Just tried it out on b.net, and I have to say the game is awesome. The production values are what most impress me and it's highly responsive with no noticeable lag, however it's definitely far from perfect.
First off, FIX THE HOTKEYS. There are too many skills to make them completely horizontal and the standard non-phonetic keys for skills are QWER or ZXCV, the former I find myself constantly pressing instead of ASDF. I would recommend placing the skills currently on ASDFG onto QWESD and enabling attack-move.
Secondly, it's nearly impossible to hit with certain abilities. I understand it's a highly skill-based game, but you have some characters like the ice and fire psionics that are very easy to play because of their heavy aoe and some like the sniper and DT that are nearly impossible because their attacks hit in such narrow lines and tiny arcs. I would recommend lowering movement speeds a bit, otherwise enlarge the hitboxes of both the attacks and the characters. The fact all skills need to be aimed is enough, the speed and precision required simply to get a hit with some characters is going to turn a lot of players off.
Thirdly, add a time limit to rounds. Many rounds end with one character running from the other three prolonging the fight as long as possible and trying to snipe off little bits of damage at a time. This is boring for EVERYONE but that person and stressful for the one. At the current pace I'd say 60 seconds would be just right. When the time is up, the team with the most health remaining as the sum of their percentages wins.
Finally, this is simply a suggestion and not a complaint or fix, but I think having fog of war (or the option for it) would greatly enhance the gameplay. The maps are big enough to justify it and it would add a lot of tactics. It would also be nice to be able to vote on what map we want to play. I noticed there was an industrial map but it only appeared about once every 5 games, completely at random.
Well TheBillsta has been helping me with some UI stuff, we could probably count on him for that. And sorry for the late reply, my weekends are typically spent with friends, while my weekdays are when I get productive.
Thebillsta is helping me out with the customization UI. As for the gameplay, do your bunker thors show any sort of cargo load in their status bars? And can you easily apply effects to the units inside the thor? Besides all that though, I want to use normal weapons so they display in the selection panel like normal.
If you want I can help you write tips, tutorials, or tooltips, and edit whatever other text you have, or help balance. I could use more people that know the data editor well in exchange.
I've already got the turret movement restricted, that's simple. The issue is that the whole point of restricting the turrets is to work in conjunction with how the mechs move to make it difficult to fire at a target behind the mech. That movement is what I can't figure out how to emulate.
As for the weapons, I mean the latter. While having different weapon models for the mechs would be nice in the far future, it doesn't even register as a priority right now. For example, I might have a medium sized mech that has 4 lasers, a standard autocannon, and 2 LRM 10s, or 2 pulse lasers, a PPC, and a heavy flamer, or 2 ER large lasers and a gauss rifle, or any number of other combinations. You're familiar with Battletech. The player would design the mech through dialogs and save the design to a bank that could be loaded in future games so they don't have to keep rebuilding their favorite designs over and over, and based on the design the unit would have a certain price. When the design is done it goes to a personalized buy menu where you can purchase it and then it spawns as designed, with the weapons "built-in." Then later if a certain part suffers critical damage the weapons in it could be "destroyed," and those weapons would be removed or disabled. All the weapons fire independently if they're in range and don't use linked cooldowns, and they add to the mech's energy (which is how "heat" will work in AoW), which regenerates negatively. So firing a weapon increases energy per shot and energy fades away over time. If it gets too high bad stuff happens, but that sort of thing is mostly within my ability to code.
I'm a little disappointed everybody drools over 7 so much. You've got two games before it that were much better written but everybody loves 7 because it looks like an anime.
Getting a ground unit to be able to walk backwards when turning to walk forward would take its target out of its firing arc:
Basically you want a unit to be able to move backwards and continue firing. I use this example a lot, but you should give a hard look at the basic Phoenix from the normal game behaves. It sounds like that move and shoot behavior might be what you need, and I'm almost positive you can change the turning rate to suit your needs.
