Game publishers stop supporting games and screw things up with updates all the time. Have you stopped buying retail games?
I agree, this fellow is in the audience-I-tend-to-dislike-intensely. Hate is such a strong word. You are in no way entitled to free content. I will probably charge a small amount of money for my maps because I spend so much time making them. If people actually support map makers by purchasing their content, there will be a real incentive to make the content worth purchasing. It's simple economics.
Right now I make maps for fun. And to boost my ego (or ruin it, lol.) But fun and ego don't put bread on the table.
But you DON'T really rely on SC2 to put bread on the table, that's a stupid idea.
For developers and modders, making money off of this is more like chump change, not a "Wham-Bam Thank You KA-CHING!". I'd expect average mapper and modders to make a few bucks and probably up to 100 bucks average on a popular sale. But it's always a smart idea to NOT let greed get the best of you and ruin your reputation because you made every single map costs money and everyone starts copying that.
At that point, the marketplace will divide into, quality 'decent' maps for a dollar, and crap maps for free or a few cents.
I think its smarter for blizzard themselves to judge the value of your maps and players will have to discuss the pricing with the publisher themselves... But then again, capitalism and greed will ensue because some publishers likes to profit as much as possible...
-.-
In short: Be wise, avoid being greedy and pissing people off because you want to charge one dollar per map 'to put bread on the table', you can achieve the same thing without pissing people off by asking them to 'donate' instead and offer the map for free, which results in a harder to gauge revenue but at least its free and people who really likes it may pay you for it (hence becomes a matter of proving your worth to the community, and not your biased feelings on how much your map is worth).
Because as I see it, SC2 mappers are NOBODY compared to game modders and developers in the indies industry and the game industry. Your roles are miniscule and you gotta understand how much you are trying to bite off the game industry. You can be the popular guy who invented dota, but still is small time unless you start making actual games (I think he was well known in the WC3 community but nowhere else at the time).
Yes you aren't entitled to freebies, but you also aren't entitled to be paid for anything.
Karma's a bitch, as what goes around comes around.
In WC3 you had character models for that Open RPG that can equip weapons, thus changing the weapons on the character's hands and changes the animation of the character.
I wonder if you can do the same for SC2, except create a generic character skeleton model and bind animations like gun use, and psi blade use to said skeleton.
Then you can say a 'terran' character can equip psi blades, or rifles, and will use the correct animations with them...
The issue is that original character models like the marine, the rifle is attached to the model and isn't separated from it... So you can't do things like take a marine and equip psi blades to him and hook his skeleton to a zealot animation so it will move and fight like a zealot.
I have a feeling only blizzard can do these kind of things, and that sucks.
Well now its time to bring out your ideas. Im working on hero survival (And I suppose Im just doing stuff randomly without any trace of planning).
Well I already have some spells and now Im working with the gameplay. I have been thinking of somekind of randomization for waves (like overlord drops, nydys worms or so...).
There is good chance my project will end up in failure since I havent planned it too far ahead, but whatever! :(
Try to set up patterns for waves or at least make it slow but steady.
Like not too hard, but not easy enough, and make it somewhat challenging, but not annoying.
This means your players will kill them often, and you will want to throw a few 'shocks' from time to time.
Think Left 4 Dead Ai director. A system which knows how the players are doing, and throws hidden aces out of it's sleeves.
This is as dynamic as it can get and it can be tricky to make a system like that...
Maybe have a few triggers set up to certain feats by the players?
IF [PLAYERS] KILLS [100] UNITS WITHIN [30] SECONDS
{ SUMMON [MINIBOSS 1] }
OR
{ ADD [20] UNITS TO NEXT WAVE }
So then every wave always have a consistent number of units, but if the players takes too long to kill them, or kills them too easily the system adapts and changes the waves.
So say within the first 5 waves, the players aren't doing so well. You can make the system lower the amount of units for the set amount of waves.
Just need to know how to set conditions and needs TONS of playtesting.
Example:
- Consider player count in the game, and the time players takes to complete the wave.
- Come up with a formula to measure the 'difficulty' the players are having...
Say for instance if wave comes every 60 seconds (one minute), the value will be 100% if they can't kill those units in 60 seconds, and 0% if they can kill them under a second (but they can't). This is to gauge how fast they kill the waves and you determine by percentage of up to 100% of how hard they are handling it.
Each player counts can be a significant number of percentage to difficulty... For instance if the game by default requires 4 players:
4 Players = 100% difficulty
8 Players = 0% difficulty
1 Players = 175% difficulty
7 Players = 25% difficulty
Then mix and match the player count and the time it takes to complete each wave.
