For the tank... Something that slows down time in a certain area?
I have this awesome spell that slows down time in a bubble the closer you get to a unit, and another spell that flips projectiles back and launches them back at their owner. Those are reserved for the Protoss tank though!
Just as an example, these are some of the mech abilities;
Tier 1
Harpoon. Drags a target unit to the mech.
Snare. Snares targets in a target area by 30% for 10 seconds. 15 sec cd.
Tier 2
Power Disruption. Aura. Snares all targets in large radius by 25% for 15 seconds. 30 sec cd.
Decay. Deals 8% health to enemy units in targeted aoe radius.
Tier 3
Thumper. Deals 10% health to nearby units per second. Lasts 8 seconds. Snares targets by 50%.
Repulsion Field. Stuns + Knocks back all nearby enemies.
Tier 4
Overload. 3 second cast. Deals 50% of a unit's health as damage. Stuns for 2 sec.
Shock Vortex. Creates a vortex on the ground. Will use Repulsion Field on any unit if they get too close.
Tier 5
Energy Feedback. Creates a consuming vortex in the target area. Deals 15% of target's health as damage per second. Units damaged by the vortex will cause the vortex to grow in size and effect.
Seeker Barrage. Launches a seeker missile every 0.2 second for 2 seconds against a random unit.
I need a few more for the tank (defensive style) and the fighter (movement style).
All the turret weapons have drawbacks. All weapons do, even.
Non turret weapons require you to stop moving in order to fire. Their counter is getting out of the way.
Cannon Turret; Decent range but the projectile is dodgeable. It produces a decent sized splash so it's usually going to do some damage, even if a player moves. To counter this, getting close to a unit reduces their available reaction time.
Napalm Turret; Deals some small amount of initial damage but leaves a patch of flame on the ground. The faster you move out of the fire, the less damage you will take. Furthermore, the patches of flame can adjust which parts of the battlefield can be in play by introducing a player spawned environmental hazard.
When I designed each weapon, I wanted each to have a counter AND a way to counter that counter. To use the cannon as an example, the counter is to get out the way. The counter-counter is to get closer to give them less time to react. The flipside of this is that you will be more vulnerable to their weaponry and thus, hopefully, skill will show.
The 3 vehicle classes I chose to work on first were tank, mech and fighter.
Fighter abilities are mostly complete (though more suggestions are always good because I'm not afraid to replace what I have). They are speed and utility orientated. Some examples;
Target Painter
Micro Warp Drive (redesigned to be a targetted directional speed boost)
Intercept (Zooms to target. Snares target if enemy, protects target if ally)
Freedom (Protects from all snares for 10 sec).
Mech. Heavy on firepower and movement speed debuffs.
Harpoon (Drags a target to you.)
Repulsion Field (Stuns + Knocks back all nearby enemies.)
Snare (same as original)
Power Disruption (Aura ability. Applies a small snare to all targets in range. Has a duration and a shortish cd.)
Overdrive
Seeker Missile (Yes I know I said no "deals x damage" spells, but the seeker missile is too cool. This might be replaced by a turret weapon, but interesting "deals x damage" spells are welcome.)
Tank. Defensive, protects allies.
Containment Field
Deployable Shield (Drops a shield, protects allies within, dies when it's taken too much damage).
Smoke Bomb (Reduces damage taken by 75% for any unit, friend or foe, within the cloud).
Defensive Matrix (Gives 40% base health as shields for a short time).
yea a step by step tutorial would take to long. :P
Any updates Eiv?
13 functional and unique weapons;
Cannon Turret
Gauss Turret
Missile Turret
Ion Cannon Turret
Napalm Turret
Flak Turret
Nuclear Silo
Ventorini Beam
Point Defence Turret
Munitions Disruptor
Fighter Drone Bay
Bomber Drone Bay
Logistics Drone Bay
Turrets all have their own internal AI. They score their own kills (and I could actually make the turrets level up individually, but not for now) and their kills are recorded on their kill display the same as any other unit. This is all done in data. The turrets really do shoot out of your vehicle. Weapons without a turret tag are controlled by you. Weapons with the tag will use their own AI.
I have a working "talent" system that uses the SC2 UI. You get talent points as you upgrade your vehicle. You may select 1 of 3 abilities per talent tier. There are 5 talent tiers per vehicle class, and there will be 3 classes on release. 3 Protoss classes and unique Protoss weaponry will be the first major update, though I've learnt my lesson with the old Catalyst and this won't happen before what I already have is absolutely polished, balanced, intuitive and fully functional.
Passive income is gone and replaced with a new, cleaner system. Zone control is revamped and again, replaced with a cleaner working version. This whole thing is a lot of work, but I expect a beta version to be ready sometime next week. I'm serious when I say there is nothing left of the original. Everything has been rebuilt and replaced from a blank slate map.
