I started work on the second version of Catalyst on 18/03/11. That makes it 6 weeks old as of this post.
When I made Catalyst, I was basically a mapping scrub. It was my first real project, and despite probably still being one of the most polished maps on b.net, it had little replayability and suffered from a lot of convoluted ideas.
Eventually, I gave up on Catalyst and took a break from the editor, eventually returning to start VoidCraft. This was never intended to be a long-term project, it was more just trying to see what could be done using the SC2 engine. I wasn't pleased with the results, and the project was subsequently scrapped followed by a second break. I consider these 2 maps to be my learning process, and I now feel at home with the editor. Comfortably leading me onto my third and final project.
The map is designed from the ground up to be a competitive game of the action-RTS, DotA style genre. I have my own take on this, however, as I'm sure one SotIS is enough for now.
So what's different between DotA and Catalyst? Well, a few things.
Items
Items don't grant stat bonuses. Infact, there are no stats in Catalyst. Units have vitals and a weapon. This is all. Items add new weapons which fire independently to your main gun. This is different to Catalyst's first incarnation. In the first, you controlled all of your weapons. Now, item weapons are more random, avoidable and designed to add spice to gameplay. While a Diamondback has it's main guns, it may also have a chemical mortar which launches gas filled canisters at random nearby targets, leaving behind an acidic cloud which melts anything within.
The second major item difference is the way items are leveled. You begin with a choice of buying one of three weapons, a light weapon, a heavy weapon or an energy weapon. Let's say we purchase a heavy weapon. We can then upgrade that into 3 different, unique weapons; a larger, slower cannon, a mortar or an anti-aircraft cannon, displayed using a neat little piece of custom UI.
Let's pick the mortar. We then may upgrade this into a chemical mortar, an incendiary mortar, or a cluster bomb. All unique, all feel different, all require different responces from your opponent (short of getting out of the way).
Pilots
At the game's intro, you are required to select one of currently 4 different pilots. Each pilot has 5 unique abilities, and a unique starting vehicle. For example, only the reaper pilot may use the hellion vehicle. After selecting a pilot, you are sent to the battlefield. You begin with your pilot's unique vehicle and one ability. Each vehicle also has 5 unique abilities, bringing the total available abilities to 10. There are 10 levels, you begin at level 1. As you level up, more abilities unlock with the 10th unlocking at level 10. This ensures that new players aren't overwhelmed and that higher power abilities don't enter play until later in the match.
If your vehicle dies, your pilot emerges. You may then choose either to fight to the death, or flee. You have access to your pilot's 5 abilities still, but no longer may use your vehicle abilities. You do gain the ability to warp in new vehicles while in this mode, however. At the game's start you may only warp in your unique starting vehicle, but you may purchase the rights to different vehicles at the vehicle shop. Summoning a new vehicle takes time, and is interrupted by damage. Losing your pilot will incur a respawn timer.
You may also leave your vehicle at any time by simply using the "Leave vehicle [esc]" ability, and re-enter any vehicle which you own by simply right clicking it. This may sound complicated, but it's shockingly simple and intuitive.
Vehicles
Vehicles are now split into 3 types. Light, armoured and psionic. Light vehicles are weak to light weaponry (such as autocannons). Armoured vehicles are weak to heavy weaponry, and psionic vehicles are weak to energy weaponry. Note that this is not a rock-paper-scissors system. Armoured doesn't beat light. This relates back to items, where I mentioned that there are 3 starting weapons; light, heavy and energy. Using the correct counter weapon deals 33% bonus damage. This is not intended as a full counter system, but simply to prevent certain weapon types and vehicles from becoming too dominant. For example, if the Odin is notoriously overpowered, then the smart player will use energy weapons (as the odin is psionic; don't ask) therefor reducing it's overpowered-ness. Also, if 120mm Cannons (type: heavy) become rediculous, then avoiding using armoured vehicles solves that. This isn't a replacement for proper game balance, just a buffer.
In addition to being light, armoured or psionic, vehicles may also be either air or ground. Vehicles are far more diverse than the first Catalyst, each having 5 unique abilities to keep every vehicle feeling different. There are 15 completed vehicles in-game so far, and I aim to have 64 total with 12 pilots (that's 12 unique starter vehicles, 14 purchasable light, 14 heavy and 14 psionic vehicles as well as 10 secret vehicles).
These are the 3 tools that separate Catalyst from other DotA maps.
