Before I talk about the map, let me give a short intro: I realize that recently the community is somewhat dismayed by the lack of adoption of techically advanced maps by the average B-netter. In their defence, my opinion is that it's not that B-netters are stupid or only want to play simplistic maps, but rather, technically accomplished maps often come with complex controls that even after being explained, still remain counter-intuitive. This is of course, through no fault of our own as mapmakers, but due to Starcraft's interface customization options being virtually non-existent(save for modding). With this as my belief, I sought to create a map that would feature gameplay that requires insight and planning, allowing players to create their own strategy, as well as being an easily accessible crowd-pleaser.This map is the result of my efforts.





About this map
Well then what is it? The object of the game is simple: choose 1 out of 6 hero characters, and beat the snot out of the other players' hero character. More specifically, killing another player's hero gives you points,and the first player to reach 100 points wins. Battles take place in the arena filling the bottom portion of the map, and up to 6 players can participate.

FEATURE NO. 1
Interface Design Simplicity
The main commands are handled via a load/unload system, which consists of a shuttle(for hero abilities) and dropship(for items) at the top of the map. There is also a secondary, context-sensitive, command system, but more on that later.



Abilities can be categorized as Magic, Prayer, Curse and Summon, with each hero having a unique ability from each category, meaning that each hero has 4 different abilities. Abilities cost mana, which is represented by the amount of minerals you have.

Magic - These are damaging spells, using them either spawns units for a short period of time that do direct damage, or set health to a certain percentage.
Prayer - Using this grants you some sort of advantage in battle, mostly healing health, energy or shields.
Curse - The opposite of a prayer spell, it is used mainly to put opponents at a disadvantage, usually by limiting their mobility and battle choices in some way.
Summon - Pretty self-explanatory, but just in case, Summons here are defined as controllable minions that stay out for as long as they have HP.

Of course, due to limitations, the abilities menu is only able to display the general labels of the abilities, and not is's hero-specific name and use. However, to get a detailed list of the functions of the abilities as it pertains to the hero, simply select the Abilities menu and right-click anywhere. This is the context-sensitive command system mentioned earlier, as selecting the shuttle and right-clicking is also used to confirm a variety of in-game decisions.



The item menu works the same way as the abilities menu, through unloading units, but all items are one-time use only. Items are bought using gold (represented by your gas amount) which is obtained from slaying enemy summons, and can be bought from the shop which occupies the top right hand corner of the map. To teleport to the shop, select the Items menu and right-click anywhere. The shop is also a safe zone where no fighting is allowed, meaning that you could use the shop teleport to get out of a tight situation. However, because of this shop teleports cost 5 gold, and all summons would be removed from the arena. To get back out of the shop, once again select the Items menu and right-click anywhere.



FEATURE NO. 2
Hero Classes and Items
I have worked to make sure that the abilities of each hero complement each other well, and there are several possible ways to play a hero. So check it out:

Barbarian
Unit - Zealot
Abilities (Expand for description, screenshots inside)

Advantage - Newbie friendly, little micro required.
Disadvantage - Can only have one summon out at once.

Assassin
Unit - Zeratul
Abilities (Expand for description, screenshots inside)

Advantage - Somewhat newbie friendly.
Disadvantage - Magic spell is highly situational, lacks a truly damaging spell.

Druid
Unit - Medic
Abilities (Expand for description, screenshots inside)

Advantage - Healing capabilities make team-ups with this class very viable.
Disadvantage - High mana cost for all abilities.

Mage
Unit - Tassadar
Abilities (Expand for description, screenshots inside)

Advantage - Able to do a lot of damage, using Psionic Storm with ease due to prayer.
Disadvantage - Low HP and Shields, with nothing to make up for it.

Ranger
Unit - Ghost
Abilities (Expand for description, screenshots inside)

Advatage - High amount of range plus pretty good damage.
Disadvantage - Micro intensive.

Sorceror
Unit - Infested Kerrigan
Abilities (Expand for description, screenshots inside)

Advantage - Has the potential to become really powerful and virtually invincible.
Disadvantage - Extreme caution and preciseness needed: One wrong move and you're as good as dead.

Items



FEATURE NO. 3
Bounty System
To recap, I mentioned that killing enemy summons nets you gold that can be used either to upgrade or buy items. On it's own, this leads to two problems: Firstly, upgrades will 'snowball', with players spending more being able to kill with better efficiency, which gets them more gold to upgrade more etc. Secondly, this will lead to people creep denying, that is, deliberately not using their summons, or killing their own summons a la DOTA, in fear of other people becoming more powerful. However, this is resolved through a bounty system: The more summons a player kills, the larger the bounty on his head, and the larger the bounty, the more points another player would get for killing that player. In short, there is an incentive for killing stronger players; it brings you much closer to winning the game than if you kill a weak player.



Progress
UPDATE:

TO-DO LIST
In order of priority:
*Bug testing and balance testing: Testers required.
*Implement sound and look into possibility of bgm, while keeping the download small.
*Implement player number detection and modify point goal according to player number
*Polish terrain: remove blockiness and decorate with sprites.
*Look into adding different modes: 3vs3, Comp Stomp and Last Man Standing.
*Look into making graphical changes using SCMLoader: Decloaking DT(Somehow, with overlays possibly?), changing Lava Ghouls and Flame sentry into something more appropriate looking, for example.

