This topic is for discussion of map #7230: SM-02 Upgrades
(http://knucklecracker.com/creeperworld3/queryMaps.php?query=thumbnailid&id=7230)
Author: Taishan
Size: 144x144
Desc:
CSM mode introducing new building called Upgrader. Once flooded with Anti-Creeper it can use energy to increase output of friendly emitters. Terrain height 1=50 The second map in the SM-series. It is still unclear what SM actually means, but it is definately not Style Map. Thanks to Regallion for creating all the scripts for this!
I decided to try this map and it looks intriguing. However, I can't seem to figure out the upgrade mechanism. I hit "U" while having the mouse over the icon like it says, but nothing happens. I've tried clicking on it and hitting U but nothing happens. I assume the upgrade are forge points, which I have plenty of. Not sure what's going on.
Quote from: mzimmer74 on March 27, 2019, 05:44:32 PM
I decided to try this map and it looks intriguing. However, I can't seem to figure out the upgrade mechanism. I hit "U" while having the mouse over the icon like it says, but nothing happens. I've tried clicking on it and hitting U but nothing happens. I assume the upgrade are forge points, which I have plenty of. Not sure what's going on.
you need to hover over the emitter you want to upgrade. The game also has to be unpaused.
Quote from: mzimmer74 on March 27, 2019, 05:44:32 PM
I decided to try this map and it looks intriguing. However, I can't seem to figure out the upgrade mechanism. I hit "U" while having the mouse over the icon like it says, but nothing happens. I've tried clicking on it and hitting U but nothing happens. I assume the upgrade are forge points, which I have plenty of. Not sure what's going on.
It needs power, not aether. That means the emitter must be on your network. (Note that it will not show as connected if it's not trying to upgrade, you'll just have to eyeball it.)
I have one gripe with this map: When you get enough upgrades the anticreeper spills over any barrier you can erect, thus flooding the red stuff that you try to wall off.
Love the new mechanic of upgrading your emmiters! Though I do have a few pointers:
-Too many upgrades. With a maximum of 25 upgrades necessary, and the added increase of power needed for each level, this takes too long and is tedious.
-Let the upgrade of emmitters automatically stop when it reaches it's max level. (When you use the shift+U option.) Now you got to go back to every emmitter and manually disable the automatic upgrade.
-There was no explanation of the new bomb module,
-Ground levels should've increments of 100 instead of 50.
-Seent he importance of power, it'd be nice to have a second totem so to get the upgrades faster from the forge. (Could maybe be at a half-way point during the map's play through.)
Quote from: Loren Pechtel on March 27, 2019, 07:19:56 PM
I have one gripe with this map: When you get enough upgrades the anticreeper spills over any barrier you can erect, thus flooding the red stuff that you try to wall off.
Yes it does flood over and perhaps that is an indication of enough strength to overpower the final area :)
Quote from: DoomDutch on March 27, 2019, 07:43:29 PM
Love the new mechanic of upgrading your emmiters! Though I do have a few pointers:
-Too many upgrades. With a maximum of 25 upgrades necessary, and the added increase of power needed for each level, this takes too long and is tedious.
-Let the upgrade of emmitters automatically stop when it reaches it's max level. (When you use the shift+U option.) Now you got to go back to every emmitter and manually disable the automatic upgrade.
-There was no explanation of the new bomb module,
-Ground levels should've increments of 100 instead of 50.
-Seent he importance of power, it'd be nice to have a second totem so to get the upgrades faster from the forge. (Could maybe be at a half-way point during the map's play through.)
-Regallion made the Upgrader and Upgrade Upgrader Chips in a way that mapmakers can modify the settings and get vastly different results. On this map I wanted to showcase the new features making sure that they needed to be used to progress, which is not necessarily the intent. Maximum for this map is 25 upgrades but it could be any number. Same with energy costs.
-There are cases when you want the upgrades to end when the limit is reached and cases where you want the upgrades to continue when you get a new Upgrade Upgrader Chip which expands upgrade limit. That was my experience at least. Perhaps another hotkey for the other setting could do the trick? Like ctrl+U could stop automatic upgrade once limit is reached. I'l have to ask Regallion if that is easy to implement.
-A little surprise spices things up I guess. But the new bomb essentially gives upgrade levels to the target emitter. Again the cost and effect is defined by the mapmaper. In this map it gives 5 upgrade levels for each bomb. Also it takes into account the upgrade limit, so there is no point sending the bomb to a max upgraded emitter.
-Ground levels are what the mapmaper decides them to be, in this case 50 :)
-I had no trouble with the amount of Aether. Within an hour it is easily possible to reach over 300 energy production so I don't feel another totem would be necessary.
I think is somewhat difficult to balance a big map around this Upgrade feature. My main intent was a mechanic that makes things easier over time but not make things trivial for "speedrunners" like me who try to get a good score.
