Ok, so prepare for a mountain of text, I typed this up in a wordpad document to help catalog my idea's for a map I have planned. I thought it might be nice to let people know what I intend to be working on.
Again, I appologize if this is hard to read.
So I have this idea for a Starcraft 2 map, I am having difficulty deciding where I should have certain features be complex and where I should have others simple. I want to try and make certain features diverse so that they stand out and bring a form of entertainment to the players who don't want to just play another starcraft 2 ladder map, yet I also want certain features to be simple so they won't scare off newcomers trying to learn a new type of game.
So I figure the best way to iron out the details of the map would be to discuss the features I have planned for the game along with gathering suggestions for additional features. I can also gather opinions on what people think about certain features that I have planned, take note however that while I will respect everyones opinion on the features I include in the map it is still up to my discretion on whether or not the features will be added, removed, or changed so don't assume that every suggestion will be immediately implemented if at all.
Now on to the actual map itself, I will give a nice brief summary of what I have planned.
The current name of the map is "Galactic Civilizations" it's not a very creative name and I intend to change it later however for the time being it describes the game just fine. It is a civilization style game in which you control an empire in a diplomatic style of a strategy game.
I will now list some of the core features I intend to have in the game regardless of what is discussed.
Core Concepts
Land, Air, and Space battles: Players will have cities built on several different planets, planets will have planetary battles consisting of land and air units, where as in the planets orbit there will be space units, these will be handled depending on how I structure the planets in the game.
Multiple Planets: Players build cities on planets to claim them for resources, the quantity of cities per planet will vary depending on the limitations of the editor and the complexity of the game I have planned, I have 2 possible blueprints for this system
-Simple Blueprint: Space platforms proxy each of the planets and are spread out across the map.
-Complex Blueprint: A Planet Unit is placed on the map to resemble each individual planet along with a separate location on the map where the planetary surface is teleported too via the planet approached in space (Waygates between the planets and their respective surfaces)
Customizable Civilizations: Players will have the ability to choose their civilizations special traits, players who have played the civilization games will recognize this concept. The customization is subject to change and can be anywhere from determining how fast a player trains troops, or how many planets a player can control at once, or even what unique unit's a player may recieve.
Balance between Aggression and Economic: Being that civilization games are mostly Free For All games, there are no decisive enemies, players can come and choose who they want to fight or ally with, as such the usual issue comes with if every player allies together the game becomes a dull and boring game of resource gathering. At the same time I don't want players to feel overwhelmed when they try to be the player that goes to war against an alliance of 7 people all by himself.
No player left behind: In these kinds of diplomacy games when one player or group of players get far in the lead, it is often difficult or impossible for the weaker players to catch up to actually make a difference. My goal is to let everyone stay in the game the best they can, for players that are uncontrollably wealthy such as having a large number of profitable planets, the weaker players may become bandits to steal from the stronger players treasury (possibly in secret to not provoke their wrath) or perhaps get a bonus since they are so far behind in the leaderboard, whatever feature I include it must make sure that no player is left hopelessly lost, but at the same time, I don't want the winning players to feel it's impossible to get in the lead and stay there.
It's not over till it's over: When these long and epic games take place, the last thing anyone wants is for the players to leave, some of the reasons players might leave is if they are either losing or have been completely wiped out. I intend to include features in this map that not only allow losing players the ability to catch up to the winning players, but to allow completely annihilated players the ability to rebuild and continue playing. While also allowing players the ability to stay in the game after being wiped out, I also intend to give boon's to players that are successful in wiping another player out completely.
Epic Victory Conditions: This game isn't meant to play like your standard starcraft 2 ladder game, defeating all your opponents in combat would take too long in such a large free for all game, also some players might prefer other methods of victory other than simply who has the largest arsenal of battlecruisers (or whatever capital ships I use for my map) Much like the victory conditions in Civilization, Rise of nations, and Age of empires this map will host an array of ways for players to win the game, not just by who has the most guns.
End of Core Concepts
Those are the core concepts that this map will follow by, now on to the currently planned features that will be in the map, these are all subject to change and maybe be changed as ideas come and go.
Current Ideas
City based automated income: Income is currently planned to be based upon having a city (a structure) placed on a city construction zone (similar to refinery on a vespene geyser). The city will then produce an automated income (much like the Automated refinery from the campaign). This current concept is a very basic idea intended to be easily understood by new players.