No, the problem here is the unit cannot move laterally, and the turret does not have a 360 degree firing arc. It can only turn up to 120 degrees to the left or right of the facing of its legs, so it cannot hit things behind it (which is both authentic to Battletech and emphasizes good positioning to ambush opponents from behind). The pheonix can move in any direction regardless of its facing, but a mech can only move directly forward or back. If it could only move forward, then when it receives a move order away from its target, it would have to turn and show its back, making it defenseless. I want it to be able to fight while walking backward, the problem is if I allow it to move laterally it will look very bad and not control like a mech would. It would also be more difficult to get into a mech's blind spot and not worth the effort, which should be a key element of mech-to-mech battles. On the other hand, the other option is stopping every time the mech needs to turn, like a Thor, and that would make them extremely slow when moving through complex terrain unless I remove acceleration, which goes back to being unrealistic and not authentic to Battletech.
Yeah it basically is like your bunker Thor in practice. However I want to be able to edit the weapons on the unit, not just load units into it to act like weapons.
About the body damage, I was planning on swapping normal pieces of the model for damaged variants if that body part is destroyed. Don't worry, I have a pretty good handle on how to make multi-part units without doing anything really complex like hitboxes or merging units. It would be helpful if someone knew how to mess with the unit "wireframe" in the selection panel on the default UI to do a couple new things though. I'd like to avoid creating a seperate dialog window just to show mech status.
The former for the unit I need it for. I'd like to have Marines actually change their weapon model based on what they have equipped but that's totally just for looks and they only equip one at a time. I'd be fine without it.
Essentially I need a custom equipment system, managed through dialogs preferably. An inventory system is unnecessary, units won't be carrying around any items. At most I might have infantry be able to pick up a dropped item but it would immediately switch with what they're carrying, like picking up a kit in a Battlefield game. As for the mechs, you set them up in advance through a customization dialog and their price is determined by how they're set up. Once they're built they don't change unless you take them back to base for a refit or a weapon is destroyed in battle. No inventory management or click-and-drag style equipment windows.
Who's "we"? You replied in my other thread too and it sounds like we're both working on something very similar. I'd like to hear what you guys have in mind, maybe we can brainstorm together.
I've been trying to figure out how to get a unit to be able to turn, WHILE moving, WITHOUT moving sideways for a couple hours and I'm not a big . The unit has acceleration and deceleration (it would be nice if the unit was prevented from bypassing these), and has its weapons on a turret that can fire independent of movement, and should only be able to move forward in the direction it's facing. Bonus points if you can get it to dynamically choose between stopping, turning, then moving again or moving in an arc depending on which will reach the destination faster (or simply on the angle from the facing to the destination). Jackpot points if you also figure out how to get it to choose between walking backward or forward in order to keep a specified unit in front of it. The triggering for that isn't very difficult, it's the movement I can't figure out.
Here's a visual aid:
Keep in mind that this isn't just useful for my project, it would also be a very realistic way to recreate the movement of a car or any other land vehicle that can't move laterally or turn in place.
Take the art of war to the future and apply the wisdom of past tacticians to a battlefield of advanced technology.
Art of War applies the Blizzard philosophy of taking the best aspects of existing games and combining and polishing them into something more than the sum of its parts. We seek to combine the deep strategic experience of Homeworld 2: Complex and Total Annihilation with the tactical brawls of MechCommander and Company of Heroes.
THIS IS AN RTS STYLE GAME. MORE DETAILS TO COME SOON.
*********
Man, I had a whole post typed up earlier and lost it due to some copy/pasting mishap. I'll try to keep things simple.
Art of War is an AoS style game, but unlike any other currently available. Since it's not like any other game it's difficult to describe with words alone. The best comparison I could make is that Art of War is DotA's bigger, slower, brainier cousin. Where DotA is more twitchy, AoW is strategic. Where DotA is streamlined, AoW is deep, where DotA is a battlefield, AoW is a theater. I'm aware that a lot of people are drawn to the more skill-based, high-speed action of DotA, but there are others that prefer the thinking man's game. If DotA were Dawn of War 2, AoW would be a real-time Civilization.
