Mr.Hindos's list of suggestions

[Mr.H]

Ok Im new to these forums, and couldn't be bothered to create an account till now, but here's some suggestions i have for the game and any related content. Ill try to keep in mind that the scores are allready set and all. Feel free to comment or add to it(maybe the Epic novel suggestions list?!), just don't be to mean:P.

Hopefully virgil will read this...

Forum suggestions:

1, The  introductions forums, I've seen quite a few forums communities and I find that some sort of introductory system, where newcomers may create a profile of sorts is very well to get the communtiy relations uppity. Newcomers may compeltly ignore this and go straight to posting, and you shouldn't scold them for doing so, but it's nice to get everyone to knwo each other. Ofcourse we don't want a whole life biography, you don't even have to say anything about your life. Just tell us your likes and dislikes e.t.c.  E.g. the layout could be favourite music, colour etc, why you like creeper world, you personality, etc.

Game suggestions:

1, Custom weapons, with this i mean like you can make your own art for blasters(they function the same) just like you can for tiles. This might need a bit more of an approval system, but will definetly make maps more unique and epic!

2, For custom maps, it would be nice if the maps were more organised as a whole, right now not too many maps are made/approved so you don't notice much. But it's hard to find the maps you would like to play.
Having simple tag searches like rush for fast paced maps, survival for when your stuck in a tiny area of the map against an onslaught of creeper, titan for you guessed it titan maps with tremendous amounts of creeper, story for a multi-pack map series, sweep for a simple normal map, fun for just crazy or visual maps e.g. the pinball map, or watch the creeper fight , and finally misc for anything else. People have different
tastes and this will allow them to pursue maps of their tastes. On the note of implementing this for allready made maps(I don't know how many there are), i'd say that you may be able to moderate all the popular ones, have a seperate category for unorganised, and let player votes decide which category they go in (or moderator). Thus eventually all maps will be organised as new ones need the creators to organise it themselves.

3, Following on custom map searches, i noticed quite a few collections of map eg. masters of the creeper series or the ETF series. It would be wonderful if map developers could create such a sereies of maps and put in a downloadable package, pretty much a collection of maps. This could then be updated or added to by the developer and whomever downloaded the package would automatcily be notified or if they disable notifications, automaticly downloaded when on custom map screen. edit: This idea is so if you have a nice serie that's still in the making you can just have the new maps downloaded automaticly, also if you have a serie you could have a it automtaicly played in chronological order, i.e. if you win the first map it automaticly loads the second one(with confirmation ofcourse), so not only does it making searching slighltly easier but it also allows you to automaticly download new ones.

4, Ok code missions, although im new and don't exactly understand the point of them, i mean how they work and all that im presuming it spawn random maps based on what you call
it and specifications of height and complexity. If this is so, and feel free to say im wrong, then an improvement would be to add more specifications, if there were only one change i would say having the ability to disable enable the experimentals tab if your looking for a challenge :P.  Other then that there could be specifications of drones, phantoms and emitter strength.This way we can spawn maps more to our tastes or talents.

5, Nominated maps: these are or will be the best maps ever created in the history of creeper world 2. Thus they earn a special new menu button called Nominee maps. Thus they could be included within the purchase of the game. Ofcourse they will be heavily moderated for quality, user like/dislike, difficulty e.t.c.

Edit: 6, I was playing through a map just now called that's odd or soemthing like that, and faced a big pool of creeper. So i move in my maker and unleash anti-creeper upon my foes! The only problem is it is a huge pool, and i want to have my anti creeper distributed equally all over the place, so all of it is worn down equally. So i had to keep moving it back and forth manually. Along these thoughts, my suggestion is loop movement for makers and maybe other objects. Going along makers only, you could enter the loop movement mode and select two destinations, the maker would first go ta destination a, then after arriving at destination a would go to b, and so on so forth between them. This allows me to spread my anti-creeper over defences. Now then loop movement for units, although less needed it could be useful in a small bunked up position situation. You would select destination A and B as previously, but can ALSO select the interval I.E. waiting time before the loop occurs again. This way you can have two blasters turn by turn taking care of the creeper. I think though that this is better implemented for only makers as a, it keeps the previous game balance since you can do the same thing manually allready and b, the maker 'fires' whilst moving.
Comment away ;)

