It's a bit complicated to explain but I'll give it a try...
I have a validator or filters problem in one of my custom abilities... Basically it's a "ride unit" spell, which gives you the control of the targeted unit and lets the caster mount the target (it's based on the face hugger spell, featured here a few weeks ago). My ability already has target filters to prevent casting it on your own units... But it seems like 2 units, ordered to cast the spell on the same target at the same time, will both cast the spell anyway... Regardless of the target filters, the second caster always rides the target, even if you already ride it with the first caster (and consequently own the target already).
I just want to deny the use of the spell on a target already controlled, but it seems like if you order them both to do it far away from their target, the first one reaching the target will succeed, and the second one will cast the spell anyway if you don't order him to stop/hold manually... How to prevent this? Im not sure how to add a validator to an ability, and I'm not even sure it will prevent this from happening. Clue, anyone?
Do I need to upload a video to show what the problem is?
...which is why I only said it's rare and dangerous. It happened a few times in the history of video games. WoW is an excellent example about it, no one ever dared doing it, Blizzard did... and everyone else trying to do a MMORPG right after that just completely screwed up.
Every other week, most of the stuff gets sorted through, at least here. Again, everyone does it their way.
You're right. We're supposed to do milestones every week or so, but I'm the kind of lazy guy who only does a milestone when something big has changed (which happens, let's say... 10 times max).
I think your definition of "Art" is a bit to broad in this case. I've never seen "We're looking for a Game Design Artists" in my job descriptions. We're more Visionaries, similar to what Engineers do, not really "Artists" by what we do. We have a Vision. We do not build the parts of it, we do not sculpt it with our own hands (at least not all of it). So, we're Visionaries.
Quoted for truth.
Game designers do walls of text. The word "design" in "game design" does not mean you're an artist here. It does when you're a level designer though, because the level designer actually do the work himself, he's the one making the maps you will actually see in the game. It is not the role of a game designer to take part into the production process, even though they watch over other people's work to make sure the project is doable (and/or going the right way). Game designers only know a bit about making textures, sounds, models, animations, scripts, terrains, etc... Just enough to be able to know what can be done and what can't. They sometimes have to do a preview of a game to show the concepts, but most of the time they just write tons and tons of lines to make sure the whole team knows what they have to do.
No, you won't. Gamers are horrible designers, until they see patterns and know what their team requires from them. Trust me, I saw people walk into the first Student project that didn't know shit about it and just played before, without any use of any editor in existence. The pain.
Quoted for truth (bis).
And programmers are often horrible game designers too... They often have good ideas and know how to code them, but they forget about the game mechanics because they don't even know what it is. This is kind of sad actually, because they ruin awesome ideas with a completely lame gameplay... Gaming experience is a must, as a game designer, but you don't create a game just by mixing games you already played. As I said, there are rules to apply when you create a game, and it is not something you can guess just by being a player. It's something you have to learn and practice, that's why it's a job as a whole.
Same goes for being a tester, you might think you just have to play a game and tell what's wrong, but it's not that simple. You have reports to make, you need to check if the error is redundant or happening randomly, which action you did when it happened, was your computer lagging or showing anything abnormal, etc... You actually need to know what is normal and what's not (thanks to the GDDs and other documents), which is not that obvious.
I actually hate when people claim they can work in the video games industry just because they are players. Do you tell a cop you can do his job because you already held a gun? Seriously, it's not just as it looks, they did not become cops in a day. Would you tell someone you are a movie director because you already filmed your dog playing with a turtle? Just remember you can't do every job, know your limits and where you belong. I personally won't ever claim I'm a programmer, I'm a game designer. I know programmers are good at what they do BECAUSE they learned how to do it, and they trained very hard. Which I'm not ready for. Actually, to be completely honest I'm more of a level designer than a game designer. Game design is not my favorite task, but I studied it for 2 years. One thing I noticed about it is that there are 2 kinds of game designers: those who fancy programming, and those who have more of an "artistic" background (level design, painting, story-telling, etc...). It's important to know which "side" you are on.
