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I've been seeing this a lot, lately. Folks make a new single-player level or campaign and they feel the need to add 14 different new types of playable units to it. Despite having some good ideas, I think people are biting off a bit more than they can chew.

Keep in mind, Bungie was a team of dedicated, talented, paid developers and they only released a handful (I count roughly four) of new playable units in Myth 2. If you count the number of units available for multiplayer gaming, that number jumps up to perhaps six. Again, this was a team of many individuals who were paid over the period of years to develop a quality retail product. I always become skeptical when I hear about a new project made at home by one dude that boasts a number of new units.

Units are hard to make. It goes beyond editing tagsets, I think we can all agree. Bungie's new units were simplistic in their genius. Consider the warlock. I often wonder just how much work went into that one fireball. It's a pretty simple unit when you think about it, but the thing has provided uncounted hours of fun for years upon years. It never gets old ctrl-clicking the ground and watching that ball of carnage coast its way over to hapless victims.

I guess my point is it's better to give 50 percent and invest all of that in one good unit than to give 100 percent and invest it all in 10+ mediocre, forgettable units. Want further proof? Look at the most successful third-party conversion ever made: WWII. The flamethrowers, shotgun medics, tanks, and machine gunners all were preceded by a very simple single-unit release. WWII Recon was genius. Your boys could shoot their guns, bayonet, throw grenades, fire RPGs, and heal if they picked up a medpac. Probably the most fun part was trying to aim the grenades properly. This plugin took off and gained wild popularity because of the attention to detail paid to one little soldier boy.

I hope that makes sense. I know how it is to get creative and have your eyes outgrow your stomach tenfold, but I've learned over the years how productive it can be to not bite off more than you can chew.

Well you may think Bungie only added 4 to Myth II, but you must keep in mind that they redid all the other units it had. Ever noticed how TFL dwarves, berserks, and warriors (to name a few) don't look like the ones in Myth II? The units Bungie made served for the campaign they made. Other people making new units (not all of course) are making new units for a campaign unlike Bungie's Myth 1 and 2.

WWII's success isn't because it's creator released just one collection for all units. It's success was the gameplay. Simple and fun. But I agree sometimes people do bite more than they can chew. It also happens to the people who are making plugins without new unit collections. So new unit collections is not always the issue of why some plugins become abandoned and forgotten.

Sometimes certain new collections are needed to give a new unit the feel it requires. Sure we could use the warlock collection and settle for that. But it could be more memorable having some new wizard-like unit collection. Imagine if WWII had the Poacher collection instead of the soldier collection. Of course I know you mean people that are making several new units and not just one or two.

Four? Six? I count ten--Myrkridia, Myrkridian Giants, Mauls, Stygian Knights, Warlocks, Dwarven Mortars, Bowmen, Wolves, Bre'Unor, and Mahir. Plus Shiver, The Summoner, the Baron, a new Alric, and reworkings of most of the TFL units.

Point taken, I suppose. I dunno--if you can make them, make them. If you can't, don't. Depends on your team and their abilities, depends on the plug you're making, depends on number of levels and individual unitsets. Whatever works.

I think Anthson's point is that it takes a lot more work than you might think to create a well-balanced game.

From my own experience, gameplay is king, and a tricky beast to master.

It's easy to bite off more than you can chew. My own experience has taught me to start with manageable projects that can be broken down into doable chunks, otherwise it's all too easy to become bogged down with something that ends up being much bigger than originally anticipated and is eventually abandoned.

I've also noticed Myth projects (and software projects in general) tend to be difficult to come back to after a while unless you have them very well organized.

Another killer is trying to make the "perfect plugin". The old rule: "the last 10% of a project takes 90% of the time" can stretch to infinity if you try to make something "perfect". My experience has taught me "perfect" is an illusion, whereas building something of very high quality and playability is real. I'm very comfortable now with releasing something 90% perfect and then taking any feedback to build a follow-up release. Otherwise no one ever gets to play it, or by the time they do all the excitement is gone. Besides, there's no way one or a few people can find every single thing wrong with something - let people play it and they'll find whatever doesn't work. Take that feedback and make it even better.

