I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new Empire! Or so I tell myself.
This week we get a screen shot of something really simple… just a sector of space in a universe filled with Creeper covered worlds. Well, lets just say it won’t be filled with Creeper for long…
For game 3, I’m looking forward to unifying different aspects of the first two games. Story missions, Chronom missions, Code maps, even Custom maps together at last. The goal is to put them all in a sector based navigation system. Many things are still being worked on, but some core work has been done and a basic system is in place. Besides making mission selection a more immersive process, who doesn’t like exploring the reaches of Creeper covered space and discovering new techs and perhaps enemies…?
assume. and first
Looks cool, can’t wait to play!
interesting….. it looks very nice, i cant wait to see how it is brought together in the next week.
I’m always happy to see everytime you come up with something new 😀
Keep up the good work, can’t wait for the release 😀
Like it! What the the symbols next to the selected star?
The selected system is the one with a white dashed circle around it (that rotates). There is a little ship that also circles around this world. This is the ship that you travel around in from world to world. Another system shows a set of coordinates and a minimap. This is a system that I was holding my mouse over when I took the screenshot.
Other systems are shows with a green halo indicating those worlds have been secured.
wait a minute here! in cw2 the creeper attacked a human-owned world. can this be done in cw3 as well?
Humans? What are those?
Are we all robots now? 🙂
He’s been infected with the Loki Virus
O.o but.he…..old man….the girl……
error 109, brain overload.
awesome: check
amazing: check
crazy: check
more awesomer: check
“awww yeeaahh”: check
“:O”: check
“yep!”: check
“a million billion rainbows across the sky!”: check
INSANITY!!!!!
Apparently the Loki aren’t entirely aware of what they are destroying
i’m sorry if this sounds insulting, but this looks a lot like EVE’s map to me. but who cares it’s still epic :O
It has stars and lines, so it looks like EVE’s map?
WhatisthisIdon’teven.
EVE wasn’t the first thing to have stars and lines.
Exhibit A: le flag.
I must admit, this looks pretty dang cool. MOAR STRATEGY!!!
Here I was going to accuse him of ripping off SPAZ, freelancer, EVE, Earth and Beyond, Master of Orion, and a dozen other titles.
Then I realized that it’s like graph paper. It’s an obvious solution that anybody who needs to draw in precise increments marks precise increments on the paper. It’s not evidence of intellectual theft.
Wow – Yes! Looks amazing. Hope this map will also be part of the larger gameplay / include some strategic elements beyond world selection.
Can’t wait for this to come out.
Me too 🙂 It will have some game play elements, but I won’t go overboard.
Nice!
Freedom of choice!
(also, graphs everywhere)
Yes, graphs within graphs, within graphs, within graphs…
It’s called graphception
now I want to play the game more then ever, though if it takes time for the ship to travel then thats really bad. looks like you can only travel to places you have already “shielded”.
are the green things shields around the planets or just to show you beat it.
say you get a tech on 1 planet, can you go back to planets you have already beat and replay them with the new tech?
The green areas are secured worlds, and you can only visit worlds that you have secured or that are in range of secured worlds. It does take time to move around between the worlds but it is very quick and more of an animation.
Why would you want to go back to worlds you have secured?
to replay the level, whether for fun or a better score. 😀
to make more pretty pictures with AC
So is it going to be something like where you can go and secure worlds that you want so you can get more tech and power, or you can go straight to just doing story missions, but you might be less powerful than if you secured more worlds first?
Yes, story worlds will be mixed in with procedural worlds and world with tangents (artifact collection, etc). You can try to rush through the story or take your time. The choice will be yours.
Now that´s what I’m talking about…
What about adding a non terraformable ground type? Would be usefull in, for example custom missions, and others.
Also, what about allowing triggers for (for example for creeper fields, but possibly also emitters and spore towers) to be assigned to buildings(If creeper destroy certain plot building, …), statistics(When X buildings/ X energy production) or areas(Ie, if a player tower enters a certain area).
This would allow for interesting things, like creeper output increasing as your power increases, requiring you to go low profile, or spore towers launching their spores en masse whenever you launch an offense.
Would something like this be possible. Sure it’s complicated but it would make custom missions much more interesting.
Things like this may be added… some at launch and some over time.
Perhaps you could also show the routes between secured worlds with a green line? This would make it clearer which worlds are part of the secured space.