For those interested, the setting is basically a -craft like facsimile of the Battletech (MechWarrior) universe. In other words, it's Battletech without the copyright infringement. I've always been a big fan of the MechCommander games but felt that they lacked the full spectrum of strategic gameplay. While the Mech games had the unit customization and highly tactical combat, more traditional RTS had the resource management and information warfare. My goal is to combine the best of both types of games.
However, I'm not a wizard-level Galaxy programmer. I would say I'm more of an intermediate user, and a guy with a lot of free time and a penchant for fleshing out ideas as thoroughly as a zombie fleshes out brain cavities. I had a nearly complete working knowledge of the WC3 editor (GUI, no JASS), but some of the new stuff in GalaxyEdit has me stumped. As much as I enjoy the challenge of overcoming these brick walls, I'm more interested in having something release-worthy by launch and I'm not shy about asking for help. The ideas are all in my head, and I have a clear vision of the final product, but I need something to play with to work out the fine details.
So with that said, here's what's got me stumped right now:
Getting a ground unit to turn while moving, without moving sideways, and without stopping to turn unless stopping and turning would be faster. Kind of like a car.
Getting a ground unit to be able to walk backwards when turning to walk forward would take its target out of its firing arc.
Adding and removing weapons based on inventory. In other words, a unit that can equip and fire multiple weapons simultaneously. Multiple weapons aren't the issue, the equipment system is.
Dialogs. Seriously, I don't know why these give me so much trouble.
A modeler that can modify existing SC2 models to do a few things like separate the upper and lower bodies of a few units to act like turrets, and create "damaged" body parts and custom weapons for marines and ghosts and such.
I still know my way around triggers and the simpler parts of the data editor and I'm not going to delegate any job that I can do, I just need some help getting some gameplay mechanics into a working state so I can focus on balancing.
If you're interested you can contact me by xfire as thebaron87 or email at [email protected]. I also constantly lurk mapster's IRC channel, but you'll need to do the direct chat thing to get my attention. I don't know IRC lingo.
I'll update this OP as well as make a new post at the end of the thread as the project progresses.
0
Just tried it out on b.net, and I have to say the game is awesome. The production values are what most impress me and it's highly responsive with no noticeable lag, however it's definitely far from perfect.
First off, FIX THE HOTKEYS. There are too many skills to make them completely horizontal and the standard non-phonetic keys for skills are QWER or ZXCV, the former I find myself constantly pressing instead of ASDF. I would recommend placing the skills currently on ASDFG onto QWESD and enabling attack-move.
Secondly, it's nearly impossible to hit with certain abilities. I understand it's a highly skill-based game, but you have some characters like the ice and fire psionics that are very easy to play because of their heavy aoe and some like the sniper and DT that are nearly impossible because their attacks hit in such narrow lines and tiny arcs. I would recommend lowering movement speeds a bit, otherwise enlarge the hitboxes of both the attacks and the characters. The fact all skills need to be aimed is enough, the speed and precision required simply to get a hit with some characters is going to turn a lot of players off.
Thirdly, add a time limit to rounds. Many rounds end with one character running from the other three prolonging the fight as long as possible and trying to snipe off little bits of damage at a time. This is boring for EVERYONE but that person and stressful for the one. At the current pace I'd say 60 seconds would be just right. When the time is up, the team with the most health remaining as the sum of their percentages wins.
Finally, this is simply a suggestion and not a complaint or fix, but I think having fog of war (or the option for it) would greatly enhance the gameplay. The maps are big enough to justify it and it would add a lot of tactics. It would also be nice to be able to vote on what map we want to play. I noticed there was an industrial map but it only appeared about once every 5 games, completely at random.
0
0
@tigerija: Go
Well TheBillsta has been helping me with some UI stuff, we could probably count on him for that. And sorry for the late reply, my weekends are typically spent with friends, while my weekdays are when I get productive.
0
@KerenskyLI: Go
Thebillsta is helping me out with the customization UI. As for the gameplay, do your bunker thors show any sort of cargo load in their status bars? And can you easily apply effects to the units inside the thor? Besides all that though, I want to use normal weapons so they display in the selection panel like normal.