If its 4 players at 100 value, and they take 30 seconds to beat it, which is 50% value.
Total is 150%.
If its 8 players which is 0% and they take 45 seconds to beat it, which is 25% value.
Total is 25%.
Now lets set a 'base standard difficulty for these measurements now:
Lets say 100% to 200% is the standard difficulty range, so if it falls below 100% it means the game seems pretty easy for the players.
If it goes over 200% it means the players are having a tough time beating it.
So if they can barely beat the wave past 60 seconds, and has 4 players, then it will be a sum of 200%.
How do you add events into the difficulty now?
Assign events that occur at specific ranges of the % of difficulty, and measure it so it reponds to the correct level of difficulty the player is experiencing.
Say the players are suffering after their base took a major hit, they barely took out the wave past the usual 60 seconds. There are 3 players.
100% (60 seconds) + 150% (3 players) = 250% difficulty.
Say at 225% difficulty, the wait time between wave is slightly slower, and 'a sandstorm caused some scrap debris to be found' and spawns resources on the map.
The poll doesn't include survival types, and I really don't like any of those other sorts on the poll because it feels too repetitive to the actual gameplay you've already seen in SC2.
What I want is something that doesn't feel like SC2 meaning the mapper actually put a ton of effort into making it NOT like SC2.
Hopefully by HOTS expansion, the new editors will be sweet and help everyone create much much better content (and hopefully I got the money to get a better computer so I can actually learn to use the editor and not get discouraged by the friggen lag).
As for the survival idea, I DO NOT LIKE ANY WAVE BASED REPETITION. *points to last stand alpha*
Yeah it's fun and all but for how long?
The key point of survival games is to make it fun even after a long period of time, and it will take quite a bit of innovation to make it work.
I liked the Stranded on Krydon, and while it does use the wave system, there is a dynamic feel of the actual game shifting and adjusting their waves according to what you interact to the world. Destroying vital zerg buildings in that game will disallow them to spawn in those areas, and over time they will 'evolve' and change their unit types like in last stand alpha, which not only gets hectic but very annoying.
I would like more dynamic into survival games I guess...
Like if last stand alpha give up the 'randomized wave' idea back to a normal wave BUT with a huge twist;
Each wave will consists of:
- Main group id 1 swarm unit (always outnumbers the rest and is designed to outnumber, and outmass, not overpowering by brute strength).
- Secondary group id 2 to 4 utility units (always have a certain air of strategy or use to them, like a few banelings, or a few hydras, or a few roaches).
- Tertiary group id 5 boss unit (only spawns at certain point or if the player actually 'did' something, to reflect a 'reactive' boss to the player's action (players amass siege tanks and kills everything from afar, so the boss is a air unit)).
This is interesting, not just because you can get turn based working well, but the idea of a Advance War is possible too!
Player turns can occur in a similar way, but add unit production and mathematics in combat...
So it ain't a turn based RPG, but a turn based WAR game.
The thing that sets them different, from a FFT style to a Adv War style, is that in Adv War, both units fight, but the attacker gets a early advantage...
Basically using percentage, a infantry going up against a infantry will take like 4050% of the other infantry, and having the power of the unit depend on it's status can be fun too.
Maybe replace the knifing ability with a "kicking" or "shoving" melee attack that knocks back one enemy and can knock back a wave of enemies in a line... But comes at a cost of some energy and longer cooldown than knifing.
Maybe you can right click it, and it activates on it's own if a enemy gets extremely close to you, thus you will get lucky and kick a enemy away but if you are swarmed then it isn't enough.
Plus takes the micro out of the knifing segments when your focusing on shooting and moving.
What if you can save and load characters, at any time at the start of each chapter, to play in a open ended rpg that's story likes to advanced after a long period of time?
As the story advances, the character you are able to use, and create, changes.
Open ended rpg, as in pvpve relation, between factions and individuals.
Based on each player's choices, they may ally, or turn on each other in the game.
The really bad thing about the map is when players disconnects (for any reason), the game usually unbalanced like hell.
The leaving ratio is like... A whopping 50% whenever I play that map.
There's gotta be a way for players to catch up, because once someone leaves and your being pummeled with concentrated units sent from the other side, you can't gain much out of killing them.
So maybe increase mineral gain off of spawned player units? Getting 1~5 mineral for Goliath and so isn't a great idea.
1 Mineral per 10 gas can do...
Goliath will give 12 minerals for 120 gas basically, and Thors will give 60 minerals for 600 gas, when killed.