Also, the convention for zoom slider bars on maps appears to be a ‘+’ at the end that zooms in and a ‘-‘ at the end that zooms out.
Yeah, I’ll be decorating this screen better in the coming weeks. There are numerous improvements that can be made.
To make a rapid choice of the mission, make the option to divide the galaxy in sectors. you click “custom” and the ship jumps to another sector. you click “storyline”…
also, the ability to place the planets of the galaxy (at least the custom ones) using different patterns (alphabetical, difficulty level, mission type, size, evaluation, creation date, download date, number of completion……). in the blackhole at the center of the galaxy there could be the most difficult mission ever seen by mortal eyes.
that could be a good idea (in my opinion).
Anyway, GOOD WORK:)
When it comes to custom worlds you’ll be able to get a “list” so you can sort them how you like. The galaxy sector screen will still be there but you’ll be able to set a destination from the custom map list (if you prefer). This will cause the ship to hurry over to the containing sector and world.
and also, make a new type of mission: shield building.
to unlock the mode you need, in order, to clear the planet and have the necessary tech (found in a remote planet). the shield is a huge building that is already placed at the beginning of the mission and that must be connected to the network (it could cost 500-1000 energy).
you can’t nullify.
more the shield is complete, more the emitters are powerful, the aet have bigger ranges, the spore towers spawns more (and/or more powerful) spores…
if the shield is touched by creeper, it’s destroyed, and you must retry the mission.
if the shield is built, some awesome gfx destroys the emitters. than the planet is full shielded.
if a planet isn’t shielded, the creeper can slowly (“walking” on the lines) re-conquer the planet, making you unable of return to a part of the galaxy (if that was the only way) if you doesn’t clear again the planet.
all this is for a “galaxy conquest” mode
ps: sorry for eventuals mistakes in English
Not sure if this is what you are saying, but I like the idea of some sectors having worlds that can be retaken. Any secured world that has nearby creeper infected worlds could slowly be retaken. I could see that kind of game play mode on some sectors.
exactly what i meant:)
Like some old ants game. I do like the ideia.
strategeception.
That’s mine
Perhaps the human worlds can send out a limited amount of energy to other worlds, also there could be a lab where you can research new techs and properly new units.
You could also show threat levels of how much emitters there are ect and creeper emitted every minute when you hover over a world 🙂
good job so far and can’t wait for this game to come out 😀
After you conquer a world you gain research points depending on the world’s threat level 🙂
Bare minimum, there will be things on worlds that are of value. Picking them up will help you.
Oh MAN. I thought it was a brilliant idea just for level selection, and then read about discovering new techs on some worlds.
Assuming they aren’t visible until you try out a level, that would be amazing, especially if you’re not locked into “now you can go to planet B. Now you can go to planet C.” (Maybe the ship could have a range, maybe you can visit planets in range of the ones you’ve cleared, maybe it’s sandboxy. Just as long as it’s not hand-holdy.)
It’d be great to find little upgrades as you go, or run into a map you can’t do until you come across the right tech.
TAKE MY MONEY ALREADY.
You’ve got the general idea. Story wise, missions will be scattered across different sectors. This will allow some freedom of choice but still allow me to stagger the difficulty of surrounding worlds (by limiting knowledge of certain sectors of space till you have advanced so far into the story).
what the…. how big is that galaxy?
its a galaxy, of course its big
did you expect there to be only 20 planets in the WHOLE galaxy, cause that would not be a galaxy, it would be a solar system
A very large solar system
I certainly hope it isn’t the solar system we’re talking about…
Yeah, it’s the same system that poo originated from, then evolved so that it would mature inside of humans, then live out its life in pipes
I would like to know how big this galaxy is, too.
Also, shut up and take my money, dammit.
i’m throwing my $20s at the screen.nothing is working…
Try a $50 one.
Even my good friend Franklin can’t do it!
Roughly 100,000 lightyears in diameter with a few hundred billion stars.
most galaxies arn’t small 🙂
lol people are throwing their money at the screens V…..
I hope there will be an infinite game play, as well as the story missions, like probably 20 or so like the other games. Another great thing to have is challenges, like win on this map without the use of guppy’s, or something like that. Keep up the good work! Keep up the good work!!!
You should also make random creeper invasions… at maybe 1-2% every minute.
i just noticed that there is a bomber going to a planet, is that a bomber squad?
is that an air strike?
also is this mode a turn based?
