I wish to reserve my spot as a tester..

that's really all I could do now anyways

And I haven't gotten LoL to work yet so I have no idea what you are talking about for most of it.....

I've never played neither DotA, LoL, or HoN, so don't worry! ;D

A size that seems just right in the terms that a vulture should be the fastest a player could move with something like boots of mobility. I am not in any terms a good terrainer, so yeah. The excess space is whatever, I just picked a size that the game labeled as Epic because it sounded cool and this has the best... "Feel."

Attachments:

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 29 2010, 12:14 am by LoveLess.

Since my terraining skills aren't very good, I guess I should just stick with suggesting and testing. Leaving the terraining to someone else then.

EDIT: Also, you said to use this as a base:
and that is what I did. I'm sorry that it looked so compressed.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 29 2010, 12:25 am by aalleecc248.

can you describe this "Barracks" aka Spawning/Creep system in more detail? i'm still sorta confused about it

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I've finally dl'd LoL and played it
Quickly fell in love with the art
but was just as quickly disgusted by the items.

I don't give a shit about items... really.
7 max items = too much
Items that have names that don't make any sense = stupid
items that give %'s are stupid and unpredictable (especially evasion - this isn't an f'ing turn-based combat)
items that become the crux of the game is bad
items in a confusing UI (even in LoL) is bad
items with a humongous curveball is intimidating and bad and gives rise to elitism

Too often I see Items being thrown around in these "MOBA" games (MOBA is a joke right? are we really going to call it MOBA? Can't we just call it AoS? I'm sure the creator of Aeon of Strife won't bitch about it)
The point is, items are just not easily identified by new players. But especially SOTIS, DOTA, and now LoL, the whole items shabang has gone way, way WAY overboard. There is NO Thought process when making these items.
I don't wanna fucking put a gem and a stick together to make a gem-stick thing that gives me x% more factor 1, x% more factor 2, and x% factor 3 or something, I want an item that will tell me DIRECTLY how much it is going to improve my hero. I wanna fucking kill grunts and heroes so I get more exp to get better skills to rape even more grunts and heroes. NOT to by a fucking "Book of Craziness" that gives me 5% more damage. La de fucking da, when my spell does > 100 dmg. The %'s are so minuscule that they just don't feel like anything.

Honestly, probably the BEST use of "Items" as a secondary strategic feature is Pokemon. FUCKING DEAD SERIOUS.
No god forsaken paragraphs of description. One sentence that describes it all. And, most importantly, most of them have AWESOME affects. Like Choice Specs, increase your Sp. Attack by 50%, meaning every move you make will dole out 50% more damage! Considering that pokemons can 1hitko one another, this is insane! But it also make your pokemon stuck for using 1 move only. NOW THAT would be an interesting (albeit OP) item for an AoS.

So, tl:dr, don't screw with items unless you know what you're doing. If the makers of SOTIS, LoL, and I daresay DotA (tho i haven't played it, but has inspired those two game to shit out items like explosive diahhrea) has FUCKED it up, what are the chances of you doing it well?

Suggestion: occum's razor. Make it simple and to the point.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 29 2010, 4:52 am by UnholyUrine.

So much hate. No, it is not being called a MOBA. That is just the OFFICIAL term for it, recognized by the entire gaming industry. Sorry if this puts your panties into a twist, but that is what it is called. Did people call the second FPS game Wolfenstein?

Guy 1: "Dude I picked up this awesome First Person Shooter called Doom! It's fucking cool!"

Guy 2: "That game is just a Wolfenstein-clone, such a rip off."

...No.

Anyway, items add that additional feature into the game. In your map, you had the ability to select more health, more upgrades, more mana, more powerful skills and the like. This is EXACTLY what items are. An extension of your hero to better define how you like to play. SotIS is a horrible example and LoL is the same. In both games, there is always a guideline for heroes you basically HAVE to follow to achieve what they feel is "balanced" heroes. This is fucking wrong, DotA and HoN had it right. You don't have to get a certain item build to do good with your hero, there was plenty of room to mess around with builds and even troll games, but do well. Even in serious games of DotA or HoN, each hero could build in at least five different ways and not be exponentially better in power. I want to take this, expand on it and allow you to play what people normally consider a carry, into a support if you wanted to. Not to that extreme, but the general idea is there. This would allow for you to be your favorite hero, but still be able to make good team chemistry, which is what I want to achieve with Spell Books. Now of course, this won't fix the people who just want to play high damaging carries that are based around auto-attacks because all they do is right click and MAYBE press a few keys between the right clicking.

