This is a preview of a map i've been working on, on and off, for a while. Although i wont have time to work on it for a couple of weeks i thought it was time to post something and get some feedback.
Gameplay
The gameplay is something like a final fantasy style game, though it is much closer to the old snes game "chrono trigger". The combat is ATB-turn based which means each character can input a command at any time, but needs to wait for a progress bar to fill after a completed action.
One of the main mechanics of the gameplay are "group attacks" which is an attack that takes the turns of several characters to execute. In singleplayer only one character needs to execute the attack for it to start (if requirements are met), but in multiplayer all players involved must execute the same attack for it to start.
The idea behind the game was to make a multiplayer ff-style game. I've also worked hard to make sure that the gameplay is "free", that is everyone can move around and do battles as they like with their own hero, but teamplay is always rewarded.
Story
Not much to say about this yet, but i definitely want to have it play out in the starcraft universe, just maybe on some remote planet far from the normal sc2 storyline.
Because of the size restrictions of sc2 maps i think i want to make a few story driven coop chapters and perhaps end that with an open map that will be more orpg style and with some sort of arena where people can compare their chars to eachother.
Also this might be good place to take suggestions for a name, was thinking of something neutral like "The Colonies of X" but open to any suggestion.
Your UI could use some improvements. Make it more appealing. Also you could add rotating camera, to give a nice touch to the battle. You should take a look at voliars revenge and there was some other one who had really cool UI and samekind of system. Alltought It had a nice different feeling when you had to choose the tects and you had icons on them (most only have text).
I have played chrono trigger and the system is good for SINGLE player. Im not quite sure if average bnet user can/wants to use combined attacks. It wasnt all that clear to me how you combined the attacks and was that action bar really useful? (I guess its a nice addition to multiplayer).
Well I dont want to sound all negative. You got some things right. The battle skills looked really good, they seem to be really top notch and fun to watch. The stone zealot coming from the ground was truly epic :).
I think its a good start for a project. It atleast looks better to me than facility 17 (which was quite popular for some time). So keep up the good work. If you need testers Im happy to help on EU servers.
Thanks for the feedback. Yea, i know the UI could use a makeover, but for the moment that is pretty low on the to-do list. Out of curiousity, what part specificly did you think looks bad (or worst), and what looks alright?
About the system, i know it might not be for everyone to have such a slow system where you have to wait for other players and coordinate with them. But thats the whole reason i added a singleplayer mode, because it feels like a safer bet. That being said, i still want to try and make it work for multiplayer. I know this game might not end up working well with the popularity system, but it just wouldent be fun for me if i dident feel i was making something different.
The group attack system works differently in multi vs singleplayer so it might not be clear from watching this video how it works. In multiplayer, the group attacks work by adding any player who chooses a group attack to a "queue" that corresponds to that attack. They remain there as long as they dont take another action and when the requirements for that attack is fullfilled (for example, 1 marauder, 1 high templar present) the required players are taken from that queue and starts the attack. And that is why i have the dialog to the upper right, so that others can see which players are queued up for what, and what class they are.
It really is easier to understand in game than it is to explain :P. The hard part is probably to acctually get people to want to coordinate with others.
Maybe adding different type of text to dialogs or change the buttons to look better somehow. Now it looks just like every other dialog (Iv been playing around with dialogs so much it looks boring). And it kinda bothers me that the bar is so wide, even tough you are only using like half of it.
Maybe the UI doesnt matter that much, it seems to serve its purpose. So yea...I wouldnt call it an big issue.
The gameplay is something like a final fantasy style game, though it is much closer to the old snes game "chrono trigger".
It doesn't look like FF in any way, IMO. As soon as I watched the video it brought back memories of Chrono Trigger before I even read your description of the project, and I think you shouldn't compare what you're doing with any FF whatsoever. It's a 100% pure clone of Chrono Trigger, obviously, and I think it's better this way. There are so much FF fans that it's getting boring, and there are various FF clones for SC2 already in progress anyway.
With that said, I'm not the only one to think the UI could be better somehow. But as you said, it will be done later. I really loved the 2 or 3 guys combining their force in CT to do massive damage, I'm glad you managed to get it to work in your project. But I don't like how you select a target for your spells right now, it doesn't seem intuitive at all (the whole process of using keyboard to switch/attack target is just... well, it's wrong!).
I don't see the point either of having all these things in the Command Card of your hero, even if it is for WASD movement I think controlling your hero with the mouse is far more than enough (you don't need to dodge anything accurately in a RPG like CT, and even if you do any average player can do it with the mouse). WASD movement will most likely cause issues on Bnet, if you can avoid using it I'd suggest you do.
