First project, Gaia TD

[Sungazer]

This also happens to be my first post.

I've been playing custom maps since the Starcraft days and created a couple Starcraft RPGs, but have never attempted a WC3 custom map. I'm a huge TD addict, but I'm having a hard time finding new TDs I haven't tried that are balanced, innovative, and fun, and I finally feel inspired to take a shot at making my own. Some of my favorite TDs include:

Zoator TD in most of its forms (especially the original)
Sprout TD (made by the same guy)
BK's Gem TD (possibly my favorite; so much innovation)
Poker TD (who remembers this one? Tower selection very similar to BK's Gem)
Element TD 4.0 (fairly new to this series, don't remember playing older ones)

These maps will be the main inspiration for my TD, and I'm hoping to combine the aspects I like from each while resolving the gripes I have with each as well.

I've done my homework and read several tutorials here, downloaded an example TD map, and I'm still really familiar with triggers from my Starcraft days, so I'm not here to ask for help with the technical creation of the map or models or anything. The reason I'm posting this is for critiquing and hopefully some fundamental design ideas. Here's what I've got so far:

Gaia TD​

Premise

Humans have depleted the resources of the Earth everywhere except for a small pocket; the sanctuary of Gaia herself. The humans are now throwing themselves at her sanctuary in waves, and you must stop them before they desecrate the last natural place on Earth.

DISCLAIMER: This TD has a heavy political slant to it (an outlet for my frustration with modern society), but I will try to keep the "flavor" stuff to myself to avoid offending anyone or starting arguments here. Therefor, waves and tower names will be generic and will describe their function or purpose. You'll have to wait for the first beta release before you get a taste of what I'm talking about.

MapInit

Player 1 chooses difficulty (think Gem TD)
Each player chooses a builder race (Zoator-style, maybe)
Spawn builder in player's lane
Each player chooses a Champion of Gaia (for the mini-game between levels)
Spawn Champion in Gaia's Sanctuary (town square with fountain & shops)
Level 1 begins in 1:00 min

General

40 levels of creeps
A boss every 5 levels
Flying every 4 levels (except 40th)
00:45 sec between waves
Explore Gaia's Sacred Groves between levels for bonus gold

Champions of Gaia

I loved the hero mini-game in Zoator, but want to take it much further. Around the perimeter of the map where the TD occurs will be several "mini-dungeons" known as Gaia's Sacred Groves. At the end of the first creep wave, each player's Champion will be randomly dropped into a Sacred Grove where they have :45 seconds to explore, kill creeps for gold and items, and possibly complete a mini-objective for that Grove. When the :45 seconds are up, or when their hero dies, whichever occurs first, their hero is instantly respawned in the center (Gaia's Sanctuary) until next round. After the first wave, Champions will progress through the dungeons clockwise around the map.

The level of the creeps that spawn in a particular mini-dungeon will depend on the level of the hero who is dropped into it. There will be enough XP available in each dungeon so that a hero *could* level once per dungeon, but if they do not kill all enemies or complete the objective, or die, they are not guarunteed a level per dungeon. I'll probably cap the level between 20-30, and heroes will rely on items to improve beyond that. For completing objectives, a champion will be awarded lumber, which is *only* used to purchase items from the shops in Gaia's Sanctuary which only benefit the champion, not towers in anyway.

Objectives might include returning an item to an NPC in the Sanctuary, killing a particular mob, or simply surviving a dungeon until the end of the :45 seconds.

Killing creeps yields gold, which is only used for tower purchases and upgrades, so there is no mixing or sharing of resources between hero needs and tower needs. The purpose of this is so that the hero mini-game can only help you, never be a burden or drain. I'm thinking on lower difficulties, good use of the Champions for gold will be an optional bonus, but at higher difficulties, it will be expected that you take full advantage of your champion or you will not have enough gold to complete the 40 levels of creeps.

Yes, I realize the hero mini-game will probably be more triggers and work than the TD itself, but das ok, mon.