Construction
This is in the conceptual stage right now. Basically, I want every match to be unique. That's a difficult task to achieve, so I want to put the RTS back into Action-RTS. You have a build menu available to you at all times. Minerals may be spent on items or vehicles, and is earned from killing NPC forces. However, as with Catalyst's first incarnation, there are control points. 9 total, arranged in a square. Holding these control points provides vespene, which may be spent on structures. Structures will range from defensive to production, and are unlocked as you advance in the game's rank system. For example, an entirely new player may only be able to build the simplest of structures, while a veteran who has won many matches will have access to the full menu. Don't think of this as a push to get you to play more games, it's intended to avoid bombarding new players with too much information.
This section is entirely conceptual. While I want to get it into Catalyst, I will make sure this is done properly before fully committing.
This is a big map and will take me a long while, especially given my limited free time. I'll post here regarding any updates.
I'll also fill in videos and screenshots to help describe the above points in future.
I do NOT like your concept of items. It's a bad design decision IMO (all of the following are just personal thoughts):
1) If weapons are passive you will mostly run close to the enemy, then backoff again while your weapons cooldown. Thats just boring. Also there will be less skill required and you can use less strategies.
2) At first it might seem more simple than say 3 different stats, all having impact on different aspects of the "hero". BUT after all you will still have to check for every single weapon what it does. With a stat-based system people can play one game to learn. Then they can adapt to new heroes as they wish, since the understood the basic stat system.
Again just my 2 cents. I understand that you probably have a mod with a lot of passive weapons that you can use easily, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea to have the complete gameplay circle around them. In any case. Whatever you do will probably turn out to be a great map, so I'm looking forward to it.
It's main gun. Constant, unavoidable, decent damage.
It's abilities. Something that changes the flow of the fight. A large, heavy damage spell, zoning abilities, shields, things to break the pace up or alter the combat arena. These are what I want to decide the fight, tactically. Damage will be what kills your opponent but your abilities are what controls them. Or vice versa!
Item weapons. These add constant pressure not too dissimilar to the main gun, but avoidable and with special properties. Think of this as modifying your main weapon to suit different purposes, rather than being a sole damage delivery mechanism.
I would not want any of the methods to overtake any other method too heavily. Item weapons are quirky affairs that work to ensure that the Thor you fought last match isn't the same as the Thor you fight this match, and might even require a totally different approach.
Drone items will supplement this in the future, and are an aspect that I plan to extensively overhaul. I have a great plan for drones, just I don't want to get too far ahead of myself while I still have the basics to create.
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This is not a thread to show my map off.
It's just to document my progress.
I started work on the second version of Catalyst on 18/03/11. That makes it 6 weeks old as of this post.
When I made Catalyst, I was basically a mapping scrub. It was my first real project, and despite probably still being one of the most polished maps on b.net, it had little replayability and suffered from a lot of convoluted ideas.
Eventually, I gave up on Catalyst and took a break from the editor, eventually returning to start VoidCraft. This was never intended to be a long-term project, it was more just trying to see what could be done using the SC2 engine. I wasn't pleased with the results, and the project was subsequently scrapped followed by a second break. I consider these 2 maps to be my learning process, and I now feel at home with the editor. Comfortably leading me onto my third and final project.
The map is designed from the ground up to be a competitive game of the action-RTS, DotA style genre. I have my own take on this, however, as I'm sure one SotIS is enough for now.
So what's different between DotA and Catalyst? Well, a few things.
Items
Items don't grant stat bonuses. Infact, there are no stats in Catalyst. Units have vitals and a weapon. This is all. Items add new weapons which fire independently to your main gun. This is different to Catalyst's first incarnation. In the first, you controlled all of your weapons. Now, item weapons are more random, avoidable and designed to add spice to gameplay. While a Diamondback has it's main guns, it may also have a chemical mortar which launches gas filled canisters at random nearby targets, leaving behind an acidic cloud which melts anything within.
The second major item difference is the way items are leveled. You begin with a choice of buying one of three weapons, a light weapon, a heavy weapon or an energy weapon. Let's say we purchase a heavy weapon. We can then upgrade that into 3 different, unique weapons; a larger, slower cannon, a mortar or an anti-aircraft cannon, displayed using a neat little piece of custom UI.
Let's pick the mortar. We then may upgrade this into a chemical mortar, an incendiary mortar, or a cluster bomb. All unique, all feel different, all require different responces from your opponent (short of getting out of the way).
Pilots
At the game's intro, you are required to select one of currently 4 different pilots. Each pilot has 5 unique abilities, and a unique starting vehicle. For example, only the reaper pilot may use the hellion vehicle. After selecting a pilot, you are sent to the battlefield. You begin with your pilot's unique vehicle and one ability. Each vehicle also has 5 unique abilities, bringing the total available abilities to 10. There are 10 levels, you begin at level 1. As you level up, more abilities unlock with the 10th unlocking at level 10. This ensures that new players aren't overwhelmed and that higher power abilities don't enter play until later in the match.
