(6) Shooter Defense

Map Name : Shooter Defense
Current Version : 3.0 Z
Author : TheWye
Genre : Defense/Minigame/Shooters

Introductions
Shooter Defense is a real-time action styled shooting game. It is a small and simple map, but the triggers are sophisticated and it is loaded with some 2D dynamics physics. Perhaps a simple description of the gameplay of this map is that it is a combination of Tower defense, Pudge Wars and Warlocks.

Its like tower defense!
Like tower defense, the main objective of this map is to prevent creeps from entering a certain region in the map. If any creeps enters the region, the life will start to decrease and the players lose if the life reaches 0. However, unlike traditional tower defense game, in this map, the units that shoots and kills the enemies are not buildable towers, but are mobile riflemen units called "shooters". Players start with a shooter at the beginning of the game and can hire more shooters as the game progresses. A shooter does not have any basic attacks but they can equip different weapons to shoot the enemies to kill them.

Its like warlocks!
Another main feature of this map is that it is infused with some real world 2 dimensional dynamics physics to improve the gameplay of the map. Physical concepts like Kinematics, Momentum & Kinetic Energy transfer, Elasticity and Coefficient of Restitution are evident and can be observed while playing this map. Or in other words, units bounces on walls and they also bounce on each other. This is where it is similar with Warlocks.

Another similarity this map has with Warlocks is that weapons do not only deal damage (and/or spell effects) but they also deal "blast energy". Blast energy (or just energy for short) is the term used to describe the kinetic energy received by a unit when they are shot with certain weapons. When a unit is shot with a weapon they do not just receive damage but they also get blown away by the weapon. The higher the energy of the weapon the stronger the blast effect it can deliver. And creeps also have masses. The heavier a unit the more inertia it has, the more difficult it is to blast it with your weapons.

Its like pudge wars!
Another difference with the tower defense map is that the shooters does not attack with warcraft 3's target auto acquiring system. To shoot a weapon, you equip the weapon and point the target with your mouse and use the mouse click to fire the weapon on your own. This is where the "real-time action" part of the map comes from and also where it is similar to pudge wars.


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Gameplay System:
Firing a Weapon
This game as mentioned above has several unique gameplay system, one of them is how to fire a weapon. To fire a weapon, you don't use your left click for abilities casting but you use your right click button instead. Below is the instructions for firing a weapon.
1. Equip the weapon by clicking on in in your inventory. A message saying "Current Weapon : ||weapon name||" will appear on your screen. The equipped weapon will become undroppable.
2. Use the Take Position ability on your shooter. Your shooter will now become immobile. And everytime you command your shooter to move by right clicking, you are ordering the shooter to attack that target point instead.
3. When you order your shooter to fire, a colorful bar will appear on top of your shooter's head which indicates the cooldown for the weapon. That shooter will be able to shoot again if the bar goes empty.
4. If you want to drop the equipped weapon, you have to disarm the weapon first. If a weapon is disarmed, it becomes droppable but your shooters will not be able to shoot anymore.

Multiple Shooter Controlling
This issue may look quite difficult and complicated, but believe me, it is not. Controlling multiple shooters can be done in two ways.
1. Place all the shooters in position according to their weapons and use the take position button. Positioning your shooters are as important as building towers in the right places in tower defense games. Weapons with high energy should not be put opposite the goal since it will push enemy creeps in if it doesn't kill it. And some weapons are also more effective if used closed ranged.

or

2. If you are the type who prefers to run around and shoot people, then you can also move all the shooters together as though you are controlling just one shooter. If you want to start firing, just put all of them in position and start clicking on the general area of the target. This way, beautiful colorful rainbow of chaotic bullets and lightnings will decorate your computer screen immediately.

and also

3. Well okay, there is actually 3 ways, but this one may require you to be a genius or at least brilliant in microing units. The other way to control your shooter is by controlling them individually. I don't know if anyone is able to do it this way but I'm pretty sure I can't. But anyway, theoretically, this IS also a possible way to control your shooter.

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Features:
-a unique real-time action styled defense map
-infused with 2D dynamics physics
-weapons not only deal damage but also "blasts" enemies back
-creeps collides with one another and with walls
-20 different weapons to choose from
-multiplayer up to 6 players
-30 waves of fun creeps

Inspired By:
Warlocks (Zymoran and Demestotenes), Pudge Wars (Various versions), Tower Defense (Various versions) and various Shooter styled Flash games especially MMM(Momentum missile mayhem) by DZ2001 & Requiem from Armor Games.

Have Fun!!

-= TheWye =-


Changelog:

Hidden information: Version 3.0b to 3.0 Z changes General changes: ================ -Now wc3 version 1.24 compatible!!!! -light armor now reduces spell damage by 10% -medium armor now reduces spell damage by 25% -hero armor now reduces spell damage by 50% -fortified armor now reduces spell damage by 65% Shooter Changes: ================ Bug Fixes: ========== Creeps changes: =============== -Elder Jungle Stalkers and Enraged Jungle Stalkers now have Hero armor -Jungle Stalkers now have Medium armor -Sludge Monstrosities now have Hero armor -Howl's Moving Castles now have Fortified armor -V.I.P now is Unarmored (who cares...) -The King now has Hero armor -Superarmored wave creeps now further reduces spell damage by 33% -added spell damage reduction to some creeps (spell damage ignores armor reduction) General weapons changes: ===================== -first tier weapons now only displays information up till tier 2 Bonus changes: ============== Wacky Mode changes: ===================

NOTICE : This is much likely the full version of the map. If there is a next version of this map, it will only contain minor changes, rebalancing or bug fixes. No more major content will be added to this map.