Some notes about the Champions:

My #1 complaint of 99.9% of any hero custom games I play out there, is that the heroes are flat out BORING to play! Why? Because for some reason, map designers, especially RPG maps, got it in their head that it's fun to have heroes which rely mostly on auto-attack, and use abilities every 15-45 seconds.

* Right-click on mob *
* Stare at screen and watch the floating numbers *
* Maybe use a skill that has way too long a CD and costs too much mana *
* BORING*

I propose to "fix" this by creating heroes that have low auto-attack damage and rely heavily on using their abilities. All heroes will come with a self-heal in various forms (regen, lifesteal, holy light, etc.) and spells and abilities that work together that are very cheap, maybe even free, and on very low CDs. I want the hero mini-game to feel more like an action-strategy game then a "click-and-watch" RPG.

I haven't spent too much energy thinking about outlines for heroes like this yet, so I'll do that now for an example.

Mage Hunter

Blink - 0 mana, 0 CD
Yep, this fool can blink constantly, but he will also have low HP and armor, so will need that mobility.

Mind Blast - 10 mana, 5 cd

This spell would cast mana burn & silence on a target, but since it only affects creeps with mana, he'll need another attack skill

Alchemy Fire - 15 mana, 5 cd

This spell would function like Lina Inverses' Light Strike Array, where it must be targeted, and be the Mage Hunter's main source of damage.

Chakra - 10 mana, 10 cd

This spell would restore 15 mana and a bunch of health, instant self-cast

Ult Ability - Arcane Thunder - 20 mana, 15 cd

The Mage Hunter channels the arcane energy in the environment around him into himself until he can no longer contain it and the energy explodes in an area around him, dealing damage to all nearby enemies. This would have a 1.5 or 2 sec cast time, so the mage hunter would have to be able to survive any damage he's taking while casting it. Or, if he's smart, he'll blink away from the mobs, luring them to him while this charges. Less effective against ranged creeps.

The very low armor and HP of this hero would make for what I hope would be a pretty fun hero. You have to blink constantly to stay out of melee range, and be very quick with your spells so that you can blink, cast and blink again. The fact that you have to target your main damage spells makes this harder than it sounds. Of course in the early levels, creeps won't hit very hard so you'll have time to practice this, but ideally, around 5+, melee damage from creeps becomes lethal for all non-heavy-melee heroes.

I think that's enough of an example for the Champions.


I have to take a break for lunch now (at work), but I'll come back to this thread and share my ideas about the tower defense itself. The reason I came here is because I want to innovate a new tower defense "system", the way BK's Gem TD and Sprout TD did.

Either through tower combinations, recipes, tech trees, or some combination of all of them. One of my main goals regardless of what I come up with is a "No tower left behind" policy. In other words, EVERY tower WILL be useful at some point, possibly even at end-game. I absolutely LOATHE tower defenses where you have 10 towers to choose from, but unless you buy the right one and upgrade it to level google-billion right away, you won't live past the first 5 creep waves. I LOVE that in BK's Gem TD, everyone's mazes and towers are different, but almost always viable. Go play a Gem TD extreme/race, and look at all the variations players will have. They may even have identical maze shapes, but at least their towers aren't identical. In my opinion, if in a TD map, you HAVE to copy the host or you will lose, that TD is a failure.

That's all for now, thoughts?

 

[Flare]

Sounds cool, trying to combine the coolest parts of various TD's into one map, but do you think you can do it?

My only issue (at the moment, based on what you've said) would be the emphasis on the heroes. Should you really make the heroes such a big part of a Tower Defence map?

 

[Sungazer]

Sounds cool, trying to combine the coolest parts of various TD's into one map, but do you think you can do it?

I know it may seem like an ambitious project, and I guess for my first it is, but there's nothing I've come up with that I don't how to use triggers to do yet.

My only issue (at the moment, based on what you've said) would be the emphasis on the heroes. Should you really make the heroes such a big part of a Tower Defence map?

