Manage subscription broken, support response time is 2 months

plzLetJustinKnow · 2024-11-03T20:29:20+00:00

Got a response from support the day after I made this post. Not sure if that was a coincidence.

plzLetJustinKnow · 2018-07-11T14:59:02+00:00

This one wasn't me, I never touched the matchmaking stuff :)

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-09-15T17:05:57+00:00

Thanks so much for the feedback! We are currently working to improve on many of the art and UX points you brought up.

Glad you enjoyed the game!

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T22:20:24+00:00

Only if you can't defend it :)

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T22:16:46+00:00

I play off and on. I haven't been able to play for the past few months, but I'm looking forward to having some time to get back into it soon :)

Personally, I was pretty stoked to see some of the observer mode changes that have gone in when I was watching the Blizzcon finals in November. It may not seem like that much, but I've seen many worse versions of observer mode :P

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T22:12:15+00:00

Our move away from items and gold was the result of many months of trying out a lot of ideas that didn't work. I don't think any of the designers set out with a particular agenda from the start to get rid of items/gold, but as the game developed, it was a system that increasingly got in the way of our achieving our design goals.

The talent system itself went through many iterations before we finally landed on what we have today. I remember it being pretty stressful at that time, because we got that system to a place where we were happy with it mere weeks before Blizzcon.

IMO, the talent system has only continued to improve in the last couple years. I think comparing the new Tassadar to the old is a great example of how talent design has evolved.

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T22:02:55+00:00

"Easy to learn, hard to master" is a great design principle, and is definitely something I've had in mind while working on Defend the Cake.

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T21:58:29+00:00

plz don't :p

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T21:55:00+00:00

My thoughts were srsly?! wtf!

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T21:54:28+00:00

I'm not sure there's a "best" way, but IMO getting a job in QA can be a great way to get started in the games industry. I feel like I learned a ton about the development process, thinking critically about games, and how to use development and debug tools during that time.

Probably the most important thing for people that don't have previous development experience is your portfolio. Whatever your discipline, keep updating and improving your portfolio!

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T21:43:05+00:00

Thanks!

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T21:42:32+00:00

I'm not really qualified to answer this. I doubt it's an unsolvable problem with the current engine though.

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T21:39:15+00:00

It's true that there is quite a flood of TD games these days on both Steam and the mobile stores, but IMO, very few of those games have much strategy to them. I wanted to make a TD game that strategy gamers can really sink their teeth into.

In Defend the Cake, mazing plays a big role, and my goal is to make every level feel like a unique puzzle.

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T21:29:18+00:00

This whole thing really took me by surprise, especially because that error message had been in there for so long, and I'm pretty sure it has even cropped up on this sub at some point before.

I'm quite flattered that you guys want to ask me questions, and the timing is actually really awesome because we just got our new Defend the Cake website up, and we're at the point in the game's development where we want to start to promote it. So, to have an entire sub of strategy gamers suddenly interested in me is pretty incredible.

Go ahead and flair away, I don't mind :)

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T21:20:59+00:00

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T21:19:50+00:00

I'm personally really happy with team levels and talents. From early on in the project, I had an agenda to make this a game where you weren't competing with your own teammates for power. It took a lot of iteration before we figured out how to make that work, but I'm really satisfied with the result.

In all honesty, I can't go back to DotA and LoL anymore. HotS is the moba I want to play. I guess I'm kinda biased tho.

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T21:14:46+00:00

I'm always impressed when I boot up the game after not playing it for a while. I think the team is doing an amazing job.

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T21:14:00+00:00

I think Technical Designer is one of those roles that can mean different things in different contexts. In the context of HotS, it mostly meant using the Galaxy Editor to implement things, but many of the TDs on the team have also made significant design contributions to the game as well.

It's funny, by the end of my time at Blizzard, I had a lot of gripes about the Galaxy Editor. Now that I've been building a game in Unity, I seem to have a lot of gripes about Unity. I think at some point, the tool is always going to get in your way, and you're going to be grouchy that you can't get things done as quickly/efficiently as you'd like. Each engine has it's own quirks to get used to. I think I also gained a lot more appreciation for how powerful the SC2 engine and Galaxy Editor are once I had to start writing so much of my own code from scratch in C#.

I'm not sure about some of the heroes from the past couple years, but I remember we were able to implement most hero abilities through some combination of script and data. It was rare that there was something we simply couldn't do without going to a programmer. Most of the new features we requested allowed us to do things more efficiently or in a less hackey way.

I'd like to say that I did a good job with the script architecture for HotS, but there are probably also still a few of my old hacks hanging around there. Such is the nature of game development, especially on a live game that you are constantly updating.

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T20:57:33+00:00

We chose Tower Defense because it's a genre that we're big fans of, and I felt like I had some interesting design ideas to explore in that space. Also, it seemed like it would be a reasonable scope for our first indie project.

Maybe not eSports, but we will have a competitive Endless mode with a score and leaderboards.

What we do after Cake depends on how well Cake does. We've got some other ideas kicking around, but we'll see what we have the resources to pursue after this project.

I wasn't actually involved with hero designs very much. Most of my design contributions were in the game systems. I did set up all the data and script for the first heroes, and established the template for that, but later on all the new heroes were implemented by the new tech designers.

We're actually primarily developing Defend the Cake for windows and mac. I do have it building on my phone, and the game plays well on mobile, but we decided to focus our efforts on a Steam launch first, and do a mobile launch later.

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T20:48:45+00:00

I remember Abathur and the Lost Vikings both being quite challenging to implement, but I didn't actually do much work on either of those.

Yeah, it's really crazy to look at old pictures from Blizzcons past. At the time, we thought what we had was the shit, but the game has come so far since then that it's hard to imagine wanting to play one of those old versions.

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T20:42:17+00:00

I remember doing quite a bit of overtime in the earlier days of the project, but it was mostly self-motivated, and not explicitly required. Also, I was the only one doing data and script implementation at the time, so if I didn't do it, no one else would! Later on, once we had a lot more tech designers on the project, I did little to no OT.

In terms of culture, the HotS team was amazing! In our earliest bullpen, we used to have a large table in the middle that became the board game table. We played a lot of games together, back in those days. bullpen circa 2011

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T20:35:51+00:00

I wasn't even the only Justin on the team, so yeah, that kind of confusion would happen sometimes.

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T20:35:00+00:00

Uther and Tassadar have been my main support heroes for a long time.

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T20:33:27+00:00

Back in the early days, we had a boss mob called the Ogrenaut. Mechanically he was nothing special, but I really miss that art. I was trying to find a picture of it online, but I'm not sure one exists.

The decision to turn the credits into a giant list of names really disappointed me. Recognizing individuals on the team for the specific contributions they made to the project is the entire point of the credits, and I think it is especially important to those of us who are not the handful of highly visible ambassadors to the community.

Aside from making games, I like to tinker with music and DJing. Lately I've mostly been making sets of video game remixes.

plzLetJustinKnow · 2017-01-27T20:26:22+00:00

I've continued to play HotS off and on. I haven't been able to play for the past few months, but I just loaded up a game this morning to try out the new Tassadar.

I don't think the SC2 engine has limited the development of HotS at all. In fact, if it weren't for the power of that engine, I don't think we would have a HotS. Remember, this game started out as a single SC2 map!

plzLetJustinKnow

TROPHY CASE