Heh heh...the reason I usually don't enter these contests is that most of my maps need far more than a week to become truly good. Otherwise, you end up with a map like Blind.

Figured I'd post this here, it's a replay of the 2v2 match we had during map night. Played with random people from SEN channel.

Players were Powder_Keg, Heinermann_Zero, and Aristocrat.

BaptismalUrine = me (lol).

Anyways, enjoy

Attachments:

I just finished playing your map, Azrael. I vote for it in the set of everything that's been submitted so far.

I wouldn't see myself playing it over and over, but it's indeed most enjoyable and clever. What I also find interesting yet have no explanation for it is that pubbies don't seem to leave the game, for some reason. It's good to see a map that's worthwhile and that pubbies actually play. Usually most worthwhile maps require an effort to gather a group together because pubs are such dismal failures at them, yours seems to handle that by itself. Worth a commendation!

I agree with Gidoza, Azrael's map is really "hawt". Its just so original it blows my mind. And mostly fun too. The only thing I'd complain about is that the zealots for the valve are annoying due to requiring spam clicking.

Thanks for the feedback To be honest, the zealot timing is designed for 1 person to operate each one, which makes it quite a bit more difficult when 1 person is doing both. People usually opt to have 1 person do both though, to decrease the time it takes for the other two people to make their way past the trap.

By the way, I played Blind, is there a way to exploit with a maphack? I'm not sure but I could swear the other team was doing way too well to be simply communicating, assuming they were talking on allied chat or something. Is it possible to just maphack vision to move around or do I just suck terribly at playing?

Well, of course it's possible to maphack. I'm not sure of how to stop that, and even if I did, I'm on a much older Mac which can't run any advanced editors that could fix the problem anyways.

The map's designed, of course, to be played without cheating. FoxWolf1 and I have played several times and we've gotten better and better, but the fact of the matter is that moving blind is genuinely hard. Much of the game is played before it even starts. You need to talk with your partner and attempt to understand what he means when he says stuff, get a sense of what his mind is like when he communicates, so you can carry out the instructions better. When it comes to pubs, some can be genuinely competent, and others genuinely horrible, because some people don't like to talk...or listen to instructions, or read instructions, but I guess that's true for all games (though particularly damning for this one).

Fox and I have had a round carry on against another team (one round, not one game) for a solid 10 minutes before one team was eliminated. His only suggestion was that I reduce the amount of flags required for a flag win, because elimination occurs too much. I concur with his suggestion, though it's come after the map's time limit because in all our tests we couldn't get a game with competent enough opponents to actually get a proper feel for the balance of the game. I think I've gotten out all of the bugs, though.



EDIT---


Azrael, I don't quite understand your comment, here. How is the zealot timing designed for 1 person to operate each one? As far as I can tell, keeping a single zealot on a single beacon is every bit as incapacitating to a player and consuming in time as it is doing both at once. Otherwise said, if I'm doing one, I may as well do the second anyways because I won't have any decent amount of time available to use my scv/civ.

It seems to me if you wanted it to be designed so a player needs to do each one, inverse the beacon/zealot on one side, so say, on the left it's beacon up zealot down, and on the right it's zealot up beacon down. I could be misunderstanding what you're trying to say, though, so correct me if I'm wrong.


(Anyways, I've also included my latest mod of my map, which is of course unjudgable because it's after the due date, but as per Fox's suggestion, I've dropped the Flag requirement down to 4 from 5.)

Attachments:

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on May 31 2010, 4:20 pm by Gidoza.

Well that would explain it, I knew he was cheating I need to play with people from SEN... though some of them have admittedly maphacked as well in games we've played >_> I wasn't sure if you could still have total functionality over units with vision disabled by using a maphack, but now that I think about it more I guess it makes sense that if you can do it without a maphack, you could certainly do it with one.

My teammates are always horrendous (or maybe it's just me lol). I'm going to PM you with some information about your map after this post though

My pubbie matchups have been so dumb, I swear a huge majority of battle.net is brain damaged or something I definitely need to find a competent person to play with.

Yeah, you are incapacitated while holding the valve either way, though the timing (regarding the frequency of clicks needed to hold a valve) is doubled when attempting to hold both. The force pulling the two zealots down alternates between them, so someone holding both needs to click twice as fast as someone holding one to achieve the same effect.

If you try holding one, it's pretty much impossible to mess up, you can click about once a second if you time your clicks right to hold it. The idea is that at least one SCV/Civ needs to move up past that point, and while they do, the person moving them has their life resting entirely in the hands of their teammates.

