Epic Vampirism

[whisp]

As a big fan of the vampirism minigame i decided to create my own version of vampirism. Yes, yet another vampirism version. But even though this map is called 'vampirism' it turns out to have only a few similarities to the common vampirism games, beside there are the humans and the vampires, whose goal is to defeat one another.

I usually start any map-development with a rough vision which becomes more and more accurate while developing. And so i started this map some time ago. As rough and blurry the vision, as changeful the minigame's features. Below the planned and implemented features...


06.10.2008

Planned

Scenario:

• Mapsize 256*256
• Medieval Fantasy/Horror
• In the middle of a hard winter in a mountainous country called Transylvania , inspired by the movie 'The Fearless Vampire Killers', trying to pick up many cliches from any older and newer vampire movies.
• Humen that found and build up their cities, starting from scratch, dreaming of might and fortune, discovering that the rulers of Transylvania are bloodsucking monsters whose only goal is to subdue humanity

Gameplay:
Humans

• Build a prospering city, offering jobs for new citizens, earn gold from taxes, rental fees...
• AI controlled citizens and traders
• Produce and trade food and wood for gold with traders from other cities and traders from neighboring (simulated) countries
• City-, Trade- and Anti-Vampirism-Related research themes.
• Research system inspired by the x-com game series. Meaning: To research something you do not just simply need a certain other tech, but, as an example, you have to collect a vampire servants corpse first to research "the vampire metabolism", which then will disclose new research-technologies (like "the garlic gun" ).
• Switch between different equipments, like the worker-equipment to build new buildings and harvest wood, the hunter equipment for hunting animals (yes, you and your citizens are hungry), the vampire-hunter (slayer) equipment. More to come.

Vampires

• Regularly drink human blood to survive
• Infect humans (NPCs) to make them their servants
• Upgrade servants to different vampire-types
• Research-Centers like the dark laboratory (dracula meets frankenstein), the library (for the studying of black magic) and more, inside their accessible castle.
• Typical vampire abilities, like the vampire bite, bat-form, super-hit (the one that throws the enemy across the whole room)
• Typical vampire weaknesses, like having to drink blood, avoiding the sunlight, disgusted from garlic, hurt from holy water, silver, crucifix' and so on...

General

• Possibly only 1 vampire player. To avoid early game ends due a vampire who left the game, any human player can choose to continue as vampire (with the properties and stats the vampire had when he left, if this is possible). If noone chooses to continue as the vampire, a random player will be picked.

Game Flow

In the beginning it won't be effective for the vampire to attack humen players respectively their cities and vice versa. Instead, the humen concentrate on advancing their settlement and the vampire his castle. Humen collect food and wood and earn gold from trades, the vampires collect servants and gold by ambushing NPC-travelers and -traders. While the game advances, the vampires may also concentrate on attacking human cities, for even more servants and gold while the humen may concentrate on defending their cities and attacking the vampire and his castle for weakening purposes. But attacks usually happen on a subtle base, as mentioned, e.g. by a zombie infection in a human city, or a daytime slayer attack on sleeping vampire servants. It will be very hard to destroy one anothers base by storming it in the midgame, since there will be strong defense-structures for both parties. In late game, technologies will become that powerful, that one party will be able to storm the other parties base. There might also be a last and final technology that will instantly end the game.


Implemented

Scenario:

• 256*256 Winter-Map. 10%.
• Dynamic weather and other environmental effects. 10%.

Gameplay:

• 10 theoretically working human player slots
• AI controlled travelers that cross the country, search jobs and become citizens of player cities
  
• AI controlled citizens that bring a little live into player cities.
• City population growth, taking account of births, deaths, jobless' and homeless'
• Player earns gold from house rentals
• A few basic city- and trade-related techs
• Chat- and player-specific multiboard-infosystem

Screenshots:

 

[Super-Sheep]

Its no more fun if the map gets too big.

 

[whisp]

Thanks for your feedback. I think it depends on the gametype how large a map should be. In a common tag-game it can be really annoying if you have to walk 2 minutes, just to find out at your arrival, that there is nothing to get. But i don't plan this game to become a common tag-game where the vampire stumbles from base to base.

 

[Bane]

Big fan of vampirism games.
This looks awesome, if you need any help with triggering let me know i'd be glad to help.
I love the idea of the different ways to stop the vampires and then the humans towns etc.
+rep.

-Bane

 

[Angry_Bovine]

Oh! When I first saw this thread, I was thinking, Oh great, another Vampirism. Good thing I actually checked before assuming that completely.

This idea sounds great! If you can pull off all the concepts you wanted, especially the one with the automated villagers and travelers, this can be a great map. Just a question, though: Do humans play more like an empire builder, or do they also get a main character that is representative of themselves (like a lead vampire hunter)?

 

[whisp]

@bane

thanks for the rep and your generous offer. Currently i'm well with the triggering, but maybe i will get back to your offer later.

