General Suggestion:
Since unit control is turn based, camera work could be a focus of games using this technique.
Game suggestions:
I'd very much like to see a remake of one of the following:
Battle for Wesnoth (the game was pretty cool, except being terribly balanced. You had to save and load literally every round, sometimes multiple times, or you couldn't make it to the last level, and sometimes, even that didn't do it.)
Ogre Battle
Final Fantasy Tactics
Other games using this style include Baldur's gate and Dragon age (optional). Also, as noted previously, Heroes of Might and Magic and other games used turn based combat. But honestly, despite the quality of BG and DA as games, I'd rather see ogre battle or Wesnoth remade as a mod.
HoMM is great game series. I like it very much. But when I saw this map I remember another great series - Fallout. Is it possible to make mixed game mode like there ? Real time movement, turn based combats ?
@Hamstroman: Using one unit to represent an army wouldn't be that hard. You store a unit group as a variable in an array (UnitGroup[Player#][Group#]), and replace it by a unit when not in combat, then replace that unit with the unit group when in combat. (You could even just hide them to keep vitals, etc, the same).
Also, are you planning on releasing this engine for the public? Please say yes. :) If it gets into general circulation, it'll probably get put into a lot of maps. Just request that people give you proper credit, and I believe any serious map makers will.
Make it public, please? I'm a game designer planning to make a prototype of my card/board game project into a SC2 map and I'd like to use your system, proper credit given, of course.
I have written a game concept based on HoMM series core mechanic. It's basically HoMM set in a cyberpunk universe with ranged combat and cover system. The setting is a metropolis city and there are four factions - the Resistance, the Systech (the big brother), the Mutants and the Machines. I'm not meaning to make this game (too big a project to do anything less than an AAA title), but feel free to browse the design documents for inspiration at my game design portfolio site:
For example, I'd use floor levels in combat scenes. The too-slow-pace out of combat multiplayer wasn't a problem for my concept, as it went with an online community to occupy the player in between turns (and playing in a browser).
As for my card/board game, it's a lot smaller project so that you could play it with a physcial deck of cards and dice. It's on my site as well, and is basically about creatures fighting with chess-like and paper-rock-scissors-mechanics. I'm currently re-making the creature abilites part of the game.
Not to ruin the fun (cause I obviously really love the work that the OP put into this), but I'm curious how many people have attempted turn based combat on the editor? Are there any other cute little TBC engines running around in diapers?
I had started something that kept track of action points, but I was just messing around and never really got anywhere with it. Anyone else?
yeah i've been working on one, but he seems to have beaten me to the punch =(. i was working on making something similar to Advance wars but my job keeps getting in the way and i don't have the time to work on it that often.
I apologize for not having responded to anything in this thread recently, and my only reason for not doing so is pure laziness xD
I've read through the comments and looked up a lot of the games that have been mentioned, and i'm trying to get ideas from them. There have been some very good suggestions and i'll do my best to make use of them. I'll quickly respond to a few of them:
A couple of you suggested adding heroes, and this will without a doubt be implemented. They're gonna work pretty much like they do in HoMM, as in they grant bonuses to your troops and cast spells. Trees and other obstacles will also be added to the battlefield(s) to make them more interesting.
Some progress update stuff:
I've added a couple of more units, but i still need to make their abilities. I've mostly been working on making abilities easier for me to add and generally optimized the system to be easier to use (it is still terribly, terribly messy though)
I'm hoping to have added the hero system and to finish the above systems within about a week. I'm also planning to release a demo at that time. If you wish to use the system in your own map(when i release the demo) you can do so(as long as you give credits), but i warn you, the trigger work is a mess, and not very userfriendly :).
And of course, if you still have more ideas or even some questions, then post it here!
Awesome, I love the heroes saga (replaying Heroes I right now while beta is off :P), I think Heroes III is the best of them all, and that it's the best reference for your gameplay.
The main problem of this type of gameplay is the time. The turns of each player would last too much, so that should be fixed somehow. Some ideas, basing it on H3:
-Turns are real time. This means that all the players move at the same time, and you don't need to wait for someone to finish moving all his heroes to move yours (heroes still have a maximum movement range per turn).
-A turn ends when everyone has selected "end turn" or a small timer expires, so we force players decide fast rather than sit thinking making the game last too much.
Some other things I would change from the H3 adptation:
-Towns are generic, and you update them to your race's castle. This avoids multi-races for single players.
-Units should have a "max units built per turn" feature, instead of "get x available units per week", which is annoying as hell and makes the game slow.
The last problem would be the fights (what you made so far). Having them simultaneously isn't the problem, the problem is that they last too long.
Another option, the one I really like, is to use the combats of H3, but replace the out-combat thing for a RPG-style gameplay, like, say, Golden Sun. Take Golden Sun and replace its combat system with the H3 combat system.
With this, there wouldn't be time problems, because hero movement is completely free, and combats, being 1v1, won't affect the other players. When 2 guys are fighting, simply freeze the involved heroes and disable interacting with them while the fight lasts.
General Suggestion: Since unit control is turn based, camera work could be a focus of games using this technique.
Game suggestions:
I'd very much like to see a remake of one of the following: Battle for Wesnoth (the game was pretty cool, except being terribly balanced. You had to save and load literally every round, sometimes multiple times, or you couldn't make it to the last level, and sometimes, even that didn't do it.)
