Sin

The idea here is simple: It's a massive Open RPG-ish map vaguely inspired by the central premise of the Final Fantasy X story: Stopping a colossal, world-destroying monster called Sin. Beyond that, it won't have any pre-established story or plot to make note of nor any loving cast of androgynous Japanese whiny soccer-playing teenagers to worry about. Instead, I treat you to a fully dynamic, procedurally-generated game world with a diverse range of gameplay and player options, all built around the epic central premise of Sin hunting.

Deicide aside, as it is technically an open RPG, you'll have the option of some fudge room with the notions of victory and defeat (muahahah!). But really, since I'm not a huge fan of open RPGs, I'll make it pretty clear about what you 'should' do, while also giving players some fun ways to fuck with the system, if they're so inclined.


The Sin monster itself is a pretty no-brainer entity that wanders around and causing havoc and destroying shit. Its presence and the nature of its abilities make for a number of gameplay elements:

• First note that there's no force in the game that can 'directly' stop Sin. It's like a fucking tornado. It'll cause damage wherever it goes, but generally as long as you avoid its primary path and do what you can to clean up after it, you'll get by. To a point.
  
• Speaking of clean up, besides raw damage, it'll also leave a lot of crap behind in its wake. Crap that likes to come to life, grow, infest areas, and possibly even overrun them, if left unchecked. And since you can't be in two places at once, this'll start to get a little out of hand after a while.
  
• And of course, to help matters, Sin itself will 'grow' over time. You can damage it periodically to help trim its claws a bit and stunt parts of its growth (hopefully without neglecting cleanup), but ultimately you're going to want to kill this fucker: It WILL become unmanageable, eventually.
  
• Additionally, if you neglect harassing it for too long, it'll start doing fun stuff like using world-destroying gravity-based attacks that will quickly mop up the civilizations you're supposedly trying to protect. So don't think you can just sit in a corner somewhere and power up into insanity. At least, not without consequences.
  
• To actually kill the beast, though, you will need to physically enter inside of it and hunt down its 'controller'. The more left as a surprise about this process, the better. Just note that it will involve delivering a minimal amount of critical damage to the monster, first.
  

Now, I've mentioned something about some pesky civilizations you'll be wanting to protect. Why? Well because you depend on them. I'm basically sick of the concept of grinding for its own sake, so I'd rather give your work a distinct purpose: The more damage you can prevent to civilizations, the more and better toys you'll have to work with as the game progresses. That's right. No leveling up bullshit. You have to get your tools from people rather than some dumb magic jRPG grind-based game mechanics. Rest assured that dealing with civilizations will involve its own set of drama which you're free to indulge in to whatever extent you have the patience/inclination/ability for. I might even throw in some fun stuff like mini-games or cleanup tasks akin to emergency worker activities (Fire Fighters, anyone?) or whatever else I'm stoned enough to mix when I get to it.

Space Dogs

Here's a fun little concept map. It'll be player versus with mode selection (FFA, Team, etc.) that involves, you guessed it, ships n' space n' shit! Oh what fun!

This will probably be by far the most technologically advanced map I'd ever try to manage within Starcraft's constraints with the serious intent of making something worth playing.


Anyway. The premise is thus: Each player starts with a crew, a commander, a ship, and enough mullah to do some rudimentary stuff with it. Game begins at a main, central port (two ports if it's team-based - one for each team), and from there it's on to the wide frontier of space! This map will be massive: Both physically and technically. Using a combination of my old Zoning system concept, virtual arenas (I think Lethal's idea), and my own custom trigger scripting API for lots o' maths n' shit (MacroTriggers just wouldn't cut it in it's current form), you'll have nearly the equivalent of thousands of miles of open space to have fun with.

But all that space is useless without something to do with it. Well got that covered, too. In it will be a solar system with its own sun, planets, and other satellites; each with their own mass, gravity, and even rudimentary orbital physics. Within this setting will be spaces for colonies; both player and NPC controlled. Colonies, of course, generate resources, recruits, and also secure swaths of territory and can be built, captured, or destroyed. With resources and crew, players can customize the physical characteristics of their ships to commence with beating the ever-loving snot out of one another.

Ship battles hearken back to ye olden days of buccaneers on the high seas lobbing cannon balls at one another over fair distances (a wink to my old Cannon Balls map, maybe?). Of course, no good space map is without mandatory spacey futuristic shit, which gives me plenty of room for a lot of awesome gameplay mechanics and ideas. All of this tied together with a highly extensible, physically-simulated ship (complete with damageability for specific, physically represented parts and whatnot) and what is probably the most powerful interface possible in Starcraft without EUDs or modding.

A&O Saga

Okay okay. Since I made a trailer for it, I might as well consider using it for something. Well here's your something: An epic movie map! That's right! No fancy RPG shit here. I shall to go out the way I came in: Moviez! Rest assured of an epic tale of high adventure, drama, action, and storytelling. I'll try to actually not fuck around and make it somewhat serious this time (however tempting surprise crash endings may be), but no guarantees. I promise to thoroughly abuse the Starcraft string limit, blatantly disregard any notion of reasonable file size (moar wavs! om nom nom...), and consume a large portion of my your sanity along the way!

Anything but a movie map. Maps are made to be played, not watched. Want to practice story-telling? - Make a SGI movie or a real movie, don't try it in SC.

Space Dogs and Sin would be awesome maps if you complete them as planned.

Space Dogs: be more specific about how you'll represent ships, create basic physical laws (gravity) to govern their movement and the battle system(s).

1.) I hate movie maps. JaFF said it perfectly.

Oh fuck your bandwagons. You guys haven't seen a real movie yet!

Oh fuck your bandwagons. You guys haven't seen a real movie yet!

RUSH THREE

I say do both #1 and #2 and combine them into one game so that way we have best of both worlds in one map.

Instead you should join forces with me and we can rule the galaxy as father and son!

Make an AoS.