Tenebrous: -adjective dark; gloomy; obscure
-Dictionary.com

File Link (Used up all my SEN space...):
http://cid-681c2250300dd052.office.live.com/self.aspx/The%20Tenebrous/Tenebrous%20RPG.scx
07/16/10


The Tenebrous
-Player 1 Red (Human)
-Player 2 Blue (Human)
-Player 3 Green (Human)
-Player 4 White (Human)
07/16/10 - 1.42MB - 9685
-Player 5 Dark Aqua (Computer)
-Player 6 Dark Aqua (Computer)
Created By: Vrael@USEast
-Player 7 Purple (Computer)
-Player 8 Brown (Computer)



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Style
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The name of the map is Tenebrous RPG. If you watch the introduction, you'll get the definition of Tenebrous: dark, obscure, gloomy, down to its root in the latin tenebrae; darkness. I'm trying to showcase everything despicable about humankind in this rpg. Betrayal, murder, cruelty, I'm going to try and play it all in along with a fun gameplay experience. Darkness is the theme of my map: All the "Heroes" (or perhaps villans ) are cloaked, I'm trying to utilize different terrain heights to restrict unit vision, and you'll be able to destroy everything when the map is finished. Your character starts out arrogant and doesn't change too much, despite the actions you may pick as the player. This RPG is no fairy tale.

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The Basic Intro
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You play as you, and have no name but what you make for yourself. You start off in the introduction speaking with your fellows and King Ferdas, of the city of Releigh. He wants something, and he wants you to get it for him. From there, the story becomes.. rather tenebrous... hehe...

My story is going to be variable, depending on the actions you take in the game. That involves multiple endings and stuff.. sometimes I wonder what I'm going to be putting myself through trigger wise

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Characters (so far)
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You - Obvious
King Ferdas - Grumpy old man. You start of the game with him, in the town of Releigh.
Lord Venicar - Another old man, but much more amiable and visionary.
Elly - Mysterious dame. You first meet her out in the woods and she gives you a quest
Zurek - Strange man with a warning. Takes damage like a tank.
More to come

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Quests
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-----Main
The main quest begins with you speaking to King Ferdas. Clearly he needs something, and from the way you talk to him, he needs you to do it. You get to be rude to a king right in the presence of a bunch of soldiers, without consequence! Like any good RPG (of the medieval genre) there's some magic afoot and he asks you to go steal a scepter from the neighboring Lord Venicar. After battling with and defeating Lord Venicar in his castle's dungeon, you are presented with your first choice: Honor your word and return the scepter to King Ferdas, or take Lord Venicar up on his visionary offer of power. Who can say what's better? I won't give too much more away, but rest assured that there are plenty more times to prove your might.

-----The Bar in Releigh
You walk into a bar for a drink. Pretty usual, everyone gets thirsty. You, however, have at least some sort of reputation as a fighter, and the aging bartender asks you to knock around a couple drunks for him. Piece of cake. Now he trusts you, and asks you to help him with a bigger problem.

-----Mining Town
As you wander through the mountains on your way to the abbey, you'll probably stumble upon the mining town with a huge wall in front. Head inside the town hall and you'll surprise a council of war. At this point, they'll calm down, and tell you that they're just about to attack a bunch of foreigners settled across the mountains. You can hire on as a mercenary, attack them, or walk away. On the other side, if you happen to wander into the cave first, these "foreigners" that the folks in the mining town described have a different story: They've been forcibly evicted from what used to be their mines. Help them defend their cave town (they're practically dwarves, living in a cave in a mountain) and go on to reclaim their mines, or don't. Be careful though, those folks don't like people who know about their cave.


