Oh ok. Why don't you make it a player vs player map? That would be easier, considering you don't have to make the AI for the computer players. Plus, since this is a space map, and you have a ship, you would be able to fly virtually anywhere.

Because he doesn't want to; he wants to do a PvE. (Although a PvP version would be epic, maybe later? *hint*)

Anyway, I have made a list of Zerg building effects! If you end up using the Zerg that is. Feel free to use or not as desired.



Post has been edited 6 time(s), last time on Aug 16 2008, 12:55 am by TassadarZeratul.

Oh my gosh I am so stupid why did I think that I couldn't have more than six ships! Stuck in my ways I guess. Thanks for unsticking me.

1. Originally I built the ships so that there would be moving space and you could still have some of the bigger buildings. I thought this would be more flavorful than having a dropship - "walking" around the ship to fix stuffs. However I have realized that that would be frustrating to have to kill buildings just because you forgot to leave room to move around and your engine just died. Your idea sacrifices reality for gameplay. Although your idea is best. I'll do that. Thanks for unsticking me, lol!
2. I disagree with you about the sprites, I think a noob will be fine with it. The missing buildings show up on the minimap well. Also I will make the sprites SLIGHTLY off center so that they are your color when they are built and cyan when they are ded. Not to mention the remaining rubble. Also a message will be shown whenever any of your buildings die such as - "Your Torpedo Builder took a massive hit and falls into a freakin rubble! Hop to it boy!" Ok not exactly like that but you get the idea.


Yes I REALLY like the idea of a PvP map. One miracle at a time, tho I would like to take that on after this if this is received well at all.

Now that I am not stupid any more and realize that i can have more than 6 ships for the 6 players to choose from (Der, der der.) yeah zerg sounds pretty awesome. I was doing some concepting myself for one of the characters - You start off as a guardian. Off to the side somewhere there you would have a drone that you could put on 3 different beacons - one that has a guardian hovering over it, one with devourer, and the last one with muta. If you have a Spire you can go on the one with the devourer on it. If you have a Greater Spire you can go on the one with the mutalisk on it. If you go to one, you become a vulnerable cacoon for a little while (like 10-15 seconds) and then you turn into the guy you chose. Each has its advantages - guardian and devourer do more damage than the muta tho they attack slower. So you can change your form at any time if you have the right building. If you don't have a spire and you are a devourer you turn back into a guardian. Same sort of thing if you are a muta. Other buildings would do terran and protoss like things. A hatchery would be required to build drones and operate your unit. Also unlike terran or protoss you would actually have to build up the tech tree.

Also another possible thing would be that you could create OTHER units from your hatchery than just drones - every ground zerg unit. Then once you create them, they are automatically transported under you so you control sort of like a small zerg swarm. There would be a supply limit of 8 or so so you can't get insane amounts of zerglings, for instance. With units you would also have to work up the tech tree, like of course Ultralisks require an Ultralisk Den, although an Ultralisk Den probably would do other things than just enable Ultralisk.. This idea is just a maybe tho. I like the idea that the zerg can control a small horde tho.

Also queen could be a good character.

Lol'd at air bladder

You've got some pretty win ideas there, btw.

Overlord character, maybe? 'Cause they do carry stuff inside them. Plus, if you use my second list, he can actually Nydus down units, which methinks is pretty cool.

EDIT: I just noticed a few typos in my list of Zerg buildings, some of which might have messed up the meaning. Re-reading the post (or at least the Sunken Colony and Defiler Mound entries in the second list) might clear up some stuff.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 16 2008, 12:57 am by TassadarZeratul.

...

How is that unprofessional? You are playing Starcraft. The best universe to put a scenario is..Starcraft. One of the most professional maps I've seen (Aeon of Strife) used one of the big protoss vs protoss battles in the Starcraft manual as the story, and it was actually interesting. It wasn't some lame thing no one cared about as a story, I liked reading the display texts.

So, done some more thinking, and have had these ideas:

1. If we replace the Terran vHP units with Ghosts (or one of the Ghost Heroes) and the Protoss vHP with, for example, the Dark Templar Hero (Not Zeratul, the unit they used for the DTs in Episodes 2 and 3) (or whatever, that was just an example), and re-arranged the building lists, then we might be able to put the Engineering Bay, Forge, or Evolution Chamber on the ships (possibly as a control system building?), so then the player might lose the ability to upgrade his vHP armor until rebuilt.

