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- Mar 6, 2008
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This won't be an idea proposal but a complete map thread for the upcoming game which I am going to develop. This thread shall be the entry for discussion.
The latter itself has many derivates made by many different persons and some years ago I created the first version of Line Tower Wars - Evolution which is still updated today.
However, since I started enjoying this game over the years and course I noticed more and more flaws in its gameplay mechanics and general gameplay rules.
The list is long, but to give you an expression:
This critical view over the current gameplay of Line Tower Wars maps and my years long experience creating those games has driven me to reevaluate and redesign Line Tower Wars from ground up to fix all the things I do no longer like about it.
With the redesign I am trying to adress all the mentioned problems above and more.
Since this rework for Line Tower Wars is pretty heavy I wasn't sure if it is a good idea to name it Line Tower Wars afterwards which could lead to confusion of old-school players wanting to play classic Line Tower Wars with all its flaws. So I am still searching for a good and proper name, but at the moment I will just stick with "Builder Alliances" as this name fits best to my current state of my ideas.
The whole thing will be built on top of the newest Line Tower Wars - Evolution map.
I am currently working on v2.40 which should be the final version for the old-school Line Tower Wars and a first preparation for redesigned version of "Builder Alliances".
First of all I wanted to fix all the mentioned problems above.
So let's go through every list item and contribute an idea to solve the issue:
more to come ...
Keep in mind that nearly all of those towers have got 6 stages each.
I will describe the towers and their special abilities in a later update.
Elemental towers are the strongest towers in the game and thus a player can only have one of them at the same time.
Choose wisely and combine their strengths with your other towers and your maze's structure.
A builder is able to build a cheap barricade for blocking the path.
This barricade then can be upgraded into any basic tower.
Many of them are developed much further than stated here but you should get an idea of what I want to do with this game.
I really hope you like it and I am looking forward to your comments. =)
Regards,
Robbepop
Foreword
I guess you have all heard of Tower Wars or even played it at least once in your life.
It has a simple gameplay: Every player got a maze which he has to defend by building a maze of towers to block incoming waves of attackers sent by other players.
Tower Wars is one of the many WarCraft III classic custom maps and has countless different versions and variants like Team Tower Wars or Line Tower Wars.
Problems with the old design
The latter itself has many derivates made by many different persons and some years ago I created the first version of Line Tower Wars - Evolution which is still updated today.
However, since I started enjoying this game over the years and course I noticed more and more flaws in its gameplay mechanics and general gameplay rules.
The list is long, but to give you an expression:
- Static pool of towers for all players: Why not random or tech-tree like?
- Static pool of sendable creeps: Why shouldn't players have different creep pools?
- Players are too dependent on sends of their previous players.
- The game doesn't end for all players at the same time which leads to community fragmentation.
- The game may end too fast for new players and disallow them to gain more experience.
- Winning a game is too reliant of a single source (= Income).
- Especially for Line Tower Wars it is not possible to play in teams.
- The situation with the current creep tiers leads to only a few usable creeps at any time of the game. It would be better if the usable creeps pool would be larger or even constant at any time of a game.
- End games take too long when good players are batteling each other or may even end in a pat, often.
- etc. ...
The idea for a redesign
This critical view over the current gameplay of Line Tower Wars maps and my years long experience creating those games has driven me to reevaluate and redesign Line Tower Wars from ground up to fix all the things I do no longer like about it.
With the redesign I am trying to adress all the mentioned problems above and more.
Since this rework for Line Tower Wars is pretty heavy I wasn't sure if it is a good idea to name it Line Tower Wars afterwards which could lead to confusion of old-school players wanting to play classic Line Tower Wars with all its flaws. So I am still searching for a good and proper name, but at the moment I will just stick with "Builder Alliances" as this name fits best to my current state of my ideas.
The whole thing will be built on top of the newest Line Tower Wars - Evolution map.
I am currently working on v2.40 which should be the final version for the old-school Line Tower Wars and a first preparation for redesigned version of "Builder Alliances".
The new Design
First of all I wanted to fix all the mentioned problems above.