That’s the temporary graphic for your ‘main’ ship. The ship you travel around in and that you carry Command Nodes with… and the one that controls time.
Great Scott! So the ship manipulates the fourth dimension to reach its destination? With rift space gone, it seems like the only way…
controls…. time?!?!
unless its a typo for “controls them”……
O.o we control TIME now?!?
did we find the U.S.S. Relativity?!?
(star trek reference, the relativity was seen in star trek voyager)
wait what?
“controls time”?!?!?!
Is this game going to take place in the past?!?!
if it is, please make it a very confusing mind bending totally crazy story that leaves you trying to figure out what exactly happened after completing it!
or maybe the far future?
OR BOTH!?!?!?!
…
Controls time? Is there going to be timetravel?
Time, eh?
Now THAT is what I call 14th millenium technological genius. Honestly, I thought the seires could emphasize a little more on technology as advanced as the timetine it is used in. It is notable that most games with sci-fi backgrounds don’t often go as far into the future as 14,000 years. But frankly, I struggled to understand what technology and creations in the series really jumped out as 14th millenium-grade advancement.
Sure lasers, warp space and space travel on high scales are futuristic, but games with sci-fi ideals had technology that was less conventional-looking as the tech here, and they rarely went beyond the first few centuries succeeding the 21st. I mean nothing offensive by this, but I did not really get how the conventional weapons of this series fitted in to the 14th millenium. that Creeper World games take place in on the timeline.
I don’t intend to imply that the weapons for the series are too 20-21st century-ish, but if there is a way that the weapons and technology is perhaps more advanced than the other sci-fi games’, what is it, Virgil? For now, I presume those GIGA-advanced creations were lost when the Creeper invaded and nearly put a permanet cork in the Milky Way Galaxy.
By the way, I am impressed with this layout of the missions and worlds to go to. If at it appears, there are as many levels in the full game package as there are dots on the screen, then WOW. I thought there could be more than just 20 story missions as well as other missions of other types since there is more tech and weapons in each game than the last.
Seriously, it would make it more fun to use the units because for one thing, the CW1 Thor was never re-used even in non-story missions, and the CW2 experimentals were used in only 2 non-code/custom levels (if you count the story and bonus missions). Having few pre-laid-out levels with What I will call “Tera-Destroyers” (Thor, experimentals, presumably the Titans as well, and maybe the orbitals depending on what they are) is acceptable, but a few more missions practically dedicated to them in advance would be nice. No pressure, though.
If you think about it the weapons are already super advanced. All of the weapons are “energy” weapons. The blasters fire bolts of energy (lasers), the mortars fire presumably some sort of energy “bomb” – think about a conventional mortar. What would that do to an ocean? Nothing other than push it around and creeper is pretty much just a thick, slow flowing liquid. The weapons have to incinerate the creeper to have any effect, except for sams which why would you go high tech when a simple ballistic missle is enough? And for CW3’s “beam” towers and cw2’s phantom coils the weapons are obviously some sort of laser (the beams) and the phantom coils seem like a type of long range and high power tesla coil that is able to be aimed. etc etc 🙂
Hey me_me_me_, I appreciate the details I did not have in mind when I commented under this subject. I knew that the weapons were advanced compared to our history in real life, but I wasn’t quite sure what made it 14th millenium-type technology at the time.
I was thinking about other strategy/war games with science fiction backbones and CW seemed more conventional than them. But this stuff you have here changes that idea drastically, and if history really doesn’t always trend upwards as Virgil says, then it really makes more sense why the weapons stood out the way they did previously.
Those are advanced, but they sound nothing like something from the year 14,000; they sound more like 5,000-10,000.
Creating matter from energy on a large scale? That sounds advanced enough for me.
not 14 thousand years in the future advance, considering we do that on a small scale now
The arc of history doesn’t always trend ‘upwards’.
Will you stop being so mysterious? 😛
It’s hard enough imagining how amazing things will be without random hints! 😀
Where did you get the 14th millenium?
I think I just figured out the story. Or atleast the base of it.
obviously it involves Platius and Abraxis commanding forces somewhere else to stop the Creeper
“controls time” means waiting for the animation of the ship to move from planet to planet, not manipulating the date. Or so i assume. If the ship was able to control time were the case, you could just go back before the creeper ever came, and build a bunch of weapons to prevent the creeper from ever becoming a problem. Of course that would create a paradox, making it an even worse idea.
