Codename: Black Crab
Project starting date: Friday, August 13th 2010
Genre: RTS
Platform: SC2

So. It doesn't have a definite name yet. We still need to define several things about it... but, after long discussions with our dearest Ventrilo folks (chim, woy, death, [forgive me if I forgot to mention you], etc), I believe we have established a general guideline.

Yes. For those who are still wondering, it won't be a footy, an AoS, a modified melee, a TD, a survival map.... it's just going to be a map we made. Believe me, there are several things we all like about RTS, and we, and in particular I, are looking for a consensus among these. After experimenting with several different map concepts in maps created by others, we should have a taste of what people like, what they dislike, and most importantly, what we love.

Ok, I don't want to fill a whole page with all this motivational crap, so I will be brief.

I want armies. I want heroes. I want micro. I want a macro that makes sense. Most importantly, I want an intuitive, fast paced, balanced, competitive and fun game. Simple rules, limitless possibilities. A steep learning curve, or at least for someone who has an idea of what RTS is. Action all the time. The feeling that you ought to be doing something at all times. The feeling that game variables, parameters and all these things are constantly changing, whether you issue orders or not, to your benefit or to your misfortune.

What does this mean in concrete terms?

Well. We are quite certain we want a team VS map. 5v5 seems like a fine number. 6v6 is too much. 4 is an even number. The map should be playable starting at 3v3, so long as players are committed not to leave.

Terrain dynamics should be intuitive, yet allowing all kinds of crazy stuff.

Some units should constantly spawn, and some should be available for selective picking. Both should have a cap on their number.

Heroes will do what they always did in similar RTS, but never should a hero alone be allowed to be buffed to the extent that enemy armies would simply be deemed as big farms. This may sound impossible. It may be hard. It may not be completely achieved. Regardless of all of the faults this concept may have, we will keep it on our list of things we ought not to forget. Don't get me wrong, It will never mean that heroes will be utterly useless.

The action should turn around controlling certain resources, either with heroes or armies. These resources won't be a "given". You won't start with such resources, but once you locate them, it should be possible to always gather them for free so long as the enemy hasn't spotted them as well.

EDIT: new stuff

Objective: most likely, it will be about razing the enemy's base building.

Unit kills should be in principle award bounty/experience, but I'm thinking we need to be creative on this one. Bounty/experience is a very well known concept in RPG/MMORPG, but this is not necessarily in an RTS. Discuss.

Tech trees. I wanted to force the player into choosing only unit for constant spawning, and multiple units for selective picking. Then Chim thought we could make different tech tree lines for each race that would devise as follow: suppose we have Zergling Tier 1, then we can either tech to Zergling Tier 2, or go to Hydralisk Tier 2 directly. Both would cost the same amount of gold. Switching from Zergling Tier 2 to Hydralisk Tier 2 would cost gold. This would be similar to switching races in Footies. I like the idea. First, it's unlike frenzy: if you tech Undead, you will first have melee, then range, range, then melee, then range. In Frenzy, if you want better units, then you have only one choice within your race. This wouldn't be the case for us. I think that in principle it shouldn't be possible to switch races.

Discussion material: The basic unit. If you have constant unit spawning, then you ought to start with something. I was wondering, perhaps each race would have its own basic unit, and everyone would have to choose a race at the very beginning. Otherwise the basic unit would probably have to be a choice between terran, zerg and protoss. I thought about civilian rebels with molotov cocktails... but still.

Ok, I taking a break this weekend (going to Stuttgart!), so I will continue with the discussion once I get back.

I am still going to dare asking... who's up for it?

I'm down!

edit: my help will mostly be limited to brainstorming and testing

Shit, I better brush up on the map editor.

EDIT: edited main post.

I'm just going to just spew out ideas as they occur to me, so forgive me if the thoughts are a little confusing.

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Perhaps the objective could be something other than eliminating your opponent. This is generally the common goal of most game types, and while the game can play out very differently even with the same goal (ie. frenzy, dota, melee are all very different), I think it would be refreshing to have a new "goal". One possible goal could be like the campaign mission where you are required to "mine" the Protoss' Breath of Life. There could be various geysers (or anything that would make sense, doesn't have to be a gas of any sort obviously) that players would fight for in order to gather x amount of that resource. Destroying an opponents base is still a viable option as it would eliminate competition, and I suppose you could raid their gas gathered as an additional benefit. This way there are essentially two ways to win, either destruction or the gathering of a resource.