The idea is that if the other players manages to beat down your spawned units, they should at least gain some sort of advantage.
This is so players feed each other's side, while gaining minerals for their income.
Otherwise, there needs to be something to substitute the loss of players that the other team won't take advantage of...
Maybe spawning units will have a shorter cooldown for the team with less players, enabling them to send more units if possible? Maybe a +1 capacity to the summoning for each player gone?
So you can spawn 5 zerglings if your alone?
If you want to make the game more noob friendly, have it so level 1~3 players will see a "prebuild" strategy for their units, to make the most out of them.
Basically, colored or transparent unit will be labeled there and you can indicate spots for them to put that kind of unit.
It will not appear once your past level 3.
Also, minerals are a big deal, and refunding your towers will really cripple you if you don't know what you are doing.
There needs to be a refund "resource" for all players, like you can get a 100% refund for 3 towers, after which you'd have to get 50% refunds. Maybe its possible to buy this resource with gas at the supply depot, at 100 gas for 1 resource for a refund 'coupon'. Obviously, economized players will take advantage of this, so maybe limit the amount of buyable coupons to 3. So you start with 3, and can by 3 more. That's it.
I would rather have unique and original towers in a tower defense that is NOT about attack strengths and attack styles, but rather in a trick to deal the most damage and delay the mob to the best of your abilities...
Meaning there is no lives, but is a score attack between players to do the best trick with your towers.
Heh, calling it Trickster Defense would be interesting.
Towers that can manipulate a minion's movement and towers that can mind control (temporarily) one minion to attack other minions and potentially block the route (causing the mobs to attack the minions).
Then you balance it all out with minions and them having active abilities when they interact with specific towers...
Like jumping minions will be able to jump over the first mine-based tower trap, but will be hit by the second one after it.
Think plants vs zombies, every plants has a use and there are tons of different types of zombies to break through, outsmart, and evade your attacks on them.
Possible towers (and mobs to go along with it):
Icy Tower - Creates a patch of frozen ice which accelerates the mobs extremely fast towards the direction it was heading, very useful in mazing to prevent them from turning a corner to get by for example. Flying and jumping mobs can bypass these.
Fiery Tower - A fire variant of the floor based tower, rather than mislead mobs, it does constant damage the more the mobs are on them. Flying and jumping mobs bypass these. Metal mobs are immune.
Vacuum Tower - A tower that draws one mob towards it, trapping it for a few seconds, and then letting the mob go. It's ability will only function for a short period of time, so its best to combine other towers to maximize it. Heavy mobs bypasses these.
Scare Tower - A tower that acts like a scarecrow, making the mob flee in terror at the opposite direction for a short duration, will only work once per mob. Only cowardly mobs is affected.
Zap Tower - A tower that requires another tower linked to it, to zap and deal decent damage to any mob passing through them. Metal mobs are immune to them.
Spiked Tower - Any mob that comes in contact with this tower will take major physical damage, but it requires other towers to set up the infliction. Less effective on tank type mobs like bosses.
As for the map, it's best to have a map that gives the player many routes in their area, so basically the maze is mostly complete except for a few areas you can place towers on.
WARNING: Huge blocks of text!
I don't really like using Curse's kind of text editor because there aren't buttons to make it easier to interpret it on this post.
- You can order them to change lanes via directional hotkey <Up | Down> since the map would be horizontal and is like a nexus war direction. This causes them to jump (or warp) to the other side of the lane on the same horizontal area. To keep the game simple, two lanes can exist.
- Your hero will maintain his distance to the enemy army, so he'll never run past the opponent's wave, and heroes can't cross each other, they have to fight or flee. Minions cannot run past your hero, so think of him as a barrier for your enemy forces, but they can harm your hero if you stay on the front lines. Basically, you tell your hero to stay on the front, or on the back, and having them stay on the back means the hero will rather hide behind his ally's units rather than stand in front of them when engaging enemies.
- Every hero has a range that works for them. When your hero is close enough to a enemy, he will attack the enemy with his weapons, depending on the front/back conditions (a warrior will throw knives or weaponry and do different damage, if you tell him to stay back). In this range, enemy minions will reveal words above them.
- By quickly typing in the words that appears when your hero is in range, you will "tag" that enemy and start a chain of combos. The goal is to tag as much enemies as possible so you can initiate your combo and set off the hero's abilities. Combos will have timers so they will automatically use skills once it ends, otherwise a specific "magic" keyword you can use to initiate a combo... Like "Power!" or "[Insert your custom favorite phrase here]". By the way, a tagged enemy will take a number of hits equal to your combo count, and some enemies can have multiple words for multiple attacks and chaining combos.
