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What I Need:

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I need a movement based spell for a RPG. By movement, I mean an advanced form of movement for the hero character (like Teleport).

It is not upgradable.
It must not do damage.
Being able to use it when no enemies around is preferred.
The player must also be able to control the movement spell.

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Limitations:

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1) Mobile grids will screw up due to the presence of air units.
2) Coordinate grids are too complex to use for a SINGLE spell. No FRAGs either.
3) Dark Swarm and Disruption Web are already used for other characters.
4) The character can transform, so no MC/Halluc/etc. for aiming.

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Character Style:

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The character is designed to continually transform between 2+ forms to deal a high amount of damage safely. IE Transform into Siege Tank, fire, transform into another unit during its cooldown, transform into Siege Tank again, fire, etc..

There is no mana cost or cooldown. Instead, a burnout system is used. Each spell used adds X to his minerals, which decrease by 1 every trigger cycle. If the player ever exceeds 100 minerals, he cannot cast another spell until his minerals hit 0.

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Other Movement Spells: (these are for OTHER CHARACTERS, NOT THIS ONE)

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1)Teleport
Player 3 casts Dark Swarm. His Defiler is moved to the Dark Swarm. His summons have similar teleport abilities that utilize Dark Swarm.
2) Gale
Player 2 casts Disruption Web. A cloaked Scourge is created over the hero unit and runs towards the Disruption Web. Enemies nearby the Scourge are continually moved to the Scourge. Upon reaching its destination, the Scourge then moves towards the Corsair or a second Disruption Web casting. It now moves nearby enemies AND Player 2's hero if nearby to the Scourge continuously.

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Ideas I Went Through:

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1) Lunge
Used the Waypoint Casting System. I used a cloaked stacked Scourge that was waypointed and continually moved my hero unit to the Scourge. Unfortunately, due to the style of gameplay requiring that the player switch between hotkey groups quickly, the hotkey for the Scourge was continually lost. This hotkey loss was unacceptable. Being able to see the Scourge (looks ugly as hell) and the Scourge's tendency to swerve (decreasing distance and making the path inaccurate) were also problems.
2) Escape
Cast once to mark a teleport point. Cast again to move your hero to that point. Multiple teleport points could be set up. Unfortunately, this only allows you to move backwards, not forwards. It's too defensive. Offensive applications are only possible AFTER you set up teleport points beforehand, which is too slow.
3) Portals
Cast once to mark one end of the portal. Cast again to mark the other end. Multiple portals could be available. Portals could also move enemy units. Unfortunately, two of the character's forms CANNOT move (burrowed Lurker, sieged Siege Tank). This made the portals too difficult to use. It also has the problem of being too defensive; offensive is only applicable after you set the portals up, which takes too long.
4) Possession
Gives the nearest enemy unit to the player. When that unit dies, your hero is moved to that position. It had the major issue of lack of control; you can't pick which enemy unit to possess. It also lacked a defensive capability as you could only approach with it, not retreat.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Jan 28 2009, 5:30 am by SelfPossessed.

Create a Shuttle, when the player unloads a unit from the shuttle, his unit teleports to the Shuttle?

Maybe spawn an Arbiter to use Recall?

Create two Scourges/Observers, and if the player touches one, teleport to the other one?

Creating an air unit looks ugly as hell. If it's just one air unit, then it cannot be used aggressively as once you teleport to it, you cannot immediately teleport away. It becomes too slow then. If it's multiple air units, then there's the problem of vision (invincible air units = too much sight range) that even blind won't fix. That and it'll look even worse with multiple air units.

Arbiter looks ugly. Recall can break other systems in the game (for example recalling a spellcasting unit).

That's a portal. I mentioned the problems with it already in my first post.

No, because you can move the Scourges/Observers... Say, fly one up to your opponent, run under the other one, then jump back through if your HP is too low? And for the immobile forms, you can just move the portal unit off your hero then back onto it.

Scourges/Observers look ugly. If you can actually move them, it has the same exact problems as the Shuttle in having too much vision. Blinding them isn't enough. That and having only 1 pair decreases your options significantly.

Overall, having an extra air unit is like a poor implementation of a pet. Whereas Player 2 had a pet that is used for 3 of her spells, Player 1's pet (shuttle/scourge/ob ideas) is used for only one. It isn't worth it.

you're not leaving much room for a good solution here. short of web and dark swarm, im pretty sure to accomplish what you want is virually impossilbe.

things you could try to mess with are like using hallucinations, where a player hallucnates a far off object and u teleport to it, but that would be like ur way point teleport thing

you could play around with spider mines. u create one at the players location and it will move to the nearest burrowed ling and when it gets there itll move u there. the only problem is that u cant contral that

mind contral would be another thing, but its sloppy and if you're units upgrade and change i dont think it'd work too well. maelstrom may be interesting to play around with, where it kills the unit then u tele port there, but again if your units change then it wouldnt work

those are the closest to what you want that i can think of, i hope that it may give u some ideas

Yeah, I can't use those.

The movement thing really needs to be controllable. I had two versions of Possession that gave you control of an enemy unit (kinda like teleporting on top of an enemy) and allowed you to cast spells from them. It worked, but you weren't able to control which unit you possessed and I ended up scrapping the spell because of this.

