Blood Pressure Marathon: Char 3.0
People may have played this map on battle.net already, either the original Blood Pressure Marathon or Blood Pressure Marathon 2 (which fixed some bugs, added units and hero upgrades).
I have based this map on Blood Pressure Marathon 2, but have made many substantial changes to it. I'm am going to credit the original makers and the person who did v2 and am not trying to pass this off as my own completely original creation. I started making the changes to this map because I really found BPM a hell of a lot of fun (many lol moments when your enemies spawn an overlord or you give someone payback for killing you last time) but was frustrated by the bugs present and several rough edges and missing unit abilities (no spider mines, no mind control).
This is a race map, where each player gets a random unit spawned (from pretty much all movable units in the game) and they must complete 15 laps of the course to win. Each lap comprises of 4 sections, starting at the north, then goes to east, south and finally west. When the player brings their unit to the finish line of one section, it is killed and a new random unit is spawned at the start of the next section. Unit selection is random and units have access to their normal special abilities and attacks, which they can use to slow down, or kill, the other players. As this is a running race, units like the overlord and reaver are effectively booby prizes, while units like cracklings and speedlots are great. Stasis and ensnare make nasty surprises for your opponents also
SPECIFICATIONS
- Players
Up to 7 human players to race. P8 is CPU and used for various effects and hyper triggers. - Map Tileset & Size
Char 128x128.
Originally BPM was in Twilight tileset, but I think Char has much better contrast and more interesting basic tiles (lava is interesting ground tile)
General features, including changes from original BPM map:
- Changed the powerup system and fixed all the bugs with it:
- Respawn character now costs 15 ore by building a Zealot.
- Freeze enemies prevents enemy units from moving for 16 seconds.
- Kill enemies does what it says on the tin (good if someone is just about to finish the 15th lap, or spawned a fast moving unit and you want to spite them)
- 30 seconds invulnerability, does what it says on the tin (good for an annoying enemy camping with a tank or dark templar)
- Impose patience, kills enemy units and replaces them with slow overlords in-place, to really slow them down. Players can't respawn their character until the overlord dies!
- Steal gas, build a comsat station somewhere in the map for 10 gas and steal up to 5 gas off each other player in the game. Can only build 1 comsat per player. - Players gain 1 ore for killing enemies, 2 gas for finishing sections 1-3 and 3 gas for finishing section 4 (so 1 complete lap is 9 gas). Players can also gain gas through a few other means, such as building an assimilator and a nexus and mining the gas manually (depleted geyser), or by destroying the Player H8ter temple or No Fly Zone.
- Made each section of the map have its own flavour:
- North section is mostly blank, but has some doodad obstacles and vespene geyser.
- East section has Player H8ter temple, which spawns 4 CPU archons that insta-kill your units every 3 minutes. The archons walk towards the start section and blow up.
- South section has a gun trap system owned by the CPU that can kill ground units (not fully fleshed out yet).
- West and final section has a maze, and sight-limited spore colony in the center as a designated 'no fly zone' that kills fliers that get too close. Fliers can fly around the zone, but the path is narrow and requires some concentration to avoid (so you have to pay attention here). The cannons on the map are CPU owned and once destroyed are gone for good. Mainly they are here to slow down the initial winning player, as well as implant the idea of constructing cannons in this area in the minds of the players. There is also a small shortcut in the maze through which only small units can pass, large units must walk around a longer path (denoted by a flag with the name changed to indicate it is a shortcut - doodad disabled to prevent workers from picking it up). - The course is now 13% longer, each section is 60 tiles long instead of 53.
- Almost all movable, controllable units in the game are available, some of which have special abilities outside of regular Starcraft, such as the constipated hero firebat that creates explosive shits (crysalis powerup that kills enemies in nearby proximity), king of the sky artanis scout that damages nearby enemies and vultures that suffer engine stalls (hallucination puffs of smoke and temporary halt unit), and many others. Also a booby prize of a sunken colony (previously called G.G, now called Purgatory) where obviously the player can't move!
- Renamed many units, totally rebalanced all units and spells.
- New hero upgrade system where a player can choose several units at the start of the game that during the game will be upgraded at a cost of gas. Eg if the player selects the Dark Archon, during the game when they spawn a regular Archon, for the price of 5 gas it will instead be replaced with a Dark Archon, which has access to regular Dark Archon spells. These hero upgrades fall into 3 categories - general, which upgrades dmg, hp, shields and mana, speed, which mainly upgrades speed (but hp, dmg and shields are also adjusted by a small amount, generally upwards), and special which other upgrades like the Dark Archon above fall into.
- Fixed bugs in the original map (powerup buildings in particular), and allows abilities previously disabled such as Mind Control, Spider Mines and allows the player to keep broodlings created by queens (previously they were insta-killed).
- Sevearl new units added, and some redundant units removed.
- Includes banning system to kick annoying players, although this is disabled when any player gets to their last lap to prevent cheese.
- Bounding box system for air units so they can't fly out of bounds. In the old map if you flew out of bounds you went back to the start of the current section, which was annoying if you did it by accident. New system will place you back inside bounds just where you went out of bounds. Handles all units including carriers (interceptors are tricky), as well as prevent previous carrier-related bugs present in BPM.
- New firework effects for when a player crosses a finish line, and will have a winning ceremony with fireworks (maybe).
SCREENSHOTS
The full map. Main field in the center/left. Hero selection area at bottom right. Powerup buildings and banning system in bottom left. Random land on right are spawning pens and left over crap I haven't tided up yet.
The minimap in scmdraft fog of war layer, showing the words that will shine through in-game (although muted red).
Example of the hero description: Constipated Zealot hero.
Recent tasks completed
- Aldaris & Zeratul system partially replaced, have an idea for what I am going to do.