I think I pretty much answered to SoulCarver by the way... Gorandor was not "splitting hairs", actually he's completely right. Gamers are not designers... and game designers, even though they need to play to know how a game is done, are not much of a player. They like games, but it's also their work to analyze them. Players don't analyze games... and when they do, most of them are telling complete shit. Most of them don't even know what's hidden behind the word "gameplay". They're unable to define it.
@Ultima: You don't need a GDD in a small team?! I think you only say that because what you call a "small team" is a group of people doing maps and mods using an already existing game. If you do create a game from A to Z, even when you're a small team of 3-5 guys, you can't avoid GDDs because it does not only contain gameplay infos: there are lots of technical infos for programmers, graphic designers,... even the marketing team because advertising your game is also important!
During the last year of my studies, we had to create a game from A to Z (it was actually amongst the contestants of the IGF in 2007). We were 5 on it, we wrote GDDs, milestones, did lots of models and textures, coded the whole thing, brainstormed a lot of things to implement,... we wouldn't have gone very far without GDDs, and it was a very small project. You can't go for a project such as a video game without planning every aspect of it first (even if the project is open to changes later), or you'll reach a dead end at some point. Actually, in our case, we did. We were supposed to be a team of 4 guys, the initial project reached a dead end after 4-5 months, so we joined another project and ended up as a team of 5 guys. Without GDDs, we wouldn't have even known what the new project was about. So trust me, GDDs are not an option.
@Serius: Creating a game for having fun is kind of dangerous... The fun factor is only a part of the work. Your vision is quite accurate though, you're asking the right questions. But don't forget that you can't base a game only on what is fun. There is a VERY important step in the game design which is pretty much "handling the player's frustration". So... fun is OK, but stressing the player helps a lot! Addicting games are not just fun, you need CHALLENGE. ;)
I really liked the 4th part, we can easily see the progress done since the first chapter.
I'd like to see a bit more of the plot though, instead of fights after fights... ;)
True enough... I tend to consider something is a piece of art only when I can see the result. Paintings, dancing, playing music is obviously art, but I often forget that you can consider "art" everything that needed both hard work and a "certain knack" (to quote your own words). :)
I just noticed I forgot to talk about milestones. You also do lots of these when you design a game, I think there are at least 3 milestones to do. You basically need them to summarize in a few pages how is your project evolving. The more milestones you write, the sooner you will know when something is wrong in your GDD. If something seems impossible to do (ie. there was not much progress done since the previous milestone) it might mean you have to change a few things. That's important to always improve your GDD, everyone makes mistakes/bad choices, and it's not rare to forget something when you write hundreds of pages...
Game Design is not something anyone can do... As you all can guess, it's a job as a whole. So there are a few things that you can't learn just by being a "player with keen eyes". A game designer is not an artist, he's more of a project leader because he needs to create everything from A to Z and make sure it is good to play. He also ensures his idea is done, and can be done, by the team (actually he watches over every single aspect of the production). As a game designer you have to know:
-who's your target: If your game has teddy bears in it, even with machine guns, don't try to sell it to people over 30-40 years old. A misleading on this could ruin your project pretty fast because the ones you made the game for won't like it. I have a good example about this: Totally Spies 3 DS. I worked on that game, it was supposed to be a game for 5-10 year old girls, but truth is even hardcore gamers were unable to finish it because it was too hard and the combat mode was too hard to understand and play... Epic fail. You will have to think your GDD the best way depending on your target... Actually, using already existing games as a reference can help you a lot. But don't overdo it, your game must not be a clone of another game.