Being able to use the special movement even when there's no enemies nearby is also definitely preferred.

the only other contralable thing i can think of that can be contraled is the flag beacons place COP

but i have no idea how you could incorperate that into ur map effeciently


but u know, now that i think about it, i was playin this test map to where you cast dark swarm and it shoots a missle if u will, in a direction

now it could detect which direction it wanted to go. now i suppose you could use that same direction detection with like killing units or movement detection and it moves ur unit an exact distance in that direction, still, i think you would have a lot of trouble with taht as well

A directional detection system without a coordinate grid might be doable (not my idea, but I did do some brainstorming on it). The problem isn't detecting the direction, the problem is that I can't grid in the direction I want. Recall the limitations. No coordinate grids due to complexity for a single spell. No mobile grids due to air units screwing it up.

EDIT: Flag beacons fail. They stop working after a few minutes.

if i recall, i dont think the map used a mobile grid actually

idk what else to tell u then, i mean thats extremely narrow criteria to try to fit

im pretty sure the only detectable spells are dark swarm, web and mind contral. though i believe i saw somewhere that you can detect medic spells, like optical flare. im not exactly sure about that tho. but i dont that that'd do u much good

just to throw it out there; i suppose u could detect a nuke drop lol

Okay, this is a bit uncool talking of gameplay, but it would work (you get 2 possibilities):
1) Your map is full of preplaced invincible allied burrowed units (not stacked and not too near to each other).
If you use a Dropship (for example) to control the transformation by unloading a unit, you could simply make in sort that when you move the dropship, it activates the teleport mode.
Once that teleport mode is 'on', you order the hero to the nearest burrowed unit (or you mark all near surrounding burrowed units and tell the hero to move to one of the marked places) and then, the real stuff starts. To that point (over a burrowed unit), you'll always have 9 spots to teleport to. Via the dropship, when you detect that the hero is over a mark, you cast 1 mark over a burrowed unit (it'll be the bottom left one). The units inside the dropship becomes directions: east, north-east, etc... You select a direction and via a giving unit command, you can move the hero in the right direction! ... And it is controllable while you're teleporting!
2) Instead of having pre-placed units (which would suck :S), you can try to make your own burrowed unit grid from any point the hero is and make it move to the place he wants.
3) Since you've said it should work without any monsters, what about to create a very simple grid of units that will perfectly surround the hero and he get to initially choose his movement and can change it while he's moving (using the same system as in #1)

I think I'll make a test map!

You could a series of carriers + arbs around the edge of the map (like 8+)
Doing so would allow you to temporarily move the hero to a holding center, move an interceptor from a carrier to his spot, wait X miliseconds, and move the interceptor back to its carrier, and move the hero to where the interceptor was. Seeing how interceptors fly pretty fast, the uncloaking process (in which the interceptor fades back to "visible") wouldn't cut down the range too much.
The hero can decide the direction (which carrier + arb to take the interceptor from)
However, a few problems arise-
If the interceptor flies to a bad area, the hero will be stuck in holding center. To fix this, i suggest having a line of burrowed units created, so if the area is bad, it will trace back to a good area, via giving and such.
Some others may arise, but I can't think of any atm....

It's not a perfect system, but it does fit your criteria, and I mean, those are some pretty specific rules...

This was actually my very first attempt at making a static grid.
http://www.staredit.net/files/1226/
Read infos to learn a concept (that might be wrong) about how to make it mobile (to use no pre-placed units).

I'm still brainstorming. I'm currently leaning towards the Lunge via Waypoint Casting except always have the Scourge owned by the current player. I'd cover up the Scourge with explosions, though it would display around other air units (primarily the Corsair) rarely. I can't do anything about the massive swerving though, which is a sore point for me.

Directional detection is another option at this point. Its weakness is losing clicks when the hero is moving, which severely weakens this option.

Sigh. Player 1 is giving me headaches now. I'm not sure what to do.

@ Payne

@ Pyro682

Having the user switch screens to cast a spell is terrible usability. Nonetheless, the idea of using a moving unit instead of gridding is doable. The problem is that I'll be limited to only 8 or so directions, which may or not be favorable. That and I'll have to revisit my direction detection, which had a slight problem of losing the last click if the hero is still moving.

@SelfP:
1) It isn't an air mobile grid
2) It isn't a coordinate grid
It's a static ground grid

I completely don't understand what you're describing then. Could you explain it again?

Payne says to place a zergling burrowed or something every few tiles. It is not a good idea, you will reach the unit limit very very quickly.

It works fine if you have a small space, however, for larger spaces I'd say it isn't really an option. If it works for you, remember that unlike other editors, SCM Draft gives the units their ID number based on when the map maker placed them, so the old rule when you center a location on 2 units on the same x axis it goes to the bottom one first is untrue, it actually goes to the highest unit ID (= created last) first.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 29 2009, 6:49 pm by NudeRaider. Reason: corrected minor mistake

Actually, that's why I proposed to try to create a "mobile" static grid using units created around the hero when it cast the teleport, and you then make the units burrow.

The only two flaws with this system (besides it not working anymore after a few minutes) is that you cannot cast this spell on any 2x3 square with terrain that cannot be built on (the tileset creep is questionable though, because the stuff has green boxes whilst selecting a building to build, but you cant place stuff on it as far as i know) and the fact that it is moderately difficult to cast quickly. You could have the beacon spawned underneath the player when it is casted and be clicked about as fast as darkswarm on a defiler being spawned.

Edit(Once More): I was thinking, you could use the COP system I described in combination with the Portals or Escape spell you described and it could be offensive, relatively fast, and fix the other problems you listed. Also it would be really simple to program into a map. Win/Win solution i'd say.

Post has been edited 5 time(s), last time on Jan 31 2009, 3:08 am by NudeRaider. Reason: removed wrong/off-topic information - don't spread rumors p