Pscioed's Maps

[Pscioed]

Galactic Defense

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I know I'm reviving this thread from the forum graveyard, but it still seems the best place to put my maps pre-release to colonial space. I have made progress on the map, thanks for the suggestions. I fixed the ship timer so it doesn't stop at 500 something frames between ships, the map will actually get harder as time goes on now. The emitters no longer create power zones, but to compensate you get 2 at game start. I removed all the starting units and gave you ~2 mins 50 seconds to build your own base. The story comes at you really fast, I plan to elaborate more before a final release. The final score is 10000 + number of emitters spawned before you lost.

The main reason for posting here is to get the balance right. I have several constants to set for game balance:
InitialDelay      Frames before the first ship spawns
MaxInterval      Frames between the first and second ships (a good approximation anyway)
TimeShift         How long before the difficulty hits high gear (horizontal translation of the atan function)
DifficultyShift    How fast the ship frequency ramps up when it hits high gear (horizontal stretch factor)

I have been playing this map over and over as I made it, its hard for me to imagine the difficulty level for somebody new playing it. So what do you guys think, too hard or too easy, and in what way (there are 4 variables)? Feel free to give any suggestions or criticisms, I'm open to anything. Storyline, artwork, gameplay, unit limitations (no terp?), other? Thanks for your time.

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Older Posts

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Milky Way

Spoiler

I plan to make a map series, and this is my starting point. I will add story of course, but first I want to balance the map. This is a survival map, so the question is: How long can you survive? Does the challenge start too fast, or take too long to ramp up? Along with the story, "things" will happen as soon as a ship gets to the center of the map. Anyway, play it if you want, please send me some thoughts or suggestions.

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[eduran]

Nice map, I like the design. Is there a win condition or am I supposed to lose? I've been playing for half an hour and so far it's not looking like I am going to die anytime soon.
Some thoughts:
1) The incoming ships are very dark and almost invisible above void, resulting in emitters showing up without warning.
2) The amount of power zones you can work with is off the charts. Using terps I've created a ring of buffed up towers that completely shut down anything. Also, it's gotten to the point where I cant see the terrain anymore at the outer perimeter. I am not sure if there is somthing coming that could break through. If yes, it should happen sooner, if no, you might want to remove or severely reduce the amount of power zones.

Edit: Just read my post again and noticed I missed the most important point: I really like your map  :)

[teknotiss]

good work, but survival maps are no fun for me.
one reason i dislike CW1 is you can't win, fleeing is not an option for me, so good effort on the map and i look forwards to more, but i didn't really like the play style on this one.
the CRPL is well done, but the incoming ships are pretty dark, perhaps a little brighter would help them be a little more noticeable
PS if you are making a series it would make sense for you to put your username infront of each map name so they stay near each other in our folders.
i'd number them too, so people know which order to play them in.
cheers dude, looking forwards to more

[Pscioed]

I started this topic quite some time ago, but it seems better to revive the dead thing than to start a new one... I think anyway. I did some work on Milky Way (Galactic Defense now), and wanted help from some fresh eyes. So I edited the main post, and now am bumping the thread. Please tell me if I should have handled the situation differently.

Thanks to those who play tested the original, sorry it took so long to get around to replying.