-----First Puzzle
You enter a building only to find your way barred by a puzzle. Four beacons, each linked to a matrix operator control the colors of 4 statues. Get the colors the same and remember how you did it! You'll need to know the order of the beacons you used to input that as your key to unlock the door and progress. This one might be tough to figure out since the operators are matrices, and you can only see the before and after, not what the matrix is actually calculating. Should be fun

-----More to Come



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Gameplay
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You can choose between four weapons with the option to switch weapons in any town
Longsword (Dark Templar),
Bow (Marine),
Crossbow (Hydralisk), and
Axe (Firebat).
The balancing will be a bit odd. Marine/Firebat have the same upgrade, Hydralisk takes different damage % than the Marine Firebat or Dark Templar, and the Dark Templar is your standard Badass with a Sword.

50 Levels, 1 million exp = Level 50
5 Standard Items
Dropship-Unload for standard item use
Uses basically the same battle system as Death Knights 3, similar to Xuru RPG as well
Create a unit at building for Spell casting:

Eventually, my idea is that you will be able to do everything. Kill other players, kill towns, if you're strong enough. Of course, there are consequences for everything.

I'll keep a counter based on your actions to determine responses to things, ex. if you go around killing houses, the city guard is not going to like you...

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Items
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-----Health Restorative - obvious

-----Mana Restorative - obvious

-----Smoke Bomb - allows you to escape from battle
(Note: in more finished versions will not allow escape from bosses. Or maybe it will. Undecided yet.)
-----Cloak - hides you from your enemies; they cannot see your hero in battle and out of battle will not engage you
(Note: in more finished versions will not hide you from bosses. Or maybe it will. Undecided yet.)
-----Town Portal - teleports you to the main city, Releigh. Non-Combat

There are also, scattered across the map
+50 Exp
+250 Exp
+50 Gold
+250 Gold

+50 might not seem like a lot, but they add up. They're also very useful in the beginning, since level 2 is only 100 exp away.

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Special Items
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These are items that only 1 player will likely to be able to have at a time. I will make them transferable if I think they should be (dragon won't be, obviously). And, you can steal them from players corpses if you kill that player.
-----Dragon: After killing a ferocious beast in the mountains, you get its loot and notice an egg stashed in the piles of gold. What ho! It hatches, and the little bugger likes you. Keep it safe for long enough and it will grow to help you out in your battles, and eventually will fly.
-----Staff of Energy: Uber mana regen

-----Svilrinthir: Short-range-high-damage aura

-----Scepter of Light: If you die in battle you will be instantly revived and moved back to where you left off. No corpse will spawn for you. Also the first quest item in the game.
-----special spells
-----More to Come

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Spells
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Spells come every 4 levels.

Level 4 spells:
- Magic Bolt: spawns 3 ghosts
- Thorns: spawns 4 lurkers if you're hydralisk hero, 8 lurkers for other heroes due to free ups from hydralisk hero
Level 8 spell:
- Teleport: wraith you can move around to teleport to. drains a lot of mana out-of-battle, drains much less in-battle
Level 12 spells:
-Mana Shield: drains mana, invincibility
-Entangling: traps highest level enemy in battle & damages them (uses 25 defilers to trap)

some ideas:
Hallucin block/sair web combo spell
Good ol' fire blast
Spell Interrupt (for PvP or vs monsters that have a spell)
Upgraded Psionic Storm
Scarab attack
Scarab "hyper" attack - suggested by nuderaider
Shield golem
Barrier
Immobilize

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Deaths
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-----Very Diablo II-esque, if you die you spawn a corpse, which eventually will be able to be looted by other players, and they can steal all of your gold and items. If you bring your hero to it, you get everything back. If you never get your body back you'll never be able to hold any gold either though!


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Some Estimates
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Terrain: 45%
Triggers: 25%
Units: 15%
Ideas: Somewhere between 0 and 100% (lol.)


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The Screenies
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The opening screen.

Player 1 has 1 Health Restore


Level 2!!!!


The Shop


Fighting


Still fighting, used the health restore and have none left now


Ooooh, Free Gold


Ahh. That feels good. (If you couldn't read it, it says "Your Hero has been Healed.")


More Free Goodies


1st Spell! You're growing up so darn fast


Using the spell!


Triggers aren't done here.


Yeah yeah shutup old man


The (first) Bar.




