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Short RPG
So then, with all the RPGs out there, I want to make one, which is short, playable, and as ridiculously advanced as possible. What I'm looking for is YOUR ideas! The title will be "Short RPG" until someone comes up with a better plan.

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SPECIFICATIONS

• Players
  Max of 4
  
• Map Tileset
  Jungle, currently
  
• Map Size
  192x80, currently
  

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STORYLINE
This is why you are needed. Give me a story, preferably a short story. Perhaps there are 4 friends, Tom, Bob, Jill, and Steve. An evil magician has stolen their pet rabbit, Philip, and they must venture off into the woods to find the cave he lives in, battling the denizens of the N'ahlinkal woods. If I don't get a better one, I may use this.

Bonus points, however, if you have to play as an evil party, though.

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FEATURES
So this is where my talents come in. I'd like to feature a few concepts that make the game unique. Some may be thrown out.

• Variable sight range via exploitation of vision update frames. (Day, night, etc... One countdown second will be a minute in game.)
  
• EUD health detection/sharing
  
• EUD hotkey weapon switching (limited to 2, probably)
  
• EUD building entry (right click on building to enter it)
  
• EUD attack detection
  
• Kills to cash perfect, with randomized dropping system. I'm not sure if it would be worthwhile to have powerups as items spawn on top of the dead creatures, since that requires lots of units.
  
• Possibly decent footstep sounds, varying on your location (grass, mud, dirt, temple)
  
• Free stim! (hopefully, haven't worked it out yet)
  
• <insert your own feature here>
  

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DETAILS

• Characters
  Characters will probably have 2 weapons, so that leaves us with 4, 6, or 8 characters. Keep in mind, extended terrain is sketchy for larger units. Combos include:
  Female Character:
  •Medic+Kerrigan.
  Melee Units:
  •Zergling, Firebat, Zealot
  Ranged Units:
  •Marine, Ghost, Hydralisk
  
  DT is out, due to invisibility, and Zerg units are questionable, as I don't know if I can reason the life regen they have.
  
  
• Weapons
  •2nd weapon will probably be found/bought along the way.
  •3rd automatic weapon might be available, if I can reason it in. Planning on Medic to have a cloaked stacked zergling who can attack people when you stand right next to them.
  
  
• Items
  •Potions
  •Arrows
  •Scrolls (for spells)
  
  
• Spells
  •Probably you generic attack stuff, like ALL other RPGs with spells.
  •Again, open for ideas. The story can be fit to allow just about anything, but keep in mind that lots of spells are A) hard to trigger, and B) hard to play with.
  
  
  

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SCREENSHOTS/DEMO

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PROGRESS
IDEAS (25%)
TERRAIN (25%)
UNIT PLACEMENT (1%)
TRIGGERS (10%)
ALPHA RELEASE (5%)

UPDATES

• 20100116 - Project Announced.
  

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Made with the Map Production template.

Do you want a serious storyline, or a humourous, silly one?

How do you do variable vision?

Got a cool feature: Spell Generator (the one pyro made).
Another: Different strength of enemy units at night as opposed to day.
A block button (flash invincibility, but stops moving).
Movement acceleration.
Spells have a sort of physics to it (hitting a unit with a fireball will knock it back.)

How about an invincible arbiter you own that can't use Stasis Field, but can Recall an Infested Terran somewhere on the map using X energy, and the Infested Terran reappears once current one is dead, but since you used X energy (Which shouldn't be enough for you to cast it more than once in a row), you must wait for the "cooldown time" to use the Infested Terran again.

Sort of like a frag grenade, xD.

Plz don't steal the storyline of my upcoming short RPG.

Want to have a mapping race?

This sounds really fun. I'll work on a story.

Anything. Silly has its pluses, but if it's a good serious story (that's short) that can work too.

Burrowed units give vision, but you never actually see them, and they don't slow you down at all. I developed the system when I was researching vision.
I don't know where the spell generator is, but I'm not feeling more than a few spells. It's only so long before they start copying each other. I can do the enemy strength easy, due to multiple computers. The block sounds cool. I think if you press "3" your character will ally everyone, become invincible, and stand still for a short period. However, is there much of a practical use? You essentially become useless for that amount of time. Movement acceleration implies movement slowdown. I suppose I can do that for the zealots. Physics sounds too hard.

why wouldn't I just build a unit which summons an IT next to me/any unit? It sounds pretty inconvenient.

Okay. Definitely not. This shouldn't be too hard to do, but my future is up in the air right now, as I might lose all my free time in the near future, thus putting the project on hold.

AWESOME!

About the vision system, do you create and remove the burrowed unit underneath the hero in one trigger cycle, and if so, does it show vision?

Creating units for a player instantly gives vision. If you create a zergling, for example, it will be displaced even when burrowed, so there will be no slowdown. However, if you constantly do that, every 100 frames, the screen will flicker, and you will be left without vision. This is solved by leaving the unit there for an extra trigger cycle. Attached is the demo map showing this.

Every 100 frames, vision gets updated for all the units you control, so that's why it sometimes takes a long time (4 seconds on fastest) to get vision if you were given a unit. Every 30 frames the game checks for invisible units, and displays them, but only reveals one per frame. If the unit is already revealed, it's revealed for another 30 frames. Unfortunately, that means every 300th frame, you'll end up seeing the burrowed unit flicker. It's a pretty harmless side effect, though, since you only see the unit once every 12 seconds, for one frame. I suppose I could center the burrowed unit under the unit its providing vision, which would hide the little black spot.
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