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- Nov 5, 2008
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WCB - Custom Race Map
I will now post a very long post that describes my project. There are three "chapters" in this post. The first chapter describes the mechanics in the map. The second chapter describes some gameplay-philosophy and in the third chapter I present one of the games playable races. I like to cover things deeply, but if you feel this is to much for you to read, then just read
about the gamemechanics and the conclusion at the end. There are some pictures in the end aswell
Introduction
I have created a custom race map called WCB. The map has
some minor gameplay modifications to it that seperates
it from an ordinary melee map. (Besides the custom races
of couse) It is not a complicated map. It does not
feature a lot of triggers or settings. It is focused on
a simple gameplay and hopefully in the long run, a good
and creative balance between the races.
Much of the map have been made due to help I have got
from the Hiveworkshop-forums, where people have provided triggers and
other stuff for me. But I can not complete this project
on my own, I need feedback, ideas and help from people
here on Hiveworkshop. If you would like to corporate
with me to create this map, I will at the end of this
long post describe what things that needs to be fixed on
the map. Hopefully is there something you feel that you
can contribute with
Economics in WCB
There are two resources in WCB:
Gold
Lumber
Gold is gathered from the goldmines in the middle of the map.
Each race has a caravan-unit that travels to the goldmine and back to
the mainbuilding. Each delivery gives a huge amount of
gold to the player.
Lumber is gathered by ordinary workers. There is not
much trees in the base in the beginning, so the player
needs to put up "lumbermills" near their bases to get
more lumber to harvest.
All units costs mostly gold.
Buildings and caravans costs mostly lumber.
The Main Building
Players starts with the ordinary 5 workers, 1 caravan and a townhall.
Players can only have 1 main building and the main building
can not be rebuilt. The main building recives the
resources collected by the caravans. It also trains
workers and caravans. It is not a super-building, it's a
standard townhall that just needs to be protected.
Techtree
Players reach more advanced units and upgrades by
building a number of the same race-specific
techbuilding. For now, I use the races different
"lumbermills" to work as tech. Right now, to be able to
build the most advanced units and buildings you need to
have 4 "lumbermills" in play. This also enables players
to harass each others lumbermills to prevent them from
climbing to high up the techtree-ladder.
The Nights
The nights in WCB are darker then the ones in TFT.
Units see far in daylight (1800 sightrange) but during
the night most of them see 600 sightrange. This makes it
possible to ambush each other during the night. It also
makes it harder for ranged units to be used effective
since they can not see far. But of couse, if you have
vision over your enemy then you can shoot at him and he
can not shoot back. If you are paranoid, use your siege
weapons to fire in the darkness..
Almost all units heals during nighttime and nothing
during daytime. So you need to kill the damaged enemy
units before the night, otherwise they will regenerate
to full HP.
Heroes
There are no heroes. Perhaps do I add them later if they are needed.
A key in my mapmaking is that everything shall be easy
to see, easy to understand. I don't need any advance
cool spells with lots of effects, I want to keep it
simple. I mean, look at Starcraft, I think it is the
best RTS-game ever. Why? Because the game has gameplay,
it has soul. Everything is in a relation to each other.
Zealots have no cool abilities, they are simple. But
when your Zealots charge the enemy units, you get
excited. When your Scourge are about to hit the enemy
Science Vessel, you get pumped. When you throw a good
psi-storm on a bunch of Hydras you feel like God. I want
to encourage that, I want to give players oppurturnities
to stretch their own personal abilities beyond their
level! I want players to constantly walk on daggers: "If
he throws that spell on my units, I have two seconds to
dodge it otherwise my units are dead." That is the kind
of game I want to do, where the coolness and awesomness
of the game is determined by the way you act in response
to your opponent. It's like a dance. I'm like a madman,
crawling around the dancefloor!
My goal is that players shall get many opputurnities to
weaken each other, many chanses to strike.
The golden way in most RTS-games is to kill your enemy
by weaking his economy. Since the economy in WCB is out
on the field I think that it will open up for
interesting games, making it harder for players to
"turtle". If you leave your enemies caravans alone, he
will grow strong. If you leave your own caravans alone,
they will be killed. In the meantime, you need to
protect your base so your lumberworkers and your
buildings don't get attacked. AND you need to weaken his
base so he does not get to strong...
I want WCB to be more focused on armies, bases and map-control.
Your task is to manouver your armies, hold territories, manage your
resources, build your base, micro your units to win the combats and to attack at the right spots! In the long run you shall make the
better descision and have the best control to win the game.