You can split the responsibility between both of your teammates, in which case your chance of dying is greatly reduced but your time increases because you have to move up one at a time. However, you can offset that time cost by only having one person take their SCV/Civ up the tower before releasing the valves. This requires a great deal of trust in whoever's SCV it is and I would personally never do this because I don't trust anyone that much

Alternatively, you can have one person do both valves which is twice as difficult, requiring constant clicking spam, and instead of one person depending on the other two, you have two people with their lives entirely in the hands of one other, who is under twice the stress as usual. I don't know how it feels to others, but I tested this by having the timer change every 10 minutes, and clicking one zealot for 5 minutes, then both for 5 minutes. I went with the timing where clicking one felt easy but doing both felt stressful.

Oh no you got it right on the money That would be a really good way to do it to force them to each do one themselves. The original design actually was impossible for 1 person to do by himself (second valve area was above first one, oil vents were on same side, no wall between valve areas). I ended up redesigning this and the fireball area so that 2 players would be able to do it though, and then made sure it'd be more difficult for 2 people than 3.

Valve area is easiest with 3 people, 1 on each valve and 1 climbing. The Civ that is climbing should have another Civ set to follow him. When this finishes, the person climbing takes over for the person who's Civ is still on the ground. That person climbs with their Civ and SCV, and has the last SCV set to follow them already. This completes the area as fast as if you had 1 person clicking valves the entire time and you still end up with everyone at the top, except there was little to no risk involved since the people operating the valves are having an easy time with it.

Of course, this requires more coordination and reliance on others than most are willing to give (person climbing feels twice as vulnerable because he is relying on 2 people instead of 1, plus both valve operators are worried that the other one is going to screw up and feel they would be better off doing both instead), so people end up opting to have one person do valves at any given time.

Anyways, sending you a PM about your map now!

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 31 2010, 7:22 am by Azrael666-.

I understand all you've said, tho with one exception: When I'm clicking to keep both Zeals on the beacons simultaneously, I've never felt stressed at all to get this done. I simply click-click-click until my allies are ready. In fact, the first time I played and I figured this out, my allies couldn't understand why I wanted the lower gate closed at some point (to preserve southern buildings), and I was typing this while I was keeping both Zeals on the beacons, and I found it stressless. No broods ever spawned.

Ah, well, I guess I suck There have been a number of instances where someone found it seemingly impossible to click both fast enough for a prolonged period of time, so I'm glad there are also people on the other end of the spectrum

Huh? You don't need to click both fast enough. You select both zealots at the same time and pick a central spot on the main field as their destination. Each zealot will squeeze itself right into the very corner of the box, the left zealot in the upper-right, the right zealot in the upper-left.

Yeah but some people have issues with continually clicking that much for 5-10 minutes without accidentally letting some leak out I usually almost slip up twice every time I do it, though I've yet to actually let any out. There have been times where someone had to be the builder because they genuinely couldn't keep up the pace, they'd be fine for maybe 5 minutes then let out 2, which is enough to completely decimate your platforms.

Meh, I was fine with it, lol. Once I was done with the valves, I soloed the Queens and missed one - but that didn't matter because my teammates' build was zigzagged very nicely, so no significant damage was sustained.

O.o whens the next contest?

When Cecil and Loveless finish their exams and stuff like that.. tho I haven't seen them... I'll try to find them when I have the time.. D:

I can always be a judge, if you need one. I have all the time in the world.

Err I meant that I won't be judging anymore.

Don't count on me for contests anymore you all.

Well looks like UnholyUrine is in need of judges, as I stated I have a lot of free time to judge maps, will volunteer gladly.

Ty for giving me the images that I'll be using to describe your map

but on a srs note.. I didn't know cecil won't be judging from now on... what about loveless?
Tho I could've finished the RPG's myself, I was also waiting for Cecil to show up D:...

it certainly Does look like I could use some judges.

You could always release your reviews for both contests alone, UnholyUrine. Since there's absolutely nothing to be won, I don't see why it would matter. If Loveless ever decides to come back, you could always pool your scores and change the rankings thereafter.

The contests aren't about winning or losing; they're just a good excuse for us to produce maps. Delaying reviews for the sake of obtaining more "objective" results is a silly excuse knowing how biased they already were in previous contests with more judges... though I may be biased myself since I was a contestant in a few.