Play it! Please note: there are MANY things unfinished, but in the words of some old dead guy: I have not yet begun to fight!
All the same, if you find something that smells like a bug, walks like a bug, and talks like a bug, it's probably a bug, so let me know. My account is Vrael@USEast on Battle.net, or PM me on SEN.

Was fun and simple. My hatchling died a fair bit.

Found it easyer to play solo and steal all the xp crystals and money!

Battle system was alright, bit slow at times get into battle chasing down a zealot.

Anyway keep up the good work.

Looks good.

Please provide screenshots or this topic will be closed.

The bar area (I think that's a bar) could use other things as a table/counter. Use terrain or some other building or addon.

Yea there's a bar. What medieval rpg could be complete without a bar? And good idea. I'll add something, in fact I have to add lots of somethings to lots of things.

Bump.
(Willing Tester)

Have you ever had a great idea to put in an rpg that will otherwise never be realised? I'd like to hear any, because I'm trying to put a great deal into this map.

Here's just a few ideas:
I want to have an options are where you can decide whether or not you want to kill things, like people's houses.
Then of course, if you do something silly like that the city guards should attack you.
There should be other characters you meet in the course of the map, I'm thinking up one or two right now.
I'll keep a counter that varies others' responses to you based on what you've done. ex. if you're a serial murderer, Joe Civilian isn't going to say "Hi there! Can you come into my house and help me clean my knives?"
Item/Gold transfer, I think.
Reversible Quests. If you find the Stone of X, and complete quest Y, then another player kills you and steals stone X from you, the effects of completing the quest should probably go away.
Corpse looting. (mentioned this above.)

Quite interesting. I think you should tie the hero and the dragon together, not allowing the dragon leave too far away. This will simplify things a lot. For examle, I got into a battle with my dragon and into another batlle with the hero and two seperate battles were held in one place...

It is very easy to fight against lings and zealots in the corner. You might probably want to stick the screen in the center of the fighting area during battle.

If you're willing to have many possible variants of reacting on different events I may advice you a system of choosing the variants. Lets take a talk for example. When you begin to talk you are spawning a transport near your hero loaded with units named: 1, 2, 3, 4. Then different variants of the answer will appear like:
1. bla-bla-bla
2. ...
3. ...
4. ...
You're unloading the unit with the number to choose the variant you like.

I'm with wormer on the idea of not having two separate units, it just gets annoying.
Also, this is very much like Deathknights 3, did you get your inspiration from it?

@Wormer: Yea. The dragon is now removed and is classified as an item. That is, you will need to find a dragon later in the game and do not start with one. Once aquired, it will function more like an item/ability than an independant. I've met with opposition to the dragon so far, so it's simplified. If some staredit.net administrators would fix my attatchments I would upload a more recent version of the map, in which the dragon is gone. And for the story variance, I was just going to use text and beacon selection.
Also, I'm not to worried about how easy it is to fight the zealots/lings. The basic monsters aren't my biggest concern and aren't meant to be the focal point of the map. Thanks for the input though.

@Heegu: Yes! While my systems are almost exactly the same, please don't label me as an idea theif, that wasn't the first map to use building-spawn spells or a different-location battle system, or findable mineral/exp bonuses. (Actually it may have been the first rpg, but the ideas themselves aren't unique). I loved that map, and as I'm sure you see the gameplay is very similar. However I hope to expand on it, allowing players to do things like kill each other, destroy buildings and whatnot if needed, as well as create a less linear story. I hope to have items that affect gameplay as well, where DK3 was a solid map, it was also basic in that it was essentially "Get EXP/Money." and "Kill Boss." Though, Alpha(MC) presented that basic concept in a very professional and unique characteristic. I think though, even if I hadn't played that map, my map would still be much unchanged.

P.S. Does anyone know Alpha(MC) or if he has any aliases or if he's still around?

