I played a UMS Map a while back called Global Domination, by No-Name-Needed. Meant for Starcraft 1.04. Not BroodWar, the units aren't set in the map.
I thought it was a great map, and felt like creating my own map with some of the concepts from it. Just wanted to get some opinions or ideas.

I thought the territory idea was great, and thought of changing it a bit by having them captured by military presence, which would give control of a city or something within the territory. Supply would be limited by how many cities you had, which you acquired through captured territories, or constructing more within the territories you owned, still restricted by a limit.

I am also working on a Mod for this map or maps, which would create more terran units and change the existing ones. There would be 2 or 3 tiers for each unit type( light infantry/heavy infantry, grenadier/rocket soldier, etc.) to add a bit more dynamics, as Global domination was limited by the same few units which got stale quick. As in global domination, different countries would have access to different units. I would also be raising the population cap, as peoples computers can handle it nowadays.

I'm not sure how to work in all the diplomacy stuff, any ideas on that would be good. I couldn't think of anything more than allies / trade. Maybe a trade unit?

Resources would still be based on a timer and number of cities/metropolis'. The 'diamond mines' in global domination were an interesting idea, however very ineffective. I was thinking of modding them to give something like 100 minerals per transit, increase the mining time a bit, and putting them some distance from any possible command center locations. Hopefully in a war zone Oil would be the same, except maybe increase the amount per transit to something like 10 or 15.

The map I am working on right now is not based off of any existing landform, totally off the top of my head. I have started sectioning off the territories, keeping them a bit bigger for simplicity. I also sectioned off nations, or sets of territories, which I thought could give some bonus, like in Risk. And you can't tell me you haven't played risk.

Here's some screenies You can see i've recently started. I'm not sure how to get a screenshot of the shape of the landmass, so you'll have to live with the minimap.

Edit: Figured out how to get an image Here it is. I've done some more work on it since I took the other 3 screenies.


You can see the Nation border, denoted by the dark/light dashed line. Custom infantry bridge


Territory borders denoted by dark dashed lines.


Some interesting names for the territories. Nother custom infantry bridge



Mod information

So enough of all the stuff bout the map. Here's what I got in the way of modifications:

There are currently 8 infantry starting with Light Mech and Medium Mech. They used to be Marine and Raynor, who is now a basic ground unit. I left the hero status to give him a black selection box, for easy identification when selecting armies. The Light Mech fires a 5-shot laser burst, with a cooldown afterwards. The Medium Mech does the same, however he has more hp, fires faster, and does more damage.

Next is Grenadier and Rocket Soldier. Firebat and Gui Montag. Grenadier fires a grenade, like the vulture. Without that silly firing sound though, he just chucks that thing Rocket Soldier *Surprise* Fires a rocket. He has to take aim first, just a hair less than a second usually, although it's randomized. He then has a long cooldown.

We then have Sniper and Elite sniper. I used Ghost and Alexi Stukov. They have a randomized 4-5 second aim time where they paint a laser on their target, then finally shoot for a significant amount of damage. I have it set so they can only target biological units, however for some reason its not working. Idk why, any help with that would be great. The Elite sniper is the only one that can paint nuke points.

Finally we have the SCV and Medic. I put all the above military units on a seperate button list at the Barracks. The second tier unit of each requires the barracks to have an attached addon. Currently using the Covert Ops.

I hope to add more infantry, specialty units for different nations. Any ideas would be great! I'd like to get a sort of melee unit, who could capture buildings. Given time of course, else it'd be a bit overpowered.

Still working on vehicles, but what I have right now is Hover Bike (vulture) Who has a little machine gun turret on the top, near the back. Still working out bugs with that. Then there's its second tier, Assault Bike. Has a Grenade turret. Hover bike can lay 2 mines, Assault 4. The number can be upgraded at the machine shop to 3 and 6.

Next, Heavy Mech and Assault Mech. The Heavy Mech just fires the dual autocannons like usual, but without a delay inbetween. More full auto. Rockets for anti air, and it shoots the cannons intermittently. Assault Mech does the same, although it will fire its rockets intermittently at ground targets, and of course is bigger n better.

Dunno what to do about the siege tanks, besides just having them as tanks... I thought of just giving them their usual turret, then a machine gun for when infantry gets close, wouldn't shoot as far the turret. I dont really like the whole Siege Mode thing, as it gets abused and would ruin gameplay in my opinion, however i think 2nd tier tanks will lose the machine gun and get siege mode, which has to take aim for 4-5 seconds, then fires a 3 shot burst at target 3x3 area, so it isn't too ridiculous. maybe play a sound that makes it obvious a siege tank is loading up.

Haven't really touched air, however most will probably use rockets for attack, as thats what they do in real life. Maybe a few can have miniguns.