Limited city production slots: when a city is built, production plots will be placed around it (think vespene geysers again) these slots allow the production of several buildings, such as the buildings needed to produce a military force, or a structure to improve trade and commerce, or even a structure to develop and research new technology. These can all be built directly from the city itself, no need to create any workers to build for you. The limitation of the types and numbers of structures that a player can have per city allows players to specialize certain cities to serve different purposes, players can have one city dedicated to creating a military power, while having another city to handle research or economy, some things might grant you extra production slots, such as a research or a special trait that you customized your civilization for.
Resources and Development: There are currently 2 primary resources in this game, Resources and Development.
-Resources are the primary currency used by players to construct their structures and train their units. Resources are gained a certain number of ways, the primary method is from an automated income from each city they have. It can also be gained by constructing certain buildings in cities that slightly boost the income of the city, or by creating trade routes with allies that provide a larger boost, or if the player is devious, they can Raid an enemy players trade routes to steal their resources, as well as plunder cities.
-Development on the other hand is the resource that covers how far the civilization has developed themselves as a whole, it cover's their research progress. Development is planned to be a rare resource that is difficult to gather, it will be a resource that is in great limited quantity and can only be claimed on very specific occasions. All player's start with a capital as their first city, which provides development as an income very slowly, gaining additional development income require certain aspects such as constructing a very expensive research structure, or by building structures on certain planets that have specialized Development Zones (think of them as rich mineral veins in the form of planets).Leaderboard: Being that this is a free for all diplomacy game, it will be extremely difficult to keep tabs on every player to find out who is doing better than one another. The map will have a leaderboard that gives other players a summary on which players pose a threat, and which ones are hardly making an impact. This will allow players to be notified when they might need to team up and tackle down a tyrant, or even perhaps let them know whether they should lay low and avoid conflicting with such a powerful player so soon.
Unique Civilization Traits: Chosen at the start of each game, these traits define what each players civilization will be better than others at. It will follow a similar setup to how civilization games spread out their traits, however this will also have boons similar to how Rise of Nations makes every nation unique. I will list the current one's I have planned and remember that all of these are subject to change.
-Productive: this trait allows the player to build more structures per city, by providing additional production slots around each city built. This trait is for players that either prefer have a small number of well productive cities, or a large number of very productive cities.
-Expansive: This trait lowers the costs that it takes to build a new city, by lowering the cost of the colony ships, it also speeds up the rate that they produce, and how fast they move allowing the player to cover farther reaches of space.
-Aggressive: This trait improves a players ability to attack other players, Reduces the production time of offensive units, increases the movement speed of smaller units, and increases the bounty for plundering cities and trade routes.
-Defensive: This trait improves a players ability to defend themselves, reduces the repair costs, increases stealth detection range, and increases the range of defensive structures and defensive units.
-Subtle Presence: This trait improves the players ability to conceal their current level of power, allowing the player to either reduce or increase their statistics on the leaderboard to appear weaker or stronger than they actually are. Additionally, Privateer units have reduced costs and production times (Privateers are units who's owners are concealed).
-Economic: This trait improves the players ability to trade with other players, increasing the movement speed of traders and increases the resource gain for the player(s) with this trait for every trade made with them.
-Industrial: This trait reduces the construction times for structures and increases resource production.
-Cunning: This trait improves the players ability to scout other players and collect more detailed information on the players current standing, it also improves effectiveness with stealth units. Stealth units are cheaper to produce, have increased vision range, and move faster.
-Creative: This trait improves the players ability to gather development. The cost for creating the Development structures are reduced and development is gained faster.
-Honorable: This trait improves a players trustworthiness in alliances. When a player is Honorable and makes an alliance, their Honorable trait is revealed during the agreement. If an Honorable player breaks an alliance for whatever reason, they suffer a great penalty to their production and military capabilities. However, if the other player breaks the alliance with the Honorable player, that players people feel betrayed and fight with fervor, gaining increased military capabilities and bounty when attacking the player that broke the alliance.
End of Current Ideas
This is what I have so far, it's mostly a catalog of concept ideas, my hopes are that the starcraft 2 editor has the capabilities of handling most, if not all of the features listed. I already know that a huge portion of these are supported and that some would require custom custom coding. (I could use the warcraft 3 editor to it's limits, I knew everything about it's JASS language)
I'll be visiting this thread every once in a while with updates made to the general concept and when I actually get the map up and ready for play, I'll post a link to download it.
Well I suppose a mountain of text is very boring to read, so here is an early screenshot showing a few of the things I have finished.
Take note I have not done anything to the terrain yet, as that is to be handled once the core concept of the game has been rooted together. After all if I use idea's that require a redesign of the terrain, I would end up wasting alot of effort.