I’m not saying anything else… 🙂
It looks really cool, I’m very happy the game is coming along to nicely! I can’t wait, but i do have one question. How many “Time Trial” missions will there be, you know, the ones were you had to save the pods but you had to do it very fast. Or the second to last mission of CW2. I’m just curious because I’m really flustered about those and I can’t beat CW2 because of that time trial mission. Maybe there would be a way to skip a mission like this, or a least buff it down? Anyway, nice job!
one thing I though of, and I know people that would hate this, if any of the capsules get destroyed you get 0 score no matter what, but you can sill beat the level
Like!
But maybe on the capsule there is a character that you must save or you can’t complete the story
True; vital characters in rescuable capsules really added the much-needed spice to the hotsauce so to speak.
Do you know what really annoyed me about the capsule/pod levels?
Half of them are empty, but when the empty ones die you still lose.
I have mixed feelings about time trial missions. On the one hand I’m OCD in that I finish every CW1 map with all the emitters capped, to the point where I will turn off the green energy to prevent winning the map prematurely.
On the other hand, because of the time trial maps (especially in CW2) I learned how to play the game much better. Level 13 (Horror) of CW2 had me stumped for a while.
Maybe introduce difficulty setting PER level so everyone can finish a particularly hard level on a lower setting.
Like!!!
maybe the tt missions are just side mission, and you can skip that!
i have the same problem with day 19:(
I may not include any in the story… not sure yet. But custom map makers can make them.
You were the Chosen One! It was said you would destroy the Crepper, not join them!
It looks great, I’m just curious about the link to the Star Wars quote.
Link? 😉
I must be going crazy! I could of sworn the link was in the ‘s’ in ‘security’. Feel free to ignore me!
I FOUND THAT THING TOO!!!!!
I could have sworn there was a link.
Wait, the link’s gone?
Too big of an assumption to assume each star is a playable map? 😉
For the time being, absolutely not.
Each star is playable…. and there are many.
I knew it!
This proves how much better each game in the series is than the last.
Space? Space! SPAAAAACE!!!!!!!
Oh God, sorry, had to get that out of my system…
So all the different types of missions are going to be in that “space” empire. Will you still have the option for people who just feel like playing random code maps and leaving the main game untouched? Its looking pretty awesome btw!
Yeah, there will be a way to dial up a ‘random’ mission based on settings.
But that ship looks like ( or is ) a bomber,i mean you could re-skin it so it looks like space ship not like unit used by players
The graphic is temporary.
man this game is awesome plz release the demo soon 😀
What’s the latest update on the release date?
It’s down to seconds! Like 86400*N days of seconds…
Joking aside, I’m going as fast as possible. My hope is before the end of the year, but if I don’t make that deadline it will be very soon into next year.
why there is a link on the “s” of “security”, in the title?
There isn’t?
At least not when I went over it five seconds ago…
There used to be, I saw it too. It got removed sometime last night.
‘Phantom’ links…. that could be ‘menacing’…
well i know what it said!
Guys, Virgil is trying to crush us with his purple goo of death
That is the sexiest screenshot yet
To all of you talking about being unable to pass time trial levels – there is a forum here too. LVL 19 in CW2 is not too hard to pass once you recognize the trick to the level. and I believe there is everything just short of a step by step walk through in the CW2 gameplay section of the forums. The folks there are really helpful too. If you have a tough spot not already discussed, just ask.
That ship that you say, Virgil, carries the Command Nodes does indeed resemble a bomber VERY strongly. Might I suggest designing it so that it looks like something that really emphasizes on being able to carry and deploy multiple CN’s to their destionations? I repeat from my past comment on this subject: the CN’s are mechanical founding fathers of each base and network, and the ship carrying them would be worthy of the title “Mothership”.
If it looked like what some could call the queen bee or queen ant of the hive/colony or done that ideal in some way in appearance, I for one think it would be more cathy and appealing to us.
By the way, what’s with the blue and white colors for the mission spots?
he said that it’s the temporary gfx…
Vfkan, I see. I just now noticed the comment about the temporary design.