- Implemented gas for finishing sections, +2 for sections 1-3 and +3 for final section (+9 gas per complete lap).
- Add extra gas for finishing with slow units (overlord, reaver, civilian)
- Implemented unit sound, transmission selection circle flash and talking portrait.
- Map terrain largely finished, just tidyup right area (spawn area, unit management etc). Sorted out player fog.
- Implemented player abilities:
- Respawn character: Build a zealot (instant) for 15 ore (maybe 10 - players get 1 ore for killing enemies). Re-creates your character back at the start area for the section you're on.
- Freeze enemies: Units are halted in place for 16 seconds with a disruption web cast underneith as a 'freeze' graphic. Prevent enemies from respawning while freeze is in effect. Only 1 freeze can be in effect for any player at a time. Lift-off factory, player gains after 20 kills.
- Invulnerability (30 secs): Unit gains invincibility so cannot be targetted by spells. Will also prevent regular "kill unit" triggers such as terrorist bomb and 'Kill enemies' from affecting unit. Carries over to newly spawned units for this player. Lift-off starport, player begins with 1 and gains a second after 40 kills.
- Kill enemies: Kills enemy units including mines and broodlings, but not buildings. Does not affect players that have invulnerability from the invulnerability ability. Lift off infested command center, player begins with 1 and gains a second after 60 kills.
- Impose patience: Replaces all enemy units with a slow overlord in-place. Prevent enemies from respawning until their overlord is killed or reaches the end of a section (and therefore dies). Lift-off science facility player gains after 80 kills.
- Spider mine hero situation resolved - single hero upgrade to Raynor w/ spider mines (vs previous 2 hero upgrades). Replace previous vulture speed upgrade with zealot speed upgrade (see below).
Tasks To Do (priority order)
- Complete south section gun trap system.
- Add +1 gas for finishing west section (maze) with ground units
- Add new Zerg bonus building: spire for 8 gas that gives the player observer and shuttle speed upgrades permanently.
- Implement player ability:
- Steal gas: Initiated by building a comsat station on a command center that a player has built somewhere on the course with an SCV; the comsat is immediately destroyed upon completion. Comsat costs 10 gas to initiate construction and takes 10-15 seconds to complete, during which time enemies can destroy it (and you lose your 10 gas) - possibly allow enemies to 'pillage' 5 gas for destroying a comsat. When the comsat is complete, it will steal 5 gas from each enemy player and transfer it to the owner. So if you do this in a 7 player game, you net back 25 gas. If an enemy player only has 3 gas, then you only get 3 gas from that player (so gas is not created out of nowhere). Gas leaderboard is cycled periodically while playing, so you can see status of enemies' gas and best time to build this. Players have control of a disabled academy (so cannot research stim packs/range), so once they have created a comsat I'll destroy the academy to prevent player from building another.
- Implement mind control support
- Implement new units/rolls:
- Firebat hero is now going to be Constipated instead of diseased (with irradiate + medic). This allows zealot hero to now be a pure speed upgrade (previously Constipated).
- Cloaked Ursadon hero - need to stress-test to ensure crash-proof.
- Cloaked mutalisk hero, can morph to cloaked devourer or guardian - need to stress-test to ensure crash-proof.
- Give defiler 'victims'. Starts with 0 energy, must consume burrowed defiler victims to gain energy. If victims are unburrowed, they die.
- Enjoy the ride: Player spawns as a powerup, probably Kyahdarin crystal and cannot move. A CPU-controlled worker (probably scv) is created that the player has no control over. The CPU-controlled worker can wander off course at intervals. Possibly allow other players to kill the CPU unit and pick up the powerup themselves, if they do and bring it to the finish line they might get some special bonus?
- Create new dropship hero that spawns with 'bombs', which are Aldaris' (otherwise unplayable unit). Unloading Aldaris replaces them with ragnasaur that is killed ('bomb' death animation) and damages (kills?) nearby enemies. Investigate DDS to see if you can hide the scarab splash effect.
- Implement resurrection kitty and finish kakaru decoy hallucination effect
- Skip forward to next section / re-do previous section. Possibly put in some limits so players cannot get more than +2 sections in a streak (eg +2 must be followed by -1).
- +2 bonus gas / +5 bonus ore.
- Sort out what to do with the spider mine 'hero' situation
- Update hero selection area to demonstrate extra effects for certain heroes (eg Kakaru will spawn hallucinated decoys, ressurrection kitty will constantly die and respawn, King of Sky will have explosion effect etc)
- Finish map start up - hero selection + instructions, spawn players with their chosen critter hero for the first lap and start the race.
- Finish map revealer locations
- Rationlise all player messages with a consistent colour scheme for messages: White are banning/race status, Red for events, Green for resource events, Cyan for hero upgrades, Yellow for player abilities.
- Implement winning ceremony (low priority)
Suggestions
If anyone has suggestions for interesting unit affects or abilities, please suggest them. Also interested in ideas for powerups that players can use, that affect their unit or their enemies'.
UPDATES
- 10/02/2010
Redid this first post with new info, made it more readable. Updated Tasks Completed and To Do list with current progress. I've missed my ETAs several times now, so I'm just going to say that hopefully beta testing will start before the end of the month. Updated both map shots with current state (pretty much done, except for the east side which players don't see in-game anyway). The constipated zealot text is presently still in the game, but will be replaced with a firebat as per new tasks above. - 05/02/2010
Updated this post with accurate 'to do' list. ETA map ready for beta-testing by the start of next weekend (Feb 12) - 28/01/2010
New (almost final) map layout, new comprehensive list of remaining features. - 19/01/2010
Creation of map thread here on SEN.
Made with the Map Production template.
Post has been edited 15 time(s), last time on Feb 10 2010, 10:27 am by Lanthanide.
None.