Deity Map (No Name Yet)

This map has two different modes: a singleplayer "campaign" and a multiplayer melee-type game. Each player has control of one deity, and this is their central unit. The ultimate goal of the game is to destroy the enemy players' temples through various methods. As a God, you have no physical representation other than your temple. Your god is a hero, and this one unit has every ability you will need to play the game. Every God has the following abilities:

Abilities [Hand of God (Right-Click) Right-Click the ground in your influence to place a rune. Right-Click a unit or object to pick it up. Objects being carried by you are shown in your inventory. When you right-click a citizen/squad/tree/boulder, the object dissapears and you gain an item representing that object. You may then drop the object anywhere in your influence. Spell List (S) Shows every spell you are currently able to cast. This is a spellbook ability. Every time you learn a spell, a passive ability representing that spell will be added to the spellbook showing the rune pattern and what it does. This ability doesn't affect anything, it is just for reference. Place Blueprint (B) Allows you to place the blueprint of a structure anywhere in your influence. When placed, a blueprint can be built by ordering male citizens to build it. This is basically the standard "build" menu. When you place a building, a semi-transparent, 10% hp building appears. As citizens repair it, parts of the structure become opaque until it finishes building.

This game is centered around the idea of Gods of civilizations from different time periods and locations fighting against each other. The Gods can not directly fight each other, but do so through their people.

Thor the Thunder God
Thor is the deity you control in the first singleplayer level. He starts with the Lightning spell. Thor controls the vikings, which are a very militarized race. They are adept at quick strikes which can leave an enemy crippled, however they have minimal defensive structures.

Buildings .: Temple of Thor N/A N/A This temple allows your citizens to pay tribute to you. You start with this main building and it cannot be duplicated. If it is destroyed you lose. Citizens can channel on the building, regenerating your mana by 5 every 5 sec, per person. If your mana is full, your max mana is increased by 1 every 5 sec, per person. Longhouse 40 10 Allows up to 4 citizens to sleep in this structure at a time. If a citizen does not have a place to sleep at night, it will become angry. Each citizen sleeps for 4 out of every 12 hours night, so only 1/3 of your citizens will be trying to sleep at a time. Field 10 10 Allows your citizens to cultivate crops for food. Order a citizen to harvest crops to gain food over time. A field spawns a "crop" every 6 seconds, up to a max capacity of 10 crops. For every worker harvesting from the field, 1 crop is transformed into 2 food every 12 seconds. These are very cheap to build, but the real price is the space constraint. Each field has the pathing map of a large circle of power. Storehouse 60 25 This structure provides a place for your citizens to bring their harvested wood and stone to. Players will start with 1 of these. They do nothing other than what they say they do. Warrior's Hall 125 50 This structure can train squads of 6 Viking Warriors. A squad can be trained by filling the capacity of this building with male citizens. Able to load units like a transport. When there are 6 male citizens, they are all removed and you are given one flag unit under your control, with 6 chaos/locust warriors underneath it. Controlling the flag controls the units. Thunder Totem 140 60 This defensive structure is able to cast Lightning three times on nearby enemies. In order to activate the Thunder Totem, you must cast Lightning on the totem. When built, it is not active. When you cast lightning on it, 3 large lightning orbs circle the top. After each Lightning, an orb dissapears. The unit has a 0 damage non-ui attack, and when it runs out of charges it is paused. Bulwark 140 60 This wall structure is vital for your village's defense. You build the corner towers, and when corner towers are completed near each other, the game automatically connects the towers with each other to form walls. Shrine of the Dead 140 60 This mystical shrine transcends the boundaries of death. Contains several upgrades. Whenever one of your living units dies, your God gains 5 mana.

Spells
Every deity starts with one of these spells. Spells are learned by picking up golden scrolls (which are randomly placed) from the ground, but in order to pick up a scroll it must be in your influence. Spells can not be leveled up. Spells are cast by right-clicking the ground 4 times to create 4 runes. The game analyzes the pattern of the runes, and tries to detect which spell you attempted to cast. Every spell contains exactly 4 rune components, but they all have different shapes. The orientation of the shape does not matter.

