Idea for custom map

[Exide]

Hi.
I wasn't sure if this belongs here on in SC2 Discussion.. I hope I got it right.

I got an idea for a custom map that I think will be fun.
I just finished watching the first season of a TV show called The Colony. And I think it is a great show. After a while I started thinking about making a game about it, and I immediately thought of Fallout 3 and Starcraft 2. I think it would be possible to do it in both games, actually.


How it works (in general):
The players spawn together in an (almost) abandoned city. The players need to work together to stay alive X amount of days (Main mission can vary.) The more players there are; the easier it will be to fend off attackers, but it will also cost more supplies each day. Supplies (food, water, power, medical supplies) are very limited. Random events will constantly happen. (Raider attacks, traders stopping by, beggars passing by, weather/environmental changes, stuff breaking, etc.) If you have seen the show, you know what I'm talking about.
If a player dies, it stays dead. The rest of the group will continue until they win the main mission or are all dead.

How it works (detailed):
Each player has an inventory for items such as tools/weapons. Each player can only carry a single tool or a weapon at once. Each player has the ability to "gather" material (much like workers in SC2 gathers mineral, etc) -effectively disabling the player from doing anything else. (For example a player decides to drag some scrap metal back to the base. The player uses an ability "gather" and picks it up. The player's hands are then full, "gather" is replaced with an ability called "drop". The player can't use any tools or weapons while gathering stuff. The players could however build useful stuff such as a trolley and load resources onto it. A player would have to "use" the trolley to push it around. The trolley will obviously hold more than one resource at a time. The player then returns to the base and drops the resource off at a certain spot, much like how workers in SC2 works. Players use resources to build stuff, such as scrap metal, etc, to build a trolley.)
Critical things that need to be built to ensure the players survival: Water purification system. Fireplace/cooking spot. "Power station" (some sort of generator + batteries.) The players will be able to forage all things necessary to build these.
The map will obviously feature a day/night cycle-system. For example one day = 14 minutes, and one night = 10 minutes (making a full day 24 minutes - 1 minute/in game hour). Each day that passes each player consumes three food and water resources. If the players runs out of food the players will get a "Starved" -debuff, until they gather more food. The longer a player is starved the higher the debuff level comes (making the player slower, dealing more damage, lowering his/her health, etc.) If a player is starved for ~30 days he/she dies from starvation. (Same thing goes with water, except "Dehydration" only lasts 3 days before the player dies.)
Players can obviously live without power, but power is necessary to make their tools and weapon work.

Main missions could be:
*Survive for X amount of days, then get rescued.
*Leave the city through a special point (build what you need to get out, ie vehicles/weapons.)
*Gather X amount of certain resources, then leave the city/wait for rescue.
*Kill X amount of attackers. ("Securing the area".)
*Survive for as long as possible (no real mission/freeplay.)
etc.


This is just an outline for the map, I think it could be done and I think it would be great to play. The tricky parts would be to find stuff that resembles power generators, water purification systems, gather-able resources, proper unit animations, vehicles, etc.
-Which is where you guys come in! (Congratulations!)
If anyone likes this idea I'd be happy to team up with them and try to make it come true. (I haven't used Galaxy Editor in a long time, though. I could still do basic stuff like triggers, play test, come up with ideas, etc.)

Feedback appreciated.

 

[X-maul]

I like the idea a lot Havent seen "The Colony", but as you describe it, it sounds interresting
the map sure would be a lot of fun, you could even implement a save system so you can save your character, and make even more progression

At first I understood it to be some kind of zombie survival game, but it doenst seem to be the thing, is this some kind of survival of the strongest where you have colonized and everybody but the colony are your enemies?

 

[Exide]

I like the idea a lot Havent seen "The Colony", but as you describe it, it sounds interresting
the map sure would be a lot of fun, you could even implement a save system so you can save your character, and make even more progression

You should watch it, it is awesome.
I haven't thought of a save system, not sure if it will fit in. I'll give it some thought, though.

At first I understood it to be some kind of zombie survival game, but it doenst seem to be the thing, is this some kind of survival of the strongest where you have colonized and everybody but the colony are your enemies?

Not a zombie survival game, more like an post-apocalyptic survival game. Where everyone has to fight for themselves (or in this case; the colony has to fight as a group against everyone else.) There could also be random encounters such as lone survivors looking for food or other resources. (Non-combat.)


At first I thought players may choose between different classes with different abilities (such as engineers, constructors, medics, etc.) Where everyone is needed in order to survive. But that means if one critical class isn't chosen (not enough players, or whatever the reason may be) then the map is pretty much unplayable. Although I do encourage the idea that if one player in the colony gets hurt or killed the rest of the colony would suffer greatly. Would be great to have NPCs to fill in the missing classes in that case. I doubt I'll be able to code the AI, though.
Thoughts?

 

[X-maul]

The idea of not locking players to classes is good when the individual classes would be so important. And yeah, if the classes should be added some kind of AI would be needed.
The way you could do "classes" could be with items, eg. the "tank"/"heavy" class could be a person with bulletproff west and a shield, while a "medic" could be a person with a healing gin (like the one medics of terran use).

 

[Dave312]

Sounds like that Island Troll Tribes game from WC3. While I am not a big fan of the genre, I know there were quite a few fans of it in WC3.

I agree with Xmaul in that doing classes via items would be a much better way of doing it. It would allow players to pick up the slack in areas where they are short of manpower plus if the team loses a player, someone can cover them without the whole game being ruined. It would also mean that it possible to play the game without a fullhouse since games would not be lacking in classes with key skills.