So, I'm currently working on a map of "The Thing" type for SC:BW. Gameplay is standart: there are 7 players-marines and one of them is The Thing. The identity of The Thing is unknown for everyone except himself. The Thing may morph into it's special form and back to marine. Players distinguish by colors, but The Thing form is colorless. There is a system that doesn't let players bore and makes them move around the map.

Then, there is a possible dead end when The Thing doesn't want to do anything, so I need the system to urge him act. As the basic solution, I currently stick with a countdown timer which reveals the identity of The Thing.

So I want to collect all your awesome ideas on the part of such a system. The idea I like the best is going to be implemented into the map (if it ever be finished ) and you will be given the credit. (However, I can't promise I would like any of the ideas xD)

My main criteria are as follows:
1. The simplicity of understanding for a new player. The concept should be as natural and easy to understand as possible.
2. The simplicity of implementation. No, I'm not gonna spend all my life implementing this into the map.

Currently I'm seeing this system as a quest/puzzle people have to collectively accomplish to reveal the identity of The Thing. But I'm not sure about it's content. So I'm open for the discussion.



UPDATE:
We've not decided about concept that should urge The Thing to act yet, so keep posting your ideas! It's not really necessary to read the whole thread, if you want to post an idea, just check the list that follows.


UPDATE2:
Many interesting (or not very interesting ) ideas have been said upon now, but I must remind that we are mainly discussing the following problem: HOW to make The Thing ACT? The ideas list is updated to represent the current state of the thread in the perspective to the main topic. Keep discussing.



1. Based on personal timer.
a. Hunger meter (NudeRaider) - declined.

2. Based on global timer.
a. Simple timer that reveals the identity of The Thing (Wormer) - this is how it's working now.
b. Simple timer that reveals who is NOT The Thing (Wormer) - discussing.
c. Refreshing timer that resets upon player death (private_parts) - discussing.

3. Collective quest/puzzle.
a. Code breaking game (Wormer) - discussing.
b. Broken scanner (Wormer) - discussing.

9. Other.
a. The Thing activity detection (DevliN) - declined.
b. Items system with backpack (placeable spidermines and etc.) (UnholyUrine) - declined
c. Flicker inceptor (private_parts) - declined in it's current form.
d. Scent trail (JaFF) - discussing.

Post has been edited 10 time(s), last time on Apr 26 2011, 7:10 am by Wormer.

Give The Thing an ability to damage everyone in an area. It won't do much damage to a single person, but if everyone's around him it'll hurt them all. This is so that everyone doesn't just sit there in a group and wait.

Allow The Thing to actively sabotage the players in discreet ways (IE: Destroy the oxygen tanks or something).

I'm sure I could think of more but I have to go. Just make sure you have a rich ruleset so that no two games are the same.

The Thing-unit (not his marine cover) starts losing hitpoints when it hasn't eaten for a while. Make it about as slow as Zerg regeneration.

Hmm I would think a countdown timer would be your best bet, as you can't really make a system that checks to see if the Thing is inactive. The only thing I can think of is checking to see if he stands still for more than 2 minutes or something, and if he is, kill him, drop the player, and make someone else the Thing.

EDIT:
I like Nude's idea, a lot. Its been forever since I've played the Thing, but how do the Marines win again?

These are all good ideas inferno, but you're a lil off topic. I don't really want to discuss the system which makes everyone move around, but in several words it's like follows. There are 3 resources: minerals, gas and energy. All those resources go down as time goes by. When one of them hits zero the player gets severe HP penalty, when 2 hits zero at once he dies. There are several sources of these resources on the map, so people have to constantly move and collect them.

Do you mean that The Thing form loses HP and killing a player restores them to 100%? It's not a bad idea, but since I already got 3 countdown timers, one more timer for The Thing may be a bit too much to keep track of. The other thing I don't like about this is that it doesn't depend on the work of the other people. I'm currently looking into the direction of a collective task that people have to solve to find out the identity of The Thing.

