Beast and Bumpkins map

[Nelisje85]

First of all i just wanna see if you guys think this is possible to make.
I posted this idea a while ago but havent had any replies.

The Idea is to make a map based on the Beasts and Bumpkins game. but to have players attacking eachother all the time. or at least, the offensive races.

If this is possible i might want to get a team together and make a multiplayer and maybe a campaign out of it.

my original post and more info will be posted below

 

[Nelisje85]

Some years ago i ran into a game called Beasts and bumpkins, Id really like to know if it would be possible to make a map like this.

I don't think i currently posses the know-how to create anything like this. But i'd really like to try and make a campaign and/or multiplayer map based on this game with a warcraft twist to it. (after i complete my Hero-def map)

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Well, this is the idea as far as i currently have it, seeing enough difficuties apart from balancing to work out.

I think in order to have players attacking there should be bounties to be given for attacking/raiding. but bases should be sufficiently defended that they wont be wiped in a single orcish or undead raid. forcing players to balance out between raiding and gaining resources and keep building on a huge invading army

Main issues:
-Controlling birthrates and aging.

-Working out the undead population system

-Needing to know and keep track of the age of a huge amount of units.

-If undead have a hero, how does it revive and how do you defeat them

-Reproduction system, how to check if an adult male and female are in the same house and then chance them on having a child.

-Make orcs reproduce fast and be agressive without them becomming too powerful.

-A lot of things i havent considered yet.

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For those of you who dont know Beast & Bumpkins:

You start of with a few villagers (Male, Female, Boys and Girls), The kids grow up and become adults that are able to do work (Harvest, Construct, Learn proffesions, etc.), the adults grow old (and generally become useless) and die.
To keep your villagers alive and help them be productive longer you need to provide them with food (based on 4 seasons), water and housing.

You gain new villagers by have male and female villagers mate. and gain gold by selling them food and out of taxes.
To create soldiers you need to train your villagers at a cost at a barracks or other building like it.

this is what gameplay i'd like to recreate in a nutshell.
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Now for the warcraft twist:

The emphasis will need to be more on warring or on economy depending on the (warcraft)race of your choice. But I havent worked out the entire idea yet.
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Humans:

As usual they will be the "average" Race. Having a longer lifespan than the orcs but a less agressive playstyle, they have a little lower reproduction rate than the orcs forcing them to be a little more careful with their units


Night Elves:

Low birthrate, but the nightelves cant die of old age, the nightelves will grow slowly, but become a force to be reckoned with when left to grow to a reasonable size. When a Nigthelf dies it will become a wisp wich can harvest or be used to grow into ancients. Altough this will have Nightelves wanting to lose some units to create the slow but powerful ancients, they cant afford to lose to many of their normal Nightelves in the game because it would slow down their growth too much. i hope this will have the nightelves use a tactic having smaller raids to harrass the growth of the other races before pulling back and luring any pursuing army into their ancient-defended bases.


Orcs:

I hope that a High birthrate and a short life span will force orc players to keep attacking. their weakness will be their offensive based hometowns with lower economies that will force them to attack and raid for gold.


Undead:

Having NO births the undead will have to depend on killing other races to gain corpses wich they can turn into their own units.
I think i would like to have the undead race start off with a Powerful(Hero?) necromancer wich can turn corpses into undead units. the larger and more powerful undead units costing more corpses to create (I really need to work this system out).
Stopping the Undead from becomming too powerful, the Undead will get damaged when not on blight during then day. forcing the undead player to attack during the night and then recall his forces when daylight comes.

 

[peterrab]

Aging could be done with a mana growth system, but that means no units can have mana-based abilites.

Reproduction, there should be a way to check whether two units are garrissoned in one building, then have the building eject all units and spawn a new one inside.

As undead, you could start with a Hero Necromancer and a couple of cultist builders, and they can build things like towers and a building to revive the Necromancer (if you want him to be revivable).

A Troll Tribes-esque crafting system would be good but might get too complicated with all the various weapons and goods you would need.

Some ideas there, hope they are useful

 

[Nelisje85]

Hmm personally i was thinking of doing the aging with custom unit values. to keep open the posibility to use abilities. and then maybe an ability to give info about the unit or population as i think it might get harder to keep track of as you grow.

what do you mean with a "troll tribes-esque crafting system" exactly?

 

[peterrab]

By Troll Tribes I mean where you cut down a tree and get a wood item, and mine a stone and get an stone item, and put them together and make a hut, that sort of thing.
Or you might put an iron into a smith and end up with a spearhead, and then put a spearhead and a wood into a weaponmakers and end up with a spear.

 

[redscores]

I thought bumpkins are written "P"umpkins.

 

[Nelisje85]

Peterrab: that system sound really good, just a little hard to automate but might be able to work that out. THX for the idea.

redscores: a Pumpkin is a vegetable, a Bumpkin a poor peasant

 

[peterrab]

One thing : where are the models for the orc civilians going to come from ?
Humans are in the game, NE could be reskinned humans with NE ears added, but I dunno for orc.

One good idea I thought of would be to have remnants of other races on the map, like Centaurs, guarding blueprints for specific items. The Centaurs might allow the making of a powerful great-axe, for example. Trolls might allow throwing-axe production when you claim their blueprint. Goblins, maybe bombs you can use to do more damage to buildings ? Maybe the Ogres could drop a blueprint for a "one use per item" item that can enslave other units (manacles, or a net, or a mantrap or something. This makes them into a unit that has low stats to use as cannon-fodder and meat-shields.

