I want to make a map that simulates what a zergling might do in the wild. My plan is to make a forest (done) that has paths you can follow that are safe from enemies with a forest surrounding it that contains treasures and enemies. You will have to kill enemies for food, and enemies will drop essence which can be used to buy special food, upgrades, possibly abilities, and to evolve. Evolution will be based somewhat on the campaign style. In addition, you can choose to evolve into a new unit like a roach. It will be 4 players.
I would like feedback on this idea as well as help on a few more ideas. Somehow I'd have to figure out how to balance the enemies as you grow. Maybe I could start spawning different units once an upgrade is purchased? Also I'm not sure how to make a victory solution. I plan to let other players attack each other and I'd like to be able to have them revive so I would like help finding some way to make a way to lose and win. Also, this seems a bit bland at the moment. I'm not sure that this is even worth continuing because it just seems like a very bland survival game. Any suggestions?
@fishy77: Go This is the perfect set to use primal zerg in my opinion. Basically life on Zerus. Add a lot of brushes to hide and things like that, or players may have a hard time escaping stronger players.
To balance enemies, make them acquire things too and evolve eventually. With some simple scripts on what to do they could avoid stronger creatures and attack weaker ones. If a creature survives long enough it may become that powerful Tyrannozor we saw in the campaign, and killing it should be extremely difficult.
I think it can be interesting enough if the specific upgrades, abilities, and evolutions follow the zerg way of acquiring them: If you want to become a Roach, you must kill X Roaches first. If you want to have abduct, you must kill X Vipers first. More generic upgrades like armor and attack bonuses could be earned by simply killing and eating enemies, while others such as speed bonuses could require fast prey.
That's a really good idea. I never thought of making them just kill things to get the upgrade. I was thinking they'd just get essence from killing things which they could use as "money". For bushes, the foliage thing added a ton of those, but you can't really hide in them, plus I'm still not sure which camera angle I want to use, since click to move in first person view seems weird and I've tried several times to get the wsad movement to work and never could get it fluid. I think this map is very do-able for me, I just need to figure out some of these details to make it playable. I think a lot of people would be intrigued just from the primal zerg aspect just like I was from the idea. I haven't seen too many maps based on the primal zerg.
Edit: I just thought of something. Maybe I could add a behavior to those bushes that it spawns so that they cloak any unit that is on it. Not sure if this works with foliage though and going back and adding custom bush units would be tedious.
i suggest that you add a hunger and stamina system... food should be droped from creatures you kill and they also should drop essence. The essence can either be used for upgrades, attribute upgrades, evolving (or evolving can be aquired at a certain level), or just as money. You could have evolution strains that the zergling goes through like you can first choose to evolve into a speedling or a swarmling, If you choose to evolve into a speedling the next evolution for that is the raptor (the one with long wings). And the swarmlings next evolution could be the hybridling (its a custom model, easy to use: http://www.sc2mapster.com/assets/hybrid-zerg/ ) Skill trees and talent systems would be nice as well as some abilities and upgrades. something that would also be cool is a swimming mechanic, you have to evolve webbed feat to be able to swim, when your in water and your not swimming it should have a breath bar, when the bar runs out the zergling will drowned. Here is an easy way to do this in triggers. First make the Event Game int. then make a comparison condition. Set the value on the left to be Unit has behavior. Then (After that is done) set "Behavior" to swimming (a behavior you should make) Then set the last one to True. should look like this... Triggering Unit has Swimming = true. Then then rest of the trigger should be the swimming mechanic. idk this is just a suggestion sounds pretty cool to me :)
@fishy77: Go HotS added tall grass LoS blockers, I think those are perfect for this. Foliage is too small to hide most units anyway, and would look weird if a big unit tried to hide there.
The great thing about primal zerg is that every individual has the potential to be unique, unlike swarm zerg that need Abathur or other external controller to decide which mutation is useful for the whole brood. Dehaka and the other pack leaders are a very good examples, each of them hunted different creatures to become what they were. Another good point: primals have some wild model variations in the editor, each could represent some specific qualities or abilities that don't change much the "basic" primal appearance.
A zergling, morphing into a Roach? Detestable, gross, and wrong. Ultralisks should aspire to be as great as we are.