As an example, I was thinking of a code breaking game, where there are let's say 4 positions and each position may be occupied by a digit 1-7. There are several tries until the code is reset. Each try you get info on the number of matched digits and number of matched digits with their positions. But the problem it's a "bit" too complicated to understand and to implement.

As another option I had the modified idea with the timer. So that when timer hits 0 each person randomly told about who is NOT The Thing. I'm still thinking about a simple way to implement this.


And no, no I don't want to completely forbid The Thing to sit, but instead I want it to be the disadvantageous strategy to sit way too long.

P.S.
They kill the thing. But the ones who were killed before that happened lose (in my map).

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 25 2011, 5:45 pm by Wormer.

There're several The Thing maps out there already...
they're all pretty bland except for one of them: The Thing Ice. It was over-the top complicated w/ its items and players usually don't last long enough to see what every item does... but there's definitely good stuff you can use from it.

1) Allow players to find and place spider mines.
Lil-inferno is right. Grouping is one major flaw for The Thing maps. If players group together, it ensures The Thing can't kill them.. but it also makes the map super boring. Having items lying randomly and occasionally spawn around the map forces player exploration which works against Player grouping.
(I don't agree with giving The Thing and AoE attack b/c players will just go "wtf's going on?")
You can also add other items like.. a Medkit that spawns a medic for 10 seconds or something...
Make sure you follow The Thing Ice and make it so that the player who's The Thing can collect but cannot use Items.
If you've ever played The Thing Ice, I suggest you make items much more scarce than it... Players paid more attention on managing items than avoiding the thing in that game lols...
With maps like The Thing, there're usually plenty of unused units. Therefore, using a dropship system for the items would work best.

2) @NudeRaider's idea
It's a good idea, b/c it requires the thing player to kill others, which gets the game going.
However, I don't think decreasing HP would be a good idea. First of all, it's going to be a pain to trigger. Second of all, it decreases the strength of The Thing, which is bad considering when it's nearly dying, it may not have enough strength to kill the marines to regain that strength.
A better system would be to use something like a Hunger system that relies on one of the resources. Like, Set gas to 200 @ start, and decrease it little by little.. Killing (Or eating ) a player will +x amt of gas more.

What is the 8th player for? Is it for the Rescuable unit so that The Thing is colorless? ?

A system to check for AFK'ers may backfire.. I suggest having a system for that ONLY at the beginning of the game (like, make all players move to a beacon in order to start or smth like that.. it can be as simple as spawning their marines in a room where they must go to a location to "start" the game)

---

EDIT:

3) I suggest map size to be max 128/128.. anything bigger than this would cause players to be spread out too much, slowing down the game.

4) Design the terrain carefully and make it interesting.. A terrain similar to Hazard zone will blow people's minds, but it'd be a lot of work on your part. Don't have, or limit, "indoor rooms" like .. u step or a beacon, and you go inside this room.. Because most players gravitate there, and players abuse the teleportation to get away from the thing.. (actually, it's not that bad of a sub-game mechanic.. lol)

5) The Thing player should have vision of players or have them constantly pinged.. I suggest ping if u implement Spider mines, and Vision if u don't.
Non-The Thing players should not be able to vision each other.

We need more ideas from You first. I mean for a game like The Thing, there can be tons of Things (pun lol) that can be implemented. It depends on what sort of game design u want..

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Apr 25 2011, 5:57 pm by UnholyUrine.

SO I Got NINJA'D!!!

I'm just going to point out that.. for a map like The Thing.. Simplicity is your friend...
Since you're designing a rather complicated game.... You're gonna need to make sure how each of these design integrate and add more to the core gameplay (aka Finding out who's The Thing by trying to befriend certain people and backstab others/coax people into killing each other and then backstab the rest as The Thing)

and I'm also going to point out sm ... hypocrisies.

Okay.. sooo..

Hmm

mmhmmm...

What, we going Mafia style now?

I don't know man... sounds complicated.

