Hive's Nexus - AoS Meets Open RPG

Storyline-
The Nexus is a mysterious artifact that has been around since recorded history. Long ago Morticus, a powerful wizard, unlocked its secrets. He found a way to open the Nexus. When opened it formed a gateway to another realm. Morticus entered the Nexus and was never seen again. Shortly after, demons started coming through and attacking anything in Thor path.

Four of the most powerful kingdoms formed a alliance and built fortresses around the nexus to hold back the demons. For ages the alliance and fortresses have held back the demons. Slowly the demon attacks have become more rare and smaller. Till they where hardly seen at all.

Recently Morticus's journal has been discovered. In it was the secret to unlocking the power of the nexus. It tells of great power to be found on the other side of the gate. To claim it one must reassemble Moticus's staff and use it to enter the Nexus. Its parts have been hidden in caves near the Nexus.

Soon the news spread. Shortly after the discovery of the journal the alliance crumbled in a fit of short sighted greed. War was soon to follow....

Game Concept-

It is a AoS/RPG combo

AoS (Age of Strife) style Concepts-
There are 4 teams of 3 players with limited unit control. Each player only controls a hero. Each team has a castle as a base. Inside the castles are a barracks for each player. In each castle is a king. If the king dies that team loses. Much like the Castle Defense maps except with 4 castles. To win the game kill the king from all the other teams while keeping yours alive.

RPG (Role Playing Game) style Concepts-
In addition to supporting your troops in combat your hero (and his hero allies) can go on a large number of quests. Some quests are simple, quick and easy. Others are complex, long and hard. But dont fret. The reward is comparable to the difficulty. Some quests give items others help you or your team in some other way. Quests are not a afterthought thrown in for flavor. They are built into the balance and strategy of the game. Questing can be a important step to victory but never a required one. You can always do your gate busting the old fashion way.

WAARRRrrgggg! :bangH:

The Random Factor-
We are making heavy use of randomness in this map. Each game will be different. Special locations are found in different spots each game. Some quests may not appear every game. Many quests are based on random item drops. Troops attack random targets. Troop spawn is random. Other randomness may be added as well.

Quest types-

Main-
There is a main storyline quest that has 5 subquests. It is long and hard but if completed it is almost a victory condition. Most (not all) of the items recovered from this quest could allow a hero to defeat a whole army supported by heroes and kill the king singlehanded. Uber Items arnt supposed to be balanced. They are supposed to be game enders. Thought it would be much cooler that way, Rather than just having the game end when you complete the quest.


Combo-Items-
There are various combo-item quests. These are items that can be combined into a more powerful/useful item. Some need to be taken to special locations and others just auto combine. With this type of item your 6 space limit on you hero is better used.

Upgrade Quests-
Some quests allow for upgrades for your team. It might be upgrades for heroes, castle upgrades, troop upgrades or a upgrade to your king. Many of these are multi-tier. In other words you can repeat the quest (or a similar one) to get additional upgrades. Most of these are team quests Ie: they benefit the whole team.

Neutral Faction Quests-
There are neutral factions in the area. The game will keep track of their attitude toward each team. There will be a variety of quests involving them. Currently there is only one type of quest for factions. Go to one and they will ask for a item. Bring them that item to finish the quest. Once finished you will get a higher level item and a unit from that faction will spawn near your king each round. If you complete more quests with the same faction you will get more powerful units from them. When one team finished a quest with a faction all other teams lose favor with them. So they will either get a reduced or no units from the faction.

Game features-

-Four teams of three players each. Human, Elf Orc and Undead. Not exactly original but we had to use the models they gave us.

-Auto balance. If a team is short or a player drops that team gets a bunch of free upgrades. It wont make up for the loss of a skilled experianced player but will replace a average one. All buildings except the starting spawn buildings are transfered to players still in the game. The amount of spawn buildings you may build also go up. It may not sound like much but upgrades are huge. There is basicly two ways to win. A super hero or tech. Mostly you will win by tech.

