The Settlers of Catan

[Saphire]

The Settlers of Catan

Hi, this is my first project and i would realy want to see it in game. I have been inspiered by all the Risk games that i have played, i that is why i see potensial in this particular project


The Map
I want to make it as much like the board game as possible, and if you haven played it, here is the start setup (working on this trigger, but need help)
u place the pieces (the larger six edge pieces in the pic below) upside down and place alphabetic carboard pieces on top (not in the pic, but theese have the alphabet on one side and numbers representing dice numbers on the other) and when you have place all (wich will then be allmost randomly placed because of the alphabetic numbers and the upside down recource pieces) you turn everything around and you have the game board for this round

Here is a view of the board game. currently i need help from some guy that is pretty good on textures, so that i can get the random in my setup trigger to spawn this types of recource textures in stead of the original wc3 ones. The textures would be:
Wood
Stone
Sheep
Clay
Wheath (or some sort of farmland thing )
Desert (unbuildable, the one with the black piece in the pic)

here is a pic of my map (not sure if i am going to use two islands)


thx for viewing, now i would really like input on how to do the game system (income, fighting, area takeover and such )

soo... i am reqriuting ppl for this project.

Current possitions:

Map director - Saphire
Advanced trigger\Jass - Open
gameplay designer - Open
Terrainer - Open
models and textures - Open

We all help and come with ideas to other peoples area of management

+rep on productive comment

 

[Black Crown]

Just wondering, So i don't have to google it; whats the point of the game? Like, what is the overall goal?

 

[Linaze]

I often play this board game with my brother, and we both find it really entertaining, therefore when I saw this thread, it caught my interest. Even though the rules of the game is very awesome, perhaps you should tweak them a bit to better fit for a wc3 map. Anyways, I think this could turn out really, really great if done correctly. I'll keep my eyes on this, and be assured that if I get any cool ideas, I'll post them directly.

 

[Saphire]

1#
The point of the game is originally to gain 12 points (you get one for villages, 2 for cities and difrent from event cards...) but in the wc3 version of the game, like Linaze mentions over i \ we have to tweak the rules to fit better.
If annyone have anny ideas, i would love to hear them cause this is one of my major problems :S

2#
agree, the game is very entertaining. i will try to tweak the rules to fit wc3 as long as my mapping skills are sufficent
hope to hear from you and your settlers-experienced ideas and maybe partition soon

 

[Aschy]

Yes I also have played it a lot, it spread like Wild Fire to all of my parents friends n' such. We have played with many variations of the rules. If I get any idea's Ill be sure to post em also.

 

[Saphire]

sounds great! How to do the gameplay (recources, fighting and building) is my main issues atm :S

 

[Chaos.]

Love that game. i actually started to make it for wc3 like a year ago but got bored of it. too much work for a game that probably wouldnt get that big of a hit on the hive. and i got better ideas for a map so i just deleted it from WE and moved on. but if you make it i for sure will dl it.

Heres how i did some of the stuff just to give you ideas.

I used the farm as the settlement
the townhall as the City
There is a brick road in the Ultimate terraining map that works well for the road
The Ultimate Terraining Map 3.0 - Wc3campaigns
Make little boxes of a terrain(dirt or something) on the corner of each area(the spot that you will place the settlement) and the same tile along the edges of the areas(where you would place the roads).
Then dont use that terrain any where else on the map. (just so that the player knows exactly where he can or cant place the settlement\roads. Less confusion for noobs, and it looks better if you seperate the terrain of the buildible areas form the terrain from the non buildible areas)
in the center of these buildible areas place a circle of power(just like you have)
Then give each player a peasant. Change there movement height so that they dont get stuck around the settlement or doodads and stuff like that. Give them inventory(remove build ability)

Create 3 items based off the tiny castle item. Make one build farm(settlement), one build townhall(city), and one build road(custom mod from UTM above). To start off, give the peasant 1 settlement item and one road item. then give the next player the same and then the next and so on.

Resourses- what i did for resourses was i actually use models for the resourses:
Resourse - Model
Wheat -Wheat bunch
Wood - Bundel of lumber
Stone -Lorderon summer rocks
Sheep -Sheep unit
Clay - i found a brick form the ulitmate terrain map and exported it
Use a unit model and replace the model file with those.

I made a 4 square island. each island is for a player and is placed in the corners of the map . Everytime you get a resourse that resourse spawns at the players resourse area. Create a circle of power in the center of the area. you can then click on a resourse and move it to the circle of power. once you have moved enough resourses in to the circle to create something, a screen pops up saying somthing like Do you want to build a settlement. Then if you click yes your peasant will recieve the item item of that building. And is able to place it somewhere.