I realize that on the development side, it's quite involved, and after thinking about it, I'm not going to bother implementing "objectives" right now, that is a bit much. But from the player's perspective it's just a hero mini-game (like Zoator has), with environments that you explore on your own instead of an arena where you fight random mobs together with other players' heroes.

Gameplay would pan out like this:

* Choose Builder Race
* Choose Hero
* Game starts in 1:00
* Wave 1 happens
* Hero teleports to dungeon and player camera centers over the hero
* Player has :45 sec (probably reduce to :30) to explore/kill/enjoy mini-game
* Hero teleports back to center, player camera centers over tower lane
* Wave 2 happens in :15 sec (to allow for building, towers will be near-instant build time)

Rinse, repeat.

The last step of pre-development before I start laying out triggers and unit specifics is to come up with a uniqe tower-building system that has a lot of replay value.

I'm hesitant to go forward with designing races because I like all players having access to the same towers, and yet, I don't want players building identical mazes and I'd like to have updwards of 80+ towers to choose from. Both Sprout TD and Gem TD accomplish this in different ways.

In Sprout TD, each tower has abilities to build more towers of different kinds, leading to creation chains and a huge number of choices. While all player mazes will have some similarities in the beginning, by the end of the game the mazes display a wide amount of variety. What I really like about Sprout TD's mechanic is that it's choice-driven. You can see what towers are available to you next and you have control of what towers you gain access to.

In Gem TD, the randomness ensures that players will have different towers in their mazes while still having access to the same pool of gems everyone else chances from. The option to upgrade and manipulate the percentages of the quality of the gem you can receive gives you a small amount of control, as well getting 5 gems to choose from, but there is never a way to influence what *kind* of gem you get, and this can get really frustrating. While BK did a great job making sure that all towers are viable, if you can't get enough special towers, extreme mode will kick your butt.

Back to the drawing board while I stew over a way to accomplish the same level of replayability but in a unique system. Randomness is certainly out. I like being rewarded for making smart decisions, and random elements can make smart decisions pointless if the dice screw you.

I like tech trees, and I like combination/recipe systems. Hmmm.

 

[Flare]

I've played both of those maps so I know how the towers work (Sprout TD's method is just awesome IMO), and if randomness is what you are looking for (this is probably exactly like Gem TD, but I'm not sure since I haven't played in a while), here's an idea:

When you build a 'tower', it creates a random tower from that tier from the available towers

e.g. if arrow, cannon and fire towers are available at tier 1, it will create one of those 3. But, if you get the Poison Tower research level 1, poison tower tier 1 will be added to that grouping.

Alternatively, if you could have X (2 or 3 maybe, depending on tower numbers) researches in each tier at a time (better research levels made available at certain time/level interval). So, you could have arrow, cannon and 2 of the following <Fire, Ice, Poison, Lightning> in your selection. But, you can change the researches around (with a cooldown obviously, so people don't constantly swap around when it suits them).

Higher level research would only be available if you had the required tower research previously. Something like

  Fire
   /          \
AOE            Speed
  |                   |
Mega AOE      Mega Speed

If only 2 researches for tier 2/3 were available at a time, you would only have a choice of 2/8 towers to build at any one time, which would give a bit of incentive to build according to what levels are coming next (if you have a levels listing)

Hopefully I explained that well enough

 

[Sooda]

I read your introduction and I like it. When do you plan to release map? Have you played Fire Storm tower defense? There you picked hero and fought with leaked creeps in your town, what was fun.

 

[diggoran]

I noticed that you made an exception for the flying rounds at round 40, because that was a boss round. Round 20 will also be a boss round, but flying too? I think round 20 should be a ground boss, and round 40 should be flying boss.

Your TD seems really cool, and if your such an addict, maybe you can critique my upcoming TD (and first), Warp TD.

Basically, it's a TD where leaked creeps go directly to your teammate's castle, via waygate, and your teammate must fight them off. Your teammate is responsible for spawning creeps for your team, and, since the castles are accessible to one another, must also defend/attack your enemy's castle. You win if your opponent's castle is destroyed.

Just tossing in my 2 cents. And more.