Post has been edited 7 time(s), last time on Jun 7 2008, 12:38 pm by MalFunkShun.

Looks fun. I agree mostly with what you said in the very beginning of the post about the "technical" maps. But that's with any tool really. Any computer program, starcraft included, takes a little bit of training time to leard before you can most efficiently use it.

I like this idea very much. Beer for you.

And good luck with the map. Looks like it's all very well planned and thought through.

One question: for all these "nearest opponet" spells, do you actually have a system which selects the nearest opponet, or is it a simple center location @ hero location?

Lookin' great though! *wants to play*

It's centering a location at a hero location. Atm, the only spells that do that are the Assassin's Frost Shatter and Freezing Strike, and the Druid's Entangle. To clarify, other spells such as Ground Shaker effect all enemies within the hero location, and spells such as Bind Trap and Demi Vine centers a location on where the spell is cast, and will take effect on any enemy who moves into that location. In the case of Bind Trap, the 10 second duration only begins once an enemy has stepped into the trap itself.

And BTW, the map is already playable. I'm looking for testers who are willing to participate in a closed beta.

This map looks fucking awesome. I can see this becoming the DotA of starcraft. Or the WoW of mmorpg's. I would love to help test. I am hp_invent at US west.

EDIT: O btw, I could remove blocks in the terrain if you need me to.

I'm ws-Impeached@USEast, I'll test. I can get another tester for you too, a very intelligent designer; he's a clanmate who doesn't post here much.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jun 4 2008, 1:32 pm by Impeached.

Are you on now? I'm at USeast.

Hi I tested your map with you and Impeached, found the following:

Messages that are preserved consta-spam every hyper cycle, such as the "You are dead" message. This should have a death count or something so only goes off once per 48 or 60 cycles, something like that.

Also, in my opinion messages for spells being cast should show for all players (e.g. an announcement to all players that "Player 1 (Red) casts: Entangle".
You can do this with death counts although it uses alot of units for death counts that way. The way I did it in Great Wizards was to create a copy of the spell's in-game unit in a special "sound location" off in some unaccessible part of the map when the spell was cast. A seperate "All Players" trigger would then remove that unit & give the message to all players.

Overall great work! The interface is pretty slick.

Ok, my suggestions:
-Game is too slow. Make all the HP ~half of what it is now perhaps.
-Asura is plain rigged. Up its cost to 20, and take much of its shields out.
-Upgrade cap should be taken out in place of a +1 increment on upgrades.
-The sorceror's death aura is useless. For 6 seconds, you have almost no HP (can still die too). There's really not much you can do in 6 seconds that's major, so it's useless. Upping the time / downing the cost will still kind of make it a useless spell. Perhaps you should change the concept to something like '1% HP. after X seconds, 75-100% HP'.
-The restore Mana item's name is too confusing. Should probably be cost-upped and be merged into restore mana/energy.
-The HP stone's store label's name says 10, but it only costs 5
-Ancient stones, while a cool idea, aren't very good. 20 cost is way too much for a tiny benefit like that. Perhaps make it 17 or 16.

Overall a good map.

Ok, here's what I've been working on:
- Sorceror's Death Aura is now out. Replacing it is a skill called Evolve Minion. Evolve Minion is a 'buff' for the parasitic minion that basically removes the time limit of a minion, and in it's place the minion has got 50HP. The evolving of a minion is subtle but has a number of effects:
- Minions become consumable. This opens the possibility of:
- Sorcerors consuming their own minions for energy. This could potentially save the Sorc a lot of money, because instead of spending 10G on an Energy Stone, she
only has to spend 3G on Soul Stones to replenish MP. For this reason, Soul Stones and to be Energy Stones are kept separate, and because the Drone still
represents both, the unit name now reads Soul or Energy stone, and the Drone's colour, Blue and Purple
respectively will be used to differentiate the two.
- Defilers can also consume the minion. This means that you don't have to wait for the energy of the Defiler to regen or summon another Defiler, you only need to
keep one alive.
- Opponents are faced with a decision now: Should I kill the minions, which focuses the damage elsewhere away from the Sorceror, or should I ignore the minions,
knowing that they will either continue being a thorn in my side, or will be consumed so that the Sorceror can storm or plague the f*** out of me?
The spell would be very cheap, at an initial cost of 6MP and up to 4 minions within range are affected by the ability. The initial cost of parasitic minion will also be decreased to 10. The defiler's cost is also increased to 16, since plague will be more powerful when the HP of all units are halved.


I want to encourage the use of Ancient Tomes as a means for players to specialize and fine-tune their character, so 16 sounds about OK if it means players would use it more... In your opinion, should players have a build ready by mid-game or late-game?

Mid-game I think.

*bumpity bump bump bump*

So..when dyou wanna test again?

Hmm...tomorrow(Sunday) would be good. try to see if we can get a couple more people

Oooh can I test maybe?
zB-C-yamico96@useast