Pros:
- Different from most common game types
- Simple concept to grasp, which attracts new players, but the game would still have a learning curve
- Heroes alone could not dominate, as they, in theory, could not defend or raid a geyser on their own

Cons:
- I feel like this sort of game type would not favor aggressive play, as most players would opt to gather resources than stop other players from getting any. As a result, this would lead to potentially boring play.
- A game type like this would be difficult to balance as far as gathering resources. If its too easy, the game could be over too quickly, while it could easily lead to a stalemate if gathering is too difficult.


An alternative could be that another team could be the ones protecting the gas, but a game where teams have different winning objectives tend to be very difficult to balance and generally one objective is more fun than the other (sheep tag). I figured it would be worth pitching the idea just in case, though.

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Another possible game type that I thought of was inspired by "Regicide" in Age of Empires. In essence, every player has a king unit. If the king unit is killed, then the player loses the game. In a map with heroes, I was thinking that the "king" unit could be the hero. I think that in this sort of map, the tech tree you get should be decided by the king/hero unit that you choose in the beginning.

Pros:
- Hero is automatically important, and attempting to farm units with your hero alone is highly dangerous. This prevents the hero from being too underpowered or overpowered. Units are required to protect the hero/king, so I think its a nice balance.

Cons:
- A minor screw-up can lead to somebody losing very early in the game.
- Hard to balance. If a hero is too weak, then the game can be over too quickly. If the hero is too strong, then units are pretty underpowered in the early stages of the game.
- Having almost the entire game centralized around one unit (per player) may be too extreme. Destroying a building is generally more difficult, and the building isn't constantly going to be in fights either.

Honestly, it seems like the cons heavily outweigh the pros in my list but I think that if the map was designed to eliminate the cons it could be a very fun map to play.

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As far as tech trees and starting units go, I like the idea of having your specific race decided by the hero that you choose. This way there is no need for a universal starting unit such as the footman, and it makes sense as well. Perhaps more than three races/tech trees would be needed as I'm sure not all hero units would fit into one of the current races. Perhaps a hybrid/Xel'Naga tech tree could be used, I dunno.

If we were to decide that there should be a global starting unit, I'm not sure what it should be. I don't like the idea of the starter being a ranged unit, so Marines don't fit. Zealots and Zerglings just ooze of their racial affiliation so I don't really like that either.

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It's almost 10 am and I haven't slept yet, so sorry if my ideas are not fully coherent.

P.S. Have fun in Stuttgart Masda!

I think the idea of multiple victory conditions is good.

the idea of "Gather X resources" maybe is good. It discourages turtling.
I also REALLY like the idea of raiding your enemy's MacGuffin resource stockpiles to set them back a bit, which encourages outside of the box thinking and stealthier gameplay.

The "king" unit idea isn't that great. The cons are too much to ignore, and it doesn't really suit the general idea of a team battle map.

As far as resource points go, like we talked about earlier, the Dawn of War Warhammer 40k RTS games use resource points instead of mideral deposits. You build a "gathering" structure on the point and it provides a steady flow of resources, but they're scattered throughout the map, so you have to keep your forces spread out to defend them all.

It's a great idea.

Custom map contest.

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/community/ ... s/sc2maps/

GoRoN wrote:
Perhaps the objective could be something other than eliminating your opponent. This is generally the common goal of most game types, and while the game can play out very differently even with the same goal (ie. frenzy, dota, melee are all very different), I think it would be refreshing to have a new "goal". One possible goal could be like the campaign mission where you are required to "mine" the Protoss' Breath of Life. There could be various geysers (or anything that would make sense, doesn't have to be a gas of any sort obviously) that players would fight for in order to gather x amount of that resource. Destroying an opponents base is still a viable option as it would eliminate competition, and I suppose you could raid their gas gathered as an additional benefit. This way there are essentially two ways to win, either destruction or the gathering of a resource.

[...]

An alternative could be that another team could be the ones protecting the gas, but a game where teams have different winning objectives tend to be very difficult to balance and generally one objective is more fun than the other (sheep tag). I figured it would be worth pitching the idea just in case, though.

It could work. In theory though, a resource objective could encourage cheesing and could be harder to balance. Also, I was thinking I could have different ways of exploiting a given resource, that would add some extra macro (just as the terran probe thing). If mining were an objective on its own, perhaps such tiny details wouldn't be details anymore.