If you want I can help you write tips, tutorials, or tooltips, and edit whatever other text you have, or help balance. I could use more people that know the data editor well in exchange.
0
@KerenskyLI: Go
I've already got the turret movement restricted, that's simple. The issue is that the whole point of restricting the turrets is to work in conjunction with how the mechs move to make it difficult to fire at a target behind the mech. That movement is what I can't figure out how to emulate.
As for the weapons, I mean the latter. While having different weapon models for the mechs would be nice in the far future, it doesn't even register as a priority right now. For example, I might have a medium sized mech that has 4 lasers, a standard autocannon, and 2 LRM 10s, or 2 pulse lasers, a PPC, and a heavy flamer, or 2 ER large lasers and a gauss rifle, or any number of other combinations. You're familiar with Battletech. The player would design the mech through dialogs and save the design to a bank that could be loaded in future games so they don't have to keep rebuilding their favorite designs over and over, and based on the design the unit would have a certain price. When the design is done it goes to a personalized buy menu where you can purchase it and then it spawns as designed, with the weapons "built-in." Then later if a certain part suffers critical damage the weapons in it could be "destroyed," and those weapons would be removed or disabled. All the weapons fire independently if they're in range and don't use linked cooldowns, and they add to the mech's energy (which is how "heat" will work in AoW), which regenerates negatively. So firing a weapon increases energy per shot and energy fades away over time. If it gets too high bad stuff happens, but that sort of thing is mostly within my ability to code.
0
@Relocator: Go
I'm a little disappointed everybody drools over 7 so much. You've got two games before it that were much better written but everybody loves 7 because it looks like an anime.
0
Hate... Vivi... SO... MUCH!
0
@Hookah604: Go
No I'll have economy and research too, but my maps are on land.
0
@KerenskyLI: Go
Getting a ground unit to be able to walk backwards when turning to walk forward would take its target out of its firing arc: Basically you want a unit to be able to move backwards and continue firing. I use this example a lot, but you should give a hard look at the basic Phoenix from the normal game behaves. It sounds like that move and shoot behavior might be what you need, and I'm almost positive you can change the turning rate to suit your needs.
No, the problem here is the unit cannot move laterally, and the turret does not have a 360 degree firing arc. It can only turn up to 120 degrees to the left or right of the facing of its legs, so it cannot hit things behind it (which is both authentic to Battletech and emphasizes good positioning to ambush opponents from behind). The pheonix can move in any direction regardless of its facing, but a mech can only move directly forward or back. If it could only move forward, then when it receives a move order away from its target, it would have to turn and show its back, making it defenseless. I want it to be able to fight while walking backward, the problem is if I allow it to move laterally it will look very bad and not control like a mech would. It would also be more difficult to get into a mech's blind spot and not worth the effort, which should be a key element of mech-to-mech battles. On the other hand, the other option is stopping every time the mech needs to turn, like a Thor, and that would make them extremely slow when moving through complex terrain unless I remove acceleration, which goes back to being unrealistic and not authentic to Battletech.
Yeah it basically is like your bunker Thor in practice. However I want to be able to edit the weapons on the unit, not just load units into it to act like weapons.
About the body damage, I was planning on swapping normal pieces of the model for damaged variants if that body part is destroyed. Don't worry, I have a pretty good handle on how to make multi-part units without doing anything really complex like hitboxes or merging units. It would be helpful if someone knew how to mess with the unit "wireframe" in the selection panel on the default UI to do a couple new things though. I'd like to avoid creating a seperate dialog window just to show mech status.
0
@Thebillsta: Go
The former for the unit I need it for. I'd like to have Marines actually change their weapon model based on what they have equipped but that's totally just for looks and they only equip one at a time. I'd be fine without it.
Essentially I need a custom equipment system, managed through dialogs preferably. An inventory system is unnecessary, units won't be carrying around any items. At most I might have infantry be able to pick up a dropped item but it would immediately switch with what they're carrying, like picking up a kit in a Battlefield game. As for the mechs, you set them up in advance through a customization dialog and their price is determined by how they're set up. Once they're built they don't change unless you take them back to base for a refit or a weapon is destroyed in battle. No inventory management or click-and-drag style equipment windows.