-what's the genre: RTS, RPG, TPS, race, platform, adventure, crossover, serious game,... all these genre follow different rules, which is precisely why we differentiate them. There are a few steps for each of these which are mandatory, playing with genres is rare and dangerous... It can either be a huge success or a total mess, so be careful about which genre your game is. If the game uses a licence from a movie, game, or book, the choice of a genre is an even more important step. Most of the noobish GDs often forget this step and end up with a project which takes a few part of this genre here, and a few parts of that genre there... The result is a huge shit, while their goal was to make "the most awesome game ever, featuring zombies in space jumping on mushrooms to gain experience for using powerful guns which will help them attack the city to steal new levitation modules for their racing spaceships". Each of these game types have RULES. Don't even think of creating your own, it's been forever that way and there is a reason: it WORKS that way. A good game is fun because it uses/play with the rules of its genre cleverly. From a good use of these rules comes the fun factor of your game.
-how to write a GDD: The Game Design is the bible of your game. Everyone in the team needs this document, because it contains EVERY single aspect of your game (controls schemes, cameras behaviors, characters and their behaviors, list of animations, plans of levels, SFXs-VFXs list, musics, texts, cinematics, interfaces, AI, storyline...). You don't need to be a pro in each of these fields, but at least you need to know what can be done and what cannot. The list I just gave doesn't even show you a third of what it needs to contain. A GDD will even specify how sounds behave (can they be they cut, looped, when do they launch and why?), you have to ask yourself a lot of questions about how everything works together.
You can't think of all aspects if you're just a player, a huge majority of them don't even know how complex a game is, they never thought pressing a key does not only move a character but also changes its animation, locks the use of another key, launches a sound, moves a camera,... and so on... GDDs are often 200-300 pages long, with pictures, boards, lists, and everything you can think of to make it easy to understand and read. For example, the GDD for Age of Mythology was more than 500 pages long (I still have nightmares about it!). The best way to understand what is inside a GDD is to actually download the GDD of a best-seller. Any triple A game will do.
-how to write a "look and feel" document: the Look and Feel is some sort of GDD about how your game actually looks. How the interfaces are designed, where do you put 3D and where there is only 2D, how big are the buttons, and fonts, which size are the characters on screen, how the terrains look, what are the textures size for terrain and for models, how many polygons per model, which format for sounds and music,... This is the graphical part, the hard part is that you have to create screenshots of your own non-existing game... :D This is the part where you describe what the player will see, how he must feel about your game (where is it sad? where is there action? what to think of each character?)... Same advice as above, the best way to know the content of a L&F is to download one from an AAA game.
These steps are mandatory IMO, there are still a few other matters but you will cover most of the aspects of a game with these. A huge part of the GDD is about the game mechanics, so you need a good knowledge of video games but also the curiosity to check how things work. You need to have a feeling for details too.
In the end, when you are used to design games you will see how mechanics are done while you play, while other players don't. How many players actually realized there is acceleration and deceleration on EACH units in SC2? I'm pretty sure that, except mappers, only a few of them noticed. This is the kind of things you must be aware of as a game designer. Don't forget brainstormings too, which are a good way to see where your idea works and where it doesn't, and also to help you improve your game. Do not brainstorm too much though, or you will never do anything.
I added mouse tracking painting style (really fun)
Aaaaah, I'm eager to test the tracking system now! :)
This map is bloody fun to play. I love Pictionary to begin with, so I obviously loved your map and had much fun testing it.
Maybe you can add censorship, to avoid words like "penis" and "boobs", etc... :D
You should change the way colors are selected, maybe do buttons with pre-defined colors (white, black, red, green, blue, yellow, etc...) instead of the RGB selection mode.
A map with zombies is nothing original... With DotA and TDs, I think that's in the top 5 of the most common map ideas... If you put it to the next level though (with really cool features never seen before) it might be interesting.
About making a board game, it's not a bad idea but be warned: it's a pain in the you-know-where to code. You also have to be cautious about how you manage turns, because people don't like to wait between each of their turns, they may quit the game when they're bored and other players won't stay either... But again, if you put it to the next level everything is possible.