-Quest Info button. This button give you info about the quests you have active and the location of your allies and the Master Alchemist (quest NPC that wonders the map). This way you can quickly check all quest requirement ingame.

-No load spawning. This is a special system we developed to reduce the amount of memory and lag during the game. We wont go into how it works but will say it reduces the amount of resources used by spawn units by about half compared to other spawn systems. Its not fully implemented yet but the parts we have used it in work great.

-Spawn units are not fixed. Each spawn building will produce a number of units each round. Exactly which unit will be based on a random roll combined with your current tech level.

-Item decay. Lots of items drop in a game so we dont it to get too cluttered. Picking up a item will reset its timer. They decay in a couple minutes so you can make transfers without problems or come back and get a item left behind.

-Pack units. There three different item hauling units right now. Buy one to hold items for your hero or stay in base as a item box. They can be killed and will drop all items when they die. Except anks that they will activate. Buying better ones makes them faster and lot harder to kill.

Heroes-

-There are 28 heroes. Each race has 7 unique heroes from 4 classes. All skills are custom and many will be trigger enhanced or based totally on triggers. We arnt done with the skills yet. Most of the skills that exists now will but either replaced or enhanced. We have been trying to get the game engine functional before doing a lot of heavy skill work.

-The classes are mage, ranged, melee and a support type hero. Support heroes and several mages are unavailable atm because we havent finished the skill system yet.

-The classes will be balanced based on team play. Some are good hero killers while others are good at base busting or mass troop killing. All are able to do any quest.

-Hero stats are the same for each race but not for each hero. So between the 7 heroes there will be a identical counterpart in each other race. Thats stats only, not skills.

-When you die you are given a choice. Respawn minus some gold after a short period or repick hero right away. If you repick all items will be dropped from your hero and may be recovered.


Castles-

-Walls. Of course it has walls, its a castle. Why nobody Else does this in AoS maps is beyond us. Most bases in AoS maps look like a flea market.

-Castles have gates that will open for allies and stay closed for opponents. They may be attacked and destroyed.

-A variety of shops to buy items and reinforcements. Five shop types in each castle so far. Not all items in the game can be bought. Many are quest only. Like the skill system the items we have right now are unfinished. There are a lot of custom items but we will do a complete overhaul of the item system after skills are done. We intend to make items somewhat like Diablo where the game is like a treasure hunt for cool items.

-Castles have prebuilt defenses. More may be added by the players. Towers can be built anywhere. A variety of spawn buildings may also be built. They may also be upgraded to provide better troops.

-There are 5 types of towers each race can build. One of those is race specific. Other are common between the races. More may be added latter.

-Barracks spawn 4 random race specific troop types. Each barracks may also be upgraded multiple times to produce better troop types. This works on a % basis. So each upgrade gives you a chance to spawn a better troop type. The number of troops remain the same to keep down lag. Same idea as the Chaos Gate in Hive's Revenge TD.

-Upgrades for troops can be researched. Each tech works for the whole team and will effect all spawned units. Race specific tech may be added latter.

-Quest NPC's and locations for team quests can be found in the castle. Team quests can be done solo but they affect the whole team.

Environment-

-In addition to the open combat area there are caves and other special locations that can be entered by heroes.

-Large play area. It is a 12 player map with lots of quests and special locations. There is plenty of room for all this and the war at the same time without getting cramped.

-Portal pads allow quick transport between certain locations. Most will send you to your castle. There is one in your castle that sends you near the middle of the map. This makes the game go faster since the map is so large. Town portal scrolls are also available.

-Creep camps are randomly located around the main map. They may be attacked by heroes. When destroyed they will spawn some creeps. Lvl of creep depends on the camp type. Many quest items are random creep drops on a low %.