- Every heroes has a set of abilities that goes off when a fixed amount of combos are met, and depending if its a "prefix" or a "suffix" it will occur before the combo starts, or after it ends. Supportive abilities like buffs and debuff are prefixes, and destructive abilities are suffixes (so after a combo you unleash a attack ability). Defending against a combo can work by having a a higher number of combo counts than the opposing hero, and inflicting a "counter" damage if you are greater than them.
- So if a hero is standing and sees another enemy hero in his range, he can combo and it'll target this new foe too! This works if your building a combo midway and a enemy hero walks into range, you can tag him and inflict damage on him! This is why battle position makes a difference when engaging enemies, because you never know if your going to walk into a combo. Spellcasters has the longest range and thus can initiate combos from the back onto his enemies (but being at the back means you target less targets).
- So if a enemy spellcaster is standing on the back, and your standing on the front, you can be targetted, and you are allowed to move to the back to avoid this. Showdowns (see below) are impossible if both players are on the back regardless of range since heroes will unable to hit other heroes.
- If both heroes has a combo set up and one of them initiates it, it starts a showdown, of which the two opposing heroes will type the randomly appearing words as fast as possible, to attain the highest count.
- The hits on target hero is based on the difference in "combo count" between each other, and the higher count means that person will inflict the damage.
- Dead heroes respawns back at base and will run back to the battlefield. Healing isn't a big issue, but rather comboing is the big deal, since its easy to kill heroes if they are ill prepared in a showdown.
- When two forces collide on one lane, a "front line" will occur, where one force stands on one side and the other stands on the other side, and they both throw attacks at each other. Heroes being on the front line zone will buff his allies' morale and give them stat boosts. Towers can exist as a defensive barrier from the army, and requires a hero's hand in order to destroy it. The tower takes damage every time an ally minion dies on it's territory, and it acts as a natural barrier so heroes and minions can't cross it unless its owned by them. Basically, your hero will stand at the tower and attack the minions that comes to attempt to fend you off, but you kill them, resulting in the tower taking damage.
- It would be better if the camera is locked to the hero and you can't move it, so the game focuses on typing and lane changing.
Will add more over time...
You see, I imagine a sort of "turn based cutscene" kind of scene, where your hero locks onto the number of targets and unleashes his attacks on them, and then the game resumes as usual.
Note: While the gameplay is simple, creating it can be complex, because I'm making up a kind of system specifically for this while innovating on the go.
As for leveling, maximum combo can be tied to your hero's level and the ability to be used can be tied to that combo, which results in being tied to the levels too.
Level 1 hero can combo up to 3 times, thus attacks 3 times, on 1~3 targets (depending on hero type this changes and its based on targets tagged).
Level 10 hero can combo up to 30 times, on 1~10 targets (same as above).
Levels will slightly affect the health, damage, and defense of your heroes.
It would be better to keep stats simple, and to a smaller spectrum.
Example:
Level 1 hero will have ~400 HP and the damage they inflict on foes is ~25, and a defense rating of ~5...
How the heck do you do with without lagging the crap out of your computer?
And it might be better if you replace actual structures and models with sprites so it'll be like Supreme Commander or Total Annihilation, you being zoomed out enables you to see them all as symbols and not lag your computer with them trying to render everything...
Think dota, with nexus word wars, with balanced, fun, features that doesn't become unbalanced once some elite typer comes into the picture.
The biggest requirement to make this map, would be AI.
You would have to give each hero a "personality" and you as a player become the "summoner", sorta like a commander who shouts orders to them.
The problem would be "how to control these heroes" so why not limit the controls to 3 paces:
- Attack! (The hero goes on a full offensive, and spends all his energy trying to inflict the most damage, and not prioritize safety so much)
- Defend! (The hero uses movements and maneuver to avoid being hit too much by enemies, using hit and run tactics and skills to suit that style)
- Rush! (The hero stops caring about safety, and goes to quickly inflict the most possible damage to a enemy hero or minion with the least health or seemed the most vulnerable)
At first the idea seems great, then I realize how complex this can be and it does need some revisions.
You mean like a narrative game for four players, but each player's experiences are script based on each character, so it narrates differently to each character like with individual cutscenes or "visions"?
P1 could play as a warrior who comes from a mercenary background, thus sees the character "think" in his head when activating certain sequences.
P2 can be a royalty wizard, etc. and sees different text and quotes.
All characters can see chat boxes of other characters when a cutscene or sequence involves them.
Kind of like a Semi-Open RPG with storytelling in it.
