Need help from creative people

I'm making a system where players can choose their own custom skills for their Heroes and I need a way to organize those skills IN-GAME (and NOT in WE) so that beginners and veterans alike can easily find the skills they need* or want to use.

*some skills will require you to have learnt another or multiple other skills.

I've thought of a few ideas to organize skills, but I don't find any of them that good which is why I need your help finding something better. +REP will be given. Anyway, here are my ideas:

*skills will be made as items purchaseable from a building.

1. Organize buildings (where skills will be sold at) according to type: one-cast,
channeling, active, auto-cast, and passive. Con: players will have to jump around trying to find requirements to spells or the next one, etc. Also, how do I classify the skills within a building? Example: I have 12 passive skills in a passive building. Do I just add them randomly or what?

2. Organize skills according to theme: fire, ice, curses, etc. Con: some skills fit in multiple categories and others won't fit in any. I also think it limits room for expansion (but I could be wrong). It will also require me to combine
buildings (e.g.; Ice & Fire Skills, etc.) to save space.

3. Organize building to make it look like a skill tree. E.g.; I would have a AxY row of buildings, with the first row being level 1 skills, 2nd one being
level 2 skills (which require a level 1 skill) and the third one requiring a level 2 skill, etc. The last row will be skills with any requirement. Example: "Any fire skill". Cons: How do I organize the skills within a building? Also, won't it cause players to jump around to find requirements and everything too much?

I need feedback, ideas on organizing buildings and skills, or ideas on how to improve the ideas I listed, etc.

+Rep will be given and any help will be much appreciated! :) If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Look at hoi hoi's Custom Hero Survival, it can be found on The Hive Workshop

His skills are organized by type (active, passive etc) and then randomed after that

I'd prefer this way
You could organize the spells by type (first row/column passive, ...)


I don't think so They will always jump around, finding there favorite spells

A 'techtree' for learning abilities definitely sounds interesting, although there's a lot of different ways to organize one. I may be reading more into this than you intended, but I'll run with it:

One way to make requirements clear to the players, would be to make all abilities in a particular tavern share the same requirements, and to draw lines in the terrain (or use lightning to link them, whatever), showing a clear progression from "Okay, I need an ability from Building A, to get an ability from Building B".

If you wanted to get really fancy, you could have each building 'light up' for a player as they meet the requirements. Careful use of GetLocalPlayer could do some interesting things, or you could just give each player a giant invisible flying wisp with custom team color or something to float over each building. Maybe green for ones you have, yellow for ones you can get now, and red for ones you don't meet the requirements for.

If you want to make the abilities be rather unique in their requirements, then you could have an individual 'trainer' for each, that demonstrates the ability in question. "Hmm. The Tauren is Warstomping, and there's lines pointing to it from the Bashing Dwarf and the Drinking Pandaren, so I need Bash and Drunken Brawler to get Warstomp". Instantly identifiable without clicking any buildings at all. And you could then just right-click on a trainer to get the ability, without having to manually walk over to a building.

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If you want to have 'complicated' requirements, an entirely different method presents itself: For each of the 'higher-level' abilities, have a building dedicated to just that ability and its requirements. Like if MegaSpin requires Whirlwind or Tornado, and Whirlwind requires Wind Walk and either Dancing Blades or Breath of Fire, and Tornado requires... etc, you could have "The MegaSpin Building/Trainer", who offers all those abilities. Then you could have the "Dragon's Might Building/Trainer", which would offer everything to get the "Dragon's Might" ability, which could also include Breath of Fire.

I don't see this method being too user-friendly without making the information more accessible, though. Maybe in the tooltips for the ability as you go to learn it, they could say, "This ability can lead to Abilities X, Y and Z.", and when someone acquires a particular ability, make some indicator to all buildings that hold some follow-up ability.

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Or, we can get away from techtrees altogether. A design idea I had long ago, was to make each "feature" of a hero cost a certain amount of "points".

At a base level, each ability would cost differing amounts based on how "powerful" it is, and after the user is satisfied with abilities, could spend remaining points on things like stat boosts.