So let's go through every list item and contribute an idea to solve the issue:
Problem | Possible Solution |
Static pool of towers for all players. | Introducing more different custom towers as there are much more tower required when dealing with balancings of possible random sets for every player to give players different towers every game. |
Static pool of sendable creeps. | Revamp of the current tier-based system and introducing a new race-based combinatory system where there could be for example four different races with a constant unit pool and a player may choose 2 and combine their units together in every game. Maybe one could also give every player a random race. To make every creep type usable at any time it is mandatory to upgrade them over time for some costs. |
Players are too dependent on sends of their previous players. | This can be fixed with two things. First of all creeps sent by oponent players should no longer provide bounty on kill. Second there should be automated creep waves spawning periodically at any players base. These creep waves are controlled by a neutral computer and may provide gold and other boni for players upon killing their units. For further replayability those spawns should be random but with known configurations. |
The game doesn't end for all players at the same time which leads to community fragmentation. | This could be fixed with new gameplay rules when a player is defeated or a game ends. This can be done in a similar way the things work in my map "Spider Empire" where every player starts with his own empire and instead of defeating another player the "defeated" player will join alliances with his defeating player and play for him as a vasall. It then should still be possible for the vasall player to win the game by serving good for his "master". The game is won when there are only two alliances left and the only alliance defeats the other completely. When a vasall of a certain alliance is defeated by a player of another alliance that vasall then continues to play for the new alliance. Defeating the master of an alliance also takes the complete ownership of all his vasalls. |
The game may end too fast for new players and disallow them to gain more experience. | The solution stated above would also solve this problem entirely as noobs would then be a vasll for another experienced player and learn playing the game more instead of losing the game and stopping to play. |
Winning a game is too reliant of a single source (= Income). | Due to the other proposed solutions it will become much harder to only focus on income as a player got another major task to get all the automatically spawning neutral bonus gold etc. by building a better maze and shift focus on that thing instead. This also causes all players to have more equal base defenses. |
Especially for Line Tower Wars it is not possible to play in teams. | With the gameplay mechanics similar to "Spider Empire" mentioned above it should also be easily possible to play as predefined teams together. So a team version like "Team Tower Wars" would be unnessesary. |
The situation with the current creep tiers leads to only a few usable creeps at any time of the game. It would be better if the usable creeps pool would be larger or even constant at any time of a game. | The solutions mentioned above will fix this problem entirely already. |
End games take too long when good players are batteling each other or may even end in a pat, often. | In the current Line Tower Wars players steal lives from other players which leads to massive amount of lives in the end of a game bundled on a few single players. So it would be a better idea to remove the life steal and go with a hitpoint-based system for players. So every player got a much larger pool of hitpoints which may he regenerate or heal up to a maximum amount and when an oponent creep leaks his maze it will damage the player's hitpoints by a certain amount. When the hitpoints reach zero the player will be a vasall of his defeating player and his hitpoints should reset to default again to provide him with a little shield for some time. This should end games much faster as it is harder to mass lives or hitpoints. |
Tower Types
more to come ...