You'll have a menu for buying/selecting your weapons/items for the next mission to come... Create X maps, each corresponding to an assassination mission and/or stealing documents without being detected, etc...these maps will combine interiors and exteriors, with guards patrolling almost everywhere and people wandering in the corridors and rooms. It can be multiplayer (4 assassins max), though it will be quite hard to give it some replay value when everybody knows the missions by heart... :(
You can have missions where cooperation is mandatory (for example, 2 guys will go clean a secured house, while 2 other guys are hacking a computer to open the doors for them). The objective as an assassin is to be stealthy to earn more points, and keep your ammo to get rid of your targets only (you'll need to make the ammos rare and expensive)... The more points you earn, the better are the weapons/items you can buy for the next mission. You can try to implement something that will disguise your assassins too, so that guards won't notice them. And the ability to place traps too, to get rid of their targets without being close to them.
You can have another team of players that will act as bodyguards. Their role will simply be to kill any assassin in the area and prevent their boss(es) from being killed. They will have a bunch of tools/keys/weapons that will help them detecting the intruders and traps, and they will need to communicate with each other to know where the assassins are and how to get them. They can use alarms, security cameras, call the police, etc...
Actually, to had some replay value there might be something simple: if you have, let's say, 8 objectives/targets per map... just set the objectives to something like 3 targets only, choosen randomly between the 8 available. That way, the mission will not order the assassins to kill the 3 same targets each time you play that map... Your maps will have to be very well designed, but it can be really interesting to have completely different objectives each time you play the same map, forcing you to explore areas that were locked last time you played.
I know the SC2 editor is not at all the best editor to do maps that actually look like those in Hitman, but you can use the concept in a post-apocalyptic background or something like that...
I'd either do a scenario (involving constant use of the unit you created and its weapons, maybe making him evolve and buy the upgrades later)... Or a minigame map, because when you have a cool feature and nothing to do with it yet, the best thing to do is create a minigame which will make full use of this feature (like capturing/killing creeps, and having to fight against another team which goal is exactly the same).
Pourquoi chercher spécifiquement un français? On a d'excellents mappers venant de tous les pays, ici... Tu écris anglais correctement, c'est largement suffisant pour demander de l'aide (et gratuitement!). ;)
Je suis plutôt intéressé aussi, mais pas sans savoir à quel point le projet est "complexe". Un petit résumé de ta recherche serait utile, personne ne voudra se lancer dans un projet compliqué sans savoir si c'est à sa portée... Moi-même, je ne pense pas du tout maitriser l'éditeur, alors que je suis pro et que c'est précisément mon métier... Mais si ce que tu souhaites est abordable, ça peut m'intéresser.
You won't find a "mentor" able to help you in everything. You will need someone good at terraining, someone for data, and so on... So the best advice is to try learning on your own, and when you're stuck, read the forums first (there are much more info here than you can think of!) and if you still don't have the answer, just ask.
If you were asking for a teacher on the Unreal Engine I would have done it with pleasure... I have made maps since the first Unreal game, and since it exists I've seen many versions of this editor (even the version used in Rune)... About the SC2 editor though, I have done maps in SC1, WC2, WC3, FT, and I'm still a bit confused with all the possibilities of the SC2 editor... Even if you find a good mentor, I assume he can't have a perfect knowledge of the whole editor yet.
If I remember well it describes how to change the lobby menu to have a specific hero when starting the game. You could apply the same process to give units. And I also remember people discussing in this thread about how to reassign all units to the right player, according to who is in which place in the lobby teams.
(Controller of player (Owner of (Triggering unit))) != User
(Owner of (Triggering unit)) == Left The Game
Unit type of (Triggering unit)) == Marine
((Triggering unit) has Marine - Stimpack) == true
The problem with your actual conditions seems to be that if the unit is a marine, it is enough to validate the conditions check. And same goes for the "has stimpack" check. Adding an AND operator just makes sure ALL the conditions are met, instead of assuming they will be. I think that's why the current trigger does not work everytime.
By the way, your condition:
((Triggering unit) has Marine - Stimpack) != true
...is wrong. It should be:
((Triggering unit) has Marine - Stimpack) == true
I didn't see any difference so far in the popularity system... Star Battle is still in the first page, so is Colonial Wars and the others "big hits"... I only saw a totally unknow map once, but since the screenshot of the map looked like plain dirt, I assume it was boosted. It seems to be a bit more randomized in the next pages though, but it doesn't look *that* different...