As you can see I am currently working on one of the core features of the game, the civilization trait selection screen. My current build involves choosing 3 choices out of the available list, each item in the list provides certain benefits. Currently they provide very simple adjustments to existing units that everyone has, though depending on how I might want to focus them, they might provide certain unique units for each individual, or combination of decisions.
Example, an aggressive and defensive civilization might get an assault tank with a regenerating shield, allowing them to advance on enemies and also protect themselves by holding off before the tank regenerates it's shielding.
I'm glad this very bland screen shot was enough to get people excited for my project, though I guess you guys found interesting features in the mountain of text as well.
Glad to hear I have some fan's looking forward to this.
Well right now my projects at a serious bump, I can't get the "Built Upon" portion to work for the structures, right now I had 2 different kinds of structures that act as City foundations and Building foundations, they control where cities are built and how many buildings each city can have.
Problem is I can't seem to get them to work right, they are based off of vespene geysers, so the structures are built directly upon them, problem is after I start construction on them I can still use the foundation as if nothing was on it, causing infinite structures to be built on each one.
I have a thread posted elsewhere asking about it but I haven't seem to recieve a response, if anyone knows how to duplicate a vespene geyser / refinery relationship it would really speed up the project.
Edit: Fixed that problem, continueing on development.
Feel free to make any suggestions you want in this thread.
This game looks fantastic. Its obvious you know a lot about the editor. Im still iffy on the way that planet terrains will work, but both ideas that you have suggested sound reasonable. also, if you need any help on anything let me know. Im happy to offer the services of myself and those of my team at clan LSI!
For the planet terrain's... Honestly I haven't a clue myself, can't seem to find a way to add more textures, might end up being impossible for that particular idea to work. I could get the different planets to look like floating rocks but that might end up looking very dull, it would work like promised, it would just look dull.
The first version of the game is probably going to take place on a single planet much like your standard starcraft 2 league map. Once I get the core concepts of economy and military working, I'll work on the space portion afterwards.
All the help I need is feedback, let me know what you would want in this kind of game, go ahead and toss in any idea's that you can. I'll sift through whatever I see and implement what I can.
Ok, the space portion is put on indefinate hold, as I discovered the map bound limit is currently 256x256.
So until blizzard can update the editor to allow larger maps, I will just have to make a skirmish portion of my map.
ok, so the features for planetary settlement will not exist until then, When I attempted to work with the limited size, I could only fit 4 really small planets... not very exciting.
I guess until then I will have to make generic terrain's similar to those used in ladder maps.
If anyone want's to design a map for the terrain, it would speed up my project and I will credit them for it. I plan on making this project crossable between maps.
Really love this project, I'm a total civilization fan. If you need some help just ask (I'm not good at terraining tought).
I think you can reconsider the space portion of the game. Another possibility is to have small planets (you can reduce the size of the buildings if you want), and almost all the fights via "space". You can use the ground units only for planets attack/defense, for example if someone wanna conquer some planet, he drops all his units on the planet, and they fight automatically against the defenses. Each planet will be like a "City", with a Main base, and X spots for extra buildings, and some can have special resources (like the planet has one Vespene Gas, they gain extra income in that planet, or they have an ancient relic, they gain extra development).
That way you can't have two kinds of unit (defense/siege) and space units. The space units fight everywhere but cannot assault or defend planets. The other units stay on your planet, or go in a transport (you'll need to defend it with space units) and drops them in the opossing planet for starting a siege. You can do a single point in the planet where you can start an assault, for easier defensive units or estructures position.
Just an idea. Good luck with your project!
About the players losing the game, I think the easier way is they "surrender" to the player that defeated them, they ally with him, and can play the game helping him. They'll have income and development reduced for example. Civilization games second to last position is always based on the "approval rating", so he can still try to be second in the game.
See, the main issue is I had thought's of making the individual planets have their own maps, to make it sort of play like empire of war multiplayer campaign. But the problem is the map size is far to small to even fit a decently sized planet, let alone multiple.
In theory your suggestion could work, however the very tightness of the map would end up having tightly played terrain spots accross the map. It wouldn't feel like a galaxy full of planets, more like an asteroid belt. But I'll give it a try at some point if I decide to simplify the ground battles, it's not a bad idea and actually fit's pretty well, but ground battle's might end up being very basic and plain, since the scale would be so small.
As for players losing the game, technically losing the game, means that the entire game is over, when I work on maps like these, I like to think that the game never end's until one player/team win's the game. This encourages everyone to stay for the fullness of the game, since even if their cities all get destroyed or if they are extremely far behind in their performance, they can still catch up to the other's and give them a challenge.
