Metal Gear Solid Themed Campaign

[Reznor]

I liked how the blademaster's wind walk ability was used for that stealth section in the second chapter of Rexxar's campaign in Frozen Throne, and I thought it'd be great to have a stealth-based campaign using that ability as well as others in a strategic, stealth-oriented way with some RPG elements. The hero's spells would be wind walk, sleep, maybe shadow meld, and a nuke that stuns an enemy for a short time. There could also be collectible items like sniper rifles with limited ammo (like the item is a sniper rifle with 20 or so charges and a small cooldown working as a "reload time" between bullets) that could one-shot enemy guards, as well as health and mana regens in the form of combat rations. Maybe even incorporate shops that sell you items to increase your stealth abilities like bigger mana pool, permanent (or temporary) invisibility, and ammunition for various weapons. Some other weapons that could be included aside from sniper rifles are pistols with silencers, landmines (goblin landmines would be perfect for this), poison dart guns, and maybe BFG shots costing a premium because they do AoE and insta-kill enemies. You could also buy weapon attachments (scopes, silencers, armor-piercing rounds) to increase damage or firing range. They work similar to magic rings and other items in the base game, where they only boost stats for as long as they're equipped. I know Blizzard kinda delved into stealth when you played as Nova in Wings of Liberty, but I'd like to see even more of it. I chose Metal Gear Solid because it's considered one of the best stealth games out there, right next to Dishonored. A lot of people like Metal Gear Solid, so I'm surprised the community hasn't churned out one of these maps yet. I haven't ever seen Solid Snake in a Warcraft 3 map, so anybody who wants to give it a shot, please let me know. I'd love to play your work upon completion.

 

[noob]

Since you described it you can probably make it.
There is a bunch of warcraft 3 stealth maps but usually they do not give weapons in order to avoid the player just going in and rampaging.
Unless you plan to make the game as hard as commando and start having hundreds of opponents after a few missions and having the player need to manage 4 or more different things at once constantly at which point level design plans around weapons (that is still limited because it makes a lot of noise and you are messed up massively if the alarm rings).
It is ambitious to try to make a stealth game with efficient weapons and keep it hard but by trying to do so you might learn a lot about level design.

 

[Reznor]

Yeah. I'm actually terrible at mapmaking. I've only made melee maps, and as a mac user I can't use the world editor anyways because the newer patches don't support the software anymore. I just wanted to throw it out there in case somebody might be inspired by the idea and wouldn't mind making it for me. Is there a website I can go to like Fiverr to do commissions like this, or better yet, have somebody make maps for me for free? I could just be a consultant, but somebody else will do the leg work of map and item design. I was thinking of making the weapons overpowered, but the hero unit itself having very little health and armor (just like Snake has, making hand to hand combat impossible), making it a necessity to be smart. The game will be relatively easy if you play it the right way, but if you lack subtlety and planning, things can go awry very quickly. As far as alarms go, I hadn't really considered that. I was planning on using just normal enemy aggro AI. But I do like the idea of having a Dungeons of Dalaran-esque trap and alarm system. I was thinking a lot of the maps should have extensive ventilation shafts and alternate routes to make stealth easier. Maybe even giving the hero the blink ability late game to traverse the maps easier. In fact, maybe do away with auto attack in general and only have the ability to attack through items. That means that when you're out of ammunition for all your weapons, you're defenseless. It could also be dialogue-centric, where you overhear bits of the story by spying on enemy guards. It could also be possible for there to be multiple endings depending on if you decide to switch factions and instead of sabotaging your enemy, you secretly help them. In the military, information is on a need to know basis, so it might be interesting if you can overhear and steal top secret information/documents that changes your outlook on not just your faction, but the enemy faction as well. What I'm thinking is if you take heed to the dialogue of enemy units, you end up siding with them as you find out that they're actually the good guys, and the "good ending" is defecting from the faction you're a part of. You mentioned there were other stealth maps out there. Can you list some of them? I'm interested in checking them out.

 

[noob]

Yeah. I'm actually terrible at mapmaking. I've only made melee maps, and as a mac user I can't use the world editor anyways because the newer patches don't support the software anymore. I just wanted to throw it out there in case somebody might be inspired by the idea and wouldn't mind making it for me. Is there a website I can go to like Fiverr to do commissions like this, or better yet, have somebody make maps for me for free? I could just be a consultant, but somebody else will do the leg work of map and item design. I was thinking of making the weapons overpowered, but the hero unit itself having very little health and armor (just like Snake has, making hand to hand combat impossible), making it a necessity to be smart. The game will be relatively easy if you play it the right way, but if you lack subtlety and planning, things can go awry very quickly. As far as alarms go, I hadn't really considered that. I was planning on using just normal enemy aggro AI. But I do like the idea of having a Dungeons of Dalaran-esque trap and alarm system. I was thinking a lot of the maps should have extensive ventilation shafts and alternate routes to make stealth easier. Maybe even giving the hero the blink ability late game to traverse the maps easier. In fact, maybe do away with auto attack in general and only have the ability to attack through items. That means that when you're out of ammunition for all your weapons, you're defenseless. It could also be dialogue-centric, where you overhear bits of the story by spying on enemy guards. It could also be possible for there to be multiple endings depending on if you decide to switch factions and instead of sabotaging your enemy, you secretly help them. In the military, information is on a need to know basis, so it might be interesting if you can overhear and steal top secret information/documents that changes your outlook on not just your faction, but the enemy faction as well. What I'm thinking is if you take heed to the dialogue of enemy units, you end up siding with them as you find out that they're actually the good guys, and the "good ending" is defecting from the faction you're a part of. You mentioned there were other stealth maps out there. Can you list some of them? I'm interested in checking them out.

I never told you that you were bad at map making only that by giving correct weapons you probably needed to make a game that looks more like commando(so you now have an additional reference for your designing work).
If you are not doing the info dump for yourself but for trying to get help for your project then go in the project recruitment thread and write your ideas in a more orderly way (use sections) and possibly make a beta for your map (does not needs all the features: the core gameplay will already interest people if you are good at game design).

 

[Reznor]

Oh, ok. Sounds good. I had another idea for a campaign involving the Protoss arriving in Lordaeron to take on Diablo. You might be able to find it in my post archive if you're curious. And I knew you weren't calling me terrible, I meant that I haven't spent nearly enough time reading the materials to figure out how campaigns work. I only messed around a little with world editor, to the point where I knew how to create custom units and have them drop items. That's the most complicated thing I know how to do in world editor. I do not know how to set up victory triggers, I feel like my map design would be very linear in comparison to maps I've seen from pros like Deicide and Tomoraider. I've played a lot of other people's work, so I have a better idea of how a good map is made than I did before, where I just made dungeons in straight lines and put way too many creeps in them. I also used the world editor for even more random crap like being able to play as Kil'Jaeden or Archimonde because the base game didn't allow that. It was still fun to experience the many facets of the game that you wouldn't normally get to see. I would like to recruit somebody with experience making maps, hell it'd be an honor if Tomoraider or Deicide would personally take the time to make a map for me, because I know if it's their work, it'll be good. However, I should point out that their maps are heavy on macro and base-building, so they might not do a good job on a single unit, RPG experience. It might be out of their wheelhouse. I use Hiveworkshop almost exclusively for downloading other people's work and posting my ideas on the forums, most of which enter the territory of "shower thoughts" and can be kinda cheesy or downright terrible if not executed properly.

 

[Reznor]

And yeah, I do have issues with formatting/segmenting ideas because I come up with new elements and improvements as I'm writing my posts. So I'd need to go back and really think about how I want to say everything. That's why a lot of my posts look like a disorganized mess.