Small Team Recruitment

[Thalassicus]

Project: Competitive Dungeon Crawl

Storm the Base

Map type: Competitive dungeon crawl / hero assault

Heroes assault a series of checkpoints dungeon-crawl style, defended by squads/swarms of the competing player team. It's an adaptation of existing work, so will be playable quickly after the GE's release. If this might interest you, read on!


======= Precursor Map =======

This will be a transition from a map worked on steadily since the start of Warcraft 3. It's been reviewed favorably by several people on various sites, including a staff member here, and gets positive feedback ingame, so seems to be going in the right direction. Personal skill and teamwork are emphasized and rewarded, and balance is fine-tuned. New players don't fall completely behind, however, as part of team rewards are split among the team. The lore of the setting is also closely followed, while still featuring a variety of playstyles and skills.

http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/maps-564/balins-tomb-2-8-08-a-79636/#post649330

Some screenshots here:
http://war3.incgamers.com/?p=mod&m=10222



======= Transitioning to SC2 =======

Here's the basic concept rolling around for this in Starcraft 2:

• Now a competitive team game, Teams A vs B.
• Set in Starcraft universe.
• Teamwork required to succeed, as in the original.
• Game mode is "assault" style, Team A progressing through the map, and Team B attempting to kill off Team A.
• Team A controls one Terran or Protoss hero per player, with hack-and-slash dungeon crawl gameplay against Team B, capturing checkpoints.
• Team B controls Zerg swarms, one squad per player.
• Once Team A reaches the end or the time runs out, the teams switch and the new assault team attempts to reach more checkpoints faster than the first team.
• Persistent gameplay, allowing players to build up their capability from one match to the next.

Planning work mostly completed on:

• Game modes (how the game will play out)
• Heroes
• Hero abilities

Not yet fully planned:

• Terrain
• Hero items
• Squad unit types
• Squad unit abilities

======= Early Design =======

Since there's a significant amount of pre-existing work to draw on from WC3, the map will likely be in a playable state early on, though take longer to incorporate the full potential of new SC2 features. Here's some thoughts of overall design stages:

1. Initial concept work and planning. Once enough editing capabilities are available with SC2 (such as release of the Galaxy Editor itself), time to move on to step 2.
2. Create a simple sandbox map, developing and testing heroes and their abilities.
3. Add squad warfare to sandbox, transitioning to heroes vs squads.
4. Shift to the full dungeon crawl style map, and begin the main development cycle, below.

======= Main Development =======

A typical development method. While actively working on the map, there's iterative development with short cycles, alternating between:

1. Make changes to map.
2. Test changes in private to catch critical gamestopper issues.
3. Playtest on battle.net with general public and write down potential changes.

Step 3 is usually hovered on for a week or so, unless a critical issue appears needing an immediate move to step 1. Whatever your own personal development method is, we can work out a way to share resources and sync up work.



======= Personal =======

Now that I've given some info on the basic concept of the map, here's some information about me personally, since knowing who you're working with is important in any sort of team. If my development style (points 1-3) is too jarring for you, we probably wouldn't team well together. You don't have to follow it yourself, as long as you're comfortable with the style on my end.

• Since this is not a job, I tend to have a casual, periodic development style. I intensely work for a few weeks or months, then alternate with a few weeks/months of focusing on other things in life. When active on the map, I edit and test anywhere between 20-50 hours a week, depending on how much free time is available. It's a lot of fun! Obviously for at least the first few months after enough editing tools become available for SC2, I'll be focusing on the map.
• Similarly, this wouldn't be like at a game development company where we work non-stop until the project's completed, then quit completely. Instead, it would be an on-and-off thing over a long period of time, editing and playtesting whenever we have time. Think of it more as a joint hobby.
• If you're interested in working on just some the initial planning and design for a while to see if this is something you'd enjoy, then heading off to other things, that's ok too. It's all just to have fun, and gain experience in programming / game design.
• This is my senior year of completing a software engineering major. The degree is a cross between computer science and business majors. I like working with teams and groups in all walks of life.
• I'm better at improving existing work than coming up with things totally from scratch, especially artistic things like terrain.
• Not experienced at computer-aided drawing/art, though I'm an experienced user of Photoshop's various tools for manipulating existing images. Very little experience/skill at skinning or model design.
• Experienced at programming, mostly C++, with some basic familiarity with python and java.
• I enjoy reading papers and watching presentations of well-known game developers like Wright, Meier, and Soren Johnson, to get ideas for good game development:
  • Impress the player within the first 15 minutes of gameplay.
  • Games should be easy to learn, difficult to master.
  • Any game is a series of interesting decisions. Always ensure the player has choices, but not so many choices they're overwhelming.
  • Always ask yourself when considering part of a game: is this fun?
  • Consider player psychology. Players who see 99% odds of success will expect to win 100 out of 100 times. Likewise, heroes, abilities or items that seem powerful will be chosen more often by players, even if they're mathematically less powerful than alternatives.
• I can provide information from the beta and test maps for anyone who doesn't have beta access.

 

[The World Is Flat]

Well, I like the map Balin's tomb, And I've played it a few times. The Idea is well thougth out and good. I Am not excellet with acual programming/icons/models ect. But I am excellent with ideas. I have a similar time schedule. I am also interested in learning Modeling/icons/programming. I am much, much, more of a concept/idea person, and i am pretty good at learning things quickly. (and apparently programming skills are not required for making scripting style maps.) So if you want somone like me to help out. I'm available. I'm also preetty good with terrain. but i won't be able to do a lot of play testing because of my limited internet. (I live on an organic vegtable farm in NY state, US)

 

[Thalassicus]

I've updated the post with some new information. What would be great is people who might have ideas about, or like to design:

• Terrain
• Hero items
• Squad unit types
• Squad unit abilities