Video Added to give a better idea of whats going on
Tech Demo #2
For those who don't know, me and a few other people were working on a map called "zergling burgers". Unfortunately the project was disbanded due to lack of interest. Anyway, I'm thinking about re-starting the project myself and possibly recruiting some fellow mapsters to help out. Anyway....before I get too far into the development process, I want to see if anybody thinks it would be any fun to play... So I'm going to explain a general outline of the map here, and hopefully you guys will let me know what you think! Here goes....
Overview
The game is sort of a fast food chain simulation. The goal will probably be to the 1st to become a millionaire (if you play multiplayer) or just not go bankrupt (single player). Players have 2 main things to manage: Their farms, and their restaurants . The farms will be the main part of the game. Basically theres a lot of empty farmland around the outside of the map and the city is in the middle. Each player starts with 1 farm and 1 restaurant. The farms each have a hatchery, psi disruptor, and butchery inside. The hatchery produces zerglings at a set rate. The psi disruptor keeps the zerglings under control, and the butchery periodically "calls" in some zerglings via psionic messages and kills them. Players can buy new farms, add stuff to existing ones (hatcheries for faster production, butcheries for faster slaughtering, and psi disruptors to increase the farms "population cap". The "pop cap" is essentially how many zerglings your psi disruptor can control before they break free of it's power and go crazy. The 'crazy' zerglings will act like normal zerglings- tearing apart the farm, buildings, fences, and guards. The police will come and clean up any farms that were overrun and rebuild it after a while. Players can manage the restaurants in the city by setting prices, choosing restaurant locations, advertising, etc...
More about farms
There are a LOT of options with the farms. There are drugs you can put in the zergling food, all with different costs and side effects. For example, giving them a certain drug might make them bigger, giving more meat per zergling but also adding hitpoints and use more population- making them much more dangerous to your farm. Players can also breed Hydralisks- and everybody knows hydralisk meat is not only much better tasting, but theres more of it on each hydra. Hydralisk breeding is illegal, though, so doing it is risky. The Police will kill any on sight and fine you if you are discovered.
Police + Illegal actions
Police can be friend or foe depending on your style of play. They patrol the map, looking for anything illegal. Any illegal actions result in a fine, which you can respond to in many ways. You can pay it, pay it and 'cover it up' (preventing the local media from discovering it, therefore protecting your company's fame but costing more $$), or refuse to pay the fine and become wanted. When you are wanted, police will ignore any illegal actions preformed against you by other players. To become un-wanted, you have to pay a much larger fine. Anything illegal you do, regardless of if you pay the fine, will increase your notoriety, meaning police will check on you more often. Players can bribe Police and media outlets to decrease notoriety. Players can also bribe the police to stay away from certain areas. This is good for a variety of reasons- players who want to attack an enemy farm won't want to get discovered can bribe police to stay away from their target area. Players who want to breed Hydralisks might bribe police to stay away from their own property- thus allowing other players to attack them with no penalty. The bribes are also time-based, meaning you need to pay the police daily to keep them away.
Mercs
You can hire mercenaries to do your dirty work or to simply guard your farms and restaurants. You can not directly control them, they just guard key areas. Mercenaries can also be given contracts such as "infect player X's zerglings with a virus" or "destroy the psi disruptor on player X's farms to make the zerglings get out". Again, Police can see these contracts being carried out and will respond appropriately. (Guarding your own property is NOT illegal, only attacking other property or carrying out contracts).
Phew that was a lot. Hopefully somebody had time to read that entire thing. The full map concept document can be found here. PLEASE let me know what you think, and if this could even be fun to play. I appreciate ANY feedback. I want to do everything I can to avoid overly slow gameplay, and so I want to provide stuff to be doing constantly.
Want to make sure the map is as awesome as possible?
Join the team and let your voice be heard! Just send me a PM letting me know you want me to add you to the team and I'll do it. I'm not expecting you to work on the project, so dont worry about commitment to something you aren't too sure about.. I just need feedback & suggestions to make the map the best that it can be. Once I get to a playable version, the team can give feedback on what they think is good and bad.
imo Zerglings/Hydralisks should be ordered from a shipment. Every now and then a new shipment will arrive and you gain more inventory.
