Contribute ideas?

Greetings, everyone. I have finished the first map I intend to post 'publicly', and am moving on to a new project. I have a general idea of what I am doing (below), but I ask you for additional ideas, whether large or small.

General theme:
There is a war between two human groups, one a small town and the other the larger 'nation'. (THIS WILL NOT BE LIKE DOTA!!)

The player can select to be one of two groups of heroes: Humans or Vampires. Once they select the group, they pick a hero within it.

They are placed in more or less 'neutral ground', and can choose to ally themselves with one of the two large human groups or remain neutral. (This can change throughout the progression of the game.) Attacks and defenses will be setup by the two human groups, and attacks will be planned in advance, but at random times to improve replayability of the map. From here, there is significant difference between being a Vampire and being a Human.

Vampires:
-start with negative reputation for both human groups
-can only stay in buildings or caves during the day
-heroes are more powerful
-can turn into bats and bite unarmored units (turning them into lesser vampires)

Humans:
-start with zero reputation for both groups
-can enlist support from nearby villages and dwarves/elves/night elves(gives your force more units)
-can hire support units if reputation is high enough (ex: if you have 500 reputation, you can hire a certain type of unit. Units are still bought with money)

Reputation (on the leaderboard) will be improved through quests and killing the opposing force, as well as gaining support. There will be NPCs both in the forces' cities and around the countryside. Groups can be wiped out, preventing their enlistment.

What I ask of you, dear readers, is advice on making this better, or the recognition of possible difficulties. Heck, if you are interested in helping out in any other way as well, tell me! :)

All I can think of, is to make sure that there are pleanty of caves so Vampire players don't get bored durring day. Or even a large building that will provide days of fun. ;)

Besides that, I can't wait to see what custom spells are put into the map. :D

provided the 'strong' vampire heros arent overpowered when compared to similar leveled human ones i suggest having something in caves like minigame or arena for leveling and to pass time, maybe have an item that disables vamp attack/magic like a disguise so they could go up and buy items and mercs, or put the mercs in caves where they can be controlled to go up and wreak havoc on vamp enemies.

Ah, this sounds intresting... wouldn't it be better to post/move this to Campaign/Team Discussion forum? Anyway...

I got some random ideas and maybe you'll like them. As for the vampires.
- Let some 'hunters' walk around in... well, pretty much everywhere to hunt them. It can both give experience or lead to your death.
- A graveyard to recover, ask for help, etc.
- Not able to enter Churches/Cathedrals

I had a question though... how can a vampire become allies with one of those human forces? I don't think they would accept one such as a vampire.
Though you might think about it to make a smaller part of 'human' forces only making them thieves. With a high reputation you won't be able to join them though a Vampire with low reputation skills will have more chance from the start.

Humans
- Ability to hide theirselfs, otherwise making them TOO easy prey for the vampires seeing as they already got a huge diffrence in strenght.
- Able to enter Churches/Cathedrals to ask for healing/donation/help

Anyway, you said you could use help if anyone wanted to, what is it exactly you need?

You've got a good point about the vampires during the day - something should be done so that they aren't bored. I considered this earlier, but this has all been a somewhat hazy idea. Arenas are a wonderful idea. Having other units outside of the cave is another possibility, and perhaps creeps control a large part of some caves so you can level as you go deeper into the caves. Hunters coming to the caves every so often is an excellent idea, too. As for graveyards - perhaps a Vampire hero could go to one of them and summon as part of a quest. Can anyone think of anything else?

I am thinking that the difference in power of the vampires and humans will be made up for by the fact that the humans can hire more powerful and diverse mercenaries and will be able to level more since they can be out and about during the day.

Note: I post this here instead of in Discussion, because I believe it is essentially a discussion of how to build this map, with spell/hero suggestions, etc. This thread is about Developing the map I have :)

Fladian: The help I was referring to was one of many different things. Ideas, model design (To be able to have units enter houses, I'd like to do something where when you approach, the 'house' disappears, and you see the walls of the house with rooms, tables, etc. This would probably require custom models), skin design, creation of units, destructables, abilities, complex triggers, etc... any element of what would go into this map - as it seems to me like it will end up being a vast project.

I see... So you actually need moddelers, but it not neccesarely needed. Right. (Can't help you there, I'm no moddeler)

Anyway, you said this is a project that will finish (in a way) but in what you told, the maps will become rather large, or will it become multiple maps like in the orc bonus campaign?

The reason I said to move or post this thread elsewhere is because the Map Develop Discussion is quite populair and every few minutes there are new threads that easely let your/this thread die.

Hmmm... Well, it does sound like a intresting project.

The project will be multiplayer map, but the map will be large, and it will have some strong RPG elements, as well as some survival and 'army building' elements. Your point on the high post turnover here is well taken, but I don't have a 'team' that can focus on this as of yet...

In addition to the people I listed above, I'd like some terrain input... From looking at my past projects, i can make some really classy terrain, but making the whole map really classy terrain is difficult for me... so if anyone is interested in doing a small piece in the the tileset I'm using..

For example, I need several small villages, and varying landscapes. If someone would make a small animal farming village in the Village Fall tileset that's 16x12 medium grid spaces, or a valley that's 20x16 medium grid spaces, with an isolated graveyard in it and a cobble path leading out of the valley.. etc. I could use all sorts of help, but of course that is completely dependant on if people want to contribute. A 'payment' or 'reward' for contributing can be worked out, i suppose, but I don't have much of an idea what that would be :)

Multiplayer? That is maybe not the best thing to do. Large maps (that this one will be for sure) is hard to play for much people (like myself). Also, most cinematics screw up in multiplayer. You might want to think about making a Single Player map(s) first.

If people enjoyed playing it then you can always create an other one for multiplayer. It's just that many people want to make big maps multiplayer (I would like to make one too) but it is just that not everyone can handle a big map.

An entire map of good terrain is hard for every terrainer (I speak this from experience) how larger the map, how harder it is to go into details and some small or big mistakes may form that you may let you think to redo the entire map. (at least I have that feeling) So maybe a small part of advice, try to make several saved maps. (backupps) For incase you think you did a bad job.

I think the project/map(s) would be more fun if there would be an amount of cinematics but something like that is pretty much NOT possible in a multiplayer map, like you may know.

-Fladian

Once you get a full concept down and are well under way in map construction then worry about the house thing. Right now itll just sidetrack you. Worry about the things that will make your map fun like well balanced sides and different possibilities with teamwork of human and computer allies.