Sorry for the double post guys, but I'm hoping to revive this thread and maybe get an influx of ideas, comments, suggestions, ect. I am still working on it! So I feel that validates my double post. (If it doesn't... sorry...)
I've recently passed 1200 triggers, the map is now 732kb, and I've begun work on the actual story.
Here's a link to a download since I used up all my SEN space and can't delete stuff:


I've finished all 50 levels. Level 50 is 1 million exp, the levels are determined by the cubic formula
Level(X) = (25/3)X^3 - 25X^2 + (350/3)X - 100 (except for level 50 and level 1)
Mana has been implemented. The first spell is at level 5, or 900 experience. You randomly receive either
'Thorns' or 'Magic Bolt'. I think Thorns is slightly superior (3 lurkers with slightly less damage vs 3 ghosts for magic bolt with slighty more, but lurkers have splash), but they are comparable and that's just the luck of the draw.
Each level you recieve either an additional amount of maximum mana, or -1/12 second off your mana regeneration time (1 death count lol). I've made it so you go from .3 mana/second at level 1 to .75 mana/second at level 50. There will be items that modify both maxiumum mana and regeneration rate. Starting max mana is 150, level 50 is 300 maximum mana.

Here are some of my notes on the spells for the map:
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Offensive
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Level 1 - Thorns/Magic Bolt (Lurk/Ghosts)

Queen - 1 hit K.O. broodlings, max mana?, special item?
Battlecruiser Spawn
Plague
Storm - Upgraded
Reaver Attack
Force closer for melee, tractor beam style
Observer missle - auto

Dark Swarm Target?
If upgradeable, yamatoe cannon

"Scarab hyper attack" spam an ai (i think "make these units patrol")
on them and they will continously do insane splash damage

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Defensive
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Flashy on/off invinc + scarab effect
Golem replace/shield
Hallucin barrier
5 second invinc

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Spawn
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Force Foes to constantly attack to Dummy (defensive)
Archers
Lurkers

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Miscellaneous
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Immobilize - give foes to p12, burrow drone beneath maybe to denote player
Spell Interrupt - give foes spell buildings to neutral.
Battle Teleport - for boss too
Stun
Sair Web
Blind
Maelstrom + Lockdown
Hallucin

Sair Web + Hallucin surround = Cripple?
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Special Items
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Staff - Mana Regen Bonus, achieve 1 less than max mana but fast
Sword - weap ups, give forge, don't allow other ups, 10 sec as many ups ect.
Dragon - like mercenary

Add mercs?
Scepter of Light - revive, when lose a battle, insta-heal/teleport to dead body

Also, I'm trying to think of a good way to display your current level on the leaderboard. I could use the command-at one, and make a unit for each level on some isolated place on the map, but I'm reluctant to do this because that will take 200 units possibly, 4 players x 50 levels. I don't know how afraid of CCMU I should be. I can't use ore or gas, or custom. They = money/mana/exp. Any ideas?

I'm also hoping for feedback from you guys on the gameplay. Ease of use, suggestions, clarity, and even if you catch inconsistensies in the text or misspellings or something.

Looks good, I too vastly enjoyed DK3, me and a mate finished it, had to battle a couple of bugs, but finished it never the less.

Check out my Hells Awakening map, I think you and me have fairly similar ideas!

Quote

I could use the command-at one, and make a unit for each level on some isolated place on the map, but I'm reluctant to do this because that will take 200 units possibly, 4 players x 50 levels. I don't know how afraid of CCMU I should be. I can't use ore or gas, or custom. They = money/mana/exp. Any ideas?

Use two units for level counters. Let one represent 1 level and the other represent something higher, such as 10. Once someone obtains 10 1 level counters remove them and give them a 10 level counter. That way the most units one of them could have in the corner is 13, 4 (10 counters) + 9 (1 counters). If all of them were level 49 at once you'd have 52 units in the corner, which is significantly less than the previous predicted amount. If you have more free unit slots you could make the system even more efficient (with 1, 5, and 10 counters, or something).

Well, say with that system I'm level 11. I have one 10 level unit counter and one 1 level unit counter. If I use the "control at location" leaderboard, that will show up as me being level 2 lol, since there are only 2 units at that location.