Like if one completely new player is just doing so poorly that he basically has nothing, the game will have event's like charity of sorts that help the player catch up in their race with the other players, this charity however will not help the player win in any way, but it will allow the player the ability to try and prevent other players from winning, assuming the player is willing to try.
And of course they can surrender to the player that's beating them in a conflict, but I don't want the people who are surrendering to feel they can't win anymore, so it isn't permanent, surrender could just be a type of protection ability that saves the player from losing everything they have, at the cost of giving something important to the attacking player(s) such as something needed for victory, or something the surrendering player doesn't need to catch up.
Thank you for the suggestions.
PS: I suck at terraining too, that's why I'm offering help for it >.<
I published a testable version on battle.net for my friend and I to try out and mess around with.
If you happen to come across it in the map roster feel free to mess around in it, it's still far from playable but you can see what it's like and track it's progress.
If your interested in testing the game out, I'll post my friend info here and you can send me a request.
I think that space terrain is doable, you just need to make the units really small. I think a 65% reduction in size across the board should do it. (with some buildings at 75 if needed) One system you could do is just make it so that a planets space defenses and space battles are just fighting to be allowed entry into a planet. There are planet symbols in the space map, and if you manage to destroy a planets space defenses (fleets, orbital defense systems, ect), you can place units onto that planet. The planets could each be a sizable chunk of land on the side of the space map, and anyone who invades one would just get their invasion units into one of two or three drop points.
So basically, half the map is a space map, with planet symbols scattered around it, and the other half of the map are the actual planets. (or a 1/3:2/3 ratio, w.e you want)
Ive seen this concept before but it seems youre applying it to sc2, in sc1 there was a map called Xeno Diplomacy It was eessentially your idea but as much as it could fit to sc1 and i dont think making small planets and smaller garrisions for each planet or installation would go well because it would be like Galatic Diplomacy in sc1 and the garrision for each installation was one marine.
Really hope blizzard finds a way to unite us again, I hate been separated from the world :(
With the recent update it's easier to find maps to host. Just search for "Galactic" when hosting and my map should show up.
Test it out whenever you feel like it, i'll be publishing it frequently with updates.
As for the space idea, I already started setting up the map to work on a smaller scale, every building got shrunk to 1 square, it surprisingly works pretty well even for the non-space terrain I have.
So maybe after I test out the land combat thoroughly I can see about trying the space terrain again, but until then i'm going to stick with what I have and try to design the core concepts of the system first. After that i'll try implementing space again.
Thing's are coming along pretty well, with the support of several people on this forum I have managed to circumvent every speedbump that I came across while working on the map.
Has anyone tried out the map yet on the roster? I've understand the publishing system is pretty poor but I'm curious if anyone has come across it yet.
Anybody manage to try out the map at all? I know the map is practically unfinished but some feedback on the current design it's aiming towards would greatly help the development.
Anyone that gets around to give this map a shot let me know, any feedback is good, I don't care how harsh it is, I want to try and make this map in a way where no one can find a reason to dislike it.
Edit: Anybody have some suggestions on how I can get some testers for feedback?
I'm making a map similar to yours, it's not a civilization map, but it implements both ground and space. What I did in my map was zoom the camera in, and then shrink everything. My map's size now is around 1000x1000 given the scale of everything. Because of this the space section is MASSIVE with around 14 star systems, each star system consisting of well... a star and anywhere between 3-8 planets around it. The planet surfaces themselves are around the size of a smallish 1v1 map from Blizzard. So it is quite possible to get the expansive nature you want, just requires a TON of scaling.
Also, a question (if you don't mind), but did you re-scale the footprints of buildings? Because that's something I can't figure out. If I go to a footprint and change the scale, it just breaks the footprint, doesn't re-scale it. So I can't get buildings to work right.
P.S. If you host the map on here, I'll dl it and give it a look, could give you some feed-back. I -LOVE- diplomacy maps, especially the space kind, so I'd be happy to help in what ways I can.
I'd like to see what you did with that, let me know if you'll ever let me look at that map of yours.
As for scaling the footprints, you don't do anything involving scale like you would with actors or models, there's a pathing map tool that the data editor has. You simply draw the footprint you need depending on how small it needs to be.
Though I'm not sure if I was successful for this either, I just found a 1x1 pathing map that was used for doodad's I guess and used it as the pathing map for the buildings.
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Ok, so prepare for a mountain of text, I typed this up in a wordpad document to help catalog my idea's for a map I have planned. I thought it might be nice to let people know what I intend to be working on.
Again, I appologize if this is hard to read.