Editor suggestions:

1, Shortcuts. This will really, REALLy, improve the speed and amount of maps created. I can't tell you just how tiring it is to press create field or clone field, and click the buttons. Whilst i could have had a hotkey
like c for clone and + for a  new field. Some of these hotkeys could be relevant to different tabs in the editor i.e only work whilst in that tab, whilst others are global. Hotkeys are useful and much quicker, thus being really useful when creating maps. It also makes map making flow better and let us unleash our creativity before it dries up.

2, Personal settings: the ability to set certain preferences for your editor. e.g. where fields spawn,  the width of the different areas of the screen, automaticly set settings(e.g. ambient light on/off, experimentals
tab on/off). These settings would then automaticly be loaded each time you start a new map.

3,Although this idea may be harder to implement or too late. It would be wonderful if we could create tiles with inbetween dig amounts. For example a terrain piece that requires 7 units of excavation packages to be dug up. It would use the same art as the main tile it is closest to. So in this case the 10 tile. This adds more variation and flexibility.

4, Custom ore, gems, nano chips, remenants bunkers. The possibilities of varience and uniqueness are endless, and that is all that stands in it's way. With custom gems and things, you could either choose that creators could select different colour variants, e.g. blue ore, with blue misty effect, or that they can upload their own variants.

5, Edit: Triggers or trigger fields. These 'triggers' function merely to activate after certain events, then play some instructions or enable another field. They can not loop, for example the trigger could be used to see if 1million units of creeper enter a certain area, if the value returned is positive, the trigger might then activate a teleportation of those units to the player's base. They can detect things such as: units moving into them, creeper, anti-creeper, drones, and the liberation ship. These trigger fields will be great to activate certain events when you need them to, since different people play slower/faster user the intial delay function is very unaccurate or veen completly wrong. So having triggers makes everything happen at the same time no matter how slow or fast you are.

Ok that's all for now, feel free to add your own ideas/ comment. Hopefully this will turn out to be some sort of big list of suggestions:P

[mthw2vc]

The first replies to come to my mind...

1, Custom weapons, with this i mean like you can make your own art for blasters(they function the same) just like you can for tiles. This might need a bit more of an approval system, but will definetly make maps more unique and epic!

The problem with this is that the weapons are flash objects and so someone could add foreign code including malware to the unit data...

3, Following on custom map searches, i noticed quite a few collections of map eg. masters of the creeper series of the ETF series. It would be wonderful if map developers could create such a sereies of maps and put in a downloadable package, pretty much a collection of maps. This could then be updated or added to by the developer and whomever downloaded the package would automatcily be notified or if they disable notifications, automaticly downloaded when on custom map screen.

Is it really so hard to bookmark their author page? ::) (Example: ETF's author page)

4, Ok code missions, although im new and don't exactly understand the point of them, i mean how they work and all that im presuming it spawn random maps based on what you call
it and specifications of height and complexity. If this is so, and feel free to say im wrong, then an improvement would be to add more specifications, if there were only one change i would say having the ability to disable enable the experimentals tab if your looking for a challenge :P.  Other then that there could be specifications of drones, phantoms and emitter strength.This way we can spawn maps more to our tastes or talents.

Code missions are basically randomly generated maps for when you want to play something generic but don't feel like making your own by hand with the editor or downloading someone else's map (or just don't have internet access). Your suggestion of adding still more specifications almost defeats what I see as the purpose of code maps, and can in fact currently be done by using the editor.