I think that heroes takes away the focus from this
simple concept. Or rather, TFT gives Heroes a very
important role. You can not win the game with just a
hero, you need to do other things aswell. But a powerful
hero is the best weapon in the game, and if you spend
time leveling your hero, while your opponent does not,
you will most likely come out on top in the end.
I want other elements in WCB to be important, I want to
give players other methods to use to come out on top to
each other.
CONCLUSION
I have created the map and the races from
skins/models/icons I have found on this site. This means
that the ideas I had from the beginning has been mixed
with what material there actually is to base the ideas
upon. And the result is 3 different races and they
are around 1 MB each, making the map around 3 MB big.
But, I have created the basics for every race, not
throwing in complicated units yet. I want to keep the
races clean and as the beta-tests goes on, more advanced
units can be added to further add depth to the map.
My three steps to completing the map:
- Fixing the World Map
- Fixing the triggers. ( I have created some triggers thats needs to be fixed so they work correctly)
- Edit and create the last models.
- Setting up two races, importing all models/skins
and creating beta-stats for the units
Then it is time for beta test!
Along the line, I need ideas from you people! Ideas about features or units or mechanics that might be added to the map. Later on, I will post specific questions to you, but feel free to comment on this long post in the forums below.
I wonder if there are any mapdesigners here who would like to create the worldmap for WCB? I have only created a very simple map that is not goodlooking or balanced at all. If you are intressted, PM me and I will send you a few guidelines about the map, but otherwise you can more or less create the world as you like.
I also need help by people who would like to edit some models for me. PM me if you are interested.
I will now post a very long post that describes my project. There are three "chapters" in this post. The first chapter describes the mechanics in the map. The second chapter describes some gameplay-philosophy and in the third chapter I present one of the games playable races. I like to cover things deeply, but if you feel this is to much for you to read, then just read
about the gamemechanics and the conclusion at the end. There are some pictures in the end aswell
Introduction
I have created a custom race map called WCB. The map has
some minor gameplay modifications to it that seperates
it from an ordinary melee map. (Besides the custom races
of couse) It is not a complicated map. It does not
feature a lot of triggers or settings. It is focused on
a simple gameplay and hopefully in the long run, a good
and creative balance between the races.
Much of the map have been made due to help I have got
from the Hiveworkshop-forums, where people have provided triggers and
other stuff for me. But I can not complete this project
on my own, I need feedback, ideas and help from people
here on Hiveworkshop. If you would like to corporate
with me to create this map, I will at the end of this
long post describe what things that needs to be fixed on
the map. Hopefully is there something you feel that you
can contribute with
Economics in WCB
There are two resources in WCB:
Gold
Lumber
Gold is gathered from the goldmines in the middle of the map.
Each race has a caravan-unit that travels to the goldmine and back to
the mainbuilding. Each delivery gives a huge amount of
gold to the player.
Lumber is gathered by ordinary workers. There is not
much trees in the base in the beginning, so the player
needs to put up "lumbermills" near their bases to get
more lumber to harvest.
All units costs mostly gold.
Buildings and caravans costs mostly lumber.
The Main Building
Players starts with the ordinary 5 workers, 1 caravan and a townhall.
Players can only have 1 main building and the main building
can not be rebuilt. The main building recives the
resources collected by the caravans. It also trains
workers and caravans. It is not a super-building, it's a
standard townhall that just needs to be protected.
Techtree
Players reach more advanced units and upgrades by
building a number of the same race-specific
techbuilding. For now, I use the races different
"lumbermills" to work as tech. Right now, to be able to
build the most advanced units and buildings you need to
have 4 "lumbermills" in play. This also enables players
to harass each others lumbermills to prevent them from
climbing to high up the techtree-ladder.
The Nights
The nights in WCB are darker then the ones in TFT.
Units see far in daylight (1800 sightrange) but during
the night most of them see 600 sightrange. This makes it
possible to ambush each other during the night. It also
makes it harder for ranged units to be used effective
since they can not see far. But of couse, if you have
vision over your enemy then you can shoot at him and he
can not shoot back. If you are paranoid, use your siege
weapons to fire in the darkness..
Almost all units heals during nighttime and nothing
during daytime. So you need to kill the damaged enemy
units before the night, otherwise they will regenerate
to full HP.
Heroes
There are no heroes. Perhaps do I add them later if they are needed.
A key in my mapmaking is that everything shall be easy
to see, easy to understand. I don't need any advance
cool spells with lots of effects, I want to keep it
simple. I mean, look at Starcraft, I think it is the
best RTS-game ever. Why? Because the game has gameplay,
it has soul. Everything is in a relation to each other.