Maybe you should add a bar on the enemy units to show which are about to attack too... I'm pretty sure there was something like this in CT, you could know which unit was going to attack next, so you could focus on beating it before it does. And enemy units were not standing on a spot, which is interesting IMO because it gives a bit more life in the battle, and stress to the player (when he gets surrounded). I assume you already thought of having surprise attacks too (I mean enemies attacking from behind), with a bonus to their initiative of something like that?
Anyway, it looks very promising so far and I'd love to play a CT clone in SC2 someday... :)
One of my favorite parts about chrono trigger battles was the way the units moved around on the battlefield through the fight. You couldn’t control which way they where gunna go but it made the fights look so cool. I always wanted to be able to knock the mobs into stuff in the background.
Great job so far but do you think you can get them to do more melee and bounce of each other a little bit?
It doesn't look like FF in any way, IMO. As soon as I watched the video it brought back memories of Chrono Trigger before I even read your description of the project, and I think you shouldn't compare what you're doing with any FF whatsoever. It's a 100% pure clone of Chrono Trigger, obviously, and I think it's better this way. There are so much FF fans that it's getting boring, and there are various FF clones for SC2 already in progress anyway.
Hah, agree. I just thought that was what people knew, guess i underestimated the sc2mapster community.
Quote:
I really loved the 2 or 3 guys combining their force in CT to do massive damage, I'm glad you managed to get it to work in your project. But I don't like how you select a target for your spells right now, it doesn't seem intuitive at all (the whole process of using keyboard to switch/attack target is just... well, it's wrong!).
I thought as much myself. But there are both advantages and disadvantages to using keyboard. I personally like just only keyboard because i think it feels more relaxed. A downside is you use "left" and "right" buttons to change targets, but left and right is not always left or right. Also since enemies are auto-assigned numbers for normal fights they dont always get ordered in any foreseeable order.
Quote:
I don't see the point either of having all these things in the Command Card of your hero, even if it is for WASD movement I think controlling your hero with the mouse is far more than enough (you don't need to dodge anything accurately in a RPG like CT, and even if you do any average player can do it with the mouse). WASD movement will most likely cause issues on Bnet, if you can avoid using it I'd suggest you do.
As programmer pointed out, that is ye' old WASD movement, almost. I dont really use it for acctually moving the units, but for the keyboard controls of the UI.
Quote:
One of my favorite parts about chrono trigger battles was the way the units moved around on the battlefield through the fight. You couldn’t control which way they where gunna go but it made the fights look so cool. I always wanted to be able to knock the mobs into stuff in the background.
It might be possible but there are a few problems with it. Firstly, there are a few more things i need to consider in spells if length and angles between units can differ on a much higher scale than now. Secondly, for multiplayer games it will probably get a bit crowded if 6 players (which is the maximum) are going to move around at once. And lastly there just does not exist any animation that makes moving around while facing your target look good :P
I like the feedback so far, keep it comming :)
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This is a preview of a map i've been working on, on and off, for a while. Although i wont have time to work on it for a couple of weeks i thought it was time to post something and get some feedback.
Gameplay
The gameplay is something like a final fantasy style game, though it is much closer to the old snes game "chrono trigger". The combat is ATB-turn based which means each character can input a command at any time, but needs to wait for a progress bar to fill after a completed action.
One of the main mechanics of the gameplay are "group attacks" which is an attack that takes the turns of several characters to execute. In singleplayer only one character needs to execute the attack for it to start (if requirements are met), but in multiplayer all players involved must execute the same attack for it to start.
The idea behind the game was to make a multiplayer ff-style game. I've also worked hard to make sure that the gameplay is "free", that is everyone can move around and do battles as they like with their own hero, but teamplay is always rewarded.
Story
Not much to say about this yet, but i definitely want to have it play out in the starcraft universe, just maybe on some remote planet far from the normal sc2 storyline.
Because of the size restrictions of sc2 maps i think i want to make a few story driven coop chapters and perhaps end that with an open map that will be more orpg style and with some sort of arena where people can compare their chars to eachother.
Also this might be good place to take suggestions for a name, was thinking of something neutral like "The Colonies of X" but open to any suggestion.
battle system look really good like the group skill idea and the effect's look really good
Your UI could use some improvements. Make it more appealing. Also you could add rotating camera, to give a nice touch to the battle. You should take a look at voliars revenge and there was some other one who had really cool UI and samekind of system. Alltought It had a nice different feeling when you had to choose the tects and you had icons on them (most only have text).
I have played chrono trigger and the system is good for SINGLE player. Im not quite sure if average bnet user can/wants to use combined attacks. It wasnt all that clear to me how you combined the attacks and was that action bar really useful? (I guess its a nice addition to multiplayer).
