My version of Molten Floor - Overwatch Workshop (Plus a Steem milestone)

birchmark (59)in #overwatch • 5 years ago

Hi guys,

I decided to try to make the Molten Floor example that can be found on this page here: https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/news/22938941#examples in the Overwatch Workshop.

You may have seen my earlier post regarding this, but if not and you don't know what the Overwatch Workshop is, you can check it out here: https://steemit.com/overwatch/@birchmark/overwatch-workshop

I made the example following the example tutorial on the playoverwatch website, but then made some adjustments myself, play-tested my version with adjustments with my partner and a friend, made a few more adjustments during this process and then finally after some time, went and made what I feel are the final adjustments to it.

Play my Custom Game based on the Molten Floor Tutorial

The code to play my custom game LAVA GAME 1.5 ULT 0.1 COOLDOWN AKA MY LAVA GAME is:
16DT3

This currently must be played in the Public Test Region as the Overwatch Workshop is not yet in the main game.

To play my game, you go to play, then game browser, then create, then settings and then the import symbol and you enter the code above: 16DT3 and click OK.

Screenshot (53).png

This will add my settings to the game as you can see here:

Screenshot (54).png

If you go back from settings, you will be in the lobby and can invite people, open it to everyone or just friends etc and there is a manual start button. You can also go into the settings and adjust the game to suit your interests, and number of players etc.

Screenshot (55).png

I currently have the mode as Deathmatch mode only as it suits it and also suited the number of people I had playtesting it, but it would also be suited to other modes like escort and assault with the right number of players and this would add different challenges as you need to stay near the payload that's near the ground too and other various aspects that these game modes would add. To do this, you just go to modes within settings and choose what you want. Clicking on a gamemode will open options for it, including if it is enabled or not. You can enable it there as well as change any other options as needed. I feel that deathmatch works reasonably well though.

How I made my version of the Molten Floor tutorial - Following the basic tutorial

First upon the recommendation of the playoverwatch website, I chose one map to use for playtesting. I turned off all maps except Blizzard World. I had not turned off all modes but Deathmatch at this point though (since the final version is only Deathmatch).

Then I added a rule which consisted of:

A comment explaining the rule (shows up like a title for the rule)
An Event type: This tells the game when the rule should be executed
A condition: This determines whether or not the rule will execute
An action: What happens if the condition is true

This first rule, START BURNING IF ON GROUND was a rule to make it so that if the player is on the ground, they start burning. At that stage it is essentially an animation for burning.

This picture shows how this rule looked in the Overwatch Workshop at that stage in the tutorial:

Screenshot (57).png

The rule basically is an ongoing rule for each player, where if they are on the ground [is on ground(Event Player) == true], they will start burning [set status (event player, null, burning, 9999)]. It sets their status to burning. The 9999 is the duration which is set to the highest to keep it going. The tutorial said to set it to 10000 and their version does, but mine kept going back to 9999.

You can see this rule in action here:

As you can see, she is on fire when on the ground. However, she is still on fire in the air, which isn't right.

Next, I made a rule so that the hero stops being on fire when in the air, the STOP BURNING WHEN IN THE AIR rule. This rule also consisted of a comment, an event type, a condition and an action.

In this picture you can see how this looked in the Overwatch Workshop:

Screenshot (40).png

And here you can see the result:

So far, so good, but the burning isn't actually doing any damage to the player. The next thing to do was to go back and edit the rules.

The tutorial / example had me go back and edit the START BURNING IF ON GROUND rule so that it had another action which caused damage over time while the character is on fire, which you can see in the Workshop in this picture here:
Screenshot (42).png

It also had me edit the STOP BURNING WHEN IN THE AIR rule so that it stopped the damage over time while the character is in the air and therefore not on fire.
You can see the edit to the STOP BURNING WHEN IN THE AIR rule here:
Screenshot (44).png

Here is a video of these rules in play, this time with Junkrat:

As you can see in the game mode it was in, even once he walks out of the spawn room, at the very start of the game, he doesn't start taking damage until he jumps and lands again. However, after he dies the first time, he does start taking damage from the burning as soon as he leaves the spawn room. Jumping and dying seem to set this off working properly. I fiddled with it to try to work out why it was happening, but couldn't work it out. I tried out the Blizzard Molten Floor Preset which is available too and it did the same thing though so I'm guessing it wasn't an issue with my code. This doesn't occur in Deathmatch though (or at least I haven't encountered it so far) so it must direct relate to starting the game in a spawn room (which doesn't really happen with Deathmatch).

