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Mini-Mapping Contest #18 - Dungeon

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@Halithor That looks great! :D

Thanks! :) Your demo is looking pretty sweet too.

Thought I'd share a couple more WIP gifs to show it off a little more. Enjoy watching some footmen get tossed around :D
explodetrap2_reduced.gif
knockback_wall.gif
knockback_high_bounce.gif

The traps are some environmental effects that I'm going to include to add some chaos. Units are going to take damage as they hit walls or fall from too high.
 
@Halithor That looks great! :D

Here's another WIP from me, a small small preview of the combat system:


When I finish the tutorial I'll be able to describe it more clearly step by step in-game, but here's an attempt at describing the system:

Defence types and weaknesses
It's all based around meaningful duels where you have to know your opponents defence type in order to deal damage (blunt, strike, or thrust attack). Each attack also adds one particular stack (up to 5), and as your mana reaches 100 (through your attacks) - depending on your current stacks - you will deal additional blunt, strike or thrust damage. Shielded units have no weakness aside from finishers with blunt damage, so here you'll have to look at their amount of defence (1-5), which tell you the required number of stacks needed in a blunt finisher. In the video you see one red soldier (weak to thrust) who protects himself with a shield (weak to blunt finisher) and a defence of 2 (requires 2 stacks). As you perform the required finisher, his guard is broken, and he is returned to his original defence type, which is weak to thrust damage. There'll also be units that require finishers with thrust damage and strike damage in order to break their guards.

Parry to stay alive
Another thing to keep the combat engaging is the parry system, which at the moment works against all attack types, but there will of course be attacks that cannot be parried. There will also be opponents that can parry your attacks. Entering this parry stance will either drain their mana, only work against certain attack types, or be susceptible to a strong finisher.

Make use of additional tools
In order to build up strong finishers you want to avoid hitting 100 mana, as that resets the stack count. This is where the "Focus" ability comes in. This ability removes 50% of your mana at the cost of health.

Yet another useful tool is the "Quick Recover" ability, that removes the recovery time after each attack at the cost of a small portion of health. If you want to spam a certain attack type in quick succession, Quick Recover is really useful.

Lastly, which was hinted at in the video, if you select a unit when it's relatively close to you, your character will be selected instead as he turns towards his target. This allows you to quickly respond to approaching enemies with a parry or an attack of your own.

Future system (last one I promise)
There'll be yet another system on top of all this, which has to do with the color changes seen in the cloak. This is a system that will be unlocked as you progress through the map, so I'll leave it at that for now. Your cloak will not be as flashy in the beginning as it was in the video.

Sorry for the long post, I hope it made some sense at least. :D Just know that it feels reaaaally good to play

EDIT:
I noticed that I forgot to change the enemies' attack range. There is usually some distance between the enemy and the player, so that the spark upon a successful parry is created between the player character and the enemy
This looks cool! Can't wait to try it out!
Thanks! :) Your demo is looking pretty sweet too.

Thought I'd share a couple more WIP gifs to show it off a little more. Enjoy watching some footmen get tossed around :D

The traps are some environmental effects that I'm going to include to add some chaos. Units are going to take damage as they hit walls or fall from too high.
The bouncing is interesting. Does it bounce at 180 degrees if it hits a wall, or does it actually calculate the angle of impact?
 
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I calculates the angle of impact for everything it can, which is everything except walls. Walls are a little weird, since they're actually smooth, gradual slopes from one plane to the other on the actual terrain map (the model covers this, and you never path on them so it doesn't matter). So I do some faking it to give the walls a more vertical impact appearance.

I'm pretty happy with the effect and it's going to be a fun mechanism to base a lot of terrain and spell effects around.
 