I understand what your saying and don't even worry. The five basic stats I laid out are going to control about 80% of the items and each hero will take different stats into different considerations: One hero may get more health per strength point than another, but it is most likely going to suffer in another category. Their stat gain will also be different, leading to a very varied style of game play. Spell Books and Boots are to be unique items that you can carry only one of, because while one affects your abilities and role in battles, another affects your movement speed and can change your heroes base stats directly rather than by a normal means. Items to fill the additional 5 slots, are most likely going to consist of stat boosting items and protection items, with other activated items to aid them in battle even further.

I hope you understand this does have planning behind it and while I am looking to make a game, I want it not solely concerned with the standard: "I'm going to farm up a ton of items so that I can carry my team in an hour because I don't do anything but play games and have all the time in the world." I want it to be competitive, not a sandbox game like how everyone plays GTA, killing people, dying, then killing more, dying until you get bored/pissed off and quit. That is not what I want or what I am appealing to. The game is to be competitive team-play, not people just hoping to farm the whole game, get fully geared to where they cant max out any more and THEN attempt to win the game.

In AoS game-types, which I call MOBAs because AoS didn't have even a portion of things that the new games have. It had lanes and single selected heroes in an RTS. You just killed stuff, upgraded and pushed. Simple, brainless, I wouldn't find this fun now. I was 12 then. I am now a decade older, I think I am ready to proceed to a little more challenging game play. There are things like Early Game, Mid Game and Late Game, to take consideration into. Early Game is focused on farming up your base items, these are usually going to be used in your core items or help with survivability. During this process, you are very weak and suspect-able to being ambushed/ganked by an enemy hero from another lane. If he succeeds, this costs you valuable experience and is detrimental for your team. It also empowers the opposing team slightly, giving way for them to get better items later in the game. Whatever team did better Early Game will usually decide who starts out on top Mid-Game. During the entire Mid-Game process, towers and pushing lanes is where it is really at, with random and frequent team-fights popping up. Teams will now need to be defending their towers, pushing their lanes and aiding their allies in much bigger fights than small 2v1 or 3v2 fights. Mid-Game is where a lot of heroes and towers die, with little farming involved unless you have a designated hero to carry your team, so he will instead be farming items and coming to help in fights when needed. If your losing mid-game, that is the most viable option: Designate who will be farming and ensure that you are distracting the enemy team or protecting the farmer without hindering his progress. Late game is all about taking barracks, pushing lanes and having the whole team participate in fights. This is where carries come into play, depending on how well a hero has been doing the whole game and has been supported by your team will usually win the game for you. Chances are, if you make it to Late Game, it is more like 1+4 against 1+4, each team having one carry and the rest making sure he stays out of harms way while dealing as much disables and damage as possible.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 29 2010, 5:51 am by LoveLess.

Okay

I'm glad that you explained this to me and intend to make it high quality. I also need to take back the blame I put on DotA . Sorry dota fans

But still, I have a hard time seeing how it'd be easy for a typical person like me to understand and like items in an AoS game. (I find it hard to like items even in RPGs...)

Make sure you take every precaution to make it easy to interpret and understand. Also, have a system for the item names. Yes, I know it is tempting to give epic names to items.. but it just alienates new players.

If you can, only reserve epic names to the handful of the most expensive, epic items that you, if any, intend to put into the map. The rest of the map should have a VERY Solid, easy to follow, and systematic naming/abilities/stat boost/gender/richter scaled/everything. The only game that i know which got a systematic way of doing things is Runescape, and the only game that i know which have items that actually provides extra strategies, rather than having items just as a stat-boost, is pokemon.

I wish to argue against the style of using items as ur necessary stat-boost... but w/e. It may work theory, but a game has yet to show me. (remember, i haven't played dota D:)

I am primarily a data-editor kinda guy.

I have some trigger skills, but its most likely to be inneficient and cause bugs.

My terraining is also pretty shit hot.

I'll download the map tomorrow some time. I also have some map analyser software which basically calculates open space, watchtower coverage, and run distances between spawn points (for cliff, ground and air pathing groups). Which I think will be a nice alternative to moving a zealot and using a stopwatch .

I edited my post a little more to add jokes and more seriousness by the way.

...You had your stat system. We have an item system. The difference between this game and LoL for items is as simple as this, which I had thought was explained in the first post:

Spell Books modify your hero for things like additional auto-attack damage to Creeps. Once it levels up so many times, it slowly loses damage to creeps and does more to heroes now. Eventually doing normal damage to creeps and a lot more to heroes. This is the idea behind spell books, you fulfill its needs and get rewarded by now being given a role to fill, with a defined "what do i do now."

Boots will allow you to move faster, resist different things, maybe attack faster or have more health. They change stats more so than roles, branching out. For a hero that specializes in ambushes/ganks, you will want a pair that allows you to traverse the map quickly. For heroes that specialize in ranged damage, something that allows them to stay away from the battle and in the back, away from the hard damage dealing Physical heroes.