So I have this idea for a Starcraft 2 map, I am having difficulty deciding where I should have certain features be complex and where I should have others simple. I want to try and make certain features diverse so that they stand out and bring a form of entertainment to the players who don't want to just play another starcraft 2 ladder map, yet I also want certain features to be simple so they won't scare off newcomers trying to learn a new type of game.
So I figure the best way to iron out the details of the map would be to discuss the features I have planned for the game along with gathering suggestions for additional features. I can also gather opinions on what people think about certain features that I have planned, take note however that while I will respect everyones opinion on the features I include in the map it is still up to my discretion on whether or not the features will be added, removed, or changed so don't assume that every suggestion will be immediately implemented if at all.
Now on to the actual map itself, I will give a nice brief summary of what I have planned.
The current name of the map is "Galactic Civilizations" it's not a very creative name and I intend to change it later however for the time being it describes the game just fine. It is a civilization style game in which you control an empire in a diplomatic style of a strategy game.
I will now list some of the core features I intend to have in the game regardless of what is discussed.
Core Concepts
Land, Air, and Space battles: Players will have cities built on several different planets, planets will have planetary battles consisting of land and air units, where as in the planets orbit there will be space units, these will be handled depending on how I structure the planets in the game.
Multiple Planets: Players build cities on planets to claim them for resources, the quantity of cities per planet will vary depending on the limitations of the editor and the complexity of the game I have planned, I have 2 possible blueprints for this system
-Simple Blueprint: Space platforms proxy each of the planets and are spread out across the map.
-Complex Blueprint: A Planet Unit is placed on the map to resemble each individual planet along with a separate location on the map where the planetary surface is teleported too via the planet approached in space (Waygates between the planets and their respective surfaces)
Customizable Civilizations: Players will have the ability to choose their civilizations special traits, players who have played the civilization games will recognize this concept. The customization is subject to change and can be anywhere from determining how fast a player trains troops, or how many planets a player can control at once, or even what unique unit's a player may recieve.
Balance between Aggression and Economic: Being that civilization games are mostly Free For All games, there are no decisive enemies, players can come and choose who they want to fight or ally with, as such the usual issue comes with if every player allies together the game becomes a dull and boring game of resource gathering. At the same time I don't want players to feel overwhelmed when they try to be the player that goes to war against an alliance of 7 people all by himself.
No player left behind: In these kinds of diplomacy games when one player or group of players get far in the lead, it is often difficult or impossible for the weaker players to catch up to actually make a difference. My goal is to let everyone stay in the game the best they can, for players that are uncontrollably wealthy such as having a large number of profitable planets, the weaker players may become bandits to steal from the stronger players treasury (possibly in secret to not provoke their wrath) or perhaps get a bonus since they are so far behind in the leaderboard, whatever feature I include it must make sure that no player is left hopelessly lost, but at the same time, I don't want the winning players to feel it's impossible to get in the lead and stay there.
It's not over till it's over: When these long and epic games take place, the last thing anyone wants is for the players to leave, some of the reasons players might leave is if they are either losing or have been completely wiped out. I intend to include features in this map that not only allow losing players the ability to catch up to the winning players, but to allow completely annihilated players the ability to rebuild and continue playing. While also allowing players the ability to stay in the game after being wiped out, I also intend to give boon's to players that are successful in wiping another player out completely.
Epic Victory Conditions: This game isn't meant to play like your standard starcraft 2 ladder game, defeating all your opponents in combat would take too long in such a large free for all game, also some players might prefer other methods of victory other than simply who has the largest arsenal of battlecruisers (or whatever capital ships I use for my map) Much like the victory conditions in Civilization, Rise of nations, and Age of empires this map will host an array of ways for players to win the game, not just by who has the most guns.
End of Core Concepts
Those are the core concepts that this map will follow by, now on to the currently planned features that will be in the map, these are all subject to change and maybe be changed as ideas come and go.
Current Ideas
City based automated income: Income is currently planned to be based upon having a city (a structure) placed on a city construction zone (similar to refinery on a vespene geyser). The city will then produce an automated income (much like the Automated refinery from the campaign). This current concept is a very basic idea intended to be easily understood by new players.
Limited city production slots: when a city is built, production plots will be placed around it (think vespene geysers again) these slots allow the production of several buildings, such as the buildings needed to produce a military force, or a structure to improve trade and commerce, or even a structure to develop and research new technology. These can all be built directly from the city itself, no need to create any workers to build for you. The limitation of the types and numbers of structures that a player can have per city allows players to specialize certain cities to serve different purposes, players can have one city dedicated to creating a military power, while having another city to handle research or economy, some things might grant you extra production slots, such as a research or a special trait that you customized your civilization for.