Better is if players can interact with other players ala "Choice selections" like a player raids another player's town, initiates a "talking sequence" and both player takes turns talking and using the pre-listed story basically.
0
But you DON'T really rely on SC2 to put bread on the table, that's a stupid idea.
For developers and modders, making money off of this is more like chump change, not a "Wham-Bam Thank You KA-CHING!". I'd expect average mapper and modders to make a few bucks and probably up to 100 bucks average on a popular sale. But it's always a smart idea to NOT let greed get the best of you and ruin your reputation because you made every single map costs money and everyone starts copying that.
At that point, the marketplace will divide into, quality 'decent' maps for a dollar, and crap maps for free or a few cents.
I think its smarter for blizzard themselves to judge the value of your maps and players will have to discuss the pricing with the publisher themselves... But then again, capitalism and greed will ensue because some publishers likes to profit as much as possible...
-.-
In short: Be wise, avoid being greedy and pissing people off because you want to charge one dollar per map 'to put bread on the table', you can achieve the same thing without pissing people off by asking them to 'donate' instead and offer the map for free, which results in a harder to gauge revenue but at least its free and people who really likes it may pay you for it (hence becomes a matter of proving your worth to the community, and not your biased feelings on how much your map is worth).
Because as I see it, SC2 mappers are NOBODY compared to game modders and developers in the indies industry and the game industry. Your roles are miniscule and you gotta understand how much you are trying to bite off the game industry. You can be the popular guy who invented dota, but still is small time unless you start making actual games (I think he was well known in the WC3 community but nowhere else at the time).
Yes you aren't entitled to freebies, but you also aren't entitled to be paid for anything.
Karma's a bitch, as what goes around comes around.
0
In WC3 you had character models for that Open RPG that can equip weapons, thus changing the weapons on the character's hands and changes the animation of the character.
I wonder if you can do the same for SC2, except create a generic character skeleton model and bind animations like gun use, and psi blade use to said skeleton.
Then you can say a 'terran' character can equip psi blades, or rifles, and will use the correct animations with them...
The issue is that original character models like the marine, the rifle is attached to the model and isn't separated from it... So you can't do things like take a marine and equip psi blades to him and hook his skeleton to a zealot animation so it will move and fight like a zealot.
I have a feeling only blizzard can do these kind of things, and that sucks.
0
Try to set up patterns for waves or at least make it slow but steady.
Like not too hard, but not easy enough, and make it somewhat challenging, but not annoying.
This means your players will kill them often, and you will want to throw a few 'shocks' from time to time.
Think Left 4 Dead Ai director. A system which knows how the players are doing, and throws hidden aces out of it's sleeves.
This is as dynamic as it can get and it can be tricky to make a system like that...
Maybe have a few triggers set up to certain feats by the players?
IF [PLAYERS] KILLS [100] UNITS WITHIN [30] SECONDS
{ SUMMON [MINIBOSS 1] }
OR
{ ADD [20] UNITS TO NEXT WAVE }
So then every wave always have a consistent number of units, but if the players takes too long to kill them, or kills them too easily the system adapts and changes the waves.
So say within the first 5 waves, the players aren't doing so well. You can make the system lower the amount of units for the set amount of waves.
Just need to know how to set conditions and needs TONS of playtesting.
Example:
- Consider player count in the game, and the time players takes to complete the wave.
- Come up with a formula to measure the 'difficulty' the players are having...
Say for instance if wave comes every 60 seconds (one minute), the value will be 100% if they can't kill those units in 60 seconds, and 0% if they can kill them under a second (but they can't). This is to gauge how fast they kill the waves and you determine by percentage of up to 100% of how hard they are handling it.
Each player counts can be a significant number of percentage to difficulty... For instance if the game by default requires 4 players:
4 Players = 100% difficulty
8 Players = 0% difficulty
1 Players = 175% difficulty
7 Players = 25% difficulty
Then mix and match the player count and the time it takes to complete each wave.
If its 4 players at 100 value, and they take 30 seconds to beat it, which is 50% value.
Total is 150%.
If its 8 players which is 0% and they take 45 seconds to beat it, which is 25% value.
Total is 25%.
Now lets set a 'base standard difficulty for these measurements now:
Lets say 100% to 200% is the standard difficulty range, so if it falls below 100% it means the game seems pretty easy for the players.
If it goes over 200% it means the players are having a tough time beating it.
So if they can barely beat the wave past 60 seconds, and has 4 players, then it will be a sum of 200%.
How do you add events into the difficulty now?