-Caves are located around the main map area. The entrance to a cave looks like a goldmine and can be seen on the mini-map. Just walk near them and you will enter a cave. There are 4 main caves. When the boss is killed there will be a short delay and respawn will be available again. To cause a respawn re-enter the cave after a min or so. You must re-enter. Waiting inside the cave will do nothing. This is to reduce lag. No reason to have a ton of creeps hanging around when nobody is killing them. The current spawn system used in the cave is a basic one. It will be replaced by something better latter.

-Neutral faction locations are located beside each base. The type of units you can get from helping them will be close to the type used by the race close to them. So if you want abilities used by other races go to the faction near their castle. They may be attacked(at your own risk) but it doesnt do much right now. Latter there will be reasons to do this. There is a shop in each faction building but for now they only sell basic items. One thing they do sell is town portal scrolls so you can get back to base quick.

Troops-

-Four different races with a large variety of troop types. This includes several melee types, ranged, mages and flyers. Three of each plus one special unit atm. More may be added latter.

-All troops are being customized for good balance.

-Many troops have special abilities. Many of those are race specific.

-Each time a troop is spawned it picks a random castle to attack. This causes the balance to change throughout the game. Sometimes one front will be strong and other times weak. Heroes must deal with these little problems as they come up. This also means that when one barracks dies troops will still attack along all paths. There will just be less of them.

Quests-

Already talked a bit about them so we will give you a description of one of the side quests as a teaser.

Weapon Infuser Quest-

Items needed-

one of these (can be purchased or found)...

Finely Crafted Weapon
Enchanted Weapon
Power Weapon

And one of these (can be found on random creep drops)...

Cold Infuser
Fire Infuser
Lightning Infuser
Power Infuser

Take both items and find the Master Alchemist. He can be found wondering around in the main map area. He has raven form so sometimes he wont be accessible.

Give him a Infuser while you are holding one of those weapon types and you will get a new item depending which infuser you gave him and what type of weapon you have.

Power Infusers upgrade the weapon class. Elemental Infusers turn them into Elemental Weapons. There are more classes of Elemental Weapons that we mentioned above. A Power Infuser will also upgrade Elemental Weapons. Ie: Greater Cold Weapon. There are five weapon types for each class. We still have orbs in the game but latter this will probibly be the only way to get elemental weapons.

This is just one quest type. There will be many others. This may not be the only one involving the Master Alchemist. There will be a lot to discover in this map....and knowledge will be power.

We will place the current build in this post so you can find updates quickly. Enjoy.

A screen of the whole map.

Impressive. I love friggin' gigantic maps. :D

- Bejoty

wow, an idea WITH actual work put into it and not just full of inflatted promises. YAY looks awesome sounds awesome, cept for the whole creep camp thingie. And the neutral partners sound chaotic. So only the neutral partners next to you can be obtained by you? or can other people recruit them to help.... interfear with your troop paths? also are troops going all over the map? like while your questing can you run into troops of the other faction if your say still quite close to your base? or do they follow predetermined though multiple paths?

Looks good, hopefully with the patch decreasing loading time for multi-level custom abilities, a lot of your loading lag from the previous version you released will be gone.

@Shadow: It large but not so big its a problem with lag. Think its a 196x196 or something like that. Big enough for whats happening in it.

@Toxic: Yes, about 6 months so far. Though much of that has been debugging. Creep camps arnt normal WC3 style camps. They are buildings. When you destroy one creep appear. There arnt creeps just standing there.

The faction troops get sent from your castle not from the location of the faction building so they follow the same path your troops do. You may recruit any or all factions. All four would give you a lot of extra troops. This is hard to do though since you have to be able to find what each faction wants. During testing we have been able to get three at once but that took quite a while.

There are no predetermined paths. Each unit will target another base and try to move there. Because of the terrain and combat action units tend to spread out over a large area for combat. The only predictable combat locations are near castle gates and the bridges. Most questing is done inside the caves (where no spawned troops may enter) so normally quests wont be near combat. For some quests you may need to cross combat lines however. Like the faction quests for example. It is easiest to recruit the faction closest to you but then the troops you get will have the same special abilities your troops already have. To get new abilities you have to cross into opposing territory.