Edit: In terms of useful suggestions/insight... The hunting and evolving really need to be something special, otherwise we are just talking a Brood War style hero map with this evolution thing. Why does it need to start as a zergling anyways, why not a larvae or sub-larvae infecting docile cows, scantids, making something crazy out of that? Main trick is, how to keep it so your path results in uniqueness, not in a Zerg-O-Mon game where you gotta catchem all. Unless you really like the Pokemon thing...
@Deadzergling: Go That's why I suggested the primals, enough model variations so the player's unit doesnt have to follow a stablished evolution route. And some decisions can be added to change it from "kill X, evolve to Y, then kill 2X and evolve to Z", to add uniqueness.
One more idea I had: Whe you're a predator size matters, but not always bigger means better. Maybe selecting things that make you bigger (more armor, life or damage) could make you slower, or things like that. Maybe some prey types are too fast to catch if you're a big bully, but they are numerous and a smaller and faster predator could benefit from that. And who knows, that prey could unlock things other prey types won't.
Its all about variety. Make a big list of everything players could want to improve, and go spreading them among different creatures, in a way that you can't hope to catch everything and be a "perfect zerg".
And another idea: Killing doesn't provide its bonuses right away. The dead unit "drops" a carcass like in that campaign mission, and the player has to eat it, which takes some time, this would make players try to steal carcasses, or who knows what, adding depth to their decision, like when, where and how to kill a prey.
You pretty much hit a spot of a map I'd like to create, because I'm a biologist, but I don't have the time to work on it by my own.
Here's a screenshot of one of the areas. Is this what you would imagine the place should look like? There's just a random assortment of trees and tall grass with the cloak effect scattered around. There is also a small view of the paths I put in that are supposed to be "safe" zones, but I haven't figured out how to implement that yet. I figured that they would be kind of like roads that humans made to travel through the area and therefore wild things stay away from it making it a safe place to be on, however you would not be able to find any treasures or fight enemies on it.
This concept reminds me Kobold Tribes. It can be nice.
I think your mapping is too linear. Add some relief / cliffs and other things (trees etc) to make it more realistic ;)
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I want to make a map that simulates what a zergling might do in the wild. My plan is to make a forest (done) that has paths you can follow that are safe from enemies with a forest surrounding it that contains treasures and enemies. You will have to kill enemies for food, and enemies will drop essence which can be used to buy special food, upgrades, possibly abilities, and to evolve. Evolution will be based somewhat on the campaign style. In addition, you can choose to evolve into a new unit like a roach. It will be 4 players.
I would like feedback on this idea as well as help on a few more ideas. Somehow I'd have to figure out how to balance the enemies as you grow. Maybe I could start spawning different units once an upgrade is purchased? Also I'm not sure how to make a victory solution. I plan to let other players attack each other and I'd like to be able to have them revive so I would like help finding some way to make a way to lose and win. Also, this seems a bit bland at the moment. I'm not sure that this is even worth continuing because it just seems like a very bland survival game. Any suggestions?
New to the Editor? Need a tutorial? Click Here
Want data assets? Click Here
@fishy77: Go This is the perfect set to use primal zerg in my opinion. Basically life on Zerus. Add a lot of brushes to hide and things like that, or players may have a hard time escaping stronger players.
To balance enemies, make them acquire things too and evolve eventually. With some simple scripts on what to do they could avoid stronger creatures and attack weaker ones. If a creature survives long enough it may become that powerful Tyrannozor we saw in the campaign, and killing it should be extremely difficult.
I think it can be interesting enough if the specific upgrades, abilities, and evolutions follow the zerg way of acquiring them: If you want to become a Roach, you must kill X Roaches first. If you want to have abduct, you must kill X Vipers first. More generic upgrades like armor and attack bonuses could be earned by simply killing and eating enemies, while others such as speed bonuses could require fast prey.
@SoulFilcher: Go
That's a really good idea. I never thought of making them just kill things to get the upgrade. I was thinking they'd just get essence from killing things which they could use as "money". For bushes, the foliage thing added a ton of those, but you can't really hide in them, plus I'm still not sure which camera angle I want to use, since click to move in first person view seems weird and I've tried several times to get the wsad movement to work and never could get it fluid. I think this map is very do-able for me, I just need to figure out some of these details to make it playable. I think a lot of people would be intrigued just from the primal zerg aspect just like I was from the idea. I haven't seen too many maps based on the primal zerg.