Assign events that occur at specific ranges of the % of difficulty, and measure it so it reponds to the correct level of difficulty the player is experiencing.
Say the players are suffering after their base took a major hit, they barely took out the wave past the usual 60 seconds. There are 3 players. 100% (60 seconds) + 150% (3 players) = 250% difficulty.
Say at 225% difficulty, the wait time between wave is slightly slower, and 'a sandstorm caused some scrap debris to be found' and spawns resources on the map.
0
The poll doesn't include survival types, and I really don't like any of those other sorts on the poll because it feels too repetitive to the actual gameplay you've already seen in SC2.
What I want is something that doesn't feel like SC2 meaning the mapper actually put a ton of effort into making it NOT like SC2.
Hopefully by HOTS expansion, the new editors will be sweet and help everyone create much much better content (and hopefully I got the money to get a better computer so I can actually learn to use the editor and not get discouraged by the friggen lag).
As for the survival idea, I DO NOT LIKE ANY WAVE BASED REPETITION. *points to last stand alpha* Yeah it's fun and all but for how long?
The key point of survival games is to make it fun even after a long period of time, and it will take quite a bit of innovation to make it work.
I liked the Stranded on Krydon, and while it does use the wave system, there is a dynamic feel of the actual game shifting and adjusting their waves according to what you interact to the world. Destroying vital zerg buildings in that game will disallow them to spawn in those areas, and over time they will 'evolve' and change their unit types like in last stand alpha, which not only gets hectic but very annoying.
I would like more dynamic into survival games I guess...
Like if last stand alpha give up the 'randomized wave' idea back to a normal wave BUT with a huge twist;
Each wave will consists of:
- Main group id 1 swarm unit (always outnumbers the rest and is designed to outnumber, and outmass, not overpowering by brute strength).
- Secondary group id 2 to 4 utility units (always have a certain air of strategy or use to them, like a few banelings, or a few hydras, or a few roaches).
- Tertiary group id 5 boss unit (only spawns at certain point or if the player actually 'did' something, to reflect a 'reactive' boss to the player's action (players amass siege tanks and kills everything from afar, so the boss is a air unit)).
0
This is interesting, not just because you can get turn based working well, but the idea of a Advance War is possible too!
Player turns can occur in a similar way, but add unit production and mathematics in combat...
So it ain't a turn based RPG, but a turn based WAR game.
The thing that sets them different, from a FFT style to a Adv War style, is that in Adv War, both units fight, but the attacker gets a early advantage...
Basically using percentage, a infantry going up against a infantry will take like 4050% of the other infantry, and having the power of the unit depend on it's status can be fun too.
0
Maybe replace the knifing ability with a "kicking" or "shoving" melee attack that knocks back one enemy and can knock back a wave of enemies in a line... But comes at a cost of some energy and longer cooldown than knifing.
Maybe you can right click it, and it activates on it's own if a enemy gets extremely close to you, thus you will get lucky and kick a enemy away but if you are swarmed then it isn't enough.
Plus takes the micro out of the knifing segments when your focusing on shooting and moving.
0
What if you can save and load characters, at any time at the start of each chapter, to play in a open ended rpg that's story likes to advanced after a long period of time?
As the story advances, the character you are able to use, and create, changes.
Open ended rpg, as in pvpve relation, between factions and individuals.
Based on each player's choices, they may ally, or turn on each other in the game.
0
The really bad thing about the map is when players disconnects (for any reason), the game usually unbalanced like hell.
The leaving ratio is like... A whopping 50% whenever I play that map.
There's gotta be a way for players to catch up, because once someone leaves and your being pummeled with concentrated units sent from the other side, you can't gain much out of killing them.
So maybe increase mineral gain off of spawned player units? Getting 1~5 mineral for Goliath and so isn't a great idea.
1 Mineral per 10 gas can do...
Goliath will give 12 minerals for 120 gas basically, and Thors will give 60 minerals for 600 gas, when killed.
The idea is that if the other players manages to beat down your spawned units, they should at least gain some sort of advantage.
This is so players feed each other's side, while gaining minerals for their income.
Otherwise, there needs to be something to substitute the loss of players that the other team won't take advantage of...
Maybe spawning units will have a shorter cooldown for the team with less players, enabling them to send more units if possible? Maybe a +1 capacity to the summoning for each player gone?
So you can spawn 5 zerglings if your alone?
If you want to make the game more noob friendly, have it so level 1~3 players will see a "prebuild" strategy for their units, to make the most out of them.
Basically, colored or transparent unit will be labeled there and you can indicate spots for them to put that kind of unit.