3,Although this idea may be harder to implement or too late. It would be wonderful if we could create tiles with inbetween dig amounts. For example a terrain piece that requires 7 units of excavation packages to be dug up. It would use the same art as the main tile it is closest to. So in this case the 10 tile. This adds more variation and flexibility.

There is a way to do this that you may not know about. By partially digging the cells in question using the game itself, saving, and opening the saved file using the editor, you can achieve this effect.

[Mr.H]

Thanks for the reply, the last comment will be very useful for when im making maps:). And i don't want any malware so the custom weapons thing is a no no, do any other of the suggestions work though?

Edit:(reply to mthw2vc's forth sub comment) The diigging idea works, but nonetheless it is time consuming. Simply being able to do it directly from the ediotr would be faster.  That this technique works though, means it is very much possible and maybe even easy to implement.

[Ranakastrasz]

Are you sure the weapon SPRITES are flash objects? it sounds to me like just the art is wanted to be changed, which sounds simple, just some new images, like for the terrain.

[Mr.H]

Yes i meant ONLY the artwork, the coding /flash would be the same as it was before, you just have e.g. a jungle coloured blaster.

[thepenguin]

Are you sure the weapon SPRITES are flash objects? it sounds to me like just the art is wanted to be changed, which sounds simple, just some new images, like for the terrain.

Yes i meant ONLY the artwork, the coding /flash would be the same as it was before, you just have e.g. a jungle coloured blaster.

Yes, the sprites themselves are flash objects

[Echo51]

Sure it's not just vector graphics? the weapon as an entirety is of course a flash object ;)

[Mr.H]

Custom weapon artwork, wether possible or not, argument put aside, any additions or comments on the other areas of the list?

[Cavemaniac]

For custom maps, it would be nice if the maps were more organised as a whole.

Having simple tag searches like rush for fast paced maps, survival for when your stuck in a tiny area of the map against an onslaught of creeper, titan for you guessed it titan maps with tremendous amounts of creeper, story for a multi-pack map series, sweep for a simple normal map, fun for just crazy or visual maps e.g. the pinball map, or watch the creeper fight , and finally misc for anything else. People have different
tastes and this will allow them to pursue maps of their tastes.

Now that I would like to see. Sometimes I just want a quick thrash, other times I'm spoiling for a fight.

Nominated maps: these are or will be the best maps ever created in the history of creeper world 2. Thus they earn a special new menu button called Nominee maps. Thus they could be included within the purchase of the game. Of course they will be heavily moderated for quality, user like/dislike, difficulty e.t.c.

This would be really cool - all the best maps collected in one place would give a newly arrived player a really good impression of CW2.

It would probably be quite easy to implement, simply gather the top 20 maps with the most 'thumbs up' - but unfortunately, that method would be self fulfilling as people would then probably give thumbs up to the maps they play, which would be the ones with the highest ratings...

Edit: A filter allowing lists of most/least downloaded maps, most/least scores posted, most thumbs up/down etc would be of interest. Also shortest/longest time to complete, highest/lowest scores would help with determining what sort of game you're getting from your download.

Editor suggestions:

1, Shortcuts. This will really, REALLy, improve the speed and amount of maps created. I can't tell you just how tiring it is to press create field or clone field, and click the buttons. Whilst i could have had a hotkey
like c for clone and + for a  new field. Some of these hotkeys could be relevant to different tabs in the editor i.e only work whilst in that tab, whilst others are global. Hotkeys are useful and much quicker, thus being really useful when creating maps. It also makes map making flow better and let us unleash our creativity before it dries up.

2, Personal settings: the ability to set certain preferences for your editor. e.g. where fields spawn,  the width of the different areas of the screen, automaticly set settings(e.g. ambient light on/off, experimentals
tab on/off). These settings would then automaticly be loaded each time you start a new map.

+1!

One thing I'd really like to see (unless I'm missing the obvious and there's a shortcut I'm not taking) is having the editor and the game combined so you can playtest your map (as you develop it) right from the editor. Just click 'test map' and the game fires up with your map in the chamber...