GoRoN wrote:Another possible game type that I thought of was inspired by "Regicide" in Age of Empires. In essence, every player has a king unit. If the king unit is killed, then the player loses the game. In a map with heroes, I was thinking that the "king" unit could be the hero. I think that in this sort of map, the tech tree you get should be decided by the king/hero unit that you choose in the beginning.

Honestly, it seems like the cons heavily outweigh the pros in my list but I think that if the map was designed to eliminate the cons it could be a very fun map to play.

I don't like the idea. Perhaps call it throne, tree of life or castle and put it in the middle of your base. It would serve the same purpose except that destroying it would be defeat the whole team.

GoRoN wrote:As far as tech trees and starting units go, I like the idea of having your specific race decided by the hero that you choose. This way there is no need for a universal starting unit such as the footman, and it makes sense as well. Perhaps more than three races/tech trees would be needed as I'm sure not all hero units would fit into one of the current races. Perhaps a hybrid/Xel'Naga tech tree could be used, I dunno.

If we were to decide that there should be a global starting unit, I'm not sure what it should be. I don't like the idea of the starter being a ranged unit, so Marines don't fit. Zealots and Zerglings just ooze of their racial affiliation so I don't really like that either.

Tech should be independent from the hero. But that doesn't mean that I don't like the idea of having to choose a race at the beginning. I thought about it, we will see... I need to think whether you will have to stick to that race for the whole game.

GoRoN wrote:P.S. Have fun in Stuttgart Masda!

Thanks!


PS: The text coloring wasn't a good idea.

I'll do w/e to help but it might be a bit hard to coordinate different components on the map if more than 1 person is working on the actual thing

Ok.

I need a terrain. I think it's something we need to stand on before proceeding. There is no "proof of concept" to perform, since most mechanics will be pretty much straightforward, as far as coding goes.

If someone is interested in creating the terrain, please tell me. We will discuss about it on Vent.

The idea is that I could do the terrain myself, but I need it the first shot to be quite polished, and I was wondering if we had a skilled terrainer among us.

The terrain will help us understand the dynamics we want for the game.

mas u going to run into a ton of bugs just like i have...., so i will give a heads up. These bugs have my map progression at a complete stand still .. unless a patch comes out.. hero support is currently a joke in this editor. one of the bugs for e.g, you might think you have a work around (item drop on death) by using a variable to store the items, and grant the hero them when it revives, but the only function that supports it , Revives thier heros by forgetting there levels/behaviours everything.. so one solution for problem, causes yet another problem.. xp share is another thing that has a "back up plan" .. however the alternative is about just as bad... if u want me to go further into details i can, just thought i'd give you a heads up for what to expect.



i am jinx123 ...... this is my buglist http://forums.sc2mapster.com/mapping-ut ... -list/#p12

masda70 wrote:Ok.

I need a terrain. I think it's something we need to stand on before proceeding. There is no "proof of concept" to perform, since most mechanics will be pretty much straightforward, as far as coding goes.

If someone is interested in creating the terrain, please tell me. We will discuss about it on Vent.

The idea is that I could do the terrain myself, but I need it the first shot to be quite polished, and I was wondering if we had a skilled terrainer among us.

The terrain will help us understand the dynamics we want for the game.

Have we settled on a specific type or style of terrain?

Incinerate wrote:mas u going to run into a ton of bugs just like i have...., so i will give a heads up. These bugs have my map progression at a complete stand still .. unless a patch comes out.. hero support is currently a joke in this editor. one of the bugs for e.g, you might think you have a work around (item drop on death) by using a variable to store the items, and grant the hero them when it revives, but the only function that supports it , Revives thier heros by forgetting there levels/behaviours everything.. so one solution for problem, causes yet another problem.. xp share is another thing that has a "back up plan" .. however the alternative is about just as bad... if u want me to go further into details i can, just thought i'd give you a heads up for what to expect.



i am jinx123 ...... this is my buglist http://forums.sc2mapster.com/mapping-ut ... -list/#p12

Hm thats strange, heroes in that DotA based SCII map seemed to have been fine. Its all good though.

We have something in mind for the terrain.

As for Galaxy bugs, I always had a bad feeling about it. WC3 editor was all about workarounds anyway, so it's all good. Hopefully Blizzard will support Galaxy with some good patches, just like they did in WC3 early years.

id be willing to attempt to make the terrain

problem is im noob

don't let chim make the terrain unless you want to find hidden crabs throughout the map later