It will not appear once your past level 3.
Also, minerals are a big deal, and refunding your towers will really cripple you if you don't know what you are doing.
There needs to be a refund "resource" for all players, like you can get a 100% refund for 3 towers, after which you'd have to get 50% refunds. Maybe its possible to buy this resource with gas at the supply depot, at 100 gas for 1 resource for a refund 'coupon'. Obviously, economized players will take advantage of this, so maybe limit the amount of buyable coupons to 3. So you start with 3, and can by 3 more. That's it.
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I would rather have unique and original towers in a tower defense that is NOT about attack strengths and attack styles, but rather in a trick to deal the most damage and delay the mob to the best of your abilities...
Meaning there is no lives, but is a score attack between players to do the best trick with your towers.
Heh, calling it Trickster Defense would be interesting.
Towers that can manipulate a minion's movement and towers that can mind control (temporarily) one minion to attack other minions and potentially block the route (causing the mobs to attack the minions).
Then you balance it all out with minions and them having active abilities when they interact with specific towers...
Like jumping minions will be able to jump over the first mine-based tower trap, but will be hit by the second one after it.
Think plants vs zombies, every plants has a use and there are tons of different types of zombies to break through, outsmart, and evade your attacks on them.
Possible towers (and mobs to go along with it):
Icy Tower - Creates a patch of frozen ice which accelerates the mobs extremely fast towards the direction it was heading, very useful in mazing to prevent them from turning a corner to get by for example. Flying and jumping mobs can bypass these.
Fiery Tower - A fire variant of the floor based tower, rather than mislead mobs, it does constant damage the more the mobs are on them. Flying and jumping mobs bypass these. Metal mobs are immune.
Vacuum Tower - A tower that draws one mob towards it, trapping it for a few seconds, and then letting the mob go. It's ability will only function for a short period of time, so its best to combine other towers to maximize it. Heavy mobs bypasses these.
Scare Tower - A tower that acts like a scarecrow, making the mob flee in terror at the opposite direction for a short duration, will only work once per mob. Only cowardly mobs is affected.
Zap Tower - A tower that requires another tower linked to it, to zap and deal decent damage to any mob passing through them. Metal mobs are immune to them.
Spiked Tower - Any mob that comes in contact with this tower will take major physical damage, but it requires other towers to set up the infliction. Less effective on tank type mobs like bosses.
As for the map, it's best to have a map that gives the player many routes in their area, so basically the maze is mostly complete except for a few areas you can place towers on.
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I think what he's saying, is that it's more like DEFCOM?
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I got a pretty good setup for this...
WARNING: Huge blocks of text!
I don't really like using Curse's kind of text editor because there aren't buttons to make it easier to interpret it on this post.
- You can order them to change lanes via directional hotkey <Up | Down> since the map would be horizontal and is like a nexus war direction. This causes them to jump (or warp) to the other side of the lane on the same horizontal area. To keep the game simple, two lanes can exist.
- Your hero will maintain his distance to the enemy army, so he'll never run past the opponent's wave, and heroes can't cross each other, they have to fight or flee. Minions cannot run past your hero, so think of him as a barrier for your enemy forces, but they can harm your hero if you stay on the front lines. Basically, you tell your hero to stay on the front, or on the back, and having them stay on the back means the hero will rather hide behind his ally's units rather than stand in front of them when engaging enemies.
- Every hero has a range that works for them. When your hero is close enough to a enemy, he will attack the enemy with his weapons, depending on the front/back conditions (a warrior will throw knives or weaponry and do different damage, if you tell him to stay back). In this range, enemy minions will reveal words above them.
- By quickly typing in the words that appears when your hero is in range, you will "tag" that enemy and start a chain of combos. The goal is to tag as much enemies as possible so you can initiate your combo and set off the hero's abilities. Combos will have timers so they will automatically use skills once it ends, otherwise a specific "magic" keyword you can use to initiate a combo... Like "Power!" or "[Insert your custom favorite phrase here]". By the way, a tagged enemy will take a number of hits equal to your combo count, and some enemies can have multiple words for multiple attacks and chaining combos.
- Every heroes has a set of abilities that goes off when a fixed amount of combos are met, and depending if its a "prefix" or a "suffix" it will occur before the combo starts, or after it ends. Supportive abilities like buffs and debuff are prefixes, and destructive abilities are suffixes (so after a combo you unleash a attack ability). Defending against a combo can work by having a a higher number of combo counts than the opposing hero, and inflicting a "counter" damage if you are greater than them.