Ogre Battle
Final Fantasy Tactics
Other games using this style include Baldur's gate and Dragon age (optional). Also, as noted previously, Heroes of Might and Magic and other games used turn based combat. But honestly, despite the quality of BG and DA as games, I'd rather see ogre battle or Wesnoth remade as a mod.
HoMM is great game series. I like it very much. But when I saw this map I remember another great series - Fallout. Is it possible to make mixed game mode like there ? Real time movement, turn based combats ?
@Hamstroman: Using one unit to represent an army wouldn't be that hard. You store a unit group as a variable in an array (UnitGroup[Player#][Group#]), and replace it by a unit when not in combat, then replace that unit with the unit group when in combat. (You could even just hide them to keep vitals, etc, the same).
Also, are you planning on releasing this engine for the public? Please say yes. :) If it gets into general circulation, it'll probably get put into a lot of maps. Just request that people give you proper credit, and I believe any serious map makers will.
Make it public, please? I'm a game designer planning to make a prototype of my card/board game project into a SC2 map and I'd like to use your system, proper credit given, of course.
I have written a game concept based on HoMM series core mechanic. It's basically HoMM set in a cyberpunk universe with ranged combat and cover system. The setting is a metropolis city and there are four factions - the Resistance, the Systech (the big brother), the Mutants and the Machines. I'm not meaning to make this game (too big a project to do anything less than an AAA title), but feel free to browse the design documents for inspiration at my game design portfolio site:
http://aggedesign.se - and scroll down to the Metropolis 2084 project.
For example, I'd use floor levels in combat scenes. The too-slow-pace out of combat multiplayer wasn't a problem for my concept, as it went with an online community to occupy the player in between turns (and playing in a browser).
As for my card/board game, it's a lot smaller project so that you could play it with a physcial deck of cards and dice. It's on my site as well, and is basically about creatures fighting with chess-like and paper-rock-scissors-mechanics. I'm currently re-making the creature abilites part of the game.
Not to ruin the fun (cause I obviously really love the work that the OP put into this), but I'm curious how many people have attempted turn based combat on the editor? Are there any other cute little TBC engines running around in diapers?
I had started something that kept track of action points, but I was just messing around and never really got anywhere with it. Anyone else?
@SquarelyCircle: Go
yeah i've been working on one, but he seems to have beaten me to the punch =(. i was working on making something similar to Advance wars but my job keeps getting in the way and i don't have the time to work on it that often.
I apologize for not having responded to anything in this thread recently, and my only reason for not doing so is pure laziness xD
I've read through the comments and looked up a lot of the games that have been mentioned, and i'm trying to get ideas from them. There have been some very good suggestions and i'll do my best to make use of them. I'll quickly respond to a few of them:
A couple of you suggested adding heroes, and this will without a doubt be implemented. They're gonna work pretty much like they do in HoMM, as in they grant bonuses to your troops and cast spells. Trees and other obstacles will also be added to the battlefield(s) to make them more interesting.
Some progress update stuff:
I've added a couple of more units, but i still need to make their abilities. I've mostly been working on making abilities easier for me to add and generally optimized the system to be easier to use (it is still terribly, terribly messy though)
I'm hoping to have added the hero system and to finish the above systems within about a week. I'm also planning to release a demo at that time. If you wish to use the system in your own map(when i release the demo) you can do so(as long as you give credits), but i warn you, the trigger work is a mess, and not very userfriendly :).
And of course, if you still have more ideas or even some questions, then post it here!
Awesome, I love the heroes saga (replaying Heroes I right now while beta is off :P), I think Heroes III is the best of them all, and that it's the best reference for your gameplay.
The main problem of this type of gameplay is the time. The turns of each player would last too much, so that should be fixed somehow. Some ideas, basing it on H3:
-Turns are real time. This means that all the players move at the same time, and you don't need to wait for someone to finish moving all his heroes to move yours (heroes still have a maximum movement range per turn). -A turn ends when everyone has selected "end turn" or a small timer expires, so we force players decide fast rather than sit thinking making the game last too much.
Some other things I would change from the H3 adptation:
-Towns are generic, and you update them to your race's castle. This avoids multi-races for single players. -Units should have a "max units built per turn" feature, instead of "get x available units per week", which is annoying as hell and makes the game slow.
The last problem would be the fights (what you made so far). Having them simultaneously isn't the problem, the problem is that they last too long.
Another option, the one I really like, is to use the combats of H3, but replace the out-combat thing for a RPG-style gameplay, like, say, Golden Sun. Take Golden Sun and replace its combat system with the H3 combat system.
With this, there wouldn't be time problems, because hero movement is completely free, and combats, being 1v1, won't affect the other players. When 2 guys are fighting, simply freeze the involved heroes and disable interacting with them while the fight lasts.
Pretty much like King's Bounty, really xDDD.
PS: Gotta love that H3 combat music :P.
Sorry for the slow update(and for bumping a kinda old thread), it took a lot longer time than i had expected.
As requested, the map has been uploaded.
Changes from earlier versions are:
I'll try to keep you all updated on the project page. Also, a new video is coming up soon.