However, once the user purchases one thing, everything else that has synergy with what they bought, goes up in price. So maybe a Bloodlust ability costs 20 points, and a Critical Strike ability costs 20 points, but as soon as you buy one, the other suddenly goes up to 30 points (because they work so well together). Do this enough, and oddball abilities may be enough of a bargain for people to not always gravitate towards the "best" abilities.

Of course, the price changes need not be focused just on abilities. The same Critical Strike could also make Additional Agility Points cost more apeice. And choosing a base hero who is Agility based would make Critical Strike cost more. You could have a lot of granularity, perhaps allowing the user to customize things like base attack speed, damage, mana, mana regen...

Speaking of mana, what makes things work well together is more than "they multiply each others damage". If you have 3 abilities that each mana, suddenly an ability that doesn't use mana at all is more attractive. And Brilliance Aura gains more usefulness than the rest.

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That said, perhaps the most useful way to 'organize' the skills is group them by what sort of fighting style they support. Things that are based around attacks should go together - things that boost attack speed, boost attack damage, or do extra things when you attack go in one section. Spells that involve allies - auras, summoning spells (to get more allies), area healing - go in another. Standard "Cast X to do damage" like Firebolt in another. Put spells that "shut down" the opponent in another - Silence, Net, Mana Drain, etc. Abilities that make you sacrifice the ability to do much else in another - channeling offensive spells, Whirlwind, etc.

Note that this completely ignores 'theme' (an Ice Bolt and a Fire Bolt that both do damage plus a brief debuff go in the same fighting style) and literal differences - the 'attack boosters/users' could include the passive Critical Strike, the autocast buff Frenzy, the activated ability Windwalk... etc.

This caters to everyone:

• People that want to combine things that work well together have a one-stop shopping experience.
• Newbies that don't know what all your abilities do, at can at least decide, "I want some ability that does something sorta like X", and (assuming the categories are obvious), go right to a list of similar abilities to get the one they want.

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And a few last regarding organization: Don't let your players end up having abilities that push each other off the command card. Having three abilities that go in the bottom-rightish area of the command card can mean one gets pushed off to the right, while there's empty space to the left. Some maps have 'organized' based on "here's your Far Left Bottom ability, here's your Middle Left Bottom ability, here's your Middle Right Bottom ability..." And don't forget about the "One orb-like ability per hero" rule - either alert players to which abilities count as their one "orb" ability, and limit them to just one, or use triggers to simulate the orblike abilities without actually giving them to the heroes.

Hope something in here's useful!

These are all great and interesting ideas. :)

The first idea (with building lighting up, etc.) is interesting, but I don't think it will work for what I'm doing. What if "Starfall (Building 2)" requires "Call Meteor (Building 1)"? Both buildings would light up or be linked, tricking the player into thinking s/he can purchase any ability from Building 2.

The trainer idea is good, but I think would take way too much space and could get confusing.

The point idea is interesting but I don't fully understand it. Would points be like gold? Or just points that you get as soon as you purchase a Hero? Maybe 100 points to buy 4 abilities? Will they be earnable throughout the game? How would I indicate effectively to a player how much each ability costs?

I don't really like the last idea. It doesn't seem to support ability requirements. Also, what about skills like Endurance Aura? It boosts attack & movement speed but it also helps allies, so where would that go?

Anyway, your gave me an idea. I don't know if it's good so I'd like your opinion on it and ideas on how to improve it if you like it.

Here it goes:
I will create a whole bunch of different techtrees. Players will be able to select which techtree to have displayed to them using images. (Note: I don't know if it is possible to create an image to a single player.) The image will be the icon of the skill. Then, the icons will be linked to skill they lead to. When a player wants to see a different techtree, he can just type a command or maybe I could give him a spellbook? I don't know... Anyway, by each image would be an item that when picked up would give the hero the ability.

Using typed commands for this kind of thing is usually bad, I have seen a lot of players who doesn't read instructions, and are left clueless. Of course, there are some typed commands most people are used to, like '-repick', but it usually takes months for some people to learn new ones. You should try the spellbook solution.