- So if a hero is standing and sees another enemy hero in his range, he can combo and it'll target this new foe too! This works if your building a combo midway and a enemy hero walks into range, you can tag him and inflict damage on him! This is why battle position makes a difference when engaging enemies, because you never know if your going to walk into a combo. Spellcasters has the longest range and thus can initiate combos from the back onto his enemies (but being at the back means you target less targets).
- So if a enemy spellcaster is standing on the back, and your standing on the front, you can be targetted, and you are allowed to move to the back to avoid this. Showdowns (see below) are impossible if both players are on the back regardless of range since heroes will unable to hit other heroes.
- If both heroes has a combo set up and one of them initiates it, it starts a showdown, of which the two opposing heroes will type the randomly appearing words as fast as possible, to attain the highest count.
- The hits on target hero is based on the difference in "combo count" between each other, and the higher count means that person will inflict the damage.
- Dead heroes respawns back at base and will run back to the battlefield. Healing isn't a big issue, but rather comboing is the big deal, since its easy to kill heroes if they are ill prepared in a showdown.
- When two forces collide on one lane, a "front line" will occur, where one force stands on one side and the other stands on the other side, and they both throw attacks at each other. Heroes being on the front line zone will buff his allies' morale and give them stat boosts. Towers can exist as a defensive barrier from the army, and requires a hero's hand in order to destroy it. The tower takes damage every time an ally minion dies on it's territory, and it acts as a natural barrier so heroes and minions can't cross it unless its owned by them. Basically, your hero will stand at the tower and attack the minions that comes to attempt to fend you off, but you kill them, resulting in the tower taking damage.
- It would be better if the camera is locked to the hero and you can't move it, so the game focuses on typing and lane changing.
Will add more over time...
You see, I imagine a sort of "turn based cutscene" kind of scene, where your hero locks onto the number of targets and unleashes his attacks on them, and then the game resumes as usual.
Note: While the gameplay is simple, creating it can be complex, because I'm making up a kind of system specifically for this while innovating on the go.
As for leveling, maximum combo can be tied to your hero's level and the ability to be used can be tied to that combo, which results in being tied to the levels too.
Level 1 hero can combo up to 3 times, thus attacks 3 times, on 1~3 targets (depending on hero type this changes and its based on targets tagged).
Level 10 hero can combo up to 30 times, on 1~10 targets (same as above).
Levels will slightly affect the health, damage, and defense of your heroes.
It would be better to keep stats simple, and to a smaller spectrum.
Example:
Level 1 hero will have ~400 HP and the damage they inflict on foes is ~25, and a defense rating of ~5...
Level 10 hero = ~1000 HP / ~95 damage / ~45 Defense
The problem is that drastic changes to this idea doesn't really make it similar to DotA anymore lol.
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How the heck do you do with without lagging the crap out of your computer?
And it might be better if you replace actual structures and models with sprites so it'll be like Supreme Commander or Total Annihilation, you being zoomed out enables you to see them all as symbols and not lag your computer with them trying to render everything...
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Words of the Ancients.
Nuff said?
Think dota, with nexus word wars, with balanced, fun, features that doesn't become unbalanced once some elite typer comes into the picture.
The biggest requirement to make this map, would be AI.
You would have to give each hero a "personality" and you as a player become the "summoner", sorta like a commander who shouts orders to them.
The problem would be "how to control these heroes" so why not limit the controls to 3 paces:
- Attack! (The hero goes on a full offensive, and spends all his energy trying to inflict the most damage, and not prioritize safety so much)
- Defend! (The hero uses movements and maneuver to avoid being hit too much by enemies, using hit and run tactics and skills to suit that style)
- Rush! (The hero stops caring about safety, and goes to quickly inflict the most possible damage to a enemy hero or minion with the least health or seemed the most vulnerable)
At first the idea seems great, then I realize how complex this can be and it does need some revisions.
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Can you use the Orbital Drop functionality and put it into a "CPU vs CPU" Melee map where players commands the battle indirectly?
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You mean like a narrative game for four players, but each player's experiences are script based on each character, so it narrates differently to each character like with individual cutscenes or "visions"?
P1 could play as a warrior who comes from a mercenary background, thus sees the character "think" in his head when activating certain sequences. P2 can be a royalty wizard, etc. and sees different text and quotes.
All characters can see chat boxes of other characters when a cutscene or sequence involves them.
Kind of like a Semi-Open RPG with storytelling in it.
Better is if players can interact with other players ala "Choice selections" like a player raids another player's town, initiates a "talking sequence" and both player takes turns talking and using the pre-listed story basically.
Think Fallout talk dialogs, but between players.