Thanks for comments
Great map, I like the new Upgrader! One small comment: maybe when the max level is reached, it could just say "Max"; otherwise the long sentence is repeated everywhere and clutters the screen a bit. :)
Quote from: Loren Pechtel on March 27, 2019, 07:19:56 PM
Quote from: mzimmer74 on March 27, 2019, 05:44:32 PM
I decided to try this map and it looks intriguing. However, I can't seem to figure out the upgrade mechanism. I hit "U" while having the mouse over the icon like it says, but nothing happens. I've tried clicking on it and hitting U but nothing happens. I assume the upgrade are forge points, which I have plenty of. Not sure what's going on.
It needs power, not aether. That means the emitter must be on your network. (Note that it will not show as connected if it's not trying to upgrade, you'll just have to eyeball it.)
I have one gripe with this map: When you get enough upgrades the anticreeper spills over any barrier you can erect, thus flooding the red stuff that you try to wall off.
I'm still missing something then. I've tried every key on my keyboard while the mouse is hovered over the upgrader (the black square thing right?). Nothing happens. Thinking it my be a key binding issue I reset my keys to the default value and tried again. Nothing happens. I currently have 275 energy in store with an energy production level of +5.4. I have 49 aether in the forge. I have 6 reactors built. I have two relays, with the second one being below the upgrader.
Any suggestions? Thanks.
Quote from: mzimmer74 on March 28, 2019, 08:33:26 AM
I'm still missing something then. I've tried every key on my keyboard while the mouse is hovered over the upgrader (the black square thing right?). Nothing happens. Thinking it my be a key binding issue I reset my keys to the default value and tried again. Nothing happens. I currently have 275 energy in store with an energy production level of +5.4. I have 49 aether in the forge. I have 6 reactors built. I have two relays, with the second one being below the upgrader.
Any suggestions? Thanks.
What the upgrader does is unlock the option to upgrade individual emitters, so try hovering over the emitter you want to upgrade like Regallion wrote and press U then =) The command center will then send out packets to that emitter.
edit: further clarification
Quote from: mzimmer74 on March 28, 2019, 08:33:26 AM
Quote from: Loren Pechtel on March 27, 2019, 07:19:56 PM
Quote from: mzimmer74 on March 27, 2019, 05:44:32 PM
I decided to try this map and it looks intriguing. However, I can't seem to figure out the upgrade mechanism. I hit "U" while having the mouse over the icon like it says, but nothing happens. I've tried clicking on it and hitting U but nothing happens. I assume the upgrade are forge points, which I have plenty of. Not sure what's going on.
It needs power, not aether. That means the emitter must be on your network. (Note that it will not show as connected if it's not trying to upgrade, you'll just have to eyeball it.)
I have one gripe with this map: When you get enough upgrades the anticreeper spills over any barrier you can erect, thus flooding the red stuff that you try to wall off.
I'm still missing something then. I've tried every key on my keyboard while the mouse is hovered over the upgrader (the black square thing right?). Nothing happens. Thinking it my be a key binding issue I reset my keys to the default value and tried again. Nothing happens. I currently have 275 energy in store with an energy production level of +5.4. I have 49 aether in the forge. I have 6 reactors built. I have two relays, with the second one being below the upgrader.
Any suggestions? Thanks.
Actually, is your keyboard standard? If it's DVORAK or AZERTY it might actually be checking an entirely other key instead of U...
Quote from: Taishan on March 28, 2019, 08:51:52 AM
Quote from: mzimmer74 on March 28, 2019, 08:33:26 AM
I'm still missing something then. I've tried every key on my keyboard while the mouse is hovered over the upgrader (the black square thing right?). Nothing happens. Thinking it my be a key binding issue I reset my keys to the default value and tried again. Nothing happens. I currently have 275 energy in store with an energy production level of +5.4. I have 49 aether in the forge. I have 6 reactors built. I have two relays, with the second one being below the upgrader.
Any suggestions? Thanks.
What the upgrader does is unlock the option to upgrade individual emitters, so try hovering over the emitter you want to upgrade like Regallion wrote and press U then =) The command center will then send out packets to that emitter.
edit: further clarification
Thank you...I was missing something! I thought you had to press U while over the upgrader, not the emitter. Now I see what you mean in the text. It works now.
Thanks.
I like the idea,and I gave the map a nice good rating! It's definitely rough around the edges, though, mostly in terms of selection and display. I think I was mostly limited by how fast I could find unmaxed emmiters to upgrade by the end there, lol. And a lot of times I'd accidentally cancel because I was trying to click fast and the connection and packets are the only thing showing that an emmiter is upgrading, which aren't always obvious, especially when you're in a hurry.
So yeah. Displaying upgrade numbers (without mousing over?), showing some effect around maxed emmiters, showing some effect around emmiters upgrading, having some way to drag and upgrade a bunch of emmiters at once or something, any or all of those would be nice. 'v'
Also I felt like I didn't have enough space to put reactors in the beginning, but that's mostly a personal problem, lol. By the end, as noted, I was limited by my ability to find things to upgrade, not by anything else.
