Among the Stars (another sci-fi map)

[BlargIAmDead]

I've found a space-with-stars tileset, so we'll see how that works out.

But, for the last time, I don't see the distance issue as a problem to be "solved". It's an important element of this particular map's strategy, the same way as the timer and the population limit. (If you're playing the Humans, it's not even that important of an element, since you can upgrade to "Fusion Reactors" and "Antimatter Reactors", or go find the Varanids and unlock their secret. The Symphylids aren't so lucky as far as movement speed, but that's supposed to be made up for by their cheap cost, short build and terraform times, upgraded attack speed, etc.)

The theme of this map happens to be: "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is." It's a theme that worked out pretty well for the original "Homeworld", and I wanted to test it out in "Warcraft". I'm sorry I didn't make that clearer in the beta; I'll correct that in the final version. If it's not a theme that appeals to you, may I humbly suggest that you download any of the dozen other space maps out there? (Especially Psiblade's "Orbiting Battle", since he is also desperate for attention. )

 

[trb92]

>"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is."
Based on a quote from the Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy, excellent! That makes this map worth playing, will download it tommorow and try it.

 

[R@i_no_Wyrm]

what about making comets that may be used for damaging ships or some heat source?
Any new beta release?

 

[BlargIAmDead]

I'm trying to cut back on the cycle of endless testing and re-testing, that never leads to a finished product. There's only going to be the one beta version, and after I've fixed the kinks people mention from that map, I'll release a final "gold" version on World Edit Tutorials (and possibly The Hive).

There are four things I'm still working on:

- The loading screen; I'm having serious problems with GIMP.
- A more informative introduction. I'm probably going to include that in the loading screen.
- Installing a leaderboard for planets captured. A "ships owned" leaderboard seemed like a good idea at first, but it probably wouldn't be fair.
- Finding some kind of functionality for comets and asteroids. Comets in our own Solar System drift out halfway to the nearest star, and we know that many of the stars known to have planets have their own clouds of junk (especially Epsilon Eridani), so I'm totally cool with including them in this map. But my original plan to make comets etc. items, which could be collected as resources by a resource-collector ship, won't work: you can't place items on Outland Abyss terrain. Another possibility is to have comets etc. as neutral "creeps" that attack you with collisions, but that doesn't give you much incentive to explore the map for them.

I'm hoping to have ATS Gold out by the end of May.

 

[takethat]

there are other tiles on net which are black but not base on abyss,try use those.

btw this is a 2 player map? would u consider to add more player in future?

Epsilon Eridani!!!!

the system where babylon 5 station built upon

 

[Sirroelivan]

For the Comets, make them units and give them for example divine armor. Then give your collector ship chaos attack, but modify it so it can only damage divine armor. Then you only need to make a trigger that gives an item to the ship whenever it destroys a comet. (and it wil attomatically attack/gather).

Other suggestion: are you planning to make planets actually rotate around their star?

 

[BlargIAmDead]

Takethat: I have some vague ideas about making either a multiplayer map, or a single-player campaign, based on one of the planets in this map. But after ATS is done, I'm probably taking a break from Warcraft, and then working on-and-off on a Murloc single-player campaign. So it might be a year or two before I come back to this.

Sirroelivan: I wonder if there's a way to just modify the "Eat Tree" ability, so collectors (or drifters) can "eat" comets and asteroids -- which I would classify as "trees" -- and get metal and carbon back instead of hit points?

...If anybody's still interested, the nuclear explosion model from The Hive isn't working quite as well as I'd hoped. Lag issues, etc. It was a good idea, though. Right now I'm using the Flying Machine's bomb attack to fill in for the Battlecruiser's bomb attack, but I'm not especially happy with the way it looks. I'll probably switch to yet another attack animation before this goes Gold.

 

[Sirroelivan]

That ought to be possible, just use a trigger that detects if the modified "eat tree" ability is used, and add carbon and metal to the owner of the ship that is harvesting.

But if you use my idea, a trigger like this would be simple:
(you can edit armor properties in advanced-gameplay constants so the asteroids can only be attacked by the harvesters)
-unit dies
-unit type equal to asteroid
-add X carbon to owner of killing unit

 

[BlargIAmDead]

I'll tell you the truth: I have trigger-phobia. If there's any possible way to do something without a trigger, even if it means changing the game constants and putting all kinds of negative numbers into the Object Editor, that's what I'm going to do.

But thanks for the ideas! When I want to do something like this again, and I can't manage it just by screwing around with "Eat Tree" or "Transmute", I'll take a second look at this thread.

UPDATE!: Except for the loading screen, which I'm just about ready to give up on anyway, "Among the Stars" is almost ready for release. There's even pings every minute or two to let you know where stars are, so you don't have to waste as much time scrolling around the screen.

 

[Sirroelivan]

You could make your stars doodads and tick "visible under shadow", that way you don't have to ping them.

 

[BlargIAmDead]

I could, but then they couldn't attack with solar/stellar flares. I have ticked "Stats - Neutral Building - Shows Minimap Icon", but it doesn't seem to have any effect.

 

[Sirroelivan]

You could make them doodads, and then create a dummy unit, that can't be seen, that fires the sollar flares and place one at the location of each star.