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Here's another WIP from me
Looks interesting fight system,
if I may suggest: re-sellect your hero when enemy approaching, and player selected enemy: is not a good thing in my opinion.
At the end of your video there are soldeirs with divine (as you name it "shield") armor. I got an idea: maybe use as attachment some shield model - as the indicator what type of armor unit has. Then in combat, after breaking this shield, remove shield-model from unit. So player can see aromor type without selecting enemy unit and will be clear the shield was destroyed.
Good luck ;)
 
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@ZiBitheWand3r3r I realized that not everyone would like it, so I made it so you can turn the select thing on or off. :) Personally i prefer it, as all of the offensive abilities are based on angles.

Thanks for the suggestion! At the moment all shielded units have a defend animation and move slower than usual, so you don't have to select the units constantly to tell whether they are shielded/not shielded (I only did it in the video to show that the defence type did in fact change after a finisher). Shielded units also have unique sound and special effects.

A main focus has been readability, (which is why enemies have either a red, yellow or blue tint to hint at their weakness), so I will definitely keep your suggestion in mind. :)
 
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It's been quite on the thread for a while. So I wanted to share some more WIP images from my map. Here's some previews from my second "room". The hero simply needs to pull a lever, but the wizard who built this dungeon did not want to make it easy...

View attachment dodge1.gif
Some dangerous fire hazards that the hero needs to navigate.

View attachment jumpingpit.gif
What type of dungeon doesn't have dangerous pits of fire and death that the hero needs to cross!?

View attachment fallingpit.gif
And if you end up in the pit it's bad news.

Now onto the last room!
 
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It's been quite on the thread for a while. So I wanted to share some more WIP images from my map. Here's some previews from my second "room". The hero simply needs to pull a lever, but the wizard who built this dungeon did not want to make it easy...

View attachment 369571
Some dangerous fire hazards that the hero needs to navigate.

View attachment 369572
What type of dungeon doesn't have dangerous pits of fire and death that the hero needs to cross!?

View attachment 369573
And if you end up in the pit it's bad news.

Now onto the last room!

Your map looks incredibly charming! :D

Question: how elaborate can we make our tutorials without it counting as one of the three rooms? Like if I wanted to have combat encounters for example, or if I wanted the tutorial to include the events which brought the character to the dungeon.
 
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This is my first WIP playing around with the newer mouse mechanics in a combat test map. I'm working on unique abilities for each enemy, and I'm adding multiple projectiles fired at a time to have more complex enemies instead of spamming them like in the video. This is at least the general idea of one of the room types.
 
I'm sorry to say that I won't be completing this contest, and will give up.

The crashes really took away my motivation since I wasn't able to pinpoint exactly where they came from, and I spent way too long trying to troubleshoot it. I have many other things I am doing at the moment, so this has been heavily down-prioritized the past weeks.

I'm posting the map here in case anyone wants to dissect it. The terrain wasn't done, the lava was gonna be improved and a lot of filler doodads and other fancy structural models were gonna be placed. As it is now it's kinda bare. I haven't even started making the boss.
 

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Here's my third and final update, a small teaser I made for fun:
Looks very interesting! Reminds me of Dark Souls a bit with the flame intro and intricate combat. With how intense the combat is, it seems like paying attention to your tutorial is going to be a good idea :prazz:

Funny thing, while watching this I actually managed to discover a small sound bug!
Yeah, I recently learned how helpful it is to make videos of gameplay whether they're uploaded or not. They really give a good outside perspective of what could be fixed or tweaked.
 
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I recently came across a game crash that I can't fix. I'm still trying, but I feel like I've tried everything. Everything else works, but the game crashes after a cinematic in the void crystal room after defeating the dragon turtle in case anyone wants to give it a test. The map is only playable in version 1.31 as far as I know.
 

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Ah I lost my motivation over the holidays, so mine is only half complete. I'll be dropping out of this one. If anyone is interested in the knockback system I came up with, I'd love to discuss it.

Oh man, your entry looked great with that knockback system. It's a shame there are only 2 entries left.

Good luck to @Ungoliath and @Tickles.
 
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