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It's a bit complicated to explain but I'll give it a try... I have a validator or filters problem in one of my custom abilities... Basically it's a "ride unit" spell, which gives you the control of the targeted unit and lets the caster mount the target (it's based on the face hugger spell, featured here a few weeks ago). My ability already has target filters to prevent casting it on your own units... But it seems like 2 units, ordered to cast the spell on the same target at the same time, will both cast the spell anyway... Regardless of the target filters, the second caster always rides the target, even if you already ride it with the first caster (and consequently own the target already).
I just want to deny the use of the spell on a target already controlled, but it seems like if you order them both to do it far away from their target, the first one reaching the target will succeed, and the second one will cast the spell anyway if you don't order him to stop/hold manually... How to prevent this? Im not sure how to add a validator to an ability, and I'm not even sure it will prevent this from happening. Clue, anyone?
Do I need to upload a video to show what the problem is?
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...which is why I only said it's rare and dangerous. It happened a few times in the history of video games. WoW is an excellent example about it, no one ever dared doing it, Blizzard did... and everyone else trying to do a MMORPG right after that just completely screwed up.
Quite true. :)
You're right. We're supposed to do milestones every week or so, but I'm the kind of lazy guy who only does a milestone when something big has changed (which happens, let's say... 10 times max).
Quoted for truth.
Game designers do walls of text. The word "design" in "game design" does not mean you're an artist here. It does when you're a level designer though, because the level designer actually do the work himself, he's the one making the maps you will actually see in the game. It is not the role of a game designer to take part into the production process, even though they watch over other people's work to make sure the project is doable (and/or going the right way). Game designers only know a bit about making textures, sounds, models, animations, scripts, terrains, etc... Just enough to be able to know what can be done and what can't. They sometimes have to do a preview of a game to show the concepts, but most of the time they just write tons and tons of lines to make sure the whole team knows what they have to do.
Quoted for truth (bis).
And programmers are often horrible game designers too... They often have good ideas and know how to code them, but they forget about the game mechanics because they don't even know what it is. This is kind of sad actually, because they ruin awesome ideas with a completely lame gameplay... Gaming experience is a must, as a game designer, but you don't create a game just by mixing games you already played. As I said, there are rules to apply when you create a game, and it is not something you can guess just by being a player. It's something you have to learn and practice, that's why it's a job as a whole.
Same goes for being a tester, you might think you just have to play a game and tell what's wrong, but it's not that simple. You have reports to make, you need to check if the error is redundant or happening randomly, which action you did when it happened, was your computer lagging or showing anything abnormal, etc... You actually need to know what is normal and what's not (thanks to the GDDs and other documents), which is not that obvious.
I actually hate when people claim they can work in the video games industry just because they are players. Do you tell a cop you can do his job because you already held a gun? Seriously, it's not just as it looks, they did not become cops in a day. Would you tell someone you are a movie director because you already filmed your dog playing with a turtle? Just remember you can't do every job, know your limits and where you belong. I personally won't ever claim I'm a programmer, I'm a game designer. I know programmers are good at what they do BECAUSE they learned how to do it, and they trained very hard. Which I'm not ready for. Actually, to be completely honest I'm more of a level designer than a game designer. Game design is not my favorite task, but I studied it for 2 years. One thing I noticed about it is that there are 2 kinds of game designers: those who fancy programming, and those who have more of an "artistic" background (level design, painting, story-telling, etc...). It's important to know which "side" you are on.
I think I pretty much answered to SoulCarver by the way... Gorandor was not "splitting hairs", actually he's completely right. Gamers are not designers... and game designers, even though they need to play to know how a game is done, are not much of a player. They like games, but it's also their work to analyze them. Players don't analyze games... and when they do, most of them are telling complete shit. Most of them don't even know what's hidden behind the word "gameplay". They're unable to define it.