I cant really remember anything else that i did. But i hope that it will help you.

Also consider this. When playing on battle.net it would be really boring sitting and waiting for your turn, especially if you got some newbs on that have no idea how to play and just sit there for ever trying to figure it out. so here are 2 options to make it more fun:

1- Have a time limit of like 5 minutes per player. and make some triggers that after the time runs out the player passes.

2- Or you could just remove turns and set the dice to spin like every 3 minutes or something like that. This will probably be the easier choice since it envolves alot less triiger(you dont have to worry about making trigger for the turns) I recommend this option but its up to you. this way will be alot more fast paced then if you were to have turns.
can you explain abit more on what you mean by fighting and area take over that isnt in the board game it sounds like you trying to tie this game into risk.
And is that the actual finished map. because its way to plain and the playing island has got to be ALOT bigger especially if you going to incorperate some fighting. The places are just too close together to fight each other.
What i did for the terrain was i made a huge island and for each terrain i gave it doodads that go with the resource. Like for the wood resourse area i put in a forest. It would make your map look alot more proffesional and more well done then just having circles of power. Sry but the way you have it now just doesnt look that appealling to me.


I hope this helps you. cant wait to play it. If i think of any more ideas i will post or if you have some questions, i just might be able to answer them, sry dont know how to trigger so cant help you there but i can give ideas if i have any.

 

[Saphire]

o0 nice reply +rep

ok, loads of good help here. I think i will go for the same setup, but with realtime. This has in fact been my plan all along, but i didnt know how to do it
so i think the die will roll every 3-5 minutes (have to balance it some time probably )

Just wondering, could you prehaps make the terrain for me? Looks like you still have the terrain in your head pretty clearly.
And i suck pritty much at terraining, tho this terrain is not serious. This terrain is just so that i could start triggering

map update will probably come soon (got loads of ideas here )

 

[Chaos.]

Well i am currently busy making my Campaign so i cant give you a good quality island with good terrain(would take for ever) but heres a start for you. In the top left island i included the resourses in model form. ive given you a base terrain for each of the 6 terrains. You just need to do the same to all the others. Then i just made a terrain outline for the the other tiles so that you know what terrain goes where(i used the map setup from the back of the box of my settler game) And ive added a few other things in it aswell that i cant remember right now. I think that your idea of the circle of power for the roads and settlement area works alot better then my idea. And although by adding in terrain you cant do the randomization of resourse areas i personally think it looks more like settlers when you actually when you add in terrain.
View attachment Settlers of Catan.w3x

Note that this was very rushed so if you want to make any changements or improvements to the terrain, feel free

 

[Saphire]

okey, this looks very good! thx alot.
but i thaught that i need a randimization system for the terrain, because if i dont, some areas will allways be better thatn other to build at :S that makes the game uneven...

here is a plan i thatught of:
i make a epic map and just mapp it to be a huge gameboard (not a island, but with docs at the edges) I make it so big that fighting with soliders (when you have one city) will be possible, adding a new feature to the realtime settlers game. I think i need this to make the game intresting (Either a huuge map, with more recource areas. Or a island, with more original rules and randomization of terrain)
The huge map idea makes more room for realtime battles and such..
What do people think of this two ideas, wich will be better for wc3?
at the moment i see more advantages with the huge map idea

 

[Chaos.]

well by making an epic map like that with the fighting and all that it kinda takes away the whole idea of the settlers board game. your turning this game into more of a colinize an area and destroy the others kind of map. But i think that if you do a good job on it, it would turn out to still be pretty fun. Although i think that something like that has already been done where you have to colinize an areea and attack the other bases. But if you stuck to the settlers game ideas then it could be a great map.

If your gonna do that idea then , if you dont have them already, you should get The 2 expansions to the settlers and learn to play them. they have many new features that would make your map more interesting.

Another idea that i just thought of(if you want to keep the board game feel to it) but would involve alot of triggering is to keep the outline of the island that i gave you remove the terrain and create triggers to place doodads in each area. this way you could still keep the randomization of it but still make each area look better.

The triggers would be something like -If tile variation equals _____ then place doodad-tree in region _____. You would have to make a trigger like this for each doodad that you place in each resourse area though, meaning ALOT of triggering but the end result would be awesome. Although you wont be able to add in the terrain itself but you could still create some decent resource areas.

This way it sticks to the settlers board game style.
And this is something that hasent been done before. your other idea has been done.