Resources and Development: There are currently 2 primary resources in this game, Resources and Development.
-Resources are the primary currency used by players to construct their structures and train their units. Resources are gained a certain number of ways, the primary method is from an automated income from each city they have. It can also be gained by constructing certain buildings in cities that slightly boost the income of the city, or by creating trade routes with allies that provide a larger boost, or if the player is devious, they can Raid an enemy players trade routes to steal their resources, as well as plunder cities.
-Development on the other hand is the resource that covers how far the civilization has developed themselves as a whole, it cover's their research progress. Development is planned to be a rare resource that is difficult to gather, it will be a resource that is in great limited quantity and can only be claimed on very specific occasions. All player's start with a capital as their first city, which provides development as an income very slowly, gaining additional development income require certain aspects such as constructing a very expensive research structure, or by building structures on certain planets that have specialized Development Zones (think of them as rich mineral veins in the form of planets).Leaderboard: Being that this is a free for all diplomacy game, it will be extremely difficult to keep tabs on every player to find out who is doing better than one another. The map will have a leaderboard that gives other players a summary on which players pose a threat, and which ones are hardly making an impact. This will allow players to be notified when they might need to team up and tackle down a tyrant, or even perhaps let them know whether they should lay low and avoid conflicting with such a powerful player so soon.
Unique Civilization Traits: Chosen at the start of each game, these traits define what each players civilization will be better than others at. It will follow a similar setup to how civilization games spread out their traits, however this will also have boons similar to how Rise of Nations makes every nation unique. I will list the current one's I have planned and remember that all of these are subject to change.
-Productive: this trait allows the player to build more structures per city, by providing additional production slots around each city built. This trait is for players that either prefer have a small number of well productive cities, or a large number of very productive cities.
-Expansive: This trait lowers the costs that it takes to build a new city, by lowering the cost of the colony ships, it also speeds up the rate that they produce, and how fast they move allowing the player to cover farther reaches of space.
-Aggressive: This trait improves a players ability to attack other players, Reduces the production time of offensive units, increases the movement speed of smaller units, and increases the bounty for plundering cities and trade routes.
-Defensive: This trait improves a players ability to defend themselves, reduces the repair costs, increases stealth detection range, and increases the range of defensive structures and defensive units.
-Subtle Presence: This trait improves the players ability to conceal their current level of power, allowing the player to either reduce or increase their statistics on the leaderboard to appear weaker or stronger than they actually are. Additionally, Privateer units have reduced costs and production times (Privateers are units who's owners are concealed).
-Economic: This trait improves the players ability to trade with other players, increasing the movement speed of traders and increases the resource gain for the player(s) with this trait for every trade made with them.
-Industrial: This trait reduces the construction times for structures and increases resource production.
-Cunning: This trait improves the players ability to scout other players and collect more detailed information on the players current standing, it also improves effectiveness with stealth units. Stealth units are cheaper to produce, have increased vision range, and move faster.
-Creative: This trait improves the players ability to gather development. The cost for creating the Development structures are reduced and development is gained faster.
-Honorable: This trait improves a players trustworthiness in alliances. When a player is Honorable and makes an alliance, their Honorable trait is revealed during the agreement. If an Honorable player breaks an alliance for whatever reason, they suffer a great penalty to their production and military capabilities. However, if the other player breaks the alliance with the Honorable player, that players people feel betrayed and fight with fervor, gaining increased military capabilities and bounty when attacking the player that broke the alliance.
End of Current Ideas
This is what I have so far, it's mostly a catalog of concept ideas, my hopes are that the starcraft 2 editor has the capabilities of handling most, if not all of the features listed. I already know that a huge portion of these are supported and that some would require custom custom coding. (I could use the warcraft 3 editor to it's limits, I knew everything about it's JASS language)
I'll be visiting this thread every once in a while with updates made to the general concept and when I actually get the map up and ready for play, I'll post a link to download it.
Well I suppose a mountain of text is very boring to read, so here is an early screenshot showing a few of the things I have finished.
Take note I have not done anything to the terrain yet, as that is to be handled once the core concept of the game has been rooted together. After all if I use idea's that require a redesign of the terrain, I would end up wasting alot of effort.
As you can see I am currently working on one of the core features of the game, the civilization trait selection screen. My current build involves choosing 3 choices out of the available list, each item in the list provides certain benefits. Currently they provide very simple adjustments to existing units that everyone has, though depending on how I might want to focus them, they might provide certain unique units for each individual, or combination of decisions.