@Ultima: You don't need a GDD in a small team?! I think you only say that because what you call a "small team" is a group of people doing maps and mods using an already existing game. If you do create a game from A to Z, even when you're a small team of 3-5 guys, you can't avoid GDDs because it does not only contain gameplay infos: there are lots of technical infos for programmers, graphic designers,... even the marketing team because advertising your game is also important!
During the last year of my studies, we had to create a game from A to Z (it was actually amongst the contestants of the IGF in 2007). We were 5 on it, we wrote GDDs, milestones, did lots of models and textures, coded the whole thing, brainstormed a lot of things to implement,... we wouldn't have gone very far without GDDs, and it was a very small project. You can't go for a project such as a video game without planning every aspect of it first (even if the project is open to changes later), or you'll reach a dead end at some point. Actually, in our case, we did. We were supposed to be a team of 4 guys, the initial project reached a dead end after 4-5 months, so we joined another project and ended up as a team of 5 guys. Without GDDs, we wouldn't have even known what the new project was about. So trust me, GDDs are not an option.
@Serius: Creating a game for having fun is kind of dangerous... The fun factor is only a part of the work. Your vision is quite accurate though, you're asking the right questions. But don't forget that you can't base a game only on what is fun. There is a VERY important step in the game design which is pretty much "handling the player's frustration". So... fun is OK, but stressing the player helps a lot! Addicting games are not just fun, you need CHALLENGE. ;)
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I really liked the 4th part, we can easily see the progress done since the first chapter. I'd like to see a bit more of the plot though, instead of fights after fights... ;)
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If it's well done, I'd say YES! :)
@GizmoPT: Speed and reaction times are hard to evaluate online, because of the lag... But you're right though.
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@Karawasa: Go
True enough... I tend to consider something is a piece of art only when I can see the result. Paintings, dancing, playing music is obviously art, but I often forget that you can consider "art" everything that needed both hard work and a "certain knack" (to quote your own words). :)
I just noticed I forgot to talk about milestones. You also do lots of these when you design a game, I think there are at least 3 milestones to do. You basically need them to summarize in a few pages how is your project evolving. The more milestones you write, the sooner you will know when something is wrong in your GDD. If something seems impossible to do (ie. there was not much progress done since the previous milestone) it might mean you have to change a few things. That's important to always improve your GDD, everyone makes mistakes/bad choices, and it's not rare to forget something when you write hundreds of pages...
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Sorry, wall of text! :D
Game Design is not something anyone can do... As you all can guess, it's a job as a whole. So there are a few things that you can't learn just by being a "player with keen eyes". A game designer is not an artist, he's more of a project leader because he needs to create everything from A to Z and make sure it is good to play. He also ensures his idea is done, and can be done, by the team (actually he watches over every single aspect of the production). As a game designer you have to know:
-who's your target: If your game has teddy bears in it, even with machine guns, don't try to sell it to people over 30-40 years old. A misleading on this could ruin your project pretty fast because the ones you made the game for won't like it. I have a good example about this: Totally Spies 3 DS. I worked on that game, it was supposed to be a game for 5-10 year old girls, but truth is even hardcore gamers were unable to finish it because it was too hard and the combat mode was too hard to understand and play... Epic fail. You will have to think your GDD the best way depending on your target... Actually, using already existing games as a reference can help you a lot. But don't overdo it, your game must not be a clone of another game.
-what's the genre: RTS, RPG, TPS, race, platform, adventure, crossover, serious game,... all these genre follow different rules, which is precisely why we differentiate them. There are a few steps for each of these which are mandatory, playing with genres is rare and dangerous... It can either be a huge success or a total mess, so be careful about which genre your game is. If the game uses a licence from a movie, game, or book, the choice of a genre is an even more important step. Most of the noobish GDs often forget this step and end up with a project which takes a few part of this genre here, and a few parts of that genre there... The result is a huge shit, while their goal was to make "the most awesome game ever, featuring zombies in space jumping on mushrooms to gain experience for using powerful guns which will help them attack the city to steal new levitation modules for their racing spaceships". Each of these game types have RULES. Don't even think of creating your own, it's been forever that way and there is a reason: it WORKS that way. A good game is fun because it uses/play with the rules of its genre cleverly. From a good use of these rules comes the fun factor of your game.