Well I dont want to sound all negative. You got some things right. The battle skills looked really good, they seem to be really top notch and fun to watch. The stone zealot coming from the ground was truly epic :).
I think its a good start for a project. It atleast looks better to me than facility 17 (which was quite popular for some time). So keep up the good work. If you need testers Im happy to help on EU servers.
Thanks for the feedback. Yea, i know the UI could use a makeover, but for the moment that is pretty low on the to-do list. Out of curiousity, what part specificly did you think looks bad (or worst), and what looks alright?
About the system, i know it might not be for everyone to have such a slow system where you have to wait for other players and coordinate with them. But thats the whole reason i added a singleplayer mode, because it feels like a safer bet. That being said, i still want to try and make it work for multiplayer. I know this game might not end up working well with the popularity system, but it just wouldent be fun for me if i dident feel i was making something different.
The group attack system works differently in multi vs singleplayer so it might not be clear from watching this video how it works. In multiplayer, the group attacks work by adding any player who chooses a group attack to a "queue" that corresponds to that attack. They remain there as long as they dont take another action and when the requirements for that attack is fullfilled (for example, 1 marauder, 1 high templar present) the required players are taken from that queue and starts the attack. And that is why i have the dialog to the upper right, so that others can see which players are queued up for what, and what class they are.
It really is easier to understand in game than it is to explain :P. The hard part is probably to acctually get people to want to coordinate with others.
Maybe adding different type of text to dialogs or change the buttons to look better somehow. Now it looks just like every other dialog (Iv been playing around with dialogs so much it looks boring). And it kinda bothers me that the bar is so wide, even tough you are only using like half of it.
Maybe the UI doesnt matter that much, it seems to serve its purpose. So yea...I wouldnt call it an big issue.
It doesn't look like FF in any way, IMO. As soon as I watched the video it brought back memories of Chrono Trigger before I even read your description of the project, and I think you shouldn't compare what you're doing with any FF whatsoever. It's a 100% pure clone of Chrono Trigger, obviously, and I think it's better this way. There are so much FF fans that it's getting boring, and there are various FF clones for SC2 already in progress anyway.
With that said, I'm not the only one to think the UI could be better somehow. But as you said, it will be done later. I really loved the 2 or 3 guys combining their force in CT to do massive damage, I'm glad you managed to get it to work in your project. But I don't like how you select a target for your spells right now, it doesn't seem intuitive at all (the whole process of using keyboard to switch/attack target is just... well, it's wrong!).
I don't see the point either of having all these things in the Command Card of your hero, even if it is for WASD movement I think controlling your hero with the mouse is far more than enough (you don't need to dodge anything accurately in a RPG like CT, and even if you do any average player can do it with the mouse). WASD movement will most likely cause issues on Bnet, if you can avoid using it I'd suggest you do.
Maybe you should add a bar on the enemy units to show which are about to attack too... I'm pretty sure there was something like this in CT, you could know which unit was going to attack next, so you could focus on beating it before it does. And enemy units were not standing on a spot, which is interesting IMO because it gives a bit more life in the battle, and stress to the player (when he gets surrounded). I assume you already thought of having surprise attacks too (I mean enemies attacking from behind), with a bonus to their initiative of something like that?
Anyway, it looks very promising so far and I'd love to play a CT clone in SC2 someday... :)
Looking cool, I'm a fan of turn based game too. The unit's command card as shown earlier looks awfully familiar too.
Btw i like the fact that you're being too s3rius on the forum avatar.
One of my favorite parts about chrono trigger battles was the way the units moved around on the battlefield through the fight. You couldn’t control which way they where gunna go but it made the fights look so cool. I always wanted to be able to knock the mobs into stuff in the background.
Great job so far but do you think you can get them to do more melee and bounce of each other a little bit?
Hah, agree. I just thought that was what people knew, guess i underestimated the sc2mapster community.
I thought as much myself. But there are both advantages and disadvantages to using keyboard. I personally like just only keyboard because i think it feels more relaxed. A downside is you use "left" and "right" buttons to change targets, but left and right is not always left or right. Also since enemies are auto-assigned numbers for normal fights they dont always get ordered in any foreseeable order.
As programmer pointed out, that is ye' old WASD movement, almost. I dont really use it for acctually moving the units, but for the keyboard controls of the UI.
It might be possible but there are a few problems with it. Firstly, there are a few more things i need to consider in spells if length and angles between units can differ on a much higher scale than now. Secondly, for multiplayer games it will probably get a bit crowded if 6 players (which is the maximum) are going to move around at once. And lastly there just does not exist any animation that makes moving around while facing your target look good :P
I like the feedback so far, keep it comming :)