We may change the pathing but what we have now seems to create a good variety of combat locations. One thing we didnt mention is your troops only attack the kingdoms next to you. So if your human you will start out fighting Orc and Undead. If one of them dies then you will start fighting Elves. So at any point in the game you troops act like its a three way battle (like Rival Nations) you just get a extra opponent if you manage to kill one. Also there is a lot of times when your troops are attacking near a castle and the other kingdoms troops show up and attack you from behind.

Final balance isnt done yet but right now castles are hard nuts to crack. Normally you wont need to go running home every time troops with a hero show up at your gates. The castle itself does a good job of fighting them off. This is so you can have time to go questing. This isnt to say you will never have to defend. If you leave your castle unguarded often enough it will get overrun. Mages are especially good at base cracking so be wary of them at the gates. To balance this they are also not too good at hero vs hero so in most cases they are easy to chase off. Or better yet...kill. :)

@Zotax: So thats why the load times are much shorter. Lol, we thought it was because of the 40 or so regions we removed just before the patch. Whatever the cause we will take it. 8))

We are currently working on improving the spawn system (its good now but could be better) and optimizing triggers. We have no cleanup functions installed so there are a few memory leaks. In testing the deload times havent been too bad so we figure the leaks arent causing many problems.

This ver is to do the final testing and debugging of the game engine. New content and balancing is on hold until we are confident we have a stable build. If anyone experiences large lag or disconnects please let us know. Now is the time to cry about bugs, lag and assorted unpleasantness with the game engine. Feedback is important to us and it will effect the final outcome of the game so dont be shy. There is a lot going on in this map so if your on a 56k with 300 meg system dont complain about the lag.....upgrade your system and it will prob go away. :ggani:

Here are some thing we may add for new content.

-Outposts
They would be buildings that could only be built outside your castle. When units come within range they send a few units out to attack. These units would have a life timer and only fight near the outpost. Basically it would be like a tower with no attack that summons units. It could be used to create a forward base or a defensive line.

-Mercs
These would be hire-able units. You would be able to hire them from your castle or a special location, like a faction building. They wouldnt act as spawned units. You would able to control them. Doing certain quests would make more mercs available to hire. Or you may receive mercs as a reward for a quest.

-New enterable locations
Two new lair type locations that could be entered. They would be located at random points on the map. There would be a group of creeps inside. When defeated you would receive a quest item or reward of some sort. Then it would be filled with a new group of creeps and moved to a new random location.

The creeps inside wouldnt be just a random set like in the caves. They would be a set group that would have something to do with the type of reward you get. There would be a number of group sets that would be random each game and each time it respawns. Factions (or somebody Else) may give you quests to clear these lairs. Or they may have NPC's that send you on other quests.

-Special Critter Camps
These would be like the regular critter camps but would spawn more powerful units and hero leader. They might drop a quest item or be part of a mission from a faction.

-Wandering NPC's
Right now the only wondering NPC is the Master Alchemist. We plan to add more. One would be a large dragon that is neutral until attacked. He would be very tough. Once killed he would drop a quest item that can be used to upgrade units. Other ones might sell special items, give quests or drop other quest items when killed.

-Delivery Quests
This would be a quest to take something from one location to another. Mainly it would be a faction type quest but may have to do with wondering NPC's or other places.

-Rescue Quests
There would cages that hold neutral heroes. They would be located in someplace like a faction building, cave, special critter camp or lair. When broken you would get a merc hero as a ally. If that hero dies he would become a free agent and be hire-able to any kingdom. The catch is they would retain whatever level they had before. So after a while there could be some powerful merc hero that you trained suddenly appear on another team. The cost to hire them would go up as they level. We may remove their inventory so they are harder to keep alive. Or at least not allow them to carry anks.

If anyone has any other ideas let us know. We are still tweaking the engine and wont be adding any of these things for a while. They will prob be added around the time we do the item system since that will be combined with quests. We still have a lot of work to do but its starting to come together.