Okay, to start things off, I decided to make a map that's based on the Metroid franchise. I'm somewhat of a new mapper so my triggering abilities are somewhat limited .

The map uses a stargate casting system, Scout for shooting your selected beam once(unless you acquired the multi shot power up), Carrier for firing your selected charged beam (having multi shot will have varying effects), Corsair is for changing between morphball and power suit.

Beams currently are: Power, Ice, and Plasma. Kerrigan ghost, Fenix dragoon, and normal firebat respectively.

Energy tanks will increase your max health by 10%, making 9 total Energy Tanks available throughout the game.

I already have the first area and boss triggered and tested, thing is, I'm at a conflict at deciding what the Power Suit(unit you use in game) will be. I made 2 test versions, first being normal marine (0 Attack) and the 2nd version is a Terran Civilian.

Marine allows the enemy computers to attack him without running away when shot at by a beam weapon. But according to some feedback, the auto marine attack is annoying. It also adds extra damage.

The civilian is pretty okay from what I tested. Though, enemies will run away once shot at and you have to go chase it and all.

And a friend of mine thinks the Power Suit should be a Zealot.

Any help on this predicament?


Note: Map is 2 players because I find 1 to be pretty lonely. 2 players make the game less difficult, but energy tanks and heals must be shared which could increase difficulty

Use marine and set to ally when not shooting, and unally when shooting.

Zealot is kinda unfitting to me as she doesn't really have a melee attack, at least from what I played.

will this include the grapple beam? space boots (makes her jump 2x)?
missiles? charge beam (charge ice, charge plasma)?
morph ball? boost ball? ball bombs? ball jump? power bomb?
viara suit? gravity suit?
the ship (prime #3)?
will there we save stations for when you die? and recharge stations? missile stations?
WILL THERE BE RIDLEY!? (<- there better be!)

I'd actually like a ghost to be samus. This way when she has a suit upgrade, the unit doesn't really change. It also give her more vision.

Samus will be a marine. Morphball is a probe holding a mineral chunk. Morphball bombs are scarabs.(DDS) Charge Beam, Charge Ice, and Charge Plasma are available, if you're meaning the Beam+Missile combos, then probably not, unless I can get some ideas on how to do those things. I've been thinking of using the Arbiter for Missiles but I was also thinking of using the Arbiter as an Observe action, which gives out some sort of clue when standing next to certain objects/doodads/etc. Your ship is a crashed BC in flames

And, I still don't know what to do for the Carrier option for morphball mode...also, I don't think there will be anymore suits besides Power Suit...for now.




Controls Area


First unfriendly encounter




Morphball Bombing

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Mar 29 2010, 10:28 pm by Xero.

Looks okay... I wonder if one could make some sort of side scroling metroid game like in the old school game, using a kind of gravity sistem with burrowed units...

Hey i think you should make Samus' Power Suit... How to say this... A "fat" unit, since the point of the MorphBall is going through the small passages, and i think a marine is just about as fat as a probe. Don't pay mind to me if i'm wrong, though.

@fat_flying_pigs: IT'S VARIA SUIT >.<.

On topic again, is this game going to have some puzzle-ish areas like in Metroid? How 'bout Ridley? And are there going to be annoyingly hard MorphBall control parts like in Metroid Prime? If you answer to some of the questions people here make, we can help you develop your ideas further, .

Anyways, i was also thinking, why not make the Morphball Bombs mines? You know, since they aren't really supossed to move from the spot they're laid on, and they're also supossed to explode shortly after placed... Heck, they're not even meant to fend off units as much as they are to jump through gaps in tight spots or solve puzzles, at least from what i remember.

Also why not make it like Metroid Echoes, where you have Light and Dark beams instead of Ice and Plasma and stuff? That way, this could also help the puzzle element develop further. I'm not really sure though, and these are just my thoughts.

Any ideas on what unit Samus' Power Suit should be?

There will be puzzles, but only a few types are bumping around in my head at the moment. Any ideas would be very helpful. I'll try my best to implement Ridley into the game, since I already made Parasite Queen.

I really like the idea of morphball bombs as scarabs, because I implemented invisible barriers/switches. Though the idea of spider mines as the bombs does offer more puzzle solving capabilities. There'll be some areas that can only be accessed with the morphball, like tiny mazes and the like.

There'll be various areas where the Plasma Beam and Ice beam can open up. Like a metal door(building), a dragoon(Ice) can destroy it, while Power(ghost) and plasma(fbat) can't. For Plasma, there will be an object that you can attack, but there will be burrowed units under it that you have to kill in order to move further. Just my ideas for the beam weapons I chose. I could consider Light and Dark beam instead if you can form some examples that are better than mine.

Note: The metal door could be a Terran building on fire, with just enough hp for the Ice Beam to "freeze and shatter" it. Yay for random ideas

Sorry for double posting, but should this map be one player or 2 players? 2 players seems quite odd for a metroid style map, but it's always fun to have someone around to play/work with
1 player will allow me to do some sort of grapple system(maybe), but expectations for 1 player maps are extremely high
Well, I'm doing something Metroid related so yeah...

I don't really have an idea of what Samus' power suit should be, but i still think it'd be unlogical that the marine could enter morphball passages. Then again i'm assuming both marine and probe are considered medium sized. I don't really know for sure.

Ideas for puzzles could be, for example, a sort of Morphball minimaze where you have to bomb specifical structures (Could be represented by a static enemy unit if you decide to use mines for bombs) in certain order and within a limited time.

A problem i can foresee with the Morphball system, though, is the fact that you needed timing and skill to ascend through mazes while in Morphball mode because you could only boost yourself up via bombs. However, since this is StarCraft, you'd need to do a lot of work to implement a gravity system so that you can imitate this kind of element, since the way i see it now instead of using timing and bombs properly to ascend you just tell the probe to go up...