This is where color-coding would come in handy for the lighting-up.
Nothing learned: Building 1 Yellow, Building 2 Red
Call Meteor learned: Building 1 Green, Building 2 Yellow
Starfall learned too: Building 1 Green, Building 2 Green

This way you can see what you've got (green), what you can get (yellow) and what you don't meet the requirements for (red). Would need some other way to indicate what the requirements are for the red items - tooltips on the abilities or some sort of linking.

With the links, I'd imagined they would be directional - the first "row" of buildings would be the Level 1 buildings, and you'd always go the same direction to get to later requirements. Sorta like how on D2 tech trees, where the requirements for a particular ability are always "above" it. And/or you could have the 'link' be directional - maybe a stretched-out waterfall flowing towards the later one.

My initial thought on representing costs was with a tooltip:

...but then I remembered that tooltips aren't dynamic. Le sigh. Well, you can do any of the following:

• Have the first click on an ability display the price to the player, and the second click purchase it.
• Whenever a player purchases something, give them a short message describing how prices have changed.
• Whenever a player selects a building, display to them all prices for items in that building.

I like the last option best - it lets the player see at a glance what the prices are, without having to memorize changes.

The way points are represented could be done any way you like - gold, lumber or some internal variable displayed to the user. Same for the number of points given, and whether they're spendable and/or earnable throughout the game. The decisions made here would have significant effects on gameplay. A couple examples:
1. Points are lumber, which is not used anywhere else in the game. You start with 100 for 4 abilities, and abilities generally cost about 20 points each initially. You don't have to spend it all right away - you can get some abilities or other features, wait to see how the matches go, and then purchase additional abilities later. You can get things to counter what the opponent is doing, or add abilities that fill in gaps in what you or your team have. With such a setup I'd expect some experienced players to generally only purchase abilities as they get the points to use them.
2. Points are gold, not spendable once you start. You start with 1000 for 4 abilities, each of which costs about 200 points initially. Any leftover gold can be used for items once you start.

If I were doing this, I'd have the points not used elsewhere, and be spendable and acquirable after the initial start. I wouldn't want to tie point awards to mere kills, however, as that makes the weak weaker as individuals, and puts those who get auras and heal spells at a disadvantage compared to their teammates. Maybe just have them flow out over time - every 5 minutes, 10 more points. Some hero arenas give out extra things to the losing team, or a team with less players, so you could do that with points. If points are acquired after starting, you'd definitely want to have a full set of cheap, non-ability features that players can spend their points on once they have the abilities they want.

You're right, it doesn't seem to support display of requirements well. As for 'fits two categories things, you could have, say, a big building for attack stuff, a big building for works-with-allies stuff, and a small building in between the two for things that fit both categories. Or, if you have space on the main buildings, just have the ability be purchasable from both locations. But yeah, this organization style doesn't seem tailored to requirement display.

I like this images+items concept. The first time I read it, I'd imagined buildings instead of items; Building A might let you purchase Firebolt, Wind Walk & Earthquake, but the image would only show the 'relevant' skill for your current tech tree. If you go ahead and have individual items, were you thinking "If I have the Fire Tech Tree selected this item gives me Fire Bolt, but if I have the Ice Tech Tree selected, the same item will give me Ice Bolt instead"? Or lay out an item for each ability? Also, with items laying out, it'll be hard to give full tooltips on ability data; you might want to go with buildings or trainers so you can do the tooltip.

For selection, use two abilities - one that has an arrow going one direction, one that has an arrow going another direction, and have them switch images when activated. Or, if you don't have a place for these abilities, make it switch every time the user hits the Esc key (check for cinematic skipped); in fact, you could probably add this method to another one to give users a choice. Or have two units that stand around somewhere, and whenever a player clicks one, switch the overlay. I gotta agree with 0zyx0, avoid typed commands. A spellbook to just allow hotkeys to work seems like a good idea.

For things being individual to each player, the general theory is that each player has to have the same objects, but you can set some things that are NEVER checked by the game individually by local player. Color changes and transparencies, for example. Paths used for textures and models work too; although I hear you have to be careful about string tables there or something, so be sure to check on that if you try setting each image's texture path to something different for each player. There's a lot of ways to go with this.