All items basically fill these categories: Defense, Physical, Ranged, Magical and Utility. Typically, defense is all about health and resisting more damage. Physical and Ranged are focused around doing more damage in their respective categories by whatever means. Magical focuses around mana/energy and your abilities, allowing them to do additional damage or be cast more frequently. Lastly is Utility, which focuses in supporting your allies or boosting some off the wall feature, like creeps or movement speed.

And UU, to reply to your naming items theory: "That Zergling looks like a normal Zergling to me. He doesn't look like a Mutant at all. It alienates me and is making me confused." thats what i got from your post...

That's a little extreme and that's not it at all.... A mutant is a mutant.. and when you see that the mutant is a zling hero that you can choose, you instantly know it's going to have some raw strength b/c it's called a mutant. In fact, the name is so simple, yet it foreshadow the hero's niche well.

Now, let me pick a random LoL Item:
"Last Whisper" - and has a picture of an arrow and bow
... soo .. i guess it's a silenced arrow and bow? but how would that make any sense?
... is it a better weapon than what I have right now?
... does it give critical damage i guess? cause last whisper = death?? wtf?

but nope it does this" +10 Attack Damage +40% Attack Speed UNIQUE Passive: +40% Armor Penetration"

To me, this does.. blah blah blah blah blah Armor penetration.

okay another one..
"Nashor's Tooth" - and has a picture of a sword
... i guess it's going to increase attack..
.. but by how much? who the f is nashor?
... I cannot tell any secondary effects?
.. is it better than the weapon I have right now?

so, tadah, it does this "+50% Attack Speed +55 Ability Power +10 Mana Regeneration per 5 UNIQUE Passive: Reduces ability cooldowns by 25%"

TO me this means.. WTF This isn't math class I don't wanna play this shit anymore.

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The biggest problem is that the naming of the items are just thrown all over the place, and so are the stat boosts...
Why couldn't they just name it "Piercing Bow" and "Multitype Sword" or something like that?
Who the ass cares about all the numbers? as long as it sounds cool and gives you a hint instantly what it's going to be like, or whether it's going to be more powerful or not (which may also be done in the way you handle the UI).

To draw another example... Runescape.
there is always a pattern in the weapon and armor.


Then you have a whole bunch of things that you can buy, but they ALWAYS follow that pattern

iron helm, armor, shield, scimitar, warhammer, etc. All follows that pattern.
Of course, then you have the REALLY high level items, like the "Crystal Bows" and the "Gods Robe" that don't follow the pattern but is fine simply because they're meant to be special and are set apart from the rest.

And that is why it is so much better, and that is why the market was so much stronger in Runescape than any other MMORPG (tho they fucked it up)

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On another note.

@Items determining diff roles for the heroes

again, I can see how that works in theory, but I haven't seen any games pull it off well (other than Pokemon).
I think your system of books and boots is good, buuuut I still don't know.

The only way I can see it is if you called the things quite literal

like Winged boots = speed up
Spiked boots = attack up
Hardy boots = hp/defense up or something like that

but there'd still be a discrepancy between boots and books... you can't call a book a "Spiked book" cause that'd be lulsy

And I also fail to see why you'd need 7 items if there's only going to be boots and books ... i are confused.

I think we're starting to describe diff things tho
maybe I should tie it up
I'm more worried about the design of items and how it is detrimental to gameplay. I understand how items may add to it, but more often than not i see them sucking and just causing confusion and taking the gamer away from what he/she really needs to focus on or what the major gameplay mechanism is.
I still feel that items should be secondary to the hero's ability, and that the abilities and the hero's base stat should mostly determine its niche, while items can complement it and make it plausible for the hero to cover more niches or have situational niches.. niche niche niche

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 29 2010, 7:39 am by UnholyUrine.

When you hear Grimoire, what do you think of? Death? A book of the dead? In any movie, book about death = summoning evil shit. The Grimoire summons minions when a determined average number of mana spent is reach, decided by your spells' energy/mana costs. It will be displayed as an actual number in a tool tip, avoiding any math equations. This is entire possible with integers and the intense math features SC2 has built-in. These minions are summoned attacking the target of the last spell you cast or if it was an AoE, the one with the lowest health, prioritizing heroes over creeps.

Another good example is the Tablet of Greed. Greed = Money. The tablet of greed increases how much money you get when you kill shit. Easy.

And yes, I can see where your going with that. In my mind, Last Whisper just means silence or death. When I hear Nashor's Tooth, I think: Nashor = Dragon/Mage/Spell/Sorcery/Fantasy and Tooth = Weapon/Damage. So... Magical Weapon/Damage? Magic and Damage? That one isn't too far off really. Increases DPS and Magic Power/Casting Time/Mana Regeneration.

I can see what you mean, but don't worry. You know me and I keep things simple, yet advanced. When we need item names, we will look into all that. But just as an FYI, I don't even read the item names in AoS/MOBAs anymore unless I want to communicate to someone else. I am looking at their stats before their name half of the time.