I presume civilians are going to be normal units ? If so, when you make one become a warrior, he should come out the same but as a hero. Then you can equip him with whatever weapons and armour you have crafted (maybe like a LOAP equip system, where the hero "transforms" into a weapon-wielding hero, or use model attachments).

Beast-taming for mounts would be nice also (using the Charm ability to tame them and the NE Hippogryph rider ability to let Warriors mount them).

 

[Nelisje85]

Havent thought of models yet, but indeed female and infant orcs might be hard to find. i'll have to sart looking around if i start this map. night elves i might be able to find. if i cant find any i guess ill have to lear how to make models.

As for the heroes, i'm not sure how to make that many heroes without clogging up the map with the hero icons. But it would be a great way to have soldiers and mages become more important to you as they gain in experience. maybe add a system that gives a chance to add points to stats, (for example: Agi when attacking, Str when being hit, Int for spell casting) and use experience to gain ranks (levels) that give special abilities or spells (or the ability to purchase some).

i guess a dead hero could be removed to keep them from lingering in the memory.

 

[peterrab]

You can disable Heros from appearing on the left side of the map and the death message when one dies in the unit editor. It's near gold cost IIRC. I found it out because I'm working on a map where everything is a hero (even buildings). And yes, when they die, they are removed from the game.

If you do use Hero warriors, when they reach a certain level (over 10 maybe), they should be allowed to revive perhaps ? So you don't lose all the work you put into leveling his XP, and spurs opponents into attacking Lv 8 and 9 Heroes before they hit Lv 10.

I edited my above post with more ideas too, if you didn't see before you posted.

 

[Nelisje85]

I really Like the ideas you posted, and I am getting excited to give this a try, just not sure if i'm good enough to pull it off.

Especially since this is gonna need a good AI(wich i know absolutely nothing about) and really tight balancing to keep the pace high enough to stay entertaining but makes player not just turn their people turn into soldiers and rush.

Since you seem to have a lot of good ideas, can you think of anything to make players (especially the orc and undead ones) commit raids on other players?
I'd like the raids to be a constant part of the game play, givving bonusses that are worth the effort to attacking players without making it possible to take down a settlement too easily

 

[peterrab]

Well the Undead will need to raid to advance their forces because they need the bodies to raise more warriors. If not they'll be wiped out almost straight away.

For the Orcs, give them some kind of Pillage ability or something ? Maybe they can build one-charge torches that scorch buildings. Giving them quick aging should help too. Maybe give them Pillage and make their resource gathering slower ? So when they bring down a building they get resources (probably a couple of wood, and a stone or ore) but they mine and gather them slower.

The Heroes should age slower though, because otherwise if they aged at the same speed as civilians they would die too soon I think. They should also be able to "teach" other Hero warriors and increase their EXP over time using a channelling ability (if possible).

 

[Nelisje85]

I Think it should be okay to have a single immortal hero, earned through experience. Maybe only one recruitable or something, and an option to kill him off if you want to make another unit into a hero.

And i thought of having storage Area's where, you can store recources such as wood and stone. this makes it possible to rush in and steal some recources. the faster aging is definitely a good idea to keep orc players more on the aggresive side.

I think i may actually start and try this map soon. but i'll still have enough triggering to learn.

I thought it might be fun to have the map grow along as you play, a group of trees changinginto a forest, plains into grasslands or back into plains, depeinding on what army is living there. do you think this might be fun?

 

[peterrab]

A living world sounds good, yeah. Also having neutral creatures pop up depending on the terrain type (i.e wolves and trolls in forests, deer and centaurs on plains, bears and ogres in hills, etc), so you can get items like fur and bone to use to make armour and weapons (at least until you learn metalforging). Neutral units would also help the undead get corpses so they don't kill the other races' starting civilians.

What would be great would be a skill system like this, but I don't know if it would be possible in Warcraft 3 (or how easy it would be to make) :

Each villager who is born has a random level 1 basic skill (and possibly a trait, i.e Intelligent, he picks up new skills quicker, or Fast, has a quicker move speed, or Brute, has higher attack, or Stout, has higher HP) when he/she becomes an adult (maybe woodcutting or mining or hunting). He works the best at this activity. Over time, he picks up EXP in the skills he performs, and learns new advanced skills (which can only be performed by units with the appropriate skill).

Maybe if a woodcutter is assigned to mining, he might eventually pick up Mining Lv 1, and combine knowledge of both and pick up Stonecarving Lv 1. Then he can carve spearheads, and might pick up Stonecarving Lv 2 in time and be able to carve axe heads. He might also pick up Woodcarving Lv 1 and learn to make spear handles, and then Woodcarving Lv 2 and be able to make axe handles. Someone who spends time making weapon heads would in time pick up Weaponmaker Lv 1 and be able to combine spearhandles and spearheads to make spears. Once their skills reach Lv 2 or 3 they can begin to teach the skill to other villagers who recieve Lv 1 of the matching skill.

 

[Nelisje85]

sounds possible, but i wouldnt know how to do it by learning. I think you could achieve it by giving a chance on an action to increase a proffesion lvl. and a chance to increase a stat like str agi or int. depending on the job thats being done.
It shouldnt be too hard to make it harder for someone with high str to gain another point in str for example.

When making a living world it might be fun to give races different terraforming abilities.

This map is going to be difficult to make tho, trigger wise and all..

 

[tjdrake719]

Great idea. Aging can be done through custom variables and triggers, just set a clock for each unit and have triggers at the times you want growth/death to happen.

 

[Nelisje85]

Sounds ideal, but how do i set sepperate timers for an unknown amount of units?