Slap, I've lost the whole text due to the redirection... Oh well... Let's do it again!

Yes, I've played The Thing Ice. That map has good sides but it has even more disadvantages. One of them is a very large map size, the other is spider mines: I remember there was a failproof strategy to mine the exit from the exploration area at top left and then unally everyone. So you know, I'm not that hardcore about my map. Items are nice things to have, but I don't see the necessity to implement items into the map. I don't really want to use all cool ideas into the map, instead I think it's possible to make a fun "The Thing" map on several basic less trite concepts. That way, no I'm not making items in my map.

Think, you're so smart? No*. =) It was the original idea though, but when I realized the unit is still colorful on the minimap there was a huge FAIL. So it's for an interceptor now! Can do it ez without an interceptor but I want interceptor! That is!

*Well, YES you are! But no, not for that!

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 25 2011, 6:18 pm by Wormer.

Okay, can reveal more about my map if you're interested. Size is 96x96. Players can't unally each other. My terrain is pretty simple, but once again I'm not putting much effort into the look of the map, but I'm more concentrated on the game mechanics. The code breaking game is complex, yes, that why I've not implemented it. And the variant when people are told who is NOT The Thing is actually pretty simple, but I'm too lazy about it's implementation now, and still looking for something better.

U don't like Items?

I don't like to implement them. Can we return to the topic pls. =)

So HOW to make The Thing ACT?

The countdown should push the THING into an attack. I'm not really sure how your thing is gonna work but let's say your attack mechanic for the Thing is that it needs to get into melee range to one-hit kill someone.

After the countdown timer expires he is teleported close to a person thereby revealing his identity to that person forcing him to try and attack that person to preserve his identity. That is an example of forcing the THING to act.

Can u explain why u need 3 resources? Anyway to make a resource available?

Okay, my The Thing form is cloaked hydralisk with a colorless interceptor on top. Kill interceptor = kill The Thing. The form changes with burrow. That is. Yeah, but why just don't tell everyone who is the thing with a text message? This is too simple though =)


I need 3 to make people spread all over the map. Let's say one needs gas, the other needs mineral and the third needs "energy" (custom score). And no, people can't walk as a crowd, because supply points spread all over the map and have few resources to satisfy the demand of the crowd. Supply points immediately respawn at a random place on the map upon depletion.

I'm actually getting inclined more towards the hybrid idea of a kickass distributed code breaking game plus the simple timer for babies

Code breaking game works as follows: there are 4 different units distributed all over the map that represent "digit slots" and their colors represent "numbers". Players can cycle through units colors by just going near them. There are also 2 mineral fields on the map which tell how much colors and colors+slots match with the code. When the code is broken the game tells who is The Thing. If this is not enough, I can also make "keys" which a person have to collect in order to be able to change the color of the building.

The timer works as normal, and reveals the identity of The Thing when reaches zero. I want The Thing to be able to increase the timer somehow (maybe killing people increases the timer?).

BREINSToRM!

P.S. Sorry about double post, but I don't want to ninja anyone, and this piece goes as a separate idea.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 25 2011, 7:32 pm by Wormer.

Then technically, The Thing player doesn't need these 3 resources (the thing doesn't need supplies <.<)
Then u can go ahead and use One of the resources as the Hunger meter I was talking about.

If u want, instead of making it die when it's hunger meter reaches 0, u can just make it a lot weaker or something like that.

EDIT:
Then don't call this map The Thing
make up your own new map then lol

You still ninja'd me

It was initially the NudeRaider's idea, but whatever... it repeats the concept of the 3 resources way too much, so I don't wanna use this anyways. I'm more looking for kind of a puzzle people have to solve altogether.

The map is actually called "Who is the WORM?". But I refer to it with "The Thing" terminology to be accessible for everyone.

The map should totally be called "The Worm"

Keeping the head post up to date.

You could make it sort of like a werewolf type thing, where the Thing only transforms at certain times. O_o