Icon | Name | Category | Description |
![]() | Barricade | Barricade | Costs almost nothing and is therefor very useful to build your initial maze. Can be upgraded to any other basic tower in the game. |
![]() | Arrow Tower | Allrounder | Very basic tower, shoots arrows at single enemy ground or air units. |
![]() | Gatling Tower | Allrounder | Attacks single ground or air units and increases its attack speed with every hit against the same target. |
![]() | Sniper | Allrounder | Attacks very slowly but with a huge range. Never misses its target and has got a chance to deal tons of damage on an attack with a head-shot. |
![]() | Ranger/Hippogryph Rider | Allrounder | Attacks ground units only but is capable to temporary ride its hyppogryph in order to attack air units only. |
![]() | Spell Tower | Allrounder | Has a very strong but slow attack against single units. Can cast Fireball or Blizzard to stun or damage units. |
![]() | Siege Tower | Anti-Ground | Basic anti-ground tower. Its splashing attacks are very slow but have a long range. |
![]() | Sharp Tower | Anti-Ground | Damages all nearby units in melee range at the same time on an attack. |
![]() | Tentacle | Anti-Ground | Has a very fast and powerful melee attack which has a chance to stun enemy units on hit. |
![]() | Ogre | Anti-Ground | Has a very strong melee attack which damages units in a huge area around the Ogre. Has twice as much hitpoints and can sleep to restore them. Can fart ... |
![]() | Impaler | Anti-Ground | Has an impale attack which throws enemy units to the sky. |
![]() | Flame Thrower | Anti-Ground | Can throw flames which deals a huge amount of damage as long as it has got a non-empty mana pool. |
![]() | Discharger | Anti-Air | Attacks single air units ultimately fast with a discharging lightning attack. Has got a huge attack range. |
![]() | Photon Tower | Anti-Air | Attacks multiple targets at the same time, can burst out a Photon Blast to hit all surrounding flying units. |
![]() | Lightning Tower | Anti-Air | Attacks with lightning strikes from the sky which deal damage to air units nearby the target. |
![]() | Net Thrower | Anti-Air | Throws nets at flying units which may ensnare them on the ground for some seconds. |
![]() | Wall | Anti-Attacker | Basic anti-attacker tower. Has got a huge amount of hitpoints and damages melee units attacking it. |
![]() | Footman | Anti-Attacker | Has an offense and defense stance. Attacks much faster in offense stance but has much more hitpoints in defense stance. |
![]() | Paladin | Anti-Attacker | Has a low range attack against ground and air units. Can completely restore the hitpoints of other nearby organic towers. Can shield itself with a Divine Shield to prevent all damage to it for some seconds. |
![]() | Mana Barrier | Anti-Attacker | Has a mana shield which regenerates very fast. Can consume its whole mana to overload its shield and burst out area damage. |
![]() | Explosive Cask | Anti-Attacker | Deals tons of damage on destruction to nearby enemy ground units. |
![]() | Command Aura | Aura | Increases the attack damage of nearby allied towers. Does not affect a few special towers. |
![]() | Fortification Aura | Aura | Increases the armor of nearby allied towers. |
![]() | Frost Aura | Aura | Decreases the movement speed of nearby enemy units. |
![]() | Mind Aura | Aura | Increases the mana regeneration of nearby allied towers. |
![]() | Thunder Elemental | Elemental | Attacks ultimately fast and has a great chance to deal bonus damage and stun its target for some time on an attack. (Permastun is possible!) |
![]() | Death Elemental | Elemental | Attacks are slow but do splash. Can activate a huge explosion around itself which burns mana every second and deals damage too all units within a large area around this tower. |
![]() | Earth Elemental | Elemental | Has a very powerful melee attack, a huge amount of hitpoints and can stomp the ground to stun all nearby enemy units for some seconds. |
![]() | Unholy Elemental | Elemental | Has a very powerful single target attack against ground- and air- units. Reduces the armor of nearby enemy units passively. |
![]() | Water Elemental | Elemental | Has a decent splashing attack which slows units on hit. |
![]() | Tech Elemental | Elemental | Has got a long attack range, attacks extremely fast and shoots missiles at multiple units at once. Is able to focus fire to deal additional damage to units within the target area. |
![]() | War Elemental | Elemental | Has a medium single target attack but is able to roar for battle in order to highly increase the attack damage of its owning player's towers. |
![]() | Fire Elemental | Elemental | Attacks very fast with splashing burning missiles. Is able to further increase its attack speed temporarly. |
![]() | Demon Elemental | Elemental | Killing an enemy unit summons a demon minio fighting for this tower for some time. |
![]() | Holy Elemental | Elemental | Has the ability to make all player's tower invulnerable for some seconds. |
![]() | Scout Tower | Utility | The only tower able to detect invisible units. |
Screenshots
Keep in mind that nearly all of those towers have got 6 stages each.
I will describe the towers and their special abilities in a later update.
Elemental towers are the strongest towers in the game and thus a player can only have one of them at the same time.
Choose wisely and combine their strengths with your other towers and your maze's structure.
A builder is able to build a cheap barricade for blocking the path.
This barricade then can be upgraded into any basic tower.
Conclusion
Many of them are developed much further than stated here but you should get an idea of what I want to do with this game.
I really hope you like it and I am looking forward to your comments. =)
Regards,
Robbepop
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