Example, an aggressive and defensive civilization might get an assault tank with a regenerating shield, allowing them to advance on enemies and also protect themselves by holding off before the tank regenerates it's shielding.
@Zackreaver: Go
i look forward to this maps completion know you have atleast one fan out there :D if u need a tester let me know i will happily help out
Looks amazing, if you need testers or anything like that let me know. My msn is: [email protected]
Well this is both unexpected and... pleasing.
I'm glad this very bland screen shot was enough to get people excited for my project, though I guess you guys found interesting features in the mountain of text as well.
Glad to hear I have some fan's looking forward to this.
Well right now my projects at a serious bump, I can't get the "Built Upon" portion to work for the structures, right now I had 2 different kinds of structures that act as City foundations and Building foundations, they control where cities are built and how many buildings each city can have.
Problem is I can't seem to get them to work right, they are based off of vespene geysers, so the structures are built directly upon them, problem is after I start construction on them I can still use the foundation as if nothing was on it, causing infinite structures to be built on each one.
I have a thread posted elsewhere asking about it but I haven't seem to recieve a response, if anyone knows how to duplicate a vespene geyser / refinery relationship it would really speed up the project.
Edit: Fixed that problem, continueing on development.
Feel free to make any suggestions you want in this thread.
This game looks fantastic. Its obvious you know a lot about the editor. Im still iffy on the way that planet terrains will work, but both ideas that you have suggested sound reasonable. also, if you need any help on anything let me know. Im happy to offer the services of myself and those of my team at clan LSI!
@DoctorM: Go
For the planet terrain's... Honestly I haven't a clue myself, can't seem to find a way to add more textures, might end up being impossible for that particular idea to work. I could get the different planets to look like floating rocks but that might end up looking very dull, it would work like promised, it would just look dull.
The first version of the game is probably going to take place on a single planet much like your standard starcraft 2 league map. Once I get the core concepts of economy and military working, I'll work on the space portion afterwards.
All the help I need is feedback, let me know what you would want in this kind of game, go ahead and toss in any idea's that you can. I'll sift through whatever I see and implement what I can.
omg this looks epic can't wait for it xD
Ok, the space portion is put on indefinate hold, as I discovered the map bound limit is currently 256x256.
So until blizzard can update the editor to allow larger maps, I will just have to make a skirmish portion of my map.
ok, so the features for planetary settlement will not exist until then, When I attempted to work with the limited size, I could only fit 4 really small planets... not very exciting.
I guess until then I will have to make generic terrain's similar to those used in ladder maps.
If anyone want's to design a map for the terrain, it would speed up my project and I will credit them for it. I plan on making this project crossable between maps.
Really love this project, I'm a total civilization fan. If you need some help just ask (I'm not good at terraining tought).
I think you can reconsider the space portion of the game. Another possibility is to have small planets (you can reduce the size of the buildings if you want), and almost all the fights via "space". You can use the ground units only for planets attack/defense, for example if someone wanna conquer some planet, he drops all his units on the planet, and they fight automatically against the defenses. Each planet will be like a "City", with a Main base, and X spots for extra buildings, and some can have special resources (like the planet has one Vespene Gas, they gain extra income in that planet, or they have an ancient relic, they gain extra development).
That way you can't have two kinds of unit (defense/siege) and space units. The space units fight everywhere but cannot assault or defend planets. The other units stay on your planet, or go in a transport (you'll need to defend it with space units) and drops them in the opossing planet for starting a siege. You can do a single point in the planet where you can start an assault, for easier defensive units or estructures position.
Just an idea. Good luck with your project!
About the players losing the game, I think the easier way is they "surrender" to the player that defeated them, they ally with him, and can play the game helping him. They'll have income and development reduced for example. Civilization games second to last position is always based on the "approval rating", so he can still try to be second in the game.
@fr0d0b0ls0n: Go
See, the main issue is I had thought's of making the individual planets have their own maps, to make it sort of play like empire of war multiplayer campaign. But the problem is the map size is far to small to even fit a decently sized planet, let alone multiple.
In theory your suggestion could work, however the very tightness of the map would end up having tightly played terrain spots accross the map. It wouldn't feel like a galaxy full of planets, more like an asteroid belt. But I'll give it a try at some point if I decide to simplify the ground battles, it's not a bad idea and actually fit's pretty well, but ground battle's might end up being very basic and plain, since the scale would be so small.
As for players losing the game, technically losing the game, means that the entire game is over, when I work on maps like these, I like to think that the game never end's until one player/team win's the game. This encourages everyone to stay for the fullness of the game, since even if their cities all get destroyed or if they are extremely far behind in their performance, they can still catch up to the other's and give them a challenge.