For example, your shipment will cost 350 minerals, and you will receive 6 zerglings, and 1 Hydralisk. If you don't meet the payment, you will not receive any of the creatures you ordered. Plus the option for players to expand their horizon by purchasing bigger stores which can hold more customers and feature better upgrades.
Keep the game small to where you don't have to do a lot, such as work with hatcheries. Give players the option to control how much they give out, what they give out, how much they charge. The better businessman will claim victory.
Shipment 1: 6 Zerglings, 1 Hydralisk
1 Zergling can make 5 burgers. 1 Burger can cost a customer 25 Minerals. 1 Zergling = Profit of 125 minerals
1 Hydralisk can make 12 burgers. 1 Burger costs 40 minerals. 1 Hydralisk = Profit of 480 minerals.
Total Profit: 605 minerals (Player made 255 minerals of profit from that one shipment, the next shipment will be larger and the player can sell more food.)
Like you said Hydralisks will be illegal too, so maybe a higher price will be necessary. Since players will make more money off of Hydralisks, then they will be likely to get fined for selling of Hydralisks. If a player reaches 0 minerals, their store closes.
Lol at the logo, I was thinking about adding that to my own design lololol.. And about vegetables, I forgot to add a quick note that bio-domes can be purchased to supply buns, lettuce, etc...
Hey I remember you were on the team! The old team leader was kind enough to promote me to leader status, so if I get this thing going again for real, I will let you know and recruit some more people.
Hmmm...Maybe you could have the option of paying for shipments like that, but if you grow large enough you can get your own farm. Like say you made a burger company in real life. You might start out purchasing meat from a supplier, and if you grow bigger you get your own farm. This could remain an option for the entire game, even though farming would be cheaper once you get it started.
My main concern is making sure there are very few 'dull moments', where you just wait. I'm okay with the game starting out slowly but I want it to quickly pick up pace.
Okay then :D I've already made a sort of 'basic' engine to the game. It just handles zergling spawns, population control within farms, the butchery, Police rescues after zerglings breakouts, and hydralisk breeding. Once I get enough features in to where it looks somewhat decent, I'll make a tech demo and see where to go from there.
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Feel free to Send me a PM if you have any questions/concerns!
When the zerglings become mad and you manage to kill enough of them with your mercs to be below the limit again - will they still be crazy will they be controllable again?
@D1000: Go
As of now, when they break the population limit they immediately destroy the psi generator, which then reduces the limit to 0. But I have not programmed in guards and mercs yet, so I don't know for sure....I'll probably make it so the zerglings prioritize any defensive units over the psi disruptor, and it can go either of 2 ways- zerglings kill the mercs and ruin the farm, or the zerglings are completely exterminated and the farm is "rest"
As of now I was planning on doing the entire thing myself, and possibly making a team for feedback and advice. Similar to how it was set up before we disbanded the project, but with me in charge this time :D
EDIT!
My most recent question for you guys:
How long should one day be (in real time) and how many days should meat last untill it is spoiled and cant be used. Right now I'm thinking 5 minutes of real time per day and 5 days before meat goes bad. Days affect things like bribes with Police (they only last so long), quality of meat, and each day you hear a report from the local news. News might be something like "Tomorrow is Mengsk appreciation day- the day we all get off of work to enjoy the wonderful world Mensgsk provided us with!" And since its a holidy, you can expect more customers. Or a plague might come and wipe out all the zerglings or hydarlisks in the map. You never know. :D
Love the concept. I'd totally play it too, but I'm not sure about the masses, I'm skeptical that most people might not be able to appreciate it due to its "complexities". It's a very cynical viewpoint I know, but unless you can find some way to present the map such that its very easy to learn and is fun at the same time, it might be a kinda hard when you take on the popularity system =/
I am trying my hardest to make this "noob friendly"...
Current Measures I'm taking to promote noob friendly ness
1) Playing the game in single player mode gives you the option of a tutorial
2) Every so often in-game, random tips will be displayed in the bottom.