Stars come in different colors…
indeed they do. my question is, how the heck have you gotten this much work done in such little time? so many levels…
It’s temporary
I also have an Idea for the Titans as well as the orbitals. What would you say to a orbital super weapon that could destroy a larger area of creeper than a bertha or deploy those AC shells/creeper-converters I mentioned in a past comment, and a Titan that could either call down the orbital weapon, or be deployed beyond the front lines as a sacrifice (of MUCH energy)?
I’m working on getting the core game stable, and finished up… Then I can go crazy with super weapons.
I don’t intend to inflict any pressure on you, Virgil, but there are some comments I made with questions that I would appreciate answers to.
Also, I’m sure this may have been already implied a long time age, but is the bertha titan truely capable of infinite range, or does it just target an untargeted emitter and take out the surrounding creeper? To add to that, I might already ask this in a past comment, but does the bertha replace the CW2 dark beam?
I answer what I can, when I can, in very limited time. If there are things that have not been answered and that remain important concerns to you, post them again in a concise form and I’ll try to get to them.
The Bertha can hit anywhere on any map. It just makes a big explosion. I wouldn’t say that the Bertha has any relationship to the DB.
In CW2, the creeper density was shown for where the cursor was at and for every pixel it was moved, the density was different. That kind of made it difficult to determine how much creeper there was and might I suggest that the creeper height beshown for every square map unit that would be shown when terraforming?
Speaking of which, when the ground is being painted, could the protocol ofr it be made so that if you wanted to cover a certain part of ground that was square or rectangular, you could tell it to terraform a whole row/colomb or stretch 2 opposing edges at a time so you don’t have to for example, paint a long, thin stretch of ground at minimum brush size like you do in the previous clip?
A subcell in CW2 was 8×8 pixels. A cell in CW3 is 8×8 pixels (at normal zoom). Creeper has a uniform density in each subcell of CW2 and each cell of CW3.
I am tweaking how you can paint the ground, but in any case it’s like a paint brush and not too much trouble to sweep around and paint with (and erase with the right mouse button).
Cleverbot says some very strange things if you just tell it “I am Virgil Wall” over and over.
No, really, it does.
So, it sounds like you have both Chronom and Code maps? Is that handled the same as in game 2, where the full written out date becomes the seed? Also, how are they added to the map exactly? Are only certain strings/dates available, or is there still a way to use any value as a level seed?
It’s handled differently. The procedural map generator has been expanded and there will be more player control when whipping up a skirmish map.
My plan is to allow a range of settings for a skirmish map, and for that to generate a GUID that you can share.
it just keeps asking how tall i am
Really? It called me a pig, said it liked paradoxes, accused me of changing my answers, and eventually said “Do you have anything intelligent to say today?”
i tried again, it just kept asking how tall i was 🙁
why does it work for you and not for me?!
http://imgur.com/UIHKW
I don’t know why it doesn’t work for you… or even why he isn’t marking these as spam. But tonight this odd… um… pattern emerged.
That is the pattern that can lead to being infected with the Loki virus, don’t look at it too much
Will the galaxy system have a way of losing worlds? E.g. you cleanse part of a sector of creeper-dominated worlds but then the creeper sends new emitters to the world you conquered three turns again and you can defend it.
If you’ve ever played AI wars or Sins of a solar empire, some basic but cool form of space-map tactics would be great. E.g. managing your planet’s resources incomes- upgrading planets-upgrading tech- and placing ships in tactical position.
Why must we limit ourselves to controlling one measly spaceship when we can control ten?
I’ve not decided everything… and some of the stuff I’ve decided I’m not yet revealing. But I like your drift…
virgil, you said “humans? what are those?” so I would love to know what we play as? robots? the styglek? some other species? humans are called come thing different?
Just a few million years ago you wouldn’t have found any creatures you would call ‘human’ on our planet. Some you might speculate would be related to modern humans but you probably wouldn’t call them human. It stands to reason that change doesn’t cease….
so humans evolved past our current form?
slow, odd, SWEET!
or maybe you’re trying to draw us off track, and what really happened is that future humans used their “time controlling” ship to go into the past when the creeper first came to our galaxy, or the Old Man’s people’s galaxy, and then the ship broke so we had to reproduce with the locals, so we’re not human anymore!
(i know that really didn’t make sence, but i don’t know how to fix it 🙁 )
actually that made perfect sense to me
so many secrets..what’s your game, Virgilw? (Besides CW3, of course) 😀
Yes, brevity and working 25 hours a day can often be mistake for being coy 🙂
He is infected with the Loki virus and wants to infect or kill us all, whichever is more convenient.