Edit: I just thought of something. Maybe I could add a behavior to those bushes that it spawns so that they cloak any unit that is on it. Not sure if this works with foliage though and going back and adding custom bush units would be tedious.
New to the Editor? Need a tutorial? Click Here
Want data assets? Click Here
i suggest that you add a hunger and stamina system... food should be droped from creatures you kill and they also should drop essence. The essence can either be used for upgrades, attribute upgrades, evolving (or evolving can be aquired at a certain level), or just as money. You could have evolution strains that the zergling goes through like you can first choose to evolve into a speedling or a swarmling, If you choose to evolve into a speedling the next evolution for that is the raptor (the one with long wings). And the swarmlings next evolution could be the hybridling (its a custom model, easy to use: http://www.sc2mapster.com/assets/hybrid-zerg/ ) Skill trees and talent systems would be nice as well as some abilities and upgrades. something that would also be cool is a swimming mechanic, you have to evolve webbed feat to be able to swim, when your in water and your not swimming it should have a breath bar, when the bar runs out the zergling will drowned. Here is an easy way to do this in triggers. First make the Event Game int. then make a comparison condition. Set the value on the left to be Unit has behavior. Then (After that is done) set "Behavior" to swimming (a behavior you should make) Then set the last one to True. should look like this... Triggering Unit has Swimming = true. Then then rest of the trigger should be the swimming mechanic. idk this is just a suggestion sounds pretty cool to me :)
@fishy77: Go HotS added tall grass LoS blockers, I think those are perfect for this. Foliage is too small to hide most units anyway, and would look weird if a big unit tried to hide there.
The great thing about primal zerg is that every individual has the potential to be unique, unlike swarm zerg that need Abathur or other external controller to decide which mutation is useful for the whole brood. Dehaka and the other pack leaders are a very good examples, each of them hunted different creatures to become what they were. Another good point: primals have some wild model variations in the editor, each could represent some specific qualities or abilities that don't change much the "basic" primal appearance.
A zergling, morphing into a Roach? Detestable, gross, and wrong. Ultralisks should aspire to be as great as we are.
Edit: In terms of useful suggestions/insight... The hunting and evolving really need to be something special, otherwise we are just talking a Brood War style hero map with this evolution thing. Why does it need to start as a zergling anyways, why not a larvae or sub-larvae infecting docile cows, scantids, making something crazy out of that? Main trick is, how to keep it so your path results in uniqueness, not in a Zerg-O-Mon game where you gotta catchem all. Unless you really like the Pokemon thing...
@Deadzergling: Go That's why I suggested the primals, enough model variations so the player's unit doesnt have to follow a stablished evolution route. And some decisions can be added to change it from "kill X, evolve to Y, then kill 2X and evolve to Z", to add uniqueness.
One more idea I had: Whe you're a predator size matters, but not always bigger means better. Maybe selecting things that make you bigger (more armor, life or damage) could make you slower, or things like that. Maybe some prey types are too fast to catch if you're a big bully, but they are numerous and a smaller and faster predator could benefit from that. And who knows, that prey could unlock things other prey types won't.
Its all about variety. Make a big list of everything players could want to improve, and go spreading them among different creatures, in a way that you can't hope to catch everything and be a "perfect zerg".
And another idea: Killing doesn't provide its bonuses right away. The dead unit "drops" a carcass like in that campaign mission, and the player has to eat it, which takes some time, this would make players try to steal carcasses, or who knows what, adding depth to their decision, like when, where and how to kill a prey.
You pretty much hit a spot of a map I'd like to create, because I'm a biologist, but I don't have the time to work on it by my own.
@SoulFilcher: Go
Yeah right now it sounds like I just need to make a list of everything I want to include because it seems there is quite a lot to remember.
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Want data assets? Click Here
@fishy77: Go
Here's a screenshot of one of the areas. Is this what you would imagine the place should look like? There's just a random assortment of trees and tall grass with the cloak effect scattered around. There is also a small view of the paths I put in that are supposed to be "safe" zones, but I haven't figured out how to implement that yet. I figured that they would be kind of like roads that humans made to travel through the area and therefore wild things stay away from it making it a safe place to be on, however you would not be able to find any treasures or fight enemies on it.
New to the Editor? Need a tutorial? Click Here
Want data assets? Click Here
This concept reminds me Kobold Tribes. It can be nice. I think your mapping is too linear. Add some relief / cliffs and other things (trees etc) to make it more realistic ;)