I think the tutorial is enough by itself. Anyway....I'm getting closer to a version with enough content for a video. Right now I'm programming the country area and not focusing too much on the city and restaurant management. I'm working on a feature to allow you to bribe the police by paying 500 bucks and then placing a "beacon" on the map. The beacon will prevent police from entering the area surrounding it but only lasts 24 hours (one day is 300 seconds as of now...of course the game runs at 1.5 seconds per real life second, so thats more like 200 seconds, I think...not 100% sure). The beacon is also invisible to other players so they can't see where other players have placed their beacons. I also added the police patrols, which is simply a bunch of banshee squads that fly around, monitoring the map for anything illegal. Today I also added a system for meat quality. Basically, when you kill a zergling it is stored as 1 pound of "fresh meat". After a day it becomes "1 day old" and then "2 days old"...Any meat over 5 days old is spoiled and thrown out. Players can check how old their oldest meat is in the menus. I plan on making it so that the restaurants automatically serve the older meat before newer meat, so players won't have to worry about that....Anyway once I finish up some more stuff I'll have a video out. Probably some time this weekend.
Still not sure if this will be finished....I'm not sure if it would be fun to play. Anyways I am currently uploading a quick little mini-demo video to show you guys a little bit of what I've made so far. Let me hear your feedback! (I'll add the video here once its uploaded)
Like I said, I'm still not sure if I should finish this. I really don't know if it would be any fun at all, and I have a sort of "alternate idea" that is a 'backup' map in case I cancel this one. Either way, let me know what you think about the video. (It only covers the farm system. The restaurant system will be next on my To-do list if I continue working on this. )
edit- Hey saw this got newsed. Thanks progammer :D
If you don't continue this map, you will find yourself strapped to a chair in front of a computer all day working on this map until its finished. WITHOUT FOOD TO EAT, AND NO BATHROOM BREAKS!
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edit- I am not currently working on this. I may pick the project up later.
team page: http://www.sc2mapster.com/teams/zergling-burgers/
Video Added to give a better idea of whats going on
Tech Demo #2
For those who don't know, me and a few other people were working on a map called "zergling burgers". Unfortunately the project was disbanded due to lack of interest. Anyway, I'm thinking about re-starting the project myself and possibly recruiting some fellow mapsters to help out. Anyway....before I get too far into the development process, I want to see if anybody thinks it would be any fun to play... So I'm going to explain a general outline of the map here, and hopefully you guys will let me know what you think! Here goes....
Overview
The game is sort of a fast food chain simulation. The goal will probably be to the 1st to become a millionaire (if you play multiplayer) or just not go bankrupt (single player). Players have 2 main things to manage: Their farms, and their restaurants . The farms will be the main part of the game. Basically theres a lot of empty farmland around the outside of the map and the city is in the middle. Each player starts with 1 farm and 1 restaurant. The farms each have a hatchery, psi disruptor, and butchery inside. The hatchery produces zerglings at a set rate. The psi disruptor keeps the zerglings under control, and the butchery periodically "calls" in some zerglings via psionic messages and kills them. Players can buy new farms, add stuff to existing ones (hatcheries for faster production, butcheries for faster slaughtering, and psi disruptors to increase the farms "population cap". The "pop cap" is essentially how many zerglings your psi disruptor can control before they break free of it's power and go crazy. The 'crazy' zerglings will act like normal zerglings- tearing apart the farm, buildings, fences, and guards. The police will come and clean up any farms that were overrun and rebuild it after a while. Players can manage the restaurants in the city by setting prices, choosing restaurant locations, advertising, etc...
More about farms
There are a LOT of options with the farms. There are drugs you can put in the zergling food, all with different costs and side effects. For example, giving them a certain drug might make them bigger, giving more meat per zergling but also adding hitpoints and use more population- making them much more dangerous to your farm. Players can also breed Hydralisks- and everybody knows hydralisk meat is not only much better tasting, but theres more of it on each hydra. Hydralisk breeding is illegal, though, so doing it is risky. The Police will kill any on sight and fine you if you are discovered.
Police + Illegal actions
Police can be friend or foe depending on your style of play. They patrol the map, looking for anything illegal. Any illegal actions result in a fine, which you can respond to in many ways. You can pay it, pay it and 'cover it up' (preventing the local media from discovering it, therefore protecting your company's fame but costing more $$), or refuse to pay the fine and become wanted. When you are wanted, police will ignore any illegal actions preformed against you by other players. To become un-wanted, you have to pay a much larger fine. Anything illegal you do, regardless of if you pay the fine, will increase your notoriety, meaning police will check on you more often. Players can bribe Police and media outlets to decrease notoriety. Players can also bribe the police to stay away from certain areas. This is good for a variety of reasons- players who want to attack an enemy farm won't want to get discovered can bribe police to stay away from their target area. Players who want to breed Hydralisks might bribe police to stay away from their own property- thus allowing other players to attack them with no penalty. The bribes are also time-based, meaning you need to pay the police daily to keep them away.