 

[Saphire]

hmm.. that is true :S damn...
i love the settlers, but i just cant see the real fun in just importing it to wc3... too much wait for noobs to not leave, if there are noobs it might be boring for the rest.
the chances of getting a full game in BNET will be small... i think.
here is a better explanation of my idea:
the map is generally the same, but it is zoomed in so that only the tradedocs are juust visible around the edges (rivers coming in from the ocean or something^^) and the big map is actually the board game lookalike. then each recource area is bigger and i could implement som realtime fights or something, just to make it intresting for a bigger audience?...
or should i just do a import of the board game?
i am in a pinch cant decide...

 

[Chaos.]

meh. your right. if theres noobs the game will suck. i think that you should make a huge island and make it so that you have to harvest the resourse. And in order to harvest them you have to make an out post near that resource. Make seperate areas for the resources. make sure that the resourses have areas all over the map. But try to keep as much to the style as you can. Like make it so that you need like 300 brick, 300 wood, 300 grain, and 300 wool, to make an settlement. and then from that settlement you can make upgades and more buildings to increase your city. (i think that you should definetly learn how to play cities and knights if you going to do this one. An idea that i just thought of is to start each player off with with 2 wagon that has an ability to turn a settlement. and give the settlement the ability to build stuff and that way you could expand your base but still kind of keeping to the settlers idea where you can only build off settlements and roads.

Here is a map that is very similar to this idea (your just going to have to make one better then it. lol )
Genesis of Empires II v1.10.4 - The Hive Workshop - A Warcraft III Modding Site

 

[Saphire]

sounds fine, i think this is the way i will do it
just got a mapper from the hive to do the mapping
so hopefully it will be nice, then i will do the triggering, and i can add features to the game later on as i feel i need it.

 

[Saphire]

hi again, little updating time here...

Things i just finished:

• Build Triggers
• Fix so that when buying one road, you can only build one. same with the other two buildings ^^

Things i need input on:

• How to do the income... :S
• How to do the fighting
• what should the victory conditions be?

 

[Chaos.]

for the income i cant help you because i dont do triggers that much.

for the fighting use the cities and knights style. where it where you buy a militia(first stage) and after you get your settlement going you can upgrade them to footman and then later knights. but make itso that you have to build quite a bit before making knights so that all ppl can have a chance to build a decent settlement. and so that is no rushing.

for the winning conditions i personally think that you should stick to the board game. with victory points.(but make it so that you have to get like 30 points to win) you can recieve points by.

-for each settlement
-for certain special buildings that you can create (make a massive tech tree including buildings like libraries and schools and stuff like that) there are alot of ideas for extra buildings in the cities and knights expansion.
-for destroying an enemy settlement.
-an idea from the expansions is to include an bonus quest. there are barbarians and pirates that come and attack the island about every 10 minutes. when they come every one on the island teams up to kill them. the player with the most barbarian\pirate kills gets a victory point.

thats all i can think of right now.

Another idea that i just thought of is for the trading. in each settlement you can create a trading post. make. make for icons having 4? and then an arrow pointing to a resource. this way you can trade like 400 of one resourse for 100 of another. and have special areas near the merchant ships so that if you place a trading post there then you get the reduced trading costs.

also dont forget about the robber. you could do this by making a bandit unit. when he goes near your settlement if its not protected then he steal like 100 of one of your resources.

 

[Saphire]

-for each settlement
-for certain special buildings that you can create (make a massive tech tree including buildings like libraries and schools and stuff like that) there are alot of ideas for extra buildings in the cities and knights expansion.
-for destroying an enemy settlement.
-an idea from the expansions is to include an bonus quest. there are barbarians and pirates that come and attack the island about every 10 minutes. when they come every one on the island teams up to kill them. the player with the most barbarian\pirate kills gets a victory point.

I LOVE the ideas in this pose
the one with barbarians are good, and easy to trigger too...
... they are all great
+reppp
As for the trading area, i allready made one

in the upper left corner, all the players have one area each. They can from there teleport to the trade area (only two players there at the same time, and it is made so that people can not trick other players at a trade event )

 

[Chaos.]

sounds good. cant wait to play it. if i have more ideas i will post them.

 

[Saphire]

sweet

 

[Aschy]

Did you add trading posts?, this also only works if you have resource trading with the bank remember when you trade like 4 wood for 1 sheep?

But remember how you can build on resource trading posts and have the cost of trading with the bank greatly reduced, like 2 wood for 1 anything.. or 3 of anything for anything.

Unless the way your doing resources is really different

 

[Saphire]

i have added the 2:1 and 3:1 trading posts (need to do the triggers that make them work tho ^^ but that should not be a problem)
the 4:1 i will add
thx for input!...