Zealots have no cool abilities, they are simple. But
when your Zealots charge the enemy units, you get
excited. When your Scourge are about to hit the enemy
Science Vessel, you get pumped. When you throw a good
psi-storm on a bunch of Hydras you feel like God. I want
to encourage that, I want to give players oppurturnities
to stretch their own personal abilities beyond their
level! I want players to constantly walk on daggers: "If
he throws that spell on my units, I have two seconds to
dodge it otherwise my units are dead." That is the kind
of game I want to do, where the coolness and awesomness
of the game is determined by the way you act in response
to your opponent. It's like a dance. I'm like a madman,
crawling around the dancefloor!
My goal is that players shall get many opputurnities to
weaken each other, many chanses to strike.
The golden way in most RTS-games is to kill your enemy
by weaking his economy. Since the economy in WCB is out
on the field I think that it will open up for
interesting games, making it harder for players to
"turtle". If you leave your enemies caravans alone, he
will grow strong. If you leave your own caravans alone,
they will be killed. In the meantime, you need to
protect your base so your lumberworkers and your
buildings don't get attacked. AND you need to weaken his
base so he does not get to strong...
I want WCB to be more focused on armies, bases and map-control.
Your task is to manouver your armies, hold territories, manage your
resources, build your base, micro your units to win the combats and to attack at the right spots! In the long run you shall make the
better descision and have the best control to win the game.
I think that heroes takes away the focus from this
simple concept. Or rather, TFT gives Heroes a very
important role. You can not win the game with just a
hero, you need to do other things aswell. But a powerful
hero is the best weapon in the game, and if you spend
time leveling your hero, while your opponent does not,
you will most likely come out on top in the end.
I want other elements in WCB to be important, I want to
give players other methods to use to come out on top to
each other.
Now I will introduce the basics of the first race I have created: The Goblins.
Note: Nothing is final. There is a tech-tree picture attached.
Short introduction to the Goblin Race:
An offensive race, a combination of explosives, melee
units and dirty tricks. Can produce units anywhere on
the field to easy reinfore you army or by sending it to
harass the enemy. A Goblin player can easy put the
preassure on the enemy and thus get map control. The
Goblins are like a plague, there are always Goblin units
and buildings plopping up anywhere in the map.
Long introduction to the goblin race:
The Goblin Town Hall - Trains Workers, Caravans and War
Caravans. Recives Gold and Lumber. You can only have 1
of this buildings and it can not be rebuilt. If you lose
it, then you can not recieve more gold from your
caravans and no more Workers can be trained.
Lumberpit - Works as expansions because they recive
gathered lumber. They also contains most of the
upgrades. You need many of these buildings to "climb" up
the tech-tree.
Worker - Harvest Lumber and build buildings. In late
game can they mount rockets to become Rocket
Riders. Workers can be transformed into Goblins. Just
load some of them into War Caravans to transform them
into Goblins. This makes it easy to quickly produce
large armies.
Caravan - A unit that travels across the map to gather
gold from Goldmines.
War Caravan - Mobile Barrack, Trains Goblins. If you
load workers into them they are transformed into Goblins
aswell. An upgrade gives War Caravans a Phoenix-Fire
ability which every 10 seconds shoot a burning bomb at
random enemy unit, igniting them and burning them to death.
damage. You don't want to attack these beasts with one
unit at a time!
Goblin - Basic melee unit. Are trained from war
Caravans, which means that these units can be purchased
anywhere on the map, makeing it easy for the Goblin
player to reinfore his army.
Beast Pit - The "real" barrack building. Trains Wolf
Riders and Barbarians.
Wolf Rider - Fast short ranged unit. Throws spears.
One of the fastest unit in the game, can easily raid
enemy Workers or Caravans.
Barbarian - Heavy Melee unit. I have not yet decided
which role in the race it shall have. Probably slow,
very High Armor and High HP-regeneration. These units
can absorb loads of damage.
Goblin Workshop - Trains the mechanical units.
Goblin Mortar Team - My favourite unit in WC3, but these
are faster and have longer range so you can siege from
annoying places. But remember, when it is night they can
not see far. They also have slower missile speed, so if
your opponent is quick he can aviod the missiles.
Goblin "Air-Unit" - Shoots slow rockets at enemy units,
dealing high damage but these rockets can be outmicroed.
Can cast Smog! which covers an area with a dirtcloud,
preventing units inside the cloud to attack and move
very slow.