Mercs
You can hire mercenaries to do your dirty work or to simply guard your farms and restaurants. You can not directly control them, they just guard key areas. Mercenaries can also be given contracts such as "infect player X's zerglings with a virus" or "destroy the psi disruptor on player X's farms to make the zerglings get out". Again, Police can see these contracts being carried out and will respond appropriately. (Guarding your own property is NOT illegal, only attacking other property or carrying out contracts).
Phew that was a lot. Hopefully somebody had time to read that entire thing. The full map concept document can be found here. PLEASE let me know what you think, and if this could even be fun to play. I appreciate ANY feedback. I want to do everything I can to avoid overly slow gameplay, and so I want to provide stuff to be doing constantly.
Want to make sure the map is as awesome as possible?
Join the team and let your voice be heard! Just send me a PM letting me know you want me to add you to the team and I'll do it. I'm not expecting you to work on the project, so dont worry about commitment to something you aren't too sure about.. I just need feedback & suggestions to make the map the best that it can be. Once I get to a playable version, the team can give feedback on what they think is good and bad.
Team Forum (only members can view)- http://www.sc2mapster.com/teams/zergling-burgers/forum/
Sounds epic, fun and unique
I'd totally play
@zeldarules28: Go
Too bad I am a Vegetarian, haha. =P
I've long since thought this was a good idea, and I've considered picking it up myself more than once. I encourage you to go for it!
It's a good idea.
imo Zerglings/Hydralisks should be ordered from a shipment. Every now and then a new shipment will arrive and you gain more inventory.
For example, your shipment will cost 350 minerals, and you will receive 6 zerglings, and 1 Hydralisk. If you don't meet the payment, you will not receive any of the creatures you ordered. Plus the option for players to expand their horizon by purchasing bigger stores which can hold more customers and feature better upgrades.
Keep the game small to where you don't have to do a lot, such as work with hatcheries. Give players the option to control how much they give out, what they give out, how much they charge. The better businessman will claim victory.
Shipment 1: 6 Zerglings, 1 Hydralisk 1 Zergling can make 5 burgers. 1 Burger can cost a customer 25 Minerals. 1 Zergling = Profit of 125 minerals 1 Hydralisk can make 12 burgers. 1 Burger costs 40 minerals. 1 Hydralisk = Profit of 480 minerals. Total Profit: 605 minerals (Player made 255 minerals of profit from that one shipment, the next shipment will be larger and the player can sell more food.)
Like you said Hydralisks will be illegal too, so maybe a higher price will be necessary. Since players will make more money off of Hydralisks, then they will be likely to get fined for selling of Hydralisks. If a player reaches 0 minerals, their store closes.
Just some ideas.
@Kyajin: Go
K.
@Bronxsy: Go
Lol at the logo, I was thinking about adding that to my own design lololol.. And about vegetables, I forgot to add a quick note that bio-domes can be purchased to supply buns, lettuce, etc...
@jaminv: Go
Hey I remember you were on the team! The old team leader was kind enough to promote me to leader status, so if I get this thing going again for real, I will let you know and recruit some more people.
@Blackveiled: Go
Hmmm...Maybe you could have the option of paying for shipments like that, but if you grow large enough you can get your own farm. Like say you made a burger company in real life. You might start out purchasing meat from a supplier, and if you grow bigger you get your own farm. This could remain an option for the entire game, even though farming would be cheaper once you get it started.
My main concern is making sure there are very few 'dull moments', where you just wait. I'm okay with the game starting out slowly but I want it to quickly pick up pace.
Sounds fun! I say go for it. :-)
Sounds very unique and fun. I'd love to play this.
If you think you can pull it off, I'd say go for it. I'd be willing to help in my spare time if you need.
Your idea sounds like a lot of fun. If this game came out, I would love to play it.