No one is really calling it a MOBA except the people who are trying to make a profit off of mass marketing it and think they need an acronym for a genre name (ie: pretty much just LoL and HunteR_). This is because the name sucks.

StarCraft is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena.
Street Fighter 4 is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena.
Counter-Strike is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena.
WoW is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena.
Halo is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena.
... Guitar Hero is a fucking Multiplayer Online Battle Arena.

So yeah, don't use that name or you just come off like an asshat to people who appreciate the games.


Relative to the topic, I'd also be more than willing to beta test and balance, plus hero design as long as people are actually committed to progressing the project and are willing to have discussions about changing things.

Actually, magazines, press, news and game review sites are using the term MOBA as well. It is classified as a sub-genre of RTS games unique to its own. But whatever, the only people that have acted all "wtf" so far with me saying it is SEN. AoS sucked and we all know it, so did the original DotA before Feak introduced runes, recipes and Roshan. It still sucked a lot, so IceFrog Balanced it. Now that the two are off doing their own thing, Steam, S2Games and Riot are all classifying/identifying their games as MOBAs. Enough of this word battle anyway. I have played them all, experienced them all and just because one inspired the other, doesn't make them any different. I am sure that nobody here calls Star Craft a Aliens/Predators-based game, do they? Just to let everyone know, even the designers admitted the original idea came from the two series. Who cares... It's just what the genre is. I look at it as a Online Real Time Strategy Role Playing Game, but that doesn't really make an easy acronym like FPS or RTS, ORTSRPG is just too much for a mouth to spit out every time you want to say it.

And yes, I plan to be very into determining the balance of everything. I actually play, love and enjoy the style of game it is. Therefore, why wouldn't I want a game that I control be unbalanced when I play it? That would be stupid annoying. I also know how it feels to want a certain hero, but can't have it. Or feel that there is a niche of heroes available, such as not enough Initiators or not enough Semi-Carries. I'm a player, just like everyone else. Developers seem to forget what they once were, a long time ago.

Will we make this free? (I presume we are)

I have always been open-source, why would I want to make this game cost money to just play? Fuck that. I'll even put in the map loading screen: "This map will never cost you money. Ever. You paid for SC2, that is enough. If Blizzard MAKES it cost money, they have lost this map's project leader."

I'd be glad to help with testing and feedback, but I don't develop SC2 maps. I can also help with level design and overall game design, and could even get some artists from DigiPen and game designers from DigiPen to help the project if need be.

To Lovel: Just be sure to start this project very soon and get something going.

Of course ;o

Anyway, I am trying to get something off the ground. Trying to get a friend to look at Developing the terrain, but he hasn't been on Steam for a few days. You may all remember him as EFoG and he developed maps for a while, to include being in Dyne. The one who developed the terrain on the map I uploaded, so we can get something that nobody else has done from what I know: Custom cliffs.

Lol at UnholyUrine. You just fail at reading I guess.

It is pretty clear if an item gives +50% attack speed and +25 ability power. It makes me attack 50% faster and makes my abilities deal 25 more points of damage. You must be the only person I know of who finds this sort of information-analysing to be difficult or tedious.

Anyways, I've started modifying the Terrain. Will upload it when I'm finished.

Edit 1: Completely changed the Terrain Texture Tileset. Tyrador is ugly. I'm now using Agria with blended textures incorporated into it, Korhal Concrete has replaced Agria Concrete. I also use Mar Sara Dirt and Mar Sara Sand which have replaced Agria Rough Dirt and Agria Rock respectively. It's a nice blend and allows for grassland/jungle/forest terrain to merge seamlessly with open rolling deserts into concrete installations.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Nov 29 2010, 8:54 pm by Cardinal.

Nashor is the Baron of LoL. (Baron Nashor) He is located on the upper part of the river on the map "Summoner's Rift". Nashor is not a random name, but a subliminal message. Nashor is Roshan backways:
That answers your question "Who the f*** is Nashor?" and it proves why this is named this way. The tooth of the Baron should be strong, making you want to buy it.

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On another note, I could help out with triggers, since that is what I am best in. I didn't choose it before because you mentioned "coding" and I didn't think that meant data editing and triggers.

Here is a quick preview of the new texture blend:



It wouldn't show up in my last post.

Feedbacks please.

Edit: The general idea is that the river (running East to West in the middle of the map) starts off with Agria Foliage (left-most blend) and blends towards Dirt (middle two blends), the desert areas are reserved for the 'wasteland' in which neutral creeps are found and stretches towards the teams two opposing bases which are made completely from Concrete. I am also considering putting in a sort of 'oasis' in two locations, middle of a desert patch with grass blend coming out.