If you can do that awesome, I'd love your help :D
0
@Hookah604: Go
I'm doing a Battletech (MechWarrior) inspired rts sort of game, if you're interested. No space battles but it has sci-fi weapons and mechs and such.
0
@tigerija: Go
Who's "we"? You replied in my other thread too and it sounds like we're both working on something very similar. I'd like to hear what you guys have in mind, maybe we can brainstorm together.
0
@tigerija: Go
I checked the mapster listings and saw no maps titled "Art of War".
There's an Art of Defense map, but no Art of War. Right now it's just me alone so if I'm copying anybody else's project it's purely on accident.
0
I've been trying to figure out how to get a unit to be able to turn, WHILE moving, WITHOUT moving sideways for a couple hours and I'm not a big . The unit has acceleration and deceleration (it would be nice if the unit was prevented from bypassing these), and has its weapons on a turret that can fire independent of movement, and should only be able to move forward in the direction it's facing. Bonus points if you can get it to dynamically choose between stopping, turning, then moving again or moving in an arc depending on which will reach the destination faster (or simply on the angle from the facing to the destination). Jackpot points if you also figure out how to get it to choose between walking backward or forward in order to keep a specified unit in front of it. The triggering for that isn't very difficult, it's the movement I can't figure out.
Here's a visual aid:
Keep in mind that this isn't just useful for my project, it would also be a very realistic way to recreate the movement of a car or any other land vehicle that can't move laterally or turn in place.
0
Take the art of war to the future and apply the wisdom of past tacticians to a battlefield of advanced technology.
Art of War applies the Blizzard philosophy of taking the best aspects of existing games and combining and polishing them into something more than the sum of its parts. We seek to combine the deep strategic experience of Homeworld 2: Complex and Total Annihilation with the tactical brawls of MechCommander and Company of Heroes.
THIS IS AN RTS STYLE GAME. MORE DETAILS TO COME SOON.
*********
Man, I had a whole post typed up earlier and lost it due to some copy/pasting mishap. I'll try to keep things simple.
Art of War is an AoS style game, but unlike any other currently available. Since it's not like any other game it's difficult to describe with words alone. The best comparison I could make is that Art of War is DotA's bigger, slower, brainier cousin. Where DotA is more twitchy, AoW is strategic. Where DotA is streamlined, AoW is deep, where DotA is a battlefield, AoW is a theater. I'm aware that a lot of people are drawn to the more skill-based, high-speed action of DotA, but there are others that prefer the thinking man's game. If DotA were Dawn of War 2, AoW would be a real-time Civilization.
For those interested, the setting is basically a -craft like facsimile of the Battletech (MechWarrior) universe. In other words, it's Battletech without the copyright infringement. I've always been a big fan of the MechCommander games but felt that they lacked the full spectrum of strategic gameplay. While the Mech games had the unit customization and highly tactical combat, more traditional RTS had the resource management and information warfare. My goal is to combine the best of both types of games.
However, I'm not a wizard-level Galaxy programmer. I would say I'm more of an intermediate user, and a guy with a lot of free time and a penchant for fleshing out ideas as thoroughly as a zombie fleshes out brain cavities. I had a nearly complete working knowledge of the WC3 editor (GUI, no JASS), but some of the new stuff in GalaxyEdit has me stumped. As much as I enjoy the challenge of overcoming these brick walls, I'm more interested in having something release-worthy by launch and I'm not shy about asking for help. The ideas are all in my head, and I have a clear vision of the final product, but I need something to play with to work out the fine details.
So with that said, here's what's got me stumped right now:
I still know my way around triggers and the simpler parts of the data editor and I'm not going to delegate any job that I can do, I just need some help getting some gameplay mechanics into a working state so I can focus on balancing.
If you're interested you can contact me by xfire as thebaron87 or email at [email protected]. I also constantly lurk mapster's IRC channel, but you'll need to do the direct chat thing to get my attention. I don't know IRC lingo.
I'll update this OP as well as make a new post at the end of the thread as the project progresses.