapMods, and go from there. Not many people pay special attention to the names of commenters on the blog.
I think that would be unfair,becouse everyone wants to get beta,and there are people that havent created any maps but want to play the game too.
It’s the most respected people on the forum get into beta. The blog won’t do anything for you.
Ok here it goes. One day me and my friend where talking on the bus and we came up with an idea, what if for mortars and blasters within their rang you could target like drones because in CW1 it was very annoying to look over and see your regiment of 5 mortars firing at a (deeper yes ) but completely un-important pool, you could still have the automatic targeting but all I’m asking is that you should be able to switch to manual targeting of blasters and mortars
–that’s my two cents
Manual targeting is something I have considered, but the jury is still out. The amount of micromanagement it can require is pretty high.
Virgilw I have a quick question concerning game 2 blaster. Shouldn’t they be able to fire while moving?
I mean… they are flying anyway! but I guess they need to aim… however they could shoot inaccurately at creeper… well there’s my 1 cent….
I agree with this
That would make the game much, much too easy. You could go on aerial assaults with Blasters and take no damage.
would be cool if the wiggly-emitter-things occasionally divided.
That would be making a lot of additional creeper, and changing flow patterns rather randomly. Also, since they don’t move, even if you divided their output by 2 each division, dividing them would be rather pointless.
thought the random flow-change would be a fun thing. nvm then.
maybe there could be a weapon that infects creeper with a virus that decreases “damage” resistance of the infected creeper. It is only temporary, and the weapon can infect a large area (maybe a 10-15 square radius) but has a very slow fire rate (about half of mortar fire rate) The virus is resisted by creeper, making the virus effects temporary. Weapons will target infected creeper as top priority.
Humm interesting thought…. how ever if the “infector’s” shot areas are “top priority” then if it fires some where your unit’s ( lets say mortars ) wold start fireing at some noneffective target instead of say… keeping a vital pool of creeper pinned. therefor allowing the creeper to flood your base….
You know, all this terraforming makes me wonder if weapons could be made specifically to take advantage of it.
For instance, when I saw terraforming, one of my first thoughts was that you could make chokepoints to channel the Creeper into a killing zone rather than just trying to hold off a wave of Creeper along your entire line. This gives me a couple of ideas.
One: Line damage weapon. Flamethrower, lightning rod, whatever: the point is that they deal damage to all Creeper in their line of fire. (Within their range, of course.) While they’d be easily swamped if they were surrounded, such as would be likely on level ground… in trenches and valleys where the Creeper could only come from one or two directions, they would be very powerful.
Two: Gas cloud. Probably delivered by artillery, it would spread outwards over a large area over time. It can’t move up terrain, however. Most likely it would also keep damaging Creeper over time, making it useful for area denial. IF one was feeling fancy, one could make it so that each cell of gas does less damage as the number of affected cells go up. This would again lead to a situation where it would be much more lethal in confined spaces. (If you felt silly, you could make it go UP instead of down. That would be…interesting, to say the least.)
Since Virgil mentioned symmetry, and both of the above ideas rely on confined space and terrain differentials, I might as well throw in ideas for things that work better on level, open ground.
Spray: Exactly what it says on the tin. Does a cone area of damage. Maybe it’s a shotgun or a flamethrower or what have you, but the main point is the area of effect. Also, perhaps useful for holding a line with relatively few weapons.
Gunner: In a way, the Blaster’s big brother.Possibly tougher than most weapons, it’s basically a machine-gun Blaster of awesomesauce. However, it cannot target anything on different elevations, at all. (Note: While it would be nice if it could fire on Creeper that is on low terrain but whose height reaches the Gunner’s level, I have no idea how hard that would be to code.)
Interesting ideas…. I may experiment with some of them. I may also be adding ‘power spots’. These would be places where you can put a unit and that unit would get exceptional abilities. So your big brother blaster could work that way.
Hrm. Since I’m back here, I may as well make a few addendum ideas.
The Gas Cloud could be an alternate Mortar or Bomber payload, like how Bombers were dropping Anti-Creeper. Heck, Bertha Cannons would do the job even better.
The Gunner seems to be a particularly defensive weapon. Flat plains are hard to defend, which is why the Gunner could come in handy for a hapless player. It could also be used to encircle the Creeper and keep it penned in, due to its high rate of fire. However, its inability to fire up or down terrain would limit its offensive utility. In addition, it should likely be big and slow to match its toughness, or else very expensive.
So yeah, I guess big brother blaster is a slight oversimplification. My bad!
I just noticed that in the build section of the screenshot there is a unit called the Terp what is that?
I think that’s supposed to be Terrap? Either way, it’s the terraforming unit, IIRC.
That is the unit that does the terraforming.
I wonder if you’d mind labeling the pictures somehow? I don’t know what part of this I’m supposed to be looking at.