Leaderboard

thanks very much!! ah, I don't like to restrict the player too much even on missions with pure defense objectives, I've gotta account for if the player's gonna be aggressive and attack the enemy and stuff. quite a few players have been taken off guard on S02V1 by trying to beat up the high-tech enemy lol there are some exceptions, of course. like, S02V2 was designed to introduce hero units in a controlled environment, to teach the player to sacrifice ANYTHING to keep them alive, and show their strength without the macro game in the picture. that was only for like... 22.5k ticks or something? and I don't think we'll need missions like that in the next series. no hero units so yeah, defense-oriented missions, sure, but I gotta spice it up if it's pure defense, somehow xD ah yeah, and the Wings of Liberty campaign had that one with the supernova and the banshees and all that. terran buildings being able to pick up and wander the map was integral to that one. fun concept, very memorable it took the forefront in that mission though, whereas the natural progression of wandering the map for resources is, uhh... more of an encouraged course of action than a necessity. an underlying gameplay mechanic supporting the main gameplay loop, the focus remains on defeating the enemy. less, uhh... distinct, but hopefully more fun to be had with more flexibility on more missions. less linearity and stuff damn, mate. aye, I've lost some missions too. dang computers perhaps what I refer to as gimmicks are what you're referring to here as secondary objectives ^^ I would classify the end stage of S06V2 as being its secondary objective. the production goals on SBON2 are secondary objectives. perhaps 'xyz hero unit must survive' is more of a secondary objective than a gimmick even if it's all primary though, missions can remain interesting with a strong enough gameplay loop. I've replayed Halo: CE lots of times just because its gameplay loop is so well-conceived, despite its repetition in mission layout and stuff aye, that's the plan ^^ actually, that was chiefly what I was looking for in Kipp's test run of the variables example map in the thread I linked in the last post! he had to expand a bit to support his offensive, but wasn't overwhelmed by the enemy before he could do that. target hard mode balance achieved! and now I've got the data to go off of for future missions' designs. a factor in helping to balance this debut mission, despite it being very different from that variables example map didn't mean it was perfect from the get-go though. not that that was my fault... during this process, we discovered the AI on hard mode in d2k gets a x.75 modifier on its unit build rate, which was enough to screw up my calculations without an AI parameter-adjusting event using the index number of the assigned variable as opposed to the variable's stored value too. that also happened. what a headache xD after those problems were accounted for though, the theoretical balance I had been aiming for worked out perfectly. the testers reported it was quite manageable! thank goodness Klofkac really went all the way with enabling us mappers to do stuff ^^ impossible to overstate the meaning of his contributions aye. the variables example map was more dramatic on this front, allowing the player to start in the top right, bottom left or bottom right corners, so you'd get three very different ways to approach the rest of the map. this debut mission already introduces lotsa new units, not to mention the new environment, so the three start locations here just change the order in which you get the units you're meant to start with. the player gets an MCV at the same place on the debut mission no matter which start location was chosen oh, yeah well, time will tell about the Keravnos. it's probably in a pretty good spot for an MBT, but some other units may need adjustment. the Diakotn for one feels weak, but with its low cost and some other stuff, maybe that's just fine. I already made some other adjustments, like to its armor type