…I think i have an idea about the way you are going to handle the “time travel” (moving through the 4th dimension which we already do but dont realise it) As you travel through the 3rd dimension the ship manipulates or warps the 3rd dimesion so we travel through the 4th dimension at different rates. Basically a more advanced form of the way we already affect our speed through the 4th dimension (moving faster or slower). 😀
I always assumed that was how the Enterprise solved time paradox issues by arriving at a distant location faster than light… Though the ‘wake’ left from warping that space isn’t something I’d want to get caught in….
The Picard Maneuver! Where he uses a small burst of warp to allow his old ship, the Stargazer, to look like it’s in two places at the same time. I’m surprised no other captain thought of this sooner. I guess Kirk was too busy making out with an alien to come up with this.
Also warp drive technology, in the Star Trek universe, creates a bubble of normal space-time around it, it doesn’t enter another realm/dimension like hyperspace. , and can still interact with other objects in normal space-time. You can see this with course corrections due to gravity wells. I seem to remember an episode where they were actually pulled out of warp and trapped inside an event horizon.
And yes… I was a Trekkie… =P
or, you know, they could just be like Doctor Who, and be awesome 🙂
secrets so far the past 2 days:
1. MIGHT have some relation to a star wars quote
2. Might not play as humans
3.some sort of change of time
4. Im sure there are more, but no major ones i can remember 🙂
Virgilw- Will there be any ‘out of the world’ missions?
Virgilw- Will there be any ‘out of this galaxy’ missions?
4XC- think of the bertha as a mortar. Try BTD4/5 ^.^
cooltv27- Maybe we arn’t playing as a creeper enemy, why would the styglek want to clean a world of creeper? :p
I ment before they went evil
The only thing I want to do lately is get this game.
A ship that controls time?
Well, that explains how the player can just pause the game and put structures everywhere 😛
Yeah…..wait DOCTOR WHO?
thank you sir, thank you very much
also, the doctor is in!
Will be the development of a spore game world mode yet?
Then there will be areas of attack?
Virgil what about option to change shell type for weapons? Like-bertha shoots normal bombs that explode in touch with creeper,now i change the type os shell and it fires with bomb that explodes,relases smaller bombs that blow up as well
Maybe… it’s a bit of micromanagement, though, and doesn’t match well with the CW philosophy of specialized units for each purpose.
I’m seeing opportunities for competitive empires here… 😛
Either player vs styglek or someother weird alien race, maybe we could even play as the ‘enemy’ (i.e. styglek not the creeper).
In more depth maybe even player vs player, not online but cooperative on one system. Now you can play with your dad 😛
Yes I got my dad addicted to CW2 recently too , great way to have father-son time 😀
With all of these possibilities about who to play as, humans or otherwise, I have to say that it was what made games Like Starcraft and Halo good to look at and play through.
Like I say in a past comment, I find games with options for playing as heroes and villains gives a better perspective on things.
By the way, sweetdude 64: “Try BTD4/5”. I appreciate the recommendation, but I don’t exactly get your point. (In other words, “BTD4/5 rings no bells.) What is it?
One more thing, Virgil: I get that your time is rather reduced, and must admit I have the same thing going on now. My time to comment normally here is under pressure as well which is, I will say in 3 words that may sum it all up, “Courtesy of College”
bloom tower defense
Right. I know that series; in fact, I have played #4 in Bloons Tower Defense and I have always been impressed as to how much more advanced each game in that series was than each predecessor, no different from the CW series.
By the way Virgil, what is CW3 playing off of besides Star Wars in the quote in the post description?
BTD5 is a prime example of why I dislike most exp systems, BTD4 somewhat less so. A lot of people have suggested that weapons upgrade with exp, and I get that it’s so you have more incentive to minimize losses, but I don’t think an exp system is the best way to do that.
why not?
if you keep a turret on the second line, only the turret in the 1st gains xp, and get upgrades
I doubt an experience system for the weapons will even work out too well whether it means it will be too hard or too easy. That is because experience systems for tower defenses are used only on games with fixed paths for enemies that cannot be modified like the Cursed Treasure series online games.