Quote from: Twi on March 28, 2019, 11:09:53 AM
I like the idea,and I gave the map a nice good rating! It's definitely rough around the edges, though, mostly in terms of selection and display. I think I was mostly limited by how fast I could find unmaxed emmiters to upgrade by the end there
Have you tried Shift+U?
Well, I made a video of this map aswell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9Wvm1RuFLo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9Wvm1RuFLo)
Quote from: Regallion on March 28, 2019, 02:17:15 PM
Quote from: Twi on March 28, 2019, 11:09:53 AM
I like the idea,and I gave the map a nice good rating! It's definitely rough around the edges, though, mostly in terms of selection and display. I think I was mostly limited by how fast I could find unmaxed emmiters to upgrade by the end there
Have you tried Shift+U?
Ooh, I missed that. It's not everything I wanted, but it's nice to have!
Very much enjoyable and fascinating game! :)
Congratulation and big thanks to SMTaishan and Regallion for this GREAT WORK! :D
My vision how it can be better:
ABOUT THIS MAP
1. Too many objects and too many stages for upgrading - not optimal dynamic of gameplay.
2. Not so useful bomb as it could be. And very slow speed of bomb's movement.
3. Explanation about chip and bomb's type was not enough. At least for me.
4. Instead of terrain 1=50 better 1=100
ABOUT GENERAL CONCEPT
Will be nice:
1. Together with individual emitter's upgrades under cursor by "U"/"Ctrl+U" will be nice to introduce "TOTAL UPGRADE" by "Ctrl+Shift+U" when all friendly emitters will be automatically updating till maximum possible level. Like special upgrade mode in game. Of course they should be connected to CN. And player can decide whether (s)he need upgrades of individual friendly emitter or more slowly upgrade all emitters.
2. Bomb can influence/effective not only on one friendly emitter, but on many/all friendly emitters within ring with some radius. And within this area all friendly emitters within XX second will be upgraded step by step to maximum possible at that time level. As possible more tricky variant: if in this area (inside ring) of bomb's efficiency will be also enemy emitters - they will be upgraded to doubl level of creeper production. And player can decide what is better - individual upgrade or big square upgrade by bomb.
3. Visually will be nice to see by one glance what friendly emitter can be upgraded (green dot in center?) or couldn't be upgraded (red dot in the center?).
Once more I would like to say big thanks for Regallion and SMTaishan for VERY CREATIVE work! Waiting for more maps! :)
Wanted to love this but gameplay is too slow (even at highest speed) and there's a lot of tedious upgrading.
Great interesting ideas I think can be used in many games though. Will try other maps in the same style.
Quote from: lividbishop on March 30, 2019, 03:51:30 PM
Wanted to love this but gameplay is too slow (even at highest speed) and there's a lot of tedious upgrading.
Great interesting ideas I think can be used in many games though. Will try other maps in the same style.
I think one way of balancing is limiting how many reactors you can build. The game does go slow when you have 300+ power. With reactor limits to say 50 and disable collectors altogether it would be smoother.
About tedious upgrading, have you tried shift+u as Regallion suggested to someone else?
To answer yums points
About the map
1: This map was more a proof of concept and more focus on the upgraders than I envision for a normal map, hence many stages for upgrading.
2: I personally don't like the overwhelming impact bombs have on progress on these types of maps and I prefer to tone down bombs and instead use stargate joiners more. This bomb was included because well, Regallion had made it and fit the theme with upgrading. And by my intent tuned to not have massive impact on progress.
3: Yeah, there are some surprises =) perhaps bad
4: I preffered terrain 1=50 on this map to get the four waterfall effect in the middle without having to scale up AC emissions even more. More numbers does not necessarily mean better in this case.
About the general concept
1: I'm not sure what features Regallion finds reasonable to include without adventuring performance. A slow upgrade for all emitters does have its drawback though because the energy is shared with terps. Meaning you might not be able to build terps or other buildings as fast as you want.
2: Interesting idea. Again up to Regallion what he can implement. For now I don't think upgrades will be touching Creeper emissions but perhaps that could change.
3: Yeah, I'd like a system where it is possible to see how far an emitter has been upgraded (like 3 out of 15 times would say 3/15 or something). Perhaps can be toggled by a hotkey. Again, up to Regallion who has the knowledge and puts in the work for this. We just come with suggestions :)
Really enjoyed this new feature. I like the concept of affecting the emitters rather than just flipping them. I would love to see some more maps with this feature.
I have similar suggestions that once an emitter is maxxed, somehow indicate it without all the yellow text - perhaps change it's color or make it bigger?
For most of the time, I was severely low on power despite maxxed energy from the forge and a TON of reactors. I suppose that's my fault because I was max upgrading all emitters rather than being more judicious on what really needed it - but I would have really appreciated a few extra pz's to put reactors in.
Also, I noticed that if I had an emitter on auto-upgrade, but I dropped the upgrade bomb on it. After the bomb came off, the auto-upgrade setting had been turned off. I would have liked it to turn back on automatically after the bomb came off. I stopped using the bomb because of this. I didn't want to hunt for emitters that were not fully upgraded.