I believe the combination of these things tends to result in a lot of unfinished projects: (1) Too ambitious to start with; (2) Too large to finish in a discrete amount of time - including testing, which seems to take at least half of the total development time; (3) Too much to manage when playing (armies too big or complex); (4) So-so or the same gameplay (often times fewer units of higher quality that afford good gameplay balance are the best); (5) Having to be "perfect" - never playing a "perfect" plugin isn't much fun, whereas playing a "90% perfect" plugin for years is great fun.

'tis a tricky balancing act indeed!

I see this more and more, especially with people playing with new features introduced in v1.4, v1.5, v1.6. While I don't want to discourage playing with these features (on the contrary, please do!), they do not HAVE to be used. They should only be used if you are able to use them in an intuitive way for the end user.

Maps with learning curves are typically very frustrating for players, unless things are fairly obvious; shiny things can be picked up, special-ability texts are descriptive and so-on. The same thing is true of units, unless it's obvious that a unit is different, and they conform to some pre-existing unit type, then it is hard for users to just jump in and play. For example; if you have a new dwarf that doesn't behave as users expect a dwarf to behave (short-range, blast radius unit) then it requires a learning curve, which impacts game-play. If a unit is obviously similar to an existing unit, then it can be used intuitively by the player. For something really new, a level should try to "train" the player in using a unit, this could be as simple as putting a target dummy near the start for them to try the unit on to see what happens, this being on single-player; new units in multi-player is almost always inadvisable.

It's fun to do cool things, but it's much better to focus on one or two cool-things, while ensuring that basic gameplay is solid, and flows well. One of the best thing to do with a map is to give it to people without documentation (who reads it anyway?) and just throw them in, without any heads up or anything. Most people will come back with confusion and every single thing that they mention should make it onto a list for you to consider "do I actually need this, what does it REALLY add?".

Just because we CAN have 32+ unit types doesn't mean we should. More often than not, 10 or less carefully chosen types is much better. This goes for single-player and multiplayer.

if we all bit what we could chew then we would have finished all our projects long time ago...hehehehe

carlinho wrote:if we all bit what we could chew then we would have finished all our projects long time ago...hehehehe

Yeah, and our jaws wouldn't be so sore either.

Dont forget our favourite unit - ghast

Baak wrote:

carlinho wrote:if we all bit what we could chew then we would have finished all our projects long time ago...hehehehe

Yeah, and our jaws wouldn't be so sore either.

And we'd have more fun plugins to play! =D

you are totally right Anth, but somehow whenever I see a plugin with the old units I don't even want to play it...as I feel I got already bored of the original units, but then I see a plugin with new units and I feel intrigued as I have no clue what will it deliver or bring to the table
of course after a while if it's not great you'll get easily bored
I think wwii units are the ones I never get bored...
I guess because of all the explosions...they are always different...

that's why you'll easily get bored of the greek tagset once I release it...haha
maybe that's why I keep doing it, to avoid the shame....hahahaha

I for one am definitely looking forward to the Greek tagset.

You've been working that shit for years, right Carl? I've seen the videos and I think it's pretty safe to say if you're dedicated to a sick degree like Carl is, you're the exception to my rant. Also you're awesome and deserve free McDonald's.

but still it's true what you say
I would dare say that explosions bring a sadistic approach at myth
and blowing units up can make a plugin die slower or make you get bored less easy
it's really difficult to harmonize and balance new units, so I totally agree...the most important thing is gameplay

carlinho wrote:but still it's true what you say
I would dare say that explosions bring a sadistic approach at myth
and blowing units up can make a plugin die slower or make you get bored less easy
it's really difficult to harmonize and balance new units, so I totally agree...the most important thing is gameplay

Don't worry about people getting bored with your Greek Units carlinho, I have already started work on my first GreekUnit mod plugin so it will be ready when you release your units - the plug will give all the spear units exploding spears and any archers will have arrows of slaying. And body pieces that fall from units when they die a hard death will turn into self-replicating pus bombs.

No one will ever get bored. It will be glorious.

vinylrake wrote:No one will ever get bored. It will be glorious.

Body Parts o' Death?