At this point I had made the basic tutorial for Molten Floor.

If you would like to try to make it, you can find the instructions here: https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/news/22938941#examples

There's also a tutorial for a mirrored deathmatch if that is more appealing to you.

But then I changed the game up further.

How I made my version of the Molten Floor tutorial - Making it my Own

This is where I started to play with the settings.

One of the things I wanted to do is slightly broaden which characters were viable by reducing ability cooldown time.

I knew this would make Junkrat and D.Va more viable as you can sort of fly around on your bombs as Junkrat in Total Mayhem so I knew that reducing cooldown time could potentially make him viable, and if D.Va can fly frequently she should also be viable.

I originally tried at 20% cooldown time and it was manageable but I found it to not be quite quick enough to make the heroes as mobile and suitable for the mode as I would like and I just thought it might be better a bit quicker, and then I tried a 5% cooldown but spamming bombs as Junkrat with that it seemed unnecessarily fast and like if you weren't careful to space it out right he would become unwieldy to control (not that players shouldn't be responsible for spacing it out right themselves but I just wanted to get the best cooldown time setting that I could).

I ultimately settled on a 10% cooldown time, which seems to work quite well. It does mean there is still a tiny wait for things, which I think is better than having constant access, but it is pretty damn close to having constant access to your abilities. It appears to work pretty well for most characters.

I also at the same time set Ultimate Generation to 150% so that it would generate faster but not ridiculously fast. I thought more Ultis might be good this mode.

I didn't change much else at this point, but asked my partner and my friend to play it with me and try it out.
Throughout our time playing, we experimented with a few things.

We set it to Deathmatch as there were three of us, but I've kept it that way now (but you can change it if you play).

We experimented with different levels of gravity since having low gravity could increase the variety of characters, but from that experience I ultimately decided that low gravity and more choice due to it actually takes away from the mode a bit. I believe the extra choice my changes to the ability cooldown adds, adds to the game, but low gravity while fun, overcomplicated things. If you decide to try it, either making your own or playing mine and messing with the settings, you can try out different levels of gravity and see what you think, but I decided before getting the link to share with all of you to make it 90% gravity. We turned it up from about 30% to 70% throughout playing when we decided it was too low, but I just took it back up again.

Here is some footage from playtesting my level on my own at various points in the process of making my own changes:

I will also later on (not in this post) share footage of me, my partner and our friend playing my level too (which wasn't the level in its final form either as I made small changes throughout the time playing with them, but it is close - it's just a little more refined again now).

The Current State of LAVA GAME 1.5 ULT 0.1 COOLDOWN (My version of Molten Floor)

You can see the current setup of the level, including the mode, game length, score to win and settings for the heroes (cooltime time, ulti generation, gravity etc) in this picture:

Screenshot (54).png

That's about it for this post discussing my Molten Floor based level.

But what about the Steem Milestone?

The Steem milestone I reached was that I passed 100 SP. I know many people are way past that to where 100 SP would be insignificant for them, but I'm pretty happy about that.

I thought this was worth mentioning and celebrating because it is a milestone number.

Thank you to everyone who has read my posts, watched my videos and upvoted my content and helped me reach this milestone.

Thank you for reading and watching. I hope you enjoyed this post and I hope you are as thrilled by the Overwatch Workshop as I am.

LINKS

Birchmark Website / Portfolio: http://birchmark.com.au/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BirchmarkAu

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Birchmark_

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/birchmark/

Redbubble: https://www.redbubble.com/people/birchmark?asc=u

Threadless: https://birchmark.threadless.com/

Discord: https://discord.gg/3ZZbbBs

OVERWATCH LINKS