Anyway, nice to meet you Mr H, that was a well thought out list of suggestions, I hope it sparks interest and development.

[Mr.H]

Thanks CaveManiac, it's nice to see more positive attitude to my suggestions:P. Although I deeply invite constructive crtisicm to make it better, ofcourse. Ok It appears there are onyl 450 ish maps made right now, so actually organising them woun't be too bad. And since more are made every day, the sooner the better!

[eudrick]

I have another Idea that fits the topic, could we have a Map Hall of Fame that all the maps that get 50 points total (after the score is totaled, Good-bad>50) then the map would get into this "hall of fame". The number of points needed could be increased but this was just what I thought.

I hijacked this post from another thread as I think is worthy of further discussion.

While a Hall of Fame would be neat, a place where one could locate maps ranked by # of downloads, Number of thumbs (up and down combined) or ratio of thumbs up to down would be really handy.
# of downloads would show popularity of an individual map, thumbs +/- would show how many thought it worthy of rating, and ratio should show consensus on playability.

I'd even go as far as to do the same thing by map author expanding the base by averaging # of maps vs each of those categories as well as highest individual in each.

[lich98]

I have another Idea that fits the topic, could we have a Map Hall of Fame that all the maps that get 50 points total (after the score is totaled, Good-bad>50) then the map would get into this "hall of fame". The number of points needed could be increased but this was just what I thought.

I hijacked this post from another thread as I think is worthy of further discussion.

While a Hall of Fame would be neat, a place where one could locate maps ranked by # of downloads, Number of thumbs (up and down combined) or ratio of thumbs up to down would be really handy.
# of downloads would show popularity of an individual map, thumbs +/- would show how many thought it worthy of rating, and ratio should show consensus on playability.

I'd even go as far as to do the same thing by map author expanding the base by averaging # of maps vs each of those categories as well as highest individual in each.

:) I would love a hall of fame, this could even be a seperate vote where if you get X amount of this vote your map is put in a Hall of Fame status.

[Mr.H]

First off thanks for adding the idea to the list  ;D. Now then onto the hall of fame, As mentioned by Cavemaniac earlier having CW2 best rated maps in a seperate area will let the newcomers see the best mast of hte community first, so they don't go play one bad map and never play custom maps again! The thumbs down thing and ratio stuff also would be nice, putting it together with some of my map organising ideas(packages), and map type. Will make the custom map section much more organised, and as i said before we better start organising it now before it's too late, there's only 16 pages of custom maps now (only ::) ) that's still enough to organise, with the community. I think if we are going to do this, then it should be done methodolically, I.E. we have a rating system for which category the old maps belong too(or the developer can do it him/herself if they are still active).  Hall of fame should be easier, Virgil could make some sort of filter to search through the maps, find the ones with best ratios/thumbs up and pick the 10 top ones. Or we could have a thread for voting on the maps that go into the hall of fame(maybe based on the heal or hurt custom map thead?) . All in all It seems many people wish to get that custom map area more organised, afterall it isn't fun to slog through 16 pages of maps to find the one you like.

Cheers,
Mr.Hindos

[TheBlaster]

4, Ok code missions, although im new and don't exactly understand the point of them, i mean how they work and all that im presuming it spawn random maps based on what you call
it and specifications of height and complexity. If this is so, and feel free to say im wrong, then an improvement would be to add more specifications, if there were only one change i would say having the ability to disable enable the experimentals tab if your looking for a challenge :P.  Other then that there could be specifications of drones, phantoms and emitter strength.This way we can spawn maps more to our tastes or talents.

you can enable and disable the experimentals using the editor and same with everything else by saving the game and loading it in the editor through 1.(your username, appdata,roaming,creeper world 2 and then whatever slot you saved it in

[Mr.H]

Thanks blaster for that info ;), That save load thing sounds like a handy but timeconsuming workaround. A simple on off switch is what im suggesting here, takes one second to click instead of loads of time uploading it and everything.