This game has no fixed, unmodifyable paths and I don’t think an experience system for the weapons will fit in very well to be honest.
why not?
the IAs inside the weapons learn how to shoot the creeper, and gains some little upgrades (20% more range, aoe, 30% rof……)
in the next planet, the creeper changes its molecular structure and the upgrades becomes useless…
why you say they don’t fit?
I say they don’t fit because experience-gaining weapons are a LOT more typical in games with tower defense genres where enemies travel on fixed paths and there is no open battle field.
Maybe an upgrade system like you are describing will work, but I don’t get it for now because there is NO fixed, permanent paths for the Creeper to cover. It was meant to cover the whole area and there is no experience system I am aware of that works out like that on a battle game without paths to narrow the travel of the enemy.
Is your idea supposed to function the same way the one-time upgrades in the first 2 games do?
Assuming the above comment by me appears as a separate one, it was supposed to be a reply to Vkfan about experience for weapons
you said it:
the experience gaining weapon is typical of close tds, but it isn’t exclusive of them.
so, why don’t we try to discover an experience system that works for cw? in my opinion, it will be a great addition!
yes, i meant:
-there are the upgrades like in cw2 (that adds range…)
-there are also, for each weapon, the option to add some extra components, that upgrades the single tower. they cost a lot of energy, but add some great upgrades. only for these upgrade type i suggested the constant upgrade while destroying creeper
It sounds like a very interesting game.
It just doesn’t sound like this game.
sorry but… what are you talking about?
The Loki virus, Virgil has been infected with it an wants to kill us all
Software is software. Any increases in efficiency can easily be copied to every other unit. It makes no sense for one unit to ‘gain experience’ but not be able to transfer that gained efficiency in software to another blaster.
Also, CW is based on a precept of tactical advancement rather than gains and losses of units – a player that plays effectively never loses a single unit anyway, and that’s not special or unusual, unlike most RTS’s.
I don’t think player’s need an incentive to preserve units, and I don’t think unit EXP is really CW, if you know what I mean.
i’ll think on it:)
Just a light hearted reference to the title I chose.
BTD 4/5
is
Bloons Tower Defense 4 and 5
Remember guys, this is a blog about creeper world, not bloons tower defence, haha.
But in all seriousness, Will it be possible to custom make our own galaxy? This would be really useful whe somebody wants to make a multi-world series
Probably… Many details are still being worked out, but this is on the list of possibilities.
what about an upgrade “experimental lab” for each weapon type?
this upgrade lowers the rof and the damage of the choosen turret, but all the weapons of the same type slowly gains range, rof, aoe… upgrades (with a limit).
more experimental lab weapons means faster upgrades.
this stacks from the upgrades researched in the tech domes
ps (stupid question): in which language is cw programmed?
Unity, isn’t it?
thx
What’s ROF?
rate of fire
Unity platform with C# as the language.
Remember everyone, this is a real time stratergy game. An XP system or perma upgrades wouldn’t fit into this genre. But I am still pretty sure there will be a wide variety of upgrades that last 1 level.
Nice to know you and I are on the same page about experience systems for weapons.
I don’t suppose you know of any games with experience systems like the one proposed here that don’t involve fixed paths for enemies to narrow down through, do you, sweetdude 64?
so, virgil, i was just wondering if it would be possible for you to go to a gaming convention and showcase creeper world? i think it would boost knuckle cracker and the creeper world series alot.
(by the way i am sort of useless when it comes to news and what’s going on, so if this has already happened, sorry)
Conventions take a lot of money and time… and don’t reach the global audience I can reach with something like a single blog post. Testament to this is you don’t know if I’ve been to one or not… but you do read this blog 🙂
But I get what you are saying… the big boys do play in arenas like that so perhaps one day.
in my opinion, there should be an half-way upgrade system:
-all the upgrades lasts one level
-you can buy, with energy, an upgrade to add aoe, range or rof (or, why not, AC)
-when you buy an upgrade with the energy, the weapon must shot a lot of creeper to maximize the benefit gained from the upgrade (ex: you buy an upgrade range. it boosts the range to 125%. when the weapon shots 10000 creeper units, the range becomes 130%, then 135%… until 150% or more)
-there could also be upgrades for other structures type: the collector upgrades the collection reange, the relay further upgrades the packet speed…
Virgil why there is no energy bar in cw3? it was very usseful in cw1,cw2
Not yet implemented.
in the previous posts he said that he will add it later, now he uses just the bar, without explicit value
Besides, the bar in question is right on the Command Node itself. It would be difficult to have separate bars for network energy on one side of the screen when there is more than one network unlike the first 2 games which is why they had bars like the one described here.