One way to do it, would be to create and import a single image for each entire tech tree, that's transparent in most places. This way you can easily draw the arrows to each one, and you don't need to manage a ton of little images images.

Once again, I hope something's useful in here. Good luck with your map.

how about a fullscreen solution? like a fullscreen inventory or a fullscreen skilltree-system. that'd be awesome 8)

In my hero Arena (Templar Arena) Skills are based like this:

What is the required level?
Level 1 comes before level 5, level 5 before level 6, level 6 before level 10 etc.
All of those Spell stages have the following classes:
Passive
Aura
Offensive
Defensive
Summon

I suggest players choose from level 1 skills up to level 10 skills, because it would be crazy chosing the highend skills at first. Make sure making every class in one shop, or more, but atleast make shops class-like.

I just thought of a really cool system for this using spell books and custom icons;
Heres a quick shop to show what im talkin bout

See, when you go in the training area you get a new spell book ability 'train skills', which would show this kind of thing. As you can see you can switch through the different trees to have a visual representation of whats going on in the tiers. (The red lines ofcourse repesent requirements)

Thats how i'd do it. It'd be like Diablo II \o/

@ Gorman:

really cool idea

Finding the best arrangement for a number of tech trees that are user friendly without knowing how many there are and what kind of spells thy would include is a little difficult, we can pile ideas over your head and let you do the hard work, or you can share a list of your spells and then we would be able to give something that’s more to your liking.

One more idea on your head is this:
First make a chart of your tech trees and try to make them head in a certain direction (a straight forward fire tree stating with starting with fire bolt then rain of fire then flame strike and ends with some omega something, all exclusively fire themed spells) form some points of a tree, say immolation, is given the name of a spell (summon golem) in brown (earth) at the end of the spell description indicating a possible mix with the named earth spell and from the mixed tech tree which links every two tech trees (say scorched earth) the player gets summon infernal and gives a player the chance to switch speciality from fire to earth and so on. In each shop the spells are arranged in rows of: 1-offensive. 2-support and summoning spells. 3-passive and buffing skills.


This method is theme supportive, simple and doesn’t consume a large area on the map. Spells and skills that are not theme supported can be altered to fit in any category (critical strike can be called earth might and say in the description that the user’s weapon becomes enchanted with the furry of the earth causing it to occasionally cause greater damage).

Another idea, use a cube or a slab model and skin it with the spell icon. Whether to use one spell per model and create a complete tech tree with red and green linking effects (which would consume a large area from the map but would be cooler and more original), or create a mosaic of spells so that the player would know which spell is where without having to select the shop is up to you.

Just a note, if you use the 'Image - Create' action you can place the spell icon without having to much around with texturing the model etc.

How to make the free points-ability?
with many different abilities with different icons?

Well, yes and no they can't be dynamic. But their requires by changing the requirments field can since you can change those in-game. So creating a unit and then removing it may changes something like this. Or setting a tech requirement upgrade to a certain level. Although this may require several very strangely named upgrades.(For instance this example would require: "24 points" to be an upgrade's name.)

Firey Whirlwind
Your weapon springs ablaze,
and you spin around as a
harbinger of spinning fiery doom.
Deals 100 normal damage plus
50 fire damage per level to
nearby enemies.
Requires:
24 points
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As for the the free points it would have to be set to a certain level depending on the amount of points already spent. Level 1 would mean that it shows the number 2. And with one point left it should be at level 0 (still there to learn but probably wouldn't show a number ). Also then when theres 0 pts at all it shouldn't even be there
Also it would have to give you your points back if you click on it (Pretty obvious).

Actually come to think of it. . You can solve the problem with 0 pts or 1 pts left by making custom icons for it tho but you would need to use a different ability and more triggers : / .

Gorman's idea has even more scarier problems than that though. How do you end up adding all the abilities so they fit in the right place on the command card? If you learn one point on one ability is it maxed? Then you why is it still there afterwards just for aesthetic looks?
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Anyways; This is what I use:


And no i'm not sharing xD. Since it's going to be pretty specific for my map. Also I didn't really make the system. I did make the UI and i'll probably fix the code more though eventually. This screeny is just an example though none of the skills and anything looking like this hero will be in it probably.