If your vehicle dies, your pilot emerges. You may then choose either to fight to the death, or flee. You have access to your pilot's 5 abilities still, but no longer may use your vehicle abilities. You do gain the ability to warp in new vehicles while in this mode, however. At the game's start you may only warp in your unique starting vehicle, but you may purchase the rights to different vehicles at the vehicle shop. Summoning a new vehicle takes time, and is interrupted by damage. Losing your pilot will incur a respawn timer.
You may also leave your vehicle at any time by simply using the "Leave vehicle [esc]" ability, and re-enter any vehicle which you own by simply right clicking it. This may sound complicated, but it's shockingly simple and intuitive.
Vehicles
Vehicles are now split into 3 types. Light, armoured and psionic. Light vehicles are weak to light weaponry (such as autocannons). Armoured vehicles are weak to heavy weaponry, and psionic vehicles are weak to energy weaponry. Note that this is not a rock-paper-scissors system. Armoured doesn't beat light. This relates back to items, where I mentioned that there are 3 starting weapons; light, heavy and energy. Using the correct counter weapon deals 33% bonus damage. This is not intended as a full counter system, but simply to prevent certain weapon types and vehicles from becoming too dominant. For example, if the Odin is notoriously overpowered, then the smart player will use energy weapons (as the odin is psionic; don't ask) therefor reducing it's overpowered-ness. Also, if 120mm Cannons (type: heavy) become rediculous, then avoiding using armoured vehicles solves that. This isn't a replacement for proper game balance, just a buffer.
In addition to being light, armoured or psionic, vehicles may also be either air or ground. Vehicles are far more diverse than the first Catalyst, each having 5 unique abilities to keep every vehicle feeling different. There are 15 completed vehicles in-game so far, and I aim to have 64 total with 12 pilots (that's 12 unique starter vehicles, 14 purchasable light, 14 heavy and 14 psionic vehicles as well as 10 secret vehicles).
These are the 3 tools that separate Catalyst from other DotA maps.
Construction
This is in the conceptual stage right now. Basically, I want every match to be unique. That's a difficult task to achieve, so I want to put the RTS back into Action-RTS. You have a build menu available to you at all times. Minerals may be spent on items or vehicles, and is earned from killing NPC forces. However, as with Catalyst's first incarnation, there are control points. 9 total, arranged in a square. Holding these control points provides vespene, which may be spent on structures. Structures will range from defensive to production, and are unlocked as you advance in the game's rank system. For example, an entirely new player may only be able to build the simplest of structures, while a veteran who has won many matches will have access to the full menu. Don't think of this as a push to get you to play more games, it's intended to avoid bombarding new players with too much information.
This section is entirely conceptual. While I want to get it into Catalyst, I will make sure this is done properly before fully committing.
This is a big map and will take me a long while, especially given my limited free time. I'll post here regarding any updates.
I'll also fill in videos and screenshots to help describe the above points in future.
Stage 1
Terrain: 20%
Abilities: 97/100
Vehicles: 15/19
Pilots: 4/4
Items: 39/39
I like the use of vehicles in a dota style game.
I do NOT like your concept of items. It's a bad design decision IMO (all of the following are just personal thoughts):
1) If weapons are passive you will mostly run close to the enemy, then backoff again while your weapons cooldown. Thats just boring. Also there will be less skill required and you can use less strategies.
2) At first it might seem more simple than say 3 different stats, all having impact on different aspects of the "hero". BUT after all you will still have to check for every single weapon what it does. With a stat-based system people can play one game to learn. Then they can adapt to new heroes as they wish, since the understood the basic stat system.
Again just my 2 cents. I understand that you probably have a mod with a lot of passive weapons that you can use easily, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea to have the complete gameplay circle around them. In any case. Whatever you do will probably turn out to be a great map, so I'm looking forward to it.
Your vehicle has 3 methods of delivering damage.
It's main gun. Constant, unavoidable, decent damage.
It's abilities. Something that changes the flow of the fight. A large, heavy damage spell, zoning abilities, shields, things to break the pace up or alter the combat arena. These are what I want to decide the fight, tactically. Damage will be what kills your opponent but your abilities are what controls them. Or vice versa!
Item weapons. These add constant pressure not too dissimilar to the main gun, but avoidable and with special properties. Think of this as modifying your main weapon to suit different purposes, rather than being a sole damage delivery mechanism.
I would not want any of the methods to overtake any other method too heavily. Item weapons are quirky affairs that work to ensure that the Thor you fought last match isn't the same as the Thor you fight this match, and might even require a totally different approach.
Drone items will supplement this in the future, and are an aspect that I plan to extensively overhaul. I have a great plan for drones, just I don't want to get too far ahead of myself while I still have the basics to create.