One aspect that I could use help with is vehicle abilities. They must be % based and generally not conflict with weaponry (so no "Fires a shot, dealing x damage" spells). I'm heavily against crowd control spells, I'm reluctant to even add root spells. Immunity abilities should come with a severe drawback. Anything else is fine.
This is a tech demo. Why is it a tech demo? Well, there are 2 triggers involved in this presentation. Both only affect the camera.
Weapons are built inside your hull. They fire from inside your hull. Drone factories throw drones out of your hull directly. There are no triggers involved with drone production; each factory will produce exactly 1 of it's drone and only replace it upon it's death. When produced, the drone will emerge at your vehicle. Again, no triggers.
Why is this important? Well, simple. It removes every single limit that I had in the original Catalyst. Sometime next week I'll be demoing the new ability system and a few instances of group combat and the new PvP emphasis on the whole system.
I'm giving up the map, yes. Though I'm going to hold on to the Catalyst name and the gameplay style. I'm busy remaking the whole thing. The style is different, and the engine is much cleaner and allows for far more creativity on my part as well as the players. I'm taking everything I learnt, and removing all those bad corners I turned. I'll take my time, and be more careful and thoughtful than I have been in the past. This has been one hell of a learning experience, and I want to show you what I, and the editor, can do. I don't aim to disappoint!
I'm not ready to give up the reins yet. Maybe in the future, but for now I want to hold onto the name. It'll help me in the future when it comes to testing my new creation, I hope.
I prioritize things that I enjoy. I'm not a servant to anyone. I don't get paid. I go out and think, wow, wouldn't it be damn cool if I made your unit's shields cover other units? Then I go home and make it happen. I don't go home and think "Oh I need to sort out this, this and this...", perhaps it is the "wrong prioritization", but I'd have quit mapping years ago if I took that attitude. I clearly need a coding minion...
Catalyst will return, but this "experiment" has expired.
Thank you to everyone for the tons of amazing feedback. Hopefully I can return the favour sometime in the future. While this is a failure, the things I have learnt are priceless. I'll be back.
Basically I was going to make 5 variants of each ability, and hide the buttons on the command card. So if you had an ability in ability slot 1, it would become available in the first ability slot of your vehicle. Repeat for all 5. However, the command card has a cap of 32 buttons, and your vehicle has a cap of 32 unique abilities.
Well on the idea of the income system, I haven't played the map as I am in the US, but I am assuming that your system uses the dota esque idea where when you kill an enemy tank, the owner of the killing unit gets all the income.
An idea is to use a function which gives the owner of the killing unit some higher percentage of the kill reward minerals, maybe 40%, and then splits the other 60% among the remaining 4 players (15% for each in this case). If you look at how DotA worked, the "Carry" heroes always got more gold in the end than the support ones, but that was the intent. You have support to give your best mech all the tools it needs to demolish the other team (slowing, disabling, healing, etc. etc.) so in this sense, you'd still be giving the killing unit a benefit over the other players, but you are also still distributing the minerals around the team, so they don't fall too far behind.
It's actually just a passive income system with an exponential formula that increases with time. There's other ways to get income but this is where 95% of your minerals come from. It's dull and lacks depth.
I was going to use a system for turrets like you describe, just with custom values rather than a variable.
I don't want to add a point defence drone type unit simply because it would only work against cannons and missiles. I might add an ability that allows you to blow up all missiles in a radius on a lengthy cd though.
Deployable items, I'm going to add some deployable shield that protects units under it, similar to the shield projector except it would absorb all damage and simply die after it's taken too much damage. The repair tower sounds nice, think I'd have to keep it an out of combat thing though otherwise it'd just be a more tedious version of the armour/shield repair items.
I've had a few requests for the method you describe, I'll try and get it working. I have a few ideas on how to do it without using monster triggers, hopefully they work!
As stated above, I removed the energy cost on all non-repair abilities in the beta build so hopefully that will address the afterburner issue, though perhaps not the way you describe! I don't think static energy costs work in a game like this, it just makes cheap abilities the only ones usable at early-game, and one big design goal I have is to make every item useful at all stages of the game.
Updated the beta build. Finished off the terrain to a more playable state, fixed a few things but more importantly, I've removed the energy cost on all abilities bar the repair ones. The reason for this is that they aren't used enough early game, and late game the cost is too trivial to matter. To ensure abilities are used at all stages of the game, their only real cost is now time.
Oh and aircraft don't need to decelerate to use the offensive abilities anymore.
I have this awesome spell that slows down time in a bubble the closer you get to a unit, and another spell that flips projectiles back and launches them back at their owner. Those are reserved for the Protoss tank though!
Just as an example, these are some of the mech abilities;
Tier 1
Harpoon. Drags a target unit to the mech.