Examples for the Dark and Light beams: Well, you could like, use Defilers with Dark Swarm for Dark Beam, and Cors with Dweb for Light Beam. This way it would look sort of "correct" regarding the light and darkness thing, and it would also require more player interaction to aim and stuff, rather than just lure ling and -Hit 1, click, hit 2, hit S, repeat-. This way, you could also give certain enemies invulnerability to certain beams, and for bosses you could make certain parts of them vulnerable to certain beams. You could then also just use the same building for doors and just add some special effects that tell the player which beam is needed to open which door.


Also, just out of curiosity, which system are you going to use for doors? You like, just make it so that only specific units can destroy it, and once it opens once that's it?

EDIT: Make it 2 players. It does seem odd, but this would also help you with the Puzzle element, Lets say, while P1 has to solve a complicated puzzle, units that are vulnerable to different beams are incoming, and it's up to P2 to protect his buddy so they can advance. Or lets say, you gotta bomb certain structures in Morphball mode within a time limit, but the time is too short for a player to do it all alone. Therefore, they have to teamwork in order to advance.

And it's also always good to have someone to have fun with and chat while playing.

I really like the idea for the Light and Dark beam, since spamming scouts gets tiring after the first boss
Power Beam might be a problem, but I could stick with the basic ghost attack? (Say Kerri ghost will be Samus, power beam is auto equipped)
I think I should learn how to do inverted locations for Light and Dark beam...maybe. Light Beam can have DDS for damage, since Light Beam does hit more than one unit Dunno about Dark beam, but could spawn a guard or so. Gravity for the morphball system seems really complicated for my level haha.
Also, are there any tricks you can do with a probe? I know that a worker unit can go through other worker units, but I haven't tested that out yet. If you can, then I could just add an tiny passage blocked off by a drone or something and you can just activate morphball then go through there.
Then I'm gonna have to figure out how to do charge Light and Dark haha...

Well, you could keep the stargate system. All i said was that you could like use Dark Swarm and Dweb so that there are more puzzle possibilities.
And for the worker trick, you could like put a mineral patch on the other side, that way the probe goes there to mine and that way he can jump through the drone. However, i dunno if this works, since he's already holding the mineral chunk. And it wouldn't look really professional either... You could sort of use that for a grapple system instead, though. Lets say, your SCV is your Grapple beam, and when you use it, the SCV spawns for a while and then detect if it's near a min patch, and if it is, teleport Samus there.

Well I'm going to implement Dark and Light Beam, since I have a couple ideas for it. For morphball, I can have morphball doors that'll teleport you to another area off the side where you stay in morphball until you get to the other side. I think some lurker spikes or fbat attacks will make the mazes interesting. Now, is it possible to make terran buildings lift and land using triggers, since this can allow multi use doors and less locations. For morphball bombs, I dunno how I'm gonna trigger that, but I'll mess around with it.

Player 2 should be blue?

If you are using Metroid Prime 2 weapons, be sure to include the annihilation beam (i think thats what the 3rd one is called).
Make both samuses goliaths, since they are fatty, have huge shoulders (like Samus) and are ranged.
Make both players the same color, or different shades of the same color. The color orange would be fitting.
Please, god, use a starPORT for spells!

Why starport? And different shades of the same color?

I think the third beam was called Echo beam? I like the idea of making samuses Goliaths, since they're fatty. They don't resemble samus as much as marines do in my opinion, though. But it would be really good, since they're way fatter than probe, which would allow for easy handling of making Morphball holes (And it would make it not look abnormally artificial). I also agree with making both players the same color. But i think brown or purple could fit in too (Grav suit or Dark suit, ).

And i think he wants you to use a starport because it's hotkeys are WDVBY, which is sorta easier than stargate's hotkeys. But if we're gonna discuss this like that, just use gateway or racks, xD.

However i don't really like the idea of adding the Echo/Annihilation beam because this keeps it simple and yet it still needs some skill to handle the beams.

Xero, you think you can release some kind of demo soon? . Also, shouldn't this be in production? It has lots of screenies and stuff, and i think it's development stage is already at an acceptable point?

Well, after having a bunch of ideas from you guys, I plan on revamping everything. Only problem I have right now is how I should trigger morphball bombs, making 3 mines NOT explode at the same time. And maybe hatches, but I have some sort of solution in my head...

But I could just upload my old map I've been working on for a bit. Well, here's the map, have fun spamming scouts

Attachments:

Eh, i was thinking that, sort of, scarabs popped out of the MorphBall and chased enemies around. I didn't know they exploded instantly. Now that that's clear, i think you should stick to scarabs now. It's way better considering they explode instantly. This would allow some more timing-based MorphBall puzzles.

Now, regarding the test map, you're right, spamming scouts is pretty much all you do >.>. It doesn't even get thrilling or anything, you just spam scouts when you see shit unburrow...

Oh, by the way, was the Stasis Cell and the Akumu Growth the last part of your demo?

Technically, the end of the demo should be after you defeat the parasite queen, but you can go ahead to the next area until you reached the entrance of the forest.

Btw, I think I'll add missiles and an ammo system for Light and Dark(Maybe, probably not), but missiles for sure. I just need to get some ideas going for missiles. So far, Building Wraith = Missiles in Varia Suit mode. I could have a scourge represent a missile, but I don't know how to make it "home" on the enemy. I have a slight idea, using a maximum missile range location centered on Samus, and any enemy that's in that area, gets another location centered on it, giving the missile an end destination. Any thoughts on this?