-how to write a GDD: The Game Design is the bible of your game. Everyone in the team needs this document, because it contains EVERY single aspect of your game (controls schemes, cameras behaviors, characters and their behaviors, list of animations, plans of levels, SFXs-VFXs list, musics, texts, cinematics, interfaces, AI, storyline...). You don't need to be a pro in each of these fields, but at least you need to know what can be done and what cannot. The list I just gave doesn't even show you a third of what it needs to contain. A GDD will even specify how sounds behave (can they be they cut, looped, when do they launch and why?), you have to ask yourself a lot of questions about how everything works together.
You can't think of all aspects if you're just a player, a huge majority of them don't even know how complex a game is, they never thought pressing a key does not only move a character but also changes its animation, locks the use of another key, launches a sound, moves a camera,... and so on... GDDs are often 200-300 pages long, with pictures, boards, lists, and everything you can think of to make it easy to understand and read. For example, the GDD for Age of Mythology was more than 500 pages long (I still have nightmares about it!). The best way to understand what is inside a GDD is to actually download the GDD of a best-seller. Any triple A game will do.
-how to write a "look and feel" document: the Look and Feel is some sort of GDD about how your game actually looks. How the interfaces are designed, where do you put 3D and where there is only 2D, how big are the buttons, and fonts, which size are the characters on screen, how the terrains look, what are the textures size for terrain and for models, how many polygons per model, which format for sounds and music,... This is the graphical part, the hard part is that you have to create screenshots of your own non-existing game... :D This is the part where you describe what the player will see, how he must feel about your game (where is it sad? where is there action? what to think of each character?)... Same advice as above, the best way to know the content of a L&F is to download one from an AAA game.
These steps are mandatory IMO, there are still a few other matters but you will cover most of the aspects of a game with these. A huge part of the GDD is about the game mechanics, so you need a good knowledge of video games but also the curiosity to check how things work. You need to have a feeling for details too.
In the end, when you are used to design games you will see how mechanics are done while you play, while other players don't. How many players actually realized there is acceleration and deceleration on EACH units in SC2? I'm pretty sure that, except mappers, only a few of them noticed. This is the kind of things you must be aware of as a game designer. Don't forget brainstormings too, which are a good way to see where your idea works and where it doesn't, and also to help you improve your game. Do not brainstorm too much though, or you will never do anything.
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Aaaaah, I'm eager to test the tracking system now! :)
This map is bloody fun to play. I love Pictionary to begin with, so I obviously loved your map and had much fun testing it.
Maybe you can add censorship, to avoid words like "penis" and "boobs", etc... :D
You should change the way colors are selected, maybe do buttons with pre-defined colors (white, black, red, green, blue, yellow, etc...) instead of the RGB selection mode.
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A map with zombies is nothing original... With DotA and TDs, I think that's in the top 5 of the most common map ideas... If you put it to the next level though (with really cool features never seen before) it might be interesting.
About making a board game, it's not a bad idea but be warned: it's a pain in the you-know-where to code. You also have to be cautious about how you manage turns, because people don't like to wait between each of their turns, they may quit the game when they're bored and other players won't stay either... But again, if you put it to the next level everything is possible.
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Hmm... A Hitman game, then?
You'll have a menu for buying/selecting your weapons/items for the next mission to come... Create X maps, each corresponding to an assassination mission and/or stealing documents without being detected, etc...these maps will combine interiors and exteriors, with guards patrolling almost everywhere and people wandering in the corridors and rooms. It can be multiplayer (4 assassins max), though it will be quite hard to give it some replay value when everybody knows the missions by heart... :(
You can have missions where cooperation is mandatory (for example, 2 guys will go clean a secured house, while 2 other guys are hacking a computer to open the doors for them). The objective as an assassin is to be stealthy to earn more points, and keep your ammo to get rid of your targets only (you'll need to make the ammos rare and expensive)... The more points you earn, the better are the weapons/items you can buy for the next mission. You can try to implement something that will disguise your assassins too, so that guards won't notice them. And the ability to place traps too, to get rid of their targets without being close to them.