2. We might be able to use Valkyries and Corsairs: Set it so that if a Corsair player builds his Upgrade to Hero building, he turns into a Valk. Or visa-versa.

3. I think Overlords should be the only ones allowed to spawn non-Drone units and deploy them: It doesn't fit with the Mutalisk and it's derivatives, nor with the Queen. (BUT, we might do it that the Queen can create Broodlings? Morph an Overlord at the Hatchery, and it vanishes and you get two Broodlings at your location...)

4. Possible cool idea: Have the crew of the ship talk to you. (Of course, not on for Zerg players.) What I mean is, get quotes from various sci-fi shows/movies/games (Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Andromeda, or even 'Craft) and play them at various times. (Like, the player looses his last armor building: Have Worf from The Next Generation say "Shields down!". If a Protoss player's Fleet Beacon dies, you can play something from Andromeda where Andromeda (the Ai) says that she's loosing control of the ship systems.) The Zerg ship can grunt in pain (Play various Zerg unit noises, especially death noises) when it gets hit.

EDIT: I was confused about this. It doesn't seem to make sense... Not insulting the idea in any way, I just tend to have trouble understanding things...

And: *agrees with above*

The overlord would be a good character. So let me check now - the choices for characters are now:

Terran Ships: Battlecruiser
Wraith
Science Vessel
Corsair - Valkyrie
Zerg Ships - Overlord
Mutalisk - Guardian - Devourer
Queen
Protoss Ships - Carrier
Arbiter
Scout

So 10 all together. Cool.



The reason is because the user might think "Wow he is one lazy SOB, he just used starcraft names." However I understand your point and I agree with you that Starcraft theme would be better than Star Wars theme. When I was first concepting the map I was tied between Starcraft theme and Star Wars theme, but Kyle decided he wanted Star Wars theme. Since I'm the concepter, my opinion overrules his tho

Starcraft it is. I will edit the first post shortly.

1. I like the idea; it is better than just having zerglings.

2. I like the idea but unfortunately, the Valk doesn't have a Disruption Web ability. I would like the idea of switching back and forth better. This can be accomplished by having a building that upgrades you to Valk. The building will be Liftable. When you Lift it, it is "disabled" and you turn back into a corsair. The corsair will be put in a desolate place so that energy is conserved.

3. Definitely agreed, Overlords should be the ones with the horde, it makes perfect sense.

4. What a cool idea! Like if you are the mutalisk and you get hurt it plays a nice mutalisk pissed off sound, "AAAAAHHHHHHHH." Or maybe it could play a random one each time you get hurt. Sweetness. And it will already play the "Your base is under attack" sound automatically whenever you get hit as a ghost is created and removed and hits a random building of your's (determined by random switches and giving the building to a different player)

This is what I mean by the drone with the beacons - You have a "Chooser" off to the side somewhere. There will be 3 beacons the chooser can go to. Hovering over each is a Guardian, Mutalisk, and Devourer all owned by neutral. You bring the "Chooser" to one of the beacons to "Morph" into that unit. The morphing takes 10 seconds to be completed after you go to the beacon. While you are in those 10 seconds, you will be represented by a Cacoon. Also you can turn into another unit if you have the right building. If that building dies, you get turned into your default unit, the Guardian. Understand?

Makes sense now, but why is the Guardian the base unit? That's what I'm confused about. (Plus, if we do the Mutalisk as the base unit, then we can actually use the Aspect spells - Kill the GS to demorph. Probably should refund the mins tho.)

Instead of Terran Wraith, you could do a Sons of Korhal Wraith. Or something similar that works with your story that would not be lazy looking.

Oh, just realized, I meant to play a sound that is not the 'base is under attack' noise.

Also, you could do custom quotes when a player builds something: I'm pretty sure I could find a Star Trek or Andromeda quote of Scotty/La Forge/Harper saying 'Warp Drive online' or 'Ready for Slipstream' or something, and play that when the player builds a Lightspeed building.

Guardian is a heck of a lot worse than mutalisk unless the mutalisk does like no damage like it does in normal SC. This is an RPG so guys should do a good amount of damage. Having Guardian as the final character would be sort of anti-climactic.