A few notes on buildings - Supply depots only give 5 supply. Bunkers have 6 capacity, and don't accept rocket soldiers or grenadiers. I'd like to add grenadiers, but the animation still plays the flame thrower, and I dont know how to get rid of that. Any help would be appreciated. And rockets, well, you don't fire those indoors. Bad things happen to the people inside.

Multiple addons for each of the unit producing buildings. Theres a research addon to unlock upgrades, and another one that unlocks the 2nd tier of units for that building.
Take a bit longer to build now, and cost a bit more, to make it more of a choice which one you will use, so it isn't so easy to hop back n forth. Slow things down a bit.

I'd like to add spells to all the units, unlocked at the research addons, to give a bit more incentive to split people between choosing to research or go for 2nd tier.

Questions, Ideas, or anything else is all appreciated, please post!

Edit: By the way, the attachment is the map Global Domination 3 By No-Name-Needed - None of my work in there. It was just a reference for those of you who would be interested in playing it to see what I was talking about earlier in this post. It's a fun map! Play it

Attachments:

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on May 15 2011, 10:53 am by Drakiazuu.

Alright, I've been working on some new graphics - wanted to switch up what I'm doing so I don't get caught up on any one thing for too terribly long.

Barracks and Supply depot. Both made in Gimp. The Supply Depot is based off of CnC3's Nod Power Plant. Shadows and animations are not yet completed. Detail work still has to be done, Barracks will probably have some more colored markings.


Any Ideas for more graphics modifications would be appreciated, as I don't have many ideas for things like a Metropolis (Command Center). Only thing that came to mind was Final Fantasy 7's Midgar, which would look cool and fit in pretty well to starcraft. Just hard to make.

Looks like you rendered/screen capped on something with perspective, and the distortion is quite significant as a result on the right building. You definitely don't want any kind of perspective/depth of field active.

Yes, I noticed that. It needs to be isometric, not perspective. As I said, they still need work. However I was just putting up some progress images. Thanks

Update as to map progress.


Started working on the Metropolis. Still pixely and needs work, like fixing the angles of the towers so they don't look so bizzare. It's a spinoff of Midgar from FF7.

Projects still alive Don't want any of you to think I'm not serious.
Another progress update regarding the map - also been working on the mod, but it's a bunch of un-interesting MPQ archives and C code still.

Map terrain and unit placement complete; now working on triggers.


Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 30 2011, 11:51 am by Drakiazuu.

I had some more ideas in the way of modifications - just wanted to get your guys' opinions, for things such as balance, playability, or if ya honestly think its just a bad idea
Like in global domination, give each team some team-specific units, such as:
(These would each go to a different team of course)
-A sort of EMP trooper, make him a tier 3 grenadier, who's attack was maelstrom, would reduce the duration of maelstrom though.
-An advanced construction unit, that could build better turrets, move a bit faster, and build better powerplants for increased income.
-A 'spy' unit that could capture buildings (and probably units too, however that would be difficult to actually do), just have a long cast time. Cloakable of course
-A cheap, invisible building that could see far as well as be a detector, call it a perimeter camera. (whoever got this will probably get something else too.)
-An acid trooper, make him a tier 3 grenadier, who's attack is plague, would probably reduce the severity of plague though.
-Everyone can build a sort of fancy battlecruiser (shoots a lot, is also a transport), however one team could have one with additional powers such as giving it 'interceptors', or the ability to build units.
-This would require a lot of custom animations, but it would be cool - have a couple mech's meld into a super mech (goliaths into a custom mech.)
-A unit that could switch between ground/air - a sort of viking. I think this might be too glitchy in starcraft 1 though.

*These would be balanced as best as possible among starting locations, as to balance out tactical positions and resources versus the power of the teams advantage.
Any and all opinions and ideas are very much welcome!

**After stretching my mind a bit, I have come up with a list of names for the Territories. Let me know if any of them are accidently vulgar in some way.


Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 30 2011, 1:09 pm by Drakiazuu.

Your supply depot shadow is off, quite a lot, because you're using the basic shadow.

In Images.dat for your mod, find the Supply Depot Shadow entry and make it point to the Supply Depot.grp instead of the shadow.

In your iscript.bin, find the Supply Depot iscript and edit the SupplyDepotInit entry. It should read something like this:
SupplyDepotInit:
imgol [grp # - don't change this] 0 7 # Supply Depot Shadow [(grp filename) - don't change this]

That will offset the shadow of the depot in such a way that it looks realistic. If you want to tweak it so that the shadow faces a different direction or something, edit the 0 or 7 in the iscript entry.

I like the stuff I'm seeing here, but I have to agree with Mesk. Lots of distortion. Also, a good rocket trooper graphic is available here: http://maplantis.mikelat.com/index.php?mod=421