Snare. Snares targets in a target area by 30% for 10 seconds. 15 sec cd.
Tier 2
Power Disruption. Aura. Snares all targets in large radius by 25% for 15 seconds. 30 sec cd.
Decay. Deals 8% health to enemy units in targeted aoe radius.
Tier 3
Thumper. Deals 10% health to nearby units per second. Lasts 8 seconds. Snares targets by 50%.
Repulsion Field. Stuns + Knocks back all nearby enemies.
Tier 4
Overload. 3 second cast. Deals 50% of a unit's health as damage. Stuns for 2 sec.
Shock Vortex. Creates a vortex on the ground. Will use Repulsion Field on any unit if they get too close.
Tier 5
Energy Feedback. Creates a consuming vortex in the target area. Deals 15% of target's health as damage per second. Units damaged by the vortex will cause the vortex to grow in size and effect.
Seeker Barrage. Launches a seeker missile every 0.2 second for 2 seconds against a random unit.
I need a few more for the tank (defensive style) and the fighter (movement style).
@iamtoolazy: Go
All the turret weapons have drawbacks. All weapons do, even.
Non turret weapons require you to stop moving in order to fire. Their counter is getting out of the way.
Cannon Turret; Decent range but the projectile is dodgeable. It produces a decent sized splash so it's usually going to do some damage, even if a player moves. To counter this, getting close to a unit reduces their available reaction time.
Napalm Turret; Deals some small amount of initial damage but leaves a patch of flame on the ground. The faster you move out of the fire, the less damage you will take. Furthermore, the patches of flame can adjust which parts of the battlefield can be in play by introducing a player spawned environmental hazard.
When I designed each weapon, I wanted each to have a counter AND a way to counter that counter. To use the cannon as an example, the counter is to get out the way. The counter-counter is to get closer to give them less time to react. The flipside of this is that you will be more vulnerable to their weaponry and thus, hopefully, skill will show.
The 3 vehicle classes I chose to work on first were tank, mech and fighter.
Fighter abilities are mostly complete (though more suggestions are always good because I'm not afraid to replace what I have). They are speed and utility orientated. Some examples;
Target Painter
Micro Warp Drive (redesigned to be a targetted directional speed boost)
Intercept (Zooms to target. Snares target if enemy, protects target if ally)
Freedom (Protects from all snares for 10 sec).
Mech. Heavy on firepower and movement speed debuffs.
Harpoon (Drags a target to you.)
Repulsion Field (Stuns + Knocks back all nearby enemies.)
Snare (same as original)
Power Disruption (Aura ability. Applies a small snare to all targets in range. Has a duration and a shortish cd.)
Overdrive
Seeker Missile (Yes I know I said no "deals x damage" spells, but the seeker missile is too cool. This might be replaced by a turret weapon, but interesting "deals x damage" spells are welcome.)
Tank. Defensive, protects allies.
Containment Field
Deployable Shield (Drops a shield, protects allies within, dies when it's taken too much damage).
Smoke Bomb (Reduces damage taken by 75% for any unit, friend or foe, within the cloud).
Defensive Matrix (Gives 40% base health as shields for a short time).
13 functional and unique weapons;
Cannon Turret
Gauss Turret
Missile Turret
Ion Cannon Turret
Napalm Turret
Flak Turret
Nuclear Silo
Ventorini Beam
Point Defence Turret
Munitions Disruptor
Fighter Drone Bay
Bomber Drone Bay
Logistics Drone Bay
Turrets all have their own internal AI. They score their own kills (and I could actually make the turrets level up individually, but not for now) and their kills are recorded on their kill display the same as any other unit. This is all done in data. The turrets really do shoot out of your vehicle. Weapons without a turret tag are controlled by you. Weapons with the tag will use their own AI.
I have a working "talent" system that uses the SC2 UI. You get talent points as you upgrade your vehicle. You may select 1 of 3 abilities per talent tier. There are 5 talent tiers per vehicle class, and there will be 3 classes on release. 3 Protoss classes and unique Protoss weaponry will be the first major update, though I've learnt my lesson with the old Catalyst and this won't happen before what I already have is absolutely polished, balanced, intuitive and fully functional.
Passive income is gone and replaced with a new, cleaner system. Zone control is revamped and again, replaced with a cleaner working version. This whole thing is a lot of work, but I expect a beta version to be ready sometime next week. I'm serious when I say there is nothing left of the original. Everything has been rebuilt and replaced from a blank slate map.
One aspect that I could use help with is vehicle abilities. They must be % based and generally not conflict with weaponry (so no "Fires a shot, dealing x damage" spells). I'm heavily against crowd control spells, I'm reluctant to even add root spells. Immunity abilities should come with a severe drawback. Anything else is fine.
Is that some Phoenix Fire?