@angry_bovine

The humen have their own main-character, starting as a common worker with an accessible hut. While advancing they can research other equipments, like the vampire hunter equipment, which then will appear inside the hut.

They can return to their house to change equipment whenever they want, but they won't be able to build anything while in vampire hunter equipment and they better run from any evil beeing while in worker equipment.

There will be more equipments, like the hunter equipment (for hunting animals) and probably some more of which i don't have a picture yet. Some of the equipments will just turn you into a hero (vampire hunter) with abilities and leveling, others (worker) won't level up, but can be replaced with more advanced equipment later. You won't loose any experience levels when changing and changing back to an equipment.

 

[Discipline]

I've enjoyed playing all kinds of vamp games, but never really loved it... they always seem to lack balancing the two sides. Generally if the human players are all pro, the vamp side is screwed.... yet if even one human player is new and the vamp is half decent he can annihilate the survivors by reaping early gold and levels.

I personally thought about what could improve on the gameplay to balance it out (as it's very difficult to do having the two sides so largely different) and I came up with a similar conclusion to you. Having the humans construct the towns for AI villagers is definitely the way to go. Humans would still have a similar role that vamp players know and love, yet having the villagers out of player control will allow an opening for the vampires to feast outside of a player base. I think that would make balancing much easier.

Other then that, I really like that finally the human defenses will have something to do with vampires. Exploiting the vampires weaknesses, especially sunlight, makes so much more sense then just having them run around invincible, well invincible until they hit a wall of towers.

Possible vampire ideas I can offer -

- There is an 80's vamp flick, the hunger, where a vampire lover's (servant) immortality only lasts for approx 300 years, before they age rapidly and wither into corpses. They don't die however, but are trapped in their broken bodies. In the movie the vampiress keeps all her past lovers in the attic of her mansion, which by the end of the film they rise again and revolt against her.

You could use this in a different way... by giving the servants a lifespan (generic timer) once they die the vamp could recover their bodies and store it in his tomb. The more servants the vampire collects and stores can increase the dark power of the vampire, either through a stat bonus or triggered ability multipliers.

- another interesting thing you could try to apply would be the age old lore of a vampire requiring an invitation to enter a person's property. I haven't thought through how you could do this yet, but maybe the vampire could disguise itself as a traveler. A traveler could be a powerful unit that a human player can acquire once it's part of their city, but always at the risk of it being of vampire player control.

Anyways, keep working on this!

 

[whisp]

It's true, when some humen don't detonate, the vampire will advance too fast and vice versa. Maybe buildings should drop more gold and harvesters less.

But in epic vampirism the vampire will not concentrate on buildings (this old buildings stone walls are hard to tear without any siege units, even for a strong vampire), and i don't want the vampires to stay in cities for farming.

I'm not absolutely sure yet how to manage this. Probably an angry mob with clubs, pitchforks and torches combined with Van Helsing are just to dangerous for a vampire. Not that he would die from pure physical damage, but if heavily damaged, it could turn him into batform for a while, which would make him fast for escaping, but incapable of fighting.

He better concentrates on travelers at the beginning. His attacks on cities should be more subtle, at least in the early- and midgame. Like your idea of vampire infiltration, a vampire masked as citizen, infecting other citizens every now and then and/or submiting valuable informations or gold to his master. Or maybe an epidemic Zombie infection...

The idea about the servants(-corpses) is good. It could be used for many purposes. Along with experience or any multipliers it could also be used as requierements for certain techs, e.g. having 20 servant-corpses to be able to research "untimely dawn".

I just hope i'll bring it to an end one day...

 

[JansiGX]

As to vampirism maps:
Vampirism map that I find being balanced is Crazy's vampirism. I learned to be both excellent vamp and human there. Only imbalance I it has is accelerate mode which is hard for vampires even if 4/5 humans are bad.

As to your idea:
It's grate but I think it's too far from vampirism map idea. Reminds me a mixture of Island Troll Tribes and some old map I saw in WC3 RoC. I think it was called Vampire Hunt (some ideas there was just like in your map: vampire turning it to bat; damage from sun; AI human village).
So far it looks like you got a lot of ideas for humans. Good luck on making them!
But what will vampires do at the start of the game? It would suck if they must spawn about 3 min after game start only because humans need time to make there city. Do vamps need to build something too?
And what about resources for each side?
And what is your idea of what can be considered end of the game? Does Vampire need to infect all main builders while humans must make themselves strong enough to banish vamp as usual?
And finaly thing that I'm most interested- will there be slayers. I love them ^^

 

[whisp]

I also like the crazy vampirism maps. Just because there is so much to be researched. I'm a research junky .

