echinodermata

Yes, it looks great. I really liked how you suggested a certain feel without having to be overt (the lampposts and the torches are terrific). I think you've brought up a good point with your comment, that we don't have to bombard the map with "elemental stuff" to have the charm. From what I'm seeing with jolin's screenies, areas 2, 6, and 7 could use a defining feature, like what the lampposts and torches did for 4 and 5, because they look kinda dry. That's what I see so far. Perhaps a game is worth a thousand pictures (cough cough).

Honestly, it looks quite fine.

Pardon me, but I don't see the reason why the general beta testing public is not allowed to see the new terrain.

hmm lookin good

I was going to say, you must be in some super special usergroup with the yellow username and all. Turns out it's just that you're one of very few people in dev team but not beta testing.

There are a few things we need to rephrase - some of our more poorly worded, slanted, easily misconstrued, or perhaps inherently confusing concepts. These changes should be made on the site, in the ingame quests menu, in ingame tooltips, etc. It's all about giving the right impression about EleTD's more unique concepts. -------------------------------- Picking Elements -------------------------------- The site and the ingame quests menu currently give the impression that you get lumber for the purpose of summoning an elemental guardian, and killing it allows you to use a certain element. I think you'll agree that this is missing the point. You get lumber for the purpose of getting an element, and killing an elemental guardian just happens to be the requirement. There's a distinction. -------------------------------- Upgrading Towers -------------------------------- The elements aren't "infused" into existing towers. That would suggest an automatic global upgrade, which is clearly not the case. Rather, it gives you the option of using that element in a tower. Elements don't "combine" or join with other elements either. You don't build a dual by building two singles next to each other and saying fusion-ha! They can be added to an existing tower. -------------------------------- Return of the Creeps -------------------------------- This one we just need to say it as it is, and stop pretending like this is some major innovation or benefit for the player. Leaked creeps continue to run until you kill them. That's it. Afterwards, you can mention some of the implications.

The major problem is the inconsistency in style with the rest of the icons in the game.

We always have to draw a line as to how much micro we expect out of players. For this one, I'm siding with the current state of affairs. The purpose of selling and rebuilding isn't only for elemental advantage; it's for interest too. You shouldn't get to maintain elemental advantage over the creep waves without mustering the micro to sell and rebuild. Lastly, it doesn't make sense for arrows and cannons to be downgradeable while other towers aren't.

The advertisement for the site.

Some comments. The start and end locations aren't spot on. http://www.eletd.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1375 The portals look great, but you don't have to use it for every single area. Caves would definitely go better with some themes. Buildability issues: Spaces that aren't actually buildable shouldn't show up as green. This is area 1, but it's all over the place. Area 1. Probably applies to all the areas. This looks quite ugly: It's for superweapons, right? If it is indeed intentional, at least wall it in and give it a proper space. New icons: I don't like them. For one, they're hard to recognize, and on top of that, the style is inconsistent with the rest of the icons. And while I'm at it, I'd like to ask you again to declutter all the icons on the builder. [pre:2oa3i9km]Move | Stop | Hold | (Superweapons camera toggle) --------+---------+---------+---------- Patrol | | | Ad (Passive) --------+---------+---------+---------- Build | Duals | Triples | Query[/pre:2oa3i9km] untitled3.jpg untitled2.jpg untitled1.jpg

In other words, advantages are relative. As for whether or not a modest change is in order, I cannot say.

A tower that sets creeps on fire. Affected creeps take damage over time, deal damage over time to nearby creeps, and have increased movement speed.

Let me go over what I just described above. All the hotkeys will be on the left. You will only have to remember 10 hotkeys. It is the combination of a left-side system and an element-based system. (The element based system is described in http://www.eletd.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=294&start=30. Basically, to get from the tower [LN] to [WLN], you press the hotkey for water since that's the element you're adding to the tower.) The proposed system will still be intuitive. I know some of you don't like the element-based system. I know we have already discussed the element based system in the past. I know the system by itself wasn't better than the current system - it was no better, no worse, and that's why we didn't make the change. That brings us to the next point. The proposed system will be faster to use than the current system. The proposed system puts all the hotkeys on the left. The proposed system will require little memorization. You will only have to remember 10 hotkeys (single elements, arrow, cannon, periodic, upgrade). You make duals and triples using the element based system. By comparison, if we used a left-side-of-the-keyboard system without the element-based system, you would have to memorize 45 hotkeys. 10 and 45 is a big difference. By itself, the left-side system is hard to remember. By itself, the element-based system is no better than a first-letter system. Put together, we can see that is a false choice. Once again, these assignments will be used: D - Dark E - Earth F - Fire W - Water T - Light R - Nature A - Arrow C - Cannon Q - Periodic V - Upgrade I urge you to reconsider.

And here's my new master plan: Let's do both. D - Dark E - Earth F - Fire W - Water T - Light R - Nature A - Arrow C - Cannon Q - Periodic V - Upgrade Now you have an element-based hotkey system, AND you have all the hotkeys on the left side of the keyboard without a ton of arbitrary decisions. Genius.

That would be a whole other story - a major change to our current hotkey choosing philosophy. A change which I would support by the way.

You are overreacting. Now then: I think consensus is that we should not change the periodic tower hotkey from P to R. If that is so, let us let this thread rest. That is all.

the bugs in this game sure are strange.

nicely done.

Sell has hotkey X, and Cancel Building/Upgrade has hotkey ESC. Unfortunately, this means when I accidentally upgrade a tower, I'll be furiously pressing X... which of course won't do anything. Oops. That wastes a few precious seconds, and, if I don't realize fast enough, I'll be stuck with a tower I don't want. Then I only get 75% back if I decide to sell. Can we have the same hotkey for sell and cancel, or, alternatively, can we sell directly during the upgrade?

Well you do only have one hero, so it's not like you're massing stuns.

and i still don't believe it. there must be a way.

Okay, I see how kaini set it up for FFA. You're considering a multiplayer game as a set of 1v1 pairs. That makes sense. There is a problem with taking this too simplistically. If we just consider a multiplayer game as a set of 1v1 pairs, then playing one 8-player game is like playing seven 2-player games. For one, this means that you're never going to get anywhere playing 2-player games. Also, I think you'll agree that beating 7 rank X players in one game is not 7 times more impressive than beating just 1 rank X player in one game. We need to make that adjustment. We don't have to bother to split rank numbers into rank categories. Just work directly with the numbers. It's only the difference in rankings that matters. Example: (Your rank) - (Opponent's rank) | 20 10 0 -10 -20 | d Points gained if you win | 2 4 8 16 32 | 2^((-d/10)+3) Points lost if you lose | 32 16 8 4 2 | 2^((d/10)+3) (By the way, I'm pretty sure that exponential growth is not the correct model here.) Don't get stuck with WGT's model. I suggest we just build from scratch. I don't think making the system nonneutral is the best way to prevent inflation. As cisz pointed out, it discourages high-ranked players from playing, and for the WGT, it didn't succeed in stopping inflation. Edit 21 Apr 2009: formatting issues due to move from old forum fixed, deleted some statements

FFA games are on a completely different level of complexity. You have yet to demonstrate the correctness of this method in a FFA setting.

that's pretty funny. it only works when it's not intentional.