I got the chance to test this map and i must say its got real potential to be one of the next big rpg's out. There is a vast amont of quests that really challenge the player, not to mention a real in depth storyline. I was very impressed with the smooth feel that your battle system allowed, not to mention the use of cloaked heroes is pretty cool haha

I dont wanna ruin the map for anyone, but i highly suggest you check out this map when it comes out.

One thing i would like to suggest is posting some more screenshots of some of the different areas in the map and maybe vaguely discuss a few of the missions, but def go into more detail on the storyline.

I look forward to the next time i get to play the map, theres over 2 hours of gameplay already and its barely 20% done.

I really hope this turns out, it looks like it has a lot of potential. The prescribed plot/style itself makes it look interesting.

Heh, thanks. I am having some difficulty, however, with the plot. It's proving to be very complex, for example here is a link to a flow chart for one of my side quests:



Note, this is a SIDE quest, not the main story Each word or phrase in that chart refers to a couple triggers, and then each battle in that chart refers to 32 base triggers to keep it within the bounds of the global system (I think it's 32, but it's some multiple of 4 since there are 4 human players), and then depending on the battle anywhere from 0-5 additional specific triggers for control and sequencing purposes times 4 players.
This one little piece of triggering has a couple death counters to keep track of a couple different things, then there's some triggers to set the global-type things for the battle. This project requires an extremely high level of control to ensure workability of all variables.

DUDE THIS GAME IS AMAZING. Amazing story, amazing dialogue.

I can't wait until this comes out. I did play this map by myself though so i have no idea how the battle system works with more than 1 player and how the story works. By myself it did seem really slow. Leveling up was really slow and tedious and the costs of healing potions and items are way too expensive. Should lower it in the first town to 100. Also instead of using smoke bombs why don't you just put an exit at the end of the battle so you could leave easier? Some of the enemies (like the hydra and vultures) are just too hard without getting like 20 armor and 20 weapon ups. You could make the mineral chunks give more gold and exp. Instead of 50 give 100.

Also the weapons aren't that balanced. Firebat is the best as it deals splash. Make range units deal more damage and instead of using a firebat, using a zergling. That way it has separate ups, as the firebat user can just switch to the marine at any time and not have to get totally new ups.

I got up to the mining battle part(after getting the scepter) and i don't know how far you got but i died in that battle and when i respawned i went into the cave and tried going into the battle again but it didn't work

Thanks very much!
I appreciate your feedback, but I have a couple things to say about that.

The cost of healing potions and stuff is meant to be high, for a few reasons. If they were cheap, it would be way too easy to win battles, and in PvP whoever has more potions would probably win.

I didn't put an exit at the end of the battle purposely. I don't want you to be able to just run away, for example, if you ran into a monster in real life (lol) and tried to run away, it would chase you and eat you. So fight!

As to the balancing of the four units, you are technically right, they're not completely balanced yet. However, keep in mind that not only do I have to balance them against the monsters in the game (which is the least of my worries), but against the other players, the spells that will be in the game, story battles, ect. So the firebat isn't really the "best" as you say, it's just the easiest to kill zerglings and zealots with because of its splash damage, take note though, that as enemies get harder the firebat will get worse. Since the firebat actually deals 2 attacks, like the normal firebat actually does 8 damage + 8 damage. If an enemy has 2 armor, then the firebat deals (8-2) +(8-2) =12 damage, instead of 16-2 = 14 damage. However, I think the firebat marine combination will be a good start for new players since if the firebat is having a difficult time killing certain enemies, the player can switch to marine at any time.

As for the leveling up thing being very slow and tedious, that's probably true for first time map players. Personally, I can get to level 5 in about 10 minutes because I know where all the goodies are (lol). I get the feeling you didn't find too many of the goodies, because there is well over 2000 exp lying around the map right now, just in free mineral chunk bonuses.


Also, the reason it didn't work when you went back into the cave is because I haven't finished the triggers in there, so no worries