Explosive-Hut - Is a kind of defensive tower that only works if Workers are loaded into them. The main use of this building is to load
Workers in it, converting them into Rocket Riders.
Rocket Riders is a ground-unit that don't live long, but
they travel fast and explode when they reach an enemy
unit. They can of course be shoot before they reach
there target. With good micro, you can avoid enemy missiles and snipe important enemy units/buildings.
Note: Nothing is final. There is a tech-tree picture attached.
Short introduction to the Goblin Race:
An offensive race, a combination of explosives, melee
units and dirty tricks. Can produce units anywhere on
the field to easy reinfore you army or by sending it to
harass the enemy. A Goblin player can easy put the
preassure on the enemy and thus get map control. The
Goblins are like a plague, there are always Goblin units
and buildings plopping up anywhere in the map.
Long introduction to the goblin race:
The Goblin Town Hall - Trains Workers, Caravans and War
Caravans. Recives Gold and Lumber. You can only have 1
of this buildings and it can not be rebuilt. If you lose
it, then you can not recieve more gold from your
caravans and no more Workers can be trained.
Lumberpit - Works as expansions because they recive
gathered lumber. They also contains most of the
upgrades. You need many of these buildings to "climb" up
the tech-tree.
Worker - Harvest Lumber and build buildings. In late
game can they mount rockets to become Rocket
Riders. Workers can be transformed into Goblins. Just
load some of them into War Caravans to transform them
into Goblins. This makes it easy to quickly produce
large armies.
Caravan - A unit that travels across the map to gather
gold from Goldmines.
War Caravan - Mobile Barrack, Trains Goblins. If you
load workers into them they are transformed into Goblins
aswell. An upgrade gives War Caravans a Phoenix-Fire
ability which every 10 seconds shoot a burning bomb at
random enemy unit, igniting them and burning them to death.
damage. You don't want to attack these beasts with one
unit at a time!
Goblin - Basic melee unit. Are trained from war
Caravans, which means that these units can be purchased
anywhere on the map, makeing it easy for the Goblin
player to reinfore his army.
Beast Pit - The "real" barrack building. Trains Wolf
Riders and Barbarians.
Wolf Rider - Fast short ranged unit. Throws spears.
One of the fastest unit in the game, can easily raid
enemy Workers or Caravans.
Barbarian - Heavy Melee unit. I have not yet decided
which role in the race it shall have. Probably slow,
very High Armor and High HP-regeneration. These units
can absorb loads of damage.
Goblin Workshop - Trains the mechanical units.
Goblin Mortar Team - My favourite unit in WC3, but these
are faster and have longer range so you can siege from
annoying places. But remember, when it is night they can
not see far. They also have slower missile speed, so if
your opponent is quick he can aviod the missiles.
Goblin "Air-Unit" - Shoots slow rockets at enemy units,
dealing high damage but these rockets can be outmicroed.
Can cast Smog! which covers an area with a dirtcloud,
preventing units inside the cloud to attack and move
very slow.
Explosive-Hut - Is a kind of defensive tower that only works if Workers are loaded into them. The main use of this building is to load
Workers in it, converting them into Rocket Riders.
Rocket Riders is a ground-unit that don't live long, but
they travel fast and explode when they reach an enemy
unit. They can of course be shoot before they reach
there target. With good micro, you can avoid enemy missiles and snipe important enemy units/buildings.
CONCLUSION
I have created the map and the races from
skins/models/icons I have found on this site. This means
that the ideas I had from the beginning has been mixed
with what material there actually is to base the ideas
upon. And the result is 3 different races and they
are around 1 MB each, making the map around 3 MB big.
But, I have created the basics for every race, not
throwing in complicated units yet. I want to keep the
races clean and as the beta-tests goes on, more advanced
units can be added to further add depth to the map.
My three steps to completing the map:
- Fixing the World Map
- Fixing the triggers. ( I have created some triggers thats needs to be fixed so they work correctly)
- Edit and create the last models.
- Setting up two races, importing all models/skins
and creating beta-stats for the units
Then it is time for beta test!
Along the line, I need ideas from you people! Ideas about features or units or mechanics that might be added to the map. Later on, I will post specific questions to you, but feel free to comment on this long post in the forums below.
I wonder if there are any mapdesigners here who would like to create the worldmap for WCB? I have only created a very simple map that is not goodlooking or balanced at all. If you are intressted, PM me and I will send you a few guidelines about the map, but otherwise you can more or less create the world as you like.
I also need help by people who would like to edit some models for me. PM me if you are interested.
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