I indeed didn't think too much about the vampire gameplay yet. But they will spawn immediately and each human and his mainbuilding will start at one of the (currently) 10 random city-start-locations. The human's maincharacter, who starts as a simple and weak worker unit, will probably start with an amulet that protects him from evil - eg from the vampire. The vampire will be able to research techs that will allow him (and eventually his minions) to overcome the powers of that amulet later. The vampire will concentrate on travelers in the beginning - to gain xp, a little loot gold, and to collect servants. Additionally, as the lord of Transylvania, he collects public money from each human city. For the unaware humen he is not known as the monster he is, in the beginning. Humen players have to find out, that he is a vampire. Eg. if the human-worker will watch him 'vampire bite' a traveler. This will allow the humen to start research vampire-related techs and also doctrines (just another type of tech) like "no taxes for the beast".

The vampire has no city. He has his castle in which he can build stuff like libraries, laboratories and the like, for researching techs, creating more advanced servants and the like. Basically the castle is a building which will teleport the one who enters it to a place on the map that looks like a castle-interior.

The human cities themself will probably never have a wall or a single-tile wall like in common vampirism games. It will be some kind of strong-base-defense-weak-attack-units games, where you will have to be quite advanced compared to your enemy, to be able to defeat him by simply storming the base.

And yes, there will be slayers as described in other posts (keyword equipment). I will update post1.

 

[JansiGX]

Additionally, as the lord of Transylvania, he collects public money from each human city. For the unaware humen he is not known as the monster he is, in the beginning. Humen players have to find out, that he is a vampire. Eg. if the human-worker will watch him 'vampire bite' a traveler. This will allow the humen to start research vampire-related techs and also doctrines (just another type of tech) like "no taxes for the beast".

Wow... you mean humans need not only to enforce villages but to make them actually fight Dracula. Sounds like a lot of hard work making AI.
Are vamp servants AI controlled too? It could turn out fun seeing army of AI controlled zombies fight army of AI controlled humans in the final battle and every player is general that must lead the army.

Just an idea:
Like I said before, your map reminds me Island Troll Tribes. Can you make every city different E.g.city in the mountain don' t have much food so village is small but it can mine iron and gems that can be used to make items for villagers (of course iron smelting research is required); city in forest can gather a lot of wood and construct a lot of buildings that requires only wood and so on so on... Maybe citys could trade with each other (probably by players not AI).

Off topic: if you like game with much to research check map in my sign. ^^

 

[Angry_Bovine]

Checking every new traveler that comes into the city could be tedious if it has to be done manually, especially if there are a lot of travelers. Perhaps you can order the guards to automatically check people that go by them?

The more I hear about this game the more I think about how complicated the AI is going to have to be.

And... how's the progress going? Any estimate of progress done or "finish" date?

 

[whisp]

I don't know yet if the traveler-form will be the one that can be abused by the vampires to enter the city. And how it will be checked. As you said, maybe guards. Maybe priests, exorcists and the like, if they are commanded to do something like a razzia (which could reduce citizen contentment, if the the razzia was unsuccessful).

The traveler's (and others 'intelligent' NPC's) AI will work the following way:

Each traveler has a taskstack, an array of tasks, from which always the one with the highest array index will be executed.

There are order tasks, using the known orders, like issue order with target (attack, get item, ...), issue order with location (or better points, i read) or issue orders with no target (e.g. abilities). And there are custom tasks (talk (texttag), check city for free jobs and so on). And there are multitasks, tasks that just add certain other tasks to the taskstack. A multitask could even add multiple multitasks to the taskstack (as long it doesn't add itself).

There's a periodical timer that checks every n seconds if a task has been finished. If it's finished, the task will be destroyed and the next task in the taskstack will be executed. Last in, first out.

Every NPC starts with a start task, usually a multitask. E.g. multitask 'search_job', which adds an issue-order-to-location (city), check-city-for-free-jobs and an accept-job-task. But while the taskstack is beeing completed, other tasks may be add. E.g. if the unit gets attacked on its way to the city, the task 'run_away' could be added and executed, which could cause the traveler to run in oposite direction of the attacker. As soon he successfully ran away (eg distance to the attacker > 5000), the 'run_away' task will be considered as finished, destroyed, and the next, not finished task (issue-order-to-location (city)), will be executed again.

I did it more simple and ways less flexible before. And currently i'm still working at this task system and a complete revision of the current code. Since i'm a newbie, especially to JASS, i frequently notice, that i should make this and this and this another way... Currently i'm organizing almost everything in structs, extending other structs and interfaces.

Concerning the finish date... I have no clue! I'm not even sure how powerfull JASS is, respectively how fast, so theoretically i could end up with many ideas not feasible. Additionally i have no detail concept. While i'm working on the map, new ideas come and others i discard. The only thing i can say is: As soon the game runs and is fun, it will be released. I will mention any progress concerning gameplay in post 1. Additonally most likely there will be a couple of test versions, since i'm only able to test it as one player, either one of the humen or as a vamp. And no competitor.