Wow I didn't even think of the Terran races like that. That would be so cool. I approve.


I like that idea. Of course it would be better if we could find something from the Starcraft scenarios.

But-if we had a sound for every building for every race, wouldn't that take like, mega space and take 10 days to dl?

O yea do La Forge!!! He's good.

Well, the Zerg sounds can be done by creating and killing Zerg units somewhere on the map. And the Terran and Protoss building lists are similar, so they can share quotes.

You worry too much about sounds. In the end, a few sounds like this will add minimal gameplay improvement and maximal filesize increase (unless you use virtual sounds). Don't spend too much time on it.

True, but I was thinking only a few short quotes. I had always known it might have to be taken out based on filesize since I suggested it... me not idiot...

And it can be compressed as well.

(And virtual sounds? What do you mean by that?)

Virtual sounds are the term that SCMDraft uses for in-game sounds.

You know, this map seems pretty epic. And now that I got my copy of StarDat.MPQ fixed, I was wondering if I could help you with the triggers. (I have had programming experience before, which makes triggering easier.) (If you want my help, just PM me whatever you have in your map so far.)

Just one question, how do you intend to damage a building by exactly 10 hits, and still let shields (or HP for the Zerg) regen/SCVs repair stuff? That would seem pretty hard to do with vHP. Not undo-able, I can see how you could, but it would be hard. Or at least annoying. (Maybe you could create a Reaver, invulnerable all the other buildings, give it one Scarab, and set Scarab damage to 10? After a few seconds you could remove the Reaver.)

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 18 2008, 1:59 pm by TassadarZeratul.

Hey TZ thanks for your offer, I'll pm you about it.

The way that it will happen is much like your reaver idea - Whenever a building of your's is finished it is given to player player 8 and then player 12. You and Player 8 are allied to eachother. When you get hit (A zergling under you dies) a random building of p12's becomes your's and a cloaked Ghost owned by player 7 (who controls all monsters and is allied to Player 8 but not you) is created next to that building and 4 DCs are counted so he can shoot the building once. Then it is given back to player 8 then 12. If several lings under you die at the same time, it will wait until there are no ghosts in your base and keep repeating until every death is accounted for.

The only flaw is that the ghost might attack buildings that you are not finished building.

The reason why I can't just have the ghost owned by player 8 and unally him to me is that player 8 is the guy who will be detecting whether the wraith is cloaked or not in the map....

I can't think of any alternatives to this flawed solution. Any ideas? otherwise yeah it will work ok.

One idea is to have wraiths instead of ghosts (wraiths have much less attack range so the danger that they will attack something other than the building you want them to attack is much less) but the problem is that they attack much slower. It will still work but it will take more time to account for all the deaths. I think I'd rather have the ghosts than this solution.

One idea: Don't give the buildings to P8/P12, but let whoever built them retain ownership. When someone gets hit, do the following:
1. Mark all the player's buildings as Invulnerable.
2. Center a location over the building you want to damage. Make it larger then the largest building by one tile.
3. Take the building under the location and de-invulnerable it.
4.. Create a Ghost at that location, and order it to attack to that location.
Then do the Death Count/Attack thing.

I'm pretty sure that this also frees up P8's slot to be used by a human player, btw.

Oh, and if you use hero Ghosts and set their attack value to 1, and create 10 instead of 1, then you can have them all attack once (or would it be twice?), which is faster. Also, this makes it much easier if you decide to do my Pain Resistance idea for the Zerg, it would be much much easier to implement, methinks.

Sorry I didn't mention that player 8 is needed for detecting whether the Wraith character is cloaked or not. Sucks huh...

I like your idea for invulnerability; we should use that. The invulnerability trigger affects buildings being built as well I assume?

I dont understand your 3rd paragraph - How would it be faster for 10 ghosts instead of just one? It would be the same, right?

Edit also if we do this thing where the evolution chamber/forge/engineering bay upgrades your armor, we could just have a cloaked terran ghost under the 3 Terran units, a cloaked Dark Templar under the 4 Protoss ships, and a cloaked Infested Duran under the 3 zerg ships. Since we are no longer using burrowed units, we can just constantly order the guys to their own locations so they dont move or attack. Or heck, why do we even need to use cloaked units at all? You'll be able to see them just fine anyways.... Seriously.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 18 2008, 10:50 pm by madroc.