Spells .: Lightning Rune Shape: 1 1 2 3 or 3 2 4 4 Calls down the power of the skies to strike a unit with lightning. Deals X damage to the nearest unit (prioritizes enemies), and Y splash damage to nearby units. Growth Rune Shape: 4 3 2 1 Causes centuries of natural growth to occur in an instant. When used on a farm, maximizes the crop capacity of the farm. When used on grass, summons 2-3 trees. Heal Rune Shape: 4 2 3 1 Cures the physical wounds of allies in the area. Restores soldiers and citizens to 100% hit points. Inferno Rune Shape: 1 2 2 1 or 3 4 4 3 Engulfs the target area in flames, dealing damage to all units in the area. Large spark, spawns several flames. These flames spread and extinguish randomly, but if they catch a tree they spread more easily. Deals X dps to units in the flame. Avalanche Rune Shape: 1 2 2 1 or 4 3 3 4 Conjures boulders to fall from the sky onto the target area. Creates several boulders which fall on the point via physics. Deals damage to allies and enemies, and boulders become permanent. Gust Rune Shape: 1 2 3 4 Focuses the seven ancient winds in the targeted direction. Accelerates boulders and units back in a line for several seconds. Trees and buildings are not affected. Deals no damage, but can push objects over cliffs.

I thought this sounded lame until I saw the user. And read the description.

Sounds pretty awexome and fun to play; I've always enjoyed hearing about those kind of "deity" games. After seeing some spell ideas you tossed off for the Spell Olympics, I'm sure we won't be let down with the quality here, either. Great success!

(BTW, how did you get your "6 warriors 'locusted' to one flag unit under your control" to work? I had a similar thing working for me, but it wasn't nearly as seamless as your seems (lol, wordplay)).

Interesting concept, obviously heavily inspired by Black & White.

The rune casting will no doubt be too difficult for most to grasp :/

Well I haven't made that part yet, but I can already see how I will make it.
I will make an Invulnerable flag unit with movement enabled (however its movement will be locked to the average position of the solderis via a periodic timer). Then I will have 6 locust soldier units. When they are created, Chaos is added to each one to transform it into itself. This "breaks" locust so that they can be targeted and can participate in combat but can not be selected.

Then, Whenever the flag is issued an order, I will order the flag to stop and order the soldiers associated with it to attack to the order target.

All that's left to do is update the life of the flag to the current total life of the 6 soldiers out of the total max life of the 6 soldiers every time a soldier takes damage.



This is indeed very heavily inspired by Black & White. I don't think that the spell-casting will be quite as difficult for the average person as you think. Memorizing a shape is only slightly harder than memorizing a hotkey. Obviously there are a lot of features in this game that are slightly complicated, but I'm trying to design a sort of campaign level if you play it single-player that has a tutorial built into it.

This method also gives more control to the user. The direction of certain spells like Gust are built into the shape of its runes. Spells like Avalanche will have their area of effect be controlled by the scale of the shape you place. The same number of falling boulders will appear, but just over more or less concentrated areas.

Holy cow, thank you. I had something almost completely different planned (a single unit is the "Leader" of the mob, and has a modified Factory which is set to keep a constant supply of X "Mobber" guys. Each of the individual guys is set (via triggers) to move or attack wherever the "Leader" is ordered.)

But aren't Periodic Timers notorious for lagging gameplay? Or is that only when you have a bunch (like 10)?

It all depends on how often the periodics are run, and what you do in them. I'm planning on a 0.025 timer to just set every flag's x/y, which should do absolutely nothing to slow the game down. If, on the other hand, you are doing heavy calculations or leaking something every time the periodic is run, then they can bring the game to a halt very quickly.

Sounds awsome, i loved the B&W map here on wc3, i'm looking forward to playing this ^_^

Really? I don't really do either of those, so perhaps I should stop being so 'periodic-timer-shy'...

Interesting, do you have a link to this map? I tried searching for it and couldn't find it.

I don't know if it's the one you're talking about, but i did a search and came up with this:

http://www.epicwar.com/maps/download...dWhite1.83.w3x

The whole rune thing seems like it'd be a bit unwieldy... I dunno, it just doesn't sound like it would work very well. It's too complex, requires too much memorization (or reading time) and is just not fast enough to use in a pinch.

I agree that it is slightly more unwieldy than having the standard hotkey/click a point approach, however I can lay down 4 runes in a line in half a second. Granted that's the most simple of the spells, but you can cast a spell as quick as you can click 4 times on the ground. As for the memorization: maybe it's just the way my mind works but I find remembering simple shapes to be very easy for me. Remembering a Square for avalanche or a "lightningbolt shape" for lightning is just as easy as remembering "A" for avalanche or "L" for lightning.

Let me give some visuals so you can see what would be going on:

The Spell Icon:


3 out of 4 runes placed:

Maybe burrow some shapes from Black & White?

Up Down Up Down for fireball, circle for thingamajig, etc.

I'd really like to see your system in action, upload a testmap asap.

Arrow keys on battlenet are very clumsy.

Here's a demo of the system. Obviously I haven't coded the actual spells yet, just the recognition system. Keep in mind the shapes can be rotated any way you please.

And how does it determine the spot that the spell will be cast?