FURTHER NOTICE (Updated on 23/09/2009): The "Z" version of this map is warcraft 3 v1.24 compatible. It doesn't have much change from the previous version (3.0), just a "little" bit of rebalancing and was just made upgraded with the new hashtable functions.

OPEN SOURCE NOTICE : The open source map is also included for downloading. Feel free to download and edit the map or even make your own version of shooter defense. You have my full permission to do so. And if you do, please credit me (under the name TheWye) in your map even if you only take some functions or contents from this map. It is not necessary to inform me if you download and use contents from this open sourced map, but it will be nice if you do.
Thank you & have fun~~

Can you play it single player?

This looks interesting, but how would you effectively control multiple shooters when using this sort of fighting mechanic?

I know this is a submission and not in the testing forum, but I just wanted to point out some cosmetics with the text.

• In the Bonus quest tab, most of the beginning sentence is cut off and all that is readable "games." After that is the actual bonuses, but there was something before that right?
• For the grenades and serpent ward (maybe other items as well), the upgrade Distance (and all other values) are cut off. You might already know that though.
• Perhaps indicate which weapons hit air and which don't?

You should also describe in your post more about the multi-unit shooting.

You need to change the title of the thread to have the number of players the map supports in it. Please read the map submission rules for further explanation.

Yep, you sure can. I have played it many times in singleplayer myself and it was well balanced as well.


Good question. Before I made it possible to play with multiple shooters I was also worried with the controlling issue. But then, after I made it possible and I playtested it, it wasn't so bad after all. You just need to put all your shooters in their positions according to their weapons and select them all together and point to the general area of the enemies. It should be quite effective as long as you position them properly. Positioning your shooters at the right place is like building towers in the right place in tower defense. Or if you are more adventurous(<- how do you spell this anyway?) you can select all your shooters and move around the map altogether as one and kill the creeps as though you are controlling just one of them.


Hmm.. Not sure which part that is. I will check on that.



Yeah, about this.. it seems that the item description is limited to a certain length when you put it in your unit inventory, but is limitless when it is still in the shop. Any suggestions on how to go around this problem?


Oh yeah. I reminded myself several times before uploading this but I still forget in the end :p. My bad. Should be there in the next version (hopefully, if there is nothing wrong with my brain)


Hmm I thought it can be learned as you play the game? Oh well, perhaps I'll do it later.


that's weird.. I thought I already put the player numbers before the title. I think there is really something wrong with my brain lolz. Sorry dusk. Will do.

Played it with full house, made it to Bouncin Bros wave (cant remember the actual number).

It was pretty fun, however I did notice air spawns could use the telepad.
Unless that was intended?

it wasn't really planned initially, but it makes it more fun isn't it? Adds to the randomness of the creeps movements :)

ummm, dusk, how do I change the title of the thread? I have put the (6) sign in front of the map title but it still doesn't show outside...

That's something I've kind of pointed out to Dusk before; he says to do that but it doesn't change on the appearance. He'll do it when he notices you've made the change. I think he says to do it so that he (or someone else) knows what to change it to.

lol I did this as I thought it was what you're supposed to do :P

I guess you could put the upgraded values in () or [] after the current numbers. eg. Missile Level 1 Damage: 20 (40)

This way you don't waste much space at all while the users can still know the damage/range/cooldown of the upgrade after the one they have.

Then you're the Duke Nukem/Rambo running-around-and-killing-people type of guy rather than the cool & calculative field commander kind :p lolz


Hmm.. yeah, I can do that. But that means I have to change all the item descriptions... Argh! all of this because of some silly random limitations from blizzard. Thanks for the suggestions though.

EDIT: tried it, still doesn't work. and it actually became worse :p. The text actually got cut off even before the previous one because more text is added to the beginning half of the description. I guess I will just have to leave it this way until I get a solution for this problem. But still, thanks for the idea though, Anopob

Version 1.1 Released!!

Not much addition in this version though, just rebalancing and bug fixing mostly. And I made the game more "winnable" as well.

Enjoy!

Tested it and I must say it looks really fun for multiplayer.

Just some minor issuses:
- The name of the map. Why do you use that stupid "l33t" language? It makes the map look much less professional and polished.
- It is map, which tries to present realistic physcis, but there are lots of flags just hanging in the air, You should get some flags with poles or make them hang from the walls.
- The projectiles from the basic gun fly in completely flat trajectory. And hit the enemies at the level of the shooter. That doesn't look good.

Is that really a big issue really? I just want to present it in a fun way. After all, you play games to have fun do you not :)
I don't really want to appear so serious and professional anyway. It doesn't really fit me personally. I hope you understand


hahaha, to be frank, I'm more of a pragmatic guy so I don't really care much about the art as long as the map can still deliver the "fun" factor that I intended. But anyway, it can be done easily, so I'll probably fix that in the next version.


Well, to begin with, the world editor doesn't allow you to mess with the Z axis orientation that much. I know you can easily control the height of the bullets by changing its flying height, but then, nothing much could be done regarding the movement of bullets when it crosses the cliff as it will automatically change its relative height according to the cliff height. And its quite troublesome to get the Z axis value of a unit since you don't have a GetUnitZ function in JASS like the GetUnitX and GetUnitY which is readily available. And if I'm not wrong, the only way to get the Z axis value is by using GetLocationZ which means you need to define a location, which in turn slows down the map quite a bit.

Another thing is that, if I want to make the collision of the bullet as accurate as possible, I will have to make this game as an 3D FPS game already and the targeting system will also be in 3D. In other words, the bullets can go pass the units if the target height is not equal with the bullet height. This is too much trouble since warcraft is not designed for such a thing.

And anyway, in my post, I mentioned 2D physics did I not? :p

Thanks for the comments, CommanderZ. Appreciate it.

No, I don't really understand. It is a big issue, unless you want your map to be regarded as stupid before even being played.