Like if one completely new player is just doing so poorly that he basically has nothing, the game will have event's like charity of sorts that help the player catch up in their race with the other players, this charity however will not help the player win in any way, but it will allow the player the ability to try and prevent other players from winning, assuming the player is willing to try.
And of course they can surrender to the player that's beating them in a conflict, but I don't want the people who are surrendering to feel they can't win anymore, so it isn't permanent, surrender could just be a type of protection ability that saves the player from losing everything they have, at the cost of giving something important to the attacking player(s) such as something needed for victory, or something the surrendering player doesn't need to catch up.
Thank you for the suggestions.
PS: I suck at terraining too, that's why I'm offering help for it >.<
I published a testable version on battle.net for my friend and I to try out and mess around with.
If you happen to come across it in the map roster feel free to mess around in it, it's still far from playable but you can see what it's like and track it's progress.
If your interested in testing the game out, I'll post my friend info here and you can send me a request.
Character: Zack
Code: 253
I think that space terrain is doable, you just need to make the units really small. I think a 65% reduction in size across the board should do it. (with some buildings at 75 if needed) One system you could do is just make it so that a planets space defenses and space battles are just fighting to be allowed entry into a planet. There are planet symbols in the space map, and if you manage to destroy a planets space defenses (fleets, orbital defense systems, ect), you can place units onto that planet. The planets could each be a sizable chunk of land on the side of the space map, and anyone who invades one would just get their invasion units into one of two or three drop points. So basically, half the map is a space map, with planet symbols scattered around it, and the other half of the map are the actual planets. (or a 1/3:2/3 ratio, w.e you want)
I wouldnt mind doing whatever terrain you want.
Ive seen this concept before but it seems youre applying it to sc2, in sc1 there was a map called Xeno Diplomacy It was eessentially your idea but as much as it could fit to sc1 and i dont think making small planets and smaller garrisions for each planet or installation would go well because it would be like Galatic Diplomacy in sc1 and the garrision for each installation was one marine.
I'll love to test it, but I play in Europe :(
@fr0d0b0ls0n: Go
Really hope blizzard finds a way to unite us again, I hate been separated from the world :(
With the recent update it's easier to find maps to host. Just search for "Galactic" when hosting and my map should show up.
Test it out whenever you feel like it, i'll be publishing it frequently with updates.
As for the space idea, I already started setting up the map to work on a smaller scale, every building got shrunk to 1 square, it surprisingly works pretty well even for the non-space terrain I have.
So maybe after I test out the land combat thoroughly I can see about trying the space terrain again, but until then i'm going to stick with what I have and try to design the core concepts of the system first. After that i'll try implementing space again.
Thing's are coming along pretty well, with the support of several people on this forum I have managed to circumvent every speedbump that I came across while working on the map.
Has anyone tried out the map yet on the roster? I've understand the publishing system is pretty poor but I'm curious if anyone has come across it yet.
If you have, let me know what you think so far.
Anybody manage to try out the map at all? I know the map is practically unfinished but some feedback on the current design it's aiming towards would greatly help the development.
Anyone that gets around to give this map a shot let me know, any feedback is good, I don't care how harsh it is, I want to try and make this map in a way where no one can find a reason to dislike it.
Edit: Anybody have some suggestions on how I can get some testers for feedback?
I'm making a map similar to yours, it's not a civilization map, but it implements both ground and space. What I did in my map was zoom the camera in, and then shrink everything. My map's size now is around 1000x1000 given the scale of everything. Because of this the space section is MASSIVE with around 14 star systems, each star system consisting of well... a star and anywhere between 3-8 planets around it. The planet surfaces themselves are around the size of a smallish 1v1 map from Blizzard. So it is quite possible to get the expansive nature you want, just requires a TON of scaling.
Also, a question (if you don't mind), but did you re-scale the footprints of buildings? Because that's something I can't figure out. If I go to a footprint and change the scale, it just breaks the footprint, doesn't re-scale it. So I can't get buildings to work right.
P.S. If you host the map on here, I'll dl it and give it a look, could give you some feed-back. I -LOVE- diplomacy maps, especially the space kind, so I'd be happy to help in what ways I can.
@Colt556: Go
I'd like to see what you did with that, let me know if you'll ever let me look at that map of yours.
As for scaling the footprints, you don't do anything involving scale like you would with actors or models, there's a pathing map tool that the data editor has. You simply draw the footprint you need depending on how small it needs to be.
Though I'm not sure if I was successful for this either, I just found a 1x1 pathing map that was used for doodad's I guess and used it as the pathing map for the buildings.