You can have another team of players that will act as bodyguards. Their role will simply be to kill any assassin in the area and prevent their boss(es) from being killed. They will have a bunch of tools/keys/weapons that will help them detecting the intruders and traps, and they will need to communicate with each other to know where the assassins are and how to get them. They can use alarms, security cameras, call the police, etc...
Actually, to had some replay value there might be something simple: if you have, let's say, 8 objectives/targets per map... just set the objectives to something like 3 targets only, choosen randomly between the 8 available. That way, the mission will not order the assassins to kill the 3 same targets each time you play that map... Your maps will have to be very well designed, but it can be really interesting to have completely different objectives each time you play the same map, forcing you to explore areas that were locked last time you played.
I know the SC2 editor is not at all the best editor to do maps that actually look like those in Hitman, but you can use the concept in a post-apocalyptic background or something like that...
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I'd either do a scenario (involving constant use of the unit you created and its weapons, maybe making him evolve and buy the upgrades later)... Or a minigame map, because when you have a cool feature and nothing to do with it yet, the best thing to do is create a minigame which will make full use of this feature (like capturing/killing creeps, and having to fight against another team which goal is exactly the same).
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Pourquoi chercher spécifiquement un français? On a d'excellents mappers venant de tous les pays, ici... Tu écris anglais correctement, c'est largement suffisant pour demander de l'aide (et gratuitement!). ;)
Je suis plutôt intéressé aussi, mais pas sans savoir à quel point le projet est "complexe". Un petit résumé de ta recherche serait utile, personne ne voudra se lancer dans un projet compliqué sans savoir si c'est à sa portée... Moi-même, je ne pense pas du tout maitriser l'éditeur, alors que je suis pro et que c'est précisément mon métier... Mais si ce que tu souhaites est abordable, ça peut m'intéresser.
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@EternalWraith: Go
Agreed.
You won't find a "mentor" able to help you in everything. You will need someone good at terraining, someone for data, and so on... So the best advice is to try learning on your own, and when you're stuck, read the forums first (there are much more info here than you can think of!) and if you still don't have the answer, just ask.
If you were asking for a teacher on the Unreal Engine I would have done it with pleasure... I have made maps since the first Unreal game, and since it exists I've seen many versions of this editor (even the version used in Rune)... About the SC2 editor though, I have done maps in SC1, WC2, WC3, FT, and I'm still a bit confused with all the possibilities of the SC2 editor... Even if you find a good mentor, I assume he can't have a perfect knowledge of the whole editor yet.
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There is a very complete tutorial on how to modify the lobby properties: http://forums.sc2mapster.com/resources/tutorials/5486-lobby-game-modes-the-complete-guide-reference/
If I remember well it describes how to change the lobby menu to have a specific hero when starting the game. You could apply the same process to give units. And I also remember people discussing in this thread about how to reassign all units to the right player, according to who is in which place in the lobby teams.
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I'd rewrite the conditions as follows:
CONDITIONS
And (Conditions)
The problem with your actual conditions seems to be that if the unit is a marine, it is enough to validate the conditions check. And same goes for the "has stimpack" check. Adding an AND operator just makes sure ALL the conditions are met, instead of assuming they will be. I think that's why the current trigger does not work everytime.
By the way, your condition:
((Triggering unit) has Marine - Stimpack) != true
...is wrong. It should be:
((Triggering unit) has Marine - Stimpack) == true
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I didn't see any difference so far in the popularity system... Star Battle is still in the first page, so is Colonial Wars and the others "big hits"... I only saw a totally unknow map once, but since the screenshot of the map looked like plain dirt, I assume it was boosted. It seems to be a bit more randomized in the next pages though, but it doesn't look *that* different...
Did I miss something?