Okay then :D I've already made a sort of 'basic' engine to the game. It just handles zergling spawns, population control within farms, the butchery, Police rescues after zerglings breakouts, and hydralisk breeding. Once I get enough features in to where it looks somewhat decent, I'll make a tech demo and see where to go from there.
Interesting idea, just one question:
When the zerglings become mad and you manage to kill enough of them with your mercs to be below the limit again - will they still be crazy will they be controllable again?
If you need someone to make dialogs, trigger or generally help out in the trigger editor, just send me a PM :)
@D1000: Go As of now, when they break the population limit they immediately destroy the psi generator, which then reduces the limit to 0. But I have not programmed in guards and mercs yet, so I don't know for sure....I'll probably make it so the zerglings prioritize any defensive units over the psi disruptor, and it can go either of 2 ways- zerglings kill the mercs and ruin the farm, or the zerglings are completely exterminated and the farm is "rest"
@wOlfLisK: Go
As of now I was planning on doing the entire thing myself, and possibly making a team for feedback and advice. Similar to how it was set up before we disbanded the project, but with me in charge this time :D
EDIT!
My most recent question for you guys:
How long should one day be (in real time) and how many days should meat last untill it is spoiled and cant be used. Right now I'm thinking 5 minutes of real time per day and 5 days before meat goes bad. Days affect things like bribes with Police (they only last so long), quality of meat, and each day you hear a report from the local news. News might be something like "Tomorrow is Mengsk appreciation day- the day we all get off of work to enjoy the wonderful world Mensgsk provided us with!" And since its a holidy, you can expect more customers. Or a plague might come and wipe out all the zerglings or hydarlisks in the map. You never know. :D
Love the concept. I'd totally play it too, but I'm not sure about the masses, I'm skeptical that most people might not be able to appreciate it due to its "complexities". It's a very cynical viewpoint I know, but unless you can find some way to present the map such that its very easy to learn and is fun at the same time, it might be a kinda hard when you take on the popularity system =/
I am trying my hardest to make this "noob friendly"...
Current Measures I'm taking to promote noob friendly ness
1) Playing the game in single player mode gives you the option of a tutorial
2) Every so often in-game, random tips will be displayed in the bottom.
I think the tutorial is enough by itself. Anyway....I'm getting closer to a version with enough content for a video. Right now I'm programming the country area and not focusing too much on the city and restaurant management. I'm working on a feature to allow you to bribe the police by paying 500 bucks and then placing a "beacon" on the map. The beacon will prevent police from entering the area surrounding it but only lasts 24 hours (one day is 300 seconds as of now...of course the game runs at 1.5 seconds per real life second, so thats more like 200 seconds, I think...not 100% sure). The beacon is also invisible to other players so they can't see where other players have placed their beacons. I also added the police patrols, which is simply a bunch of banshee squads that fly around, monitoring the map for anything illegal. Today I also added a system for meat quality. Basically, when you kill a zergling it is stored as 1 pound of "fresh meat". After a day it becomes "1 day old" and then "2 days old"...Any meat over 5 days old is spoiled and thrown out. Players can check how old their oldest meat is in the menus. I plan on making it so that the restaurants automatically serve the older meat before newer meat, so players won't have to worry about that....Anyway once I finish up some more stuff I'll have a video out. Probably some time this weekend.
Added some screenshots. :D
Maybe a possibility to name your restaurant?
lol good idea.
edit
---Still not sure if this will be finished....I'm not sure if it would be fun to play. Anyways I am currently uploading a quick little mini-demo video to show you guys a little bit of what I've made so far. Let me hear your feedback! (I'll add the video here once its uploaded)
video added (in 1st post)
Like I said, I'm still not sure if I should finish this. I really don't know if it would be any fun at all, and I have a sort of "alternate idea" that is a 'backup' map in case I cancel this one. Either way, let me know what you think about the video. (It only covers the farm system. The restaurant system will be next on my To-do list if I continue working on this. )
edit- Hey saw this got newsed. Thanks progammer :D
@zeldarules28: Go
If you don't continue this map, you will find yourself strapped to a chair in front of a computer all day working on this map until its finished. WITHOUT FOOD TO EAT, AND NO BATHROOM BREAKS!