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[Defense / Survival] For The Fallen I Must Put Down

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For The Fallen I Must Put Down

A Hybrid Survival / Tower Defense / RPG map by BlackEnvyX

Introduction: This is a map that I've always wanted to make, but never got around to in the past due to being obsessed with other personal projects. So I wanted to be close with you all during the development process and possibly get some help / pointers in its development as I go alone.

Concept: Five players choose from a selection of eight heroes (eight will be the amount released in launch version 1.0, with more being added in future updates)

- Assault Rifle: Medium damage, medium attack speed, high range. (The main standard).
- Flamethrower: Low damage, high attack speed, lower range. (Has AOE damage).
- Engineer: Low damage, low attack speed, low range (Builds towers)
- Swordsman: High damage, high attack speed, melee range. (The main melee standard).
- Archer: High damage, low attack speed, medium range (Has particular attack buffs meant for single targets and multi-target).
- Ninja: Medium damage, medium attack speed, melee range (Has damage per second buffs for itself and other players.
- Healer: Low damage, low attack speed, high range (Is focused on healing itself and other players)
- Sniper: Very high damage, very low attack speed, very high range (Has weapon upgrades meant to stun, incapacitate, and maim targets that it hits.)

Once the players have chosen their heroes, they will spawn in the hero center where they will await waves of enemies. Each round will last ten waves with the tenth wave being a boss battle. Then there will be a ten minute period between each set of ten waves in which the heroes can explore the map, take on quests, and explore hidden treasures. There will be a total of 50 waves in launch version 1.0 (with more being added in future versions)

Features currently implemented:

- Standard hero pick system.
- Dynamic weather system with lightning flashes, rain, and physical lightning that actually hits random spots on the map, disfigures the terrain, and damages nearby units.
- Customizable camera system for adjusting to your preferred viewing point.
- Leakless waves system. (Currently up to 4 waves).
- Game time counter.
- Leaderboard with player kill count.
- Dynamic wildlife that interacts with the player. (Currently only five deer).
- Four types of item shops in base. (Offense Stockpile, Defense Stockpile, Support Stockpile, Consumable Items).
- Basic hero base features. (Individual locker boxes, Fountain of Restoration, and practice targets)

Features to be implemented before launch version 1.0:

- Friendly A.I.
- Quest system. (Five outside quests at launch, more in future versions).
- A full roster of items for the four shops. (With more shops and items being added in future versions).
- Universal damage system that shows how much damage each unit does to one-another.
- 50 waves in the wave system. (Five of those waves being bosses, with more waves being added in future versions).
- Four difficulty settings. (Greenhorn, the standard setting with no buffs for enemies. Trained, the next level up with armor buffs for enemies. Battle Hardened, the level beyond that with armor and damage buffs for enemies. War Hero, the highest difficulty setting with higher damage, higher armor, and move speed buffs for enemies). (More difficulties could possibly be added in future versions).
- Disaster system. (Along with the dynamic weather system, random disasters could happen across the map. Launch version will include Earthquakes and Meteors, with additional disasters being added in future versions).
- Abilities for heroes.
- Dedicated gold system that caters to balance each individual hero.
- Debugging system (For host in case a unit gets stuck / a unit didn't spawn where it was supposed to).
- Additional wildlife for wildlife system, including hostile wildlife. (Launch version will have deer, bears, and spiders. More will be added in future versions).
- Description runes for heroes so people can tell what the heroes functions are.
- (More to come in launch version, open to suggestions)

Current Map Progress:

Terrain: 55%
Heroes: 5%
Abilities: 0%
Items: 2%
Triggers: 20%
Units: 8%
Quests / Systems: 5%
 
Level 13
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There has been quite a lot of interest in creating these hybrid Hero Defense/RPG recently.

Games of this type always do well with terrain/setting the atmosphere but fail spectacularly at creating a convincing quest system that is poorly communicated to players and delivers bland quests like 'Kill X amount of A' or 'Give Item Y to friendly NPC'.

Another problem that plagues them is balance; your playable characters will need to be balanced at dealing with waves of monsters AND exploring/treasure hunting/questing. What i normally see is this: if heroes can defend the base from an onslaught, any threat in the open world/RPG-aspect is usually smaller, but then the makers usually make RPG-aspects harder, and suddenly the defense becomes easy. And in response to this, they make the defense harder, and before you know it, map balance has gone to shit. It would certainly be better to defer some power of heroes to defenders/towers that are bound to the base (perhaps like a castle defense), or to make your attacking waves small.

Anyways, good luck with it!
 
Level 14
Joined
Mar 27, 2008
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There has been quite a lot of interest in creating these hybrid Hero Defense/RPG recently.

Games of this type always do well with terrain/setting the atmosphere but fail spectacularly at creating a convincing quest system that is poorly communicated to players and delivers bland quests like 'Kill X amount of A' or 'Give Item Y to friendly NPC'.

Another problem that plagues them is balance; your playable characters will need to be balanced at dealing with waves of monsters AND exploring/treasure hunting/questing. What i normally see is this: if heroes can defend the base from an onslaught, any threat in the open world/RPG-aspect is usually smaller, but then the makers usually make RPG-aspects harder, and suddenly the defense becomes easy. And in response to this, they make the defense harder, and before you know it, map balance has gone to shit. It would certainly be better to defer some power of heroes to defenders/towers that are bound to the base (perhaps like a castle defense), or to make your attacking waves small.

Anyways, good luck with it!

The RPG aspects are much smaller and are more supplementary. Basically if you do them, you'll have an additional... maybe 5-10% advantage against wave enemies. It's more meant to be a way to expand the game's lore and to give specific advantages for certain waves / bosses. Most of the time is going to be spent on balancing, I'm relatively sure of that. The atmosphere I've definitely got nailed down though as you said. It's also why I'm adding difficulty settings, because it'll help with any balancing issues.
 
Level 13
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That sounds like a sensible thing to do. Since the 10 minute RPG period is "forced", if players partake in it and reap little reward, it might feel underwhelming unless every RPG period offers something that is vital for defense efforts. You shouldn't shy away from increasing the benefits IMO, if RPG time is 25% of the game time, that time spent should feel like it transfers to the defense aspect.

From experience, difficulty settings makes balancing harder. You should balance EVERYTHING around your standard difficulty because easier/harder difficulties will invalidate standard strategies and make others more useful (e.g. slows would be much more valuable on War Hero).
 
Level 14
Joined
Mar 27, 2008
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1,003
That sounds like a sensible thing to do. Since the 10 minute RPG period is "forced", if players partake in it and reap little reward, it might feel underwhelming unless every RPG period offers something that is vital for defense efforts. You shouldn't shy away from increasing the benefits IMO, if RPG time is 25% of the game time, that time spent should feel like it transfers to the defense aspect.

From experience, difficulty settings makes balancing harder. You should balance EVERYTHING around your standard difficulty because easier/harder difficulties will invalidate standard strategies and make others more useful (e.g. slows would be much more valuable on War Hero).
That's a good point, maybe I will add more benefits to the RPG function of the map. Yeah I'm definitely going to model everything around the first difficulty mode (no buffs), that way it won't be overblown. Balancing is going to take a LOT of work though and is probably what 50% of this game's development time is going to be spent on.

Also, +rep for helping me out.
 
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