This is a tech demo. Why is it a tech demo? Well, there are 2 triggers involved in this presentation. Both only affect the camera.
Weapons are built inside your hull. They fire from inside your hull. Drone factories throw drones out of your hull directly. There are no triggers involved with drone production; each factory will produce exactly 1 of it's drone and only replace it upon it's death. When produced, the drone will emerge at your vehicle. Again, no triggers.
Why is this important? Well, simple. It removes every single limit that I had in the original Catalyst. Sometime next week I'll be demoing the new ability system and a few instances of group combat and the new PvP emphasis on the whole system.
@TheAlmaity: Go
I'm giving up the map, yes. Though I'm going to hold on to the Catalyst name and the gameplay style. I'm busy remaking the whole thing. The style is different, and the engine is much cleaner and allows for far more creativity on my part as well as the players. I'm taking everything I learnt, and removing all those bad corners I turned. I'll take my time, and be more careful and thoughtful than I have been in the past. This has been one hell of a learning experience, and I want to show you what I, and the editor, can do. I don't aim to disappoint!
I'm not ready to give up the reins yet. Maybe in the future, but for now I want to hold onto the name. It'll help me in the future when it comes to testing my new creation, I hope.
@Ryaneko: Go
I prioritize things that I enjoy. I'm not a servant to anyone. I don't get paid. I go out and think, wow, wouldn't it be damn cool if I made your unit's shields cover other units? Then I go home and make it happen. I don't go home and think "Oh I need to sort out this, this and this...", perhaps it is the "wrong prioritization", but I'd have quit mapping years ago if I took that attitude. I clearly need a coding minion...
@zeldarules28: Go
Oh, it's coming back. Not sure when, but I'm thoroughly enjoying working on this new engine, and that's what matters to me.
@MoonMcDemon: Go @DoctorBoo: Go @IliIilI: Go
Hah, thank you for your support, I appreciate it!
@Reach0: Go
Not quite yet, though I'd be happy to explain any of the inner workings in rough detail.
I'm officially pulling the plug.
Catalyst will return, but this "experiment" has expired.
Thank you to everyone for the tons of amazing feedback. Hopefully I can return the favour sometime in the future. While this is a failure, the things I have learnt are priceless. I'll be back.
Basically I was going to make 5 variants of each ability, and hide the buttons on the command card. So if you had an ability in ability slot 1, it would become available in the first ability slot of your vehicle. Repeat for all 5. However, the command card has a cap of 32 buttons, and your vehicle has a cap of 32 unique abilities.
Still trying to think of a better solution.
Couldn't seem to get the ability system I wanted working.
Another alternative I had, though it's not perfect;
Abilities ordered into 5 types. Abilities of the same type don't stack. For example;
Type 1
Armour Repair
Shield Repair
Energy Battery (Restores 10% energy)
Type 2
Cloak
Probe
Something stealthy
Type 3
Overcharge
Containment Field
Something tanky
Type 4
Afterburner
Micro Warp Drive
Something movey
Type 5
The ones I forgot
I admit, I'm not much of a fan of this system. It's a bit clunky and confusing, but would let me add a lot of new abilities.
It's actually just a passive income system with an exponential formula that increases with time. There's other ways to get income but this is where 95% of your minerals come from. It's dull and lacks depth.
I was going to use a system for turrets like you describe, just with custom values rather than a variable.
I don't want to add a point defence drone type unit simply because it would only work against cannons and missiles. I might add an ability that allows you to blow up all missiles in a radius on a lengthy cd though.
Deployable items, I'm going to add some deployable shield that protects units under it, similar to the shield projector except it would absorb all damage and simply die after it's taken too much damage. The repair tower sounds nice, think I'd have to keep it an out of combat thing though otherwise it'd just be a more tedious version of the armour/shield repair items.
Just got home from work and unfortunately straight into a WoW raid.
Here's what I plan tomorrow;
I need ideas for;
I've had a few requests for the method you describe, I'll try and get it working. I have a few ideas on how to do it without using monster triggers, hopefully they work!
As stated above, I removed the energy cost on all non-repair abilities in the beta build so hopefully that will address the afterburner issue, though perhaps not the way you describe! I don't think static energy costs work in a game like this, it just makes cheap abilities the only ones usable at early-game, and one big design goal I have is to make every item useful at all stages of the game.
Updated the beta build. Finished off the terrain to a more playable state, fixed a few things but more importantly, I've removed the energy cost on all abilities bar the repair ones. The reason for this is that they aren't used enough early game, and late game the cost is too trivial to matter. To ensure abilities are used at all stages of the game, their only real cost is now time.
Oh and aircraft don't need to decelerate to use the offensive abilities anymore.
I'll start searching for a US host (a 3rd one!) once my latest update is finished and functional.