Steam Greenlight!
You all know what to do!
(if virgil submits it to Steam :-D)
I don’t
I will submit it… in time. Best to let them stabilize their system, then move in.
You’re training them in war strategies, then you will infect them and make them destroy humans, I won’t let you!
I had an idea while reading some of these posts. I’m unsure if it has been suggested here yet or not. But what if we could make custom sectors? I think that would be awesome, for you could make a huge portion of a storyline and let the player choose any of the planets you want. Of course, it would also be nice to make it where if the player started going one direction, the can NOT turn back. Just an idea… Hopefully it will go to use.
suggestion for the over all energy bar
when you mouse over any building in the network or are building a new one it will pop up at the top the stuff, energy production, energy use and defict as well as ore stuff
if you mouse over a building in a network or are building a new one, it should show the energy and stuff for that network at the top, so you can decide if it is a good idea to build or not
I already suggested custom sectors 😉
Anyways, There will still be anti-creeper emitters, right?
They will be / already are implemented although they wont be in the story missions as far as i know.
previous he said there won’t be, i’m sorry
yes, in the map editor you should be able to do that
in the story, I dont know
ooh how great it would be to be in that rarified of classes – beta tester…its going to drive me nuts seeing these pics and videos, knowing there is a group of guys already playing…
ooooh are there gonna be beta testers??
WILL THERE BE HUMAN UNITS FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!?!?!?!?!?
‘Humans’… such a historical reference…
I thought there could be 4 human units a , rifleman , a grenader , a doctor , and an assistor.The rifle man would be a human verson of the cannon , the grenader would be a human version of the mortar , the doctor would heal of human units , and the assistor would assit towers to increace the range and fire rate.The humans would come from a barracks.The barracks would take 75 energy to build.It would take 15 seconds to make a squaud of 3 human units.Please reply.
P.S. u r doing great.
I’m going to give this game some praise 🙂
I LOVE what you did with the blasters. I HATED how it would shoot at specific creeper. In CW1 when i placed a blaster on higher elevation than surrounding creeper, it would shoot at one spot. The way you made it, it hits a large area! Thx for the change (:
for the upgrades idea
you could unlock the upgrades, but you have to spend the same amount of energy for the unit
so unit would be 25 lvl 1 is 25 lvl 2 is 50 lvl 3 is 100, to how ever high V wants to go
however, when a unit is upgrading it can not attack
im thinking the packets would be yellow
the upgrades will depend on the unit, weaons is rate of fire, range, energy consumption
collecter, energy collected per space, increased space
relay, packet speed
I thought there could be 4 human units a , rifleman , a grenader , a doctor , and an assistor.The rifle man would be a human verson of the cannon , the grenader would be a human version of the mortar , the doctor would heal of human units , and the assistor would assit towers to increace the range and fire rate.The humans would come from a barracks.The barracks would take 75 energy to build.It would take 15 seconds to make a squaud of 3 human units.Please reply.
P.S. u r doing great.
I have to say I’m slightly concerned about this feature, in terms of player freedom. To clarify: I have no problem with the story mode having branching paths, side quests, procedural levels..but if I as a player, say, just want to go and play a map of a certain size and other settings that have to do with difficulty (spores or not, creeper density, whatever) which is generated from the words “cherry pie”, will I still be able to do that without going through five or six maps I don’t want to play in the story space area?
I’m assuming based on your description that player-created levels will still be handled separately from the space exploration thing, or at least we’ll have the option to separate them from it.
Yes, there will be a ‘World Machine’ that lets you dial up whatever type of world you like and skirmish on it.
Hi,
When I read the topic and see “perhaps enemies…?”, my first thought was: “if there is ennemies, there should be allies and so diplomacy…” 🙂 (and I didn’t talk about creeper worm world cover of sand… ;-))
you know the loki in cw2 full game. Can there be like good creeper aswell
just a thought
GUYS, STOP MAKING A BIG DEAL ABOUT THE LINK, HE IS JUST TRYING TO MESS WITH OUR HEADS TO MAKE IT EASIER TO INFECT US WITH THE LOKI VIRUS!!!!!!