Black Passage, 1-4 player Adventure map(RPG).

Update:
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I have been working on this off and on, I am dedicated to finishing this project in the next week or two.

First off, I got a website www.BlackPassage.com up and running. Actually it's just up, nothing there yet really but once this project is done I will put the initial content there... I am going to make a campaign next, I feel I am pretty good at this point with the editor and I want to take some of my idea's into a campaign.

I have a lot of idea's to work with for my campaign, but I would like someone good at JASS to work with me. I will do all the Terrain and plan to do about 90% of the triggers, as I hope someone with JASS can help me out with optimizing some of my code.

Btw I am about 95% done with this Multiplayer map, it's titled "Black Passage: The Garden", my campaign will simply be "Black Passage". A little confusing but no big deal, right?


Original Post:
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Here's some info on a map i've been working on, all the stuff on the list is 100% up and working but there's quite a ways to go before I finish enough before an RC is ready for testing. I'll post some pics later.

Black Passage

In most occasions, General Crun'Grin was quite a hostile Elf. He showed only his warmth and caring to his immediate family, who rarely saw him anyways. After all, there was little time for family anyway. Founding Leafgrin, a hidden village in the heart of the enemy's homeland without them knowing it was quite a task that nobody could have taken up with more fervor. His devotion to his work was that of an exceptional zealot, putting aside family and personal gratifications for the hunger that rested deep in his soul, his hatred of humans. He had few actual quarrals with humans, but in recent years, they began to conquer all the lands around him and even some of the more sacred Elven gardens. They had to be stopped at all costs.

Enter you, a small party of 1 to 4 players sent to investigate the aftermath of what part of Crun'Grin's plan went horrifically wrong. The elves in the garden that Crun'Grin was building in the heart of the Human Wilderness are rumored to be the slaughtering grounds for hundreds of elves. By what though, and why is up to you to find out. Crun'Grin is now an undead being that still holds his Elven mind with him. He now asks Humanity for help in defeating a greater foe. Trust him or kill him and what's left his people, it's up to you. Your actual reason for going to the garden is to salvage elven secrets during a time of their weakness, but you'll engage much
more before finding what you want.

Features:

Comprehensive Hero System
You first get to pick a base hero (Warrior, Berserker, Sorceress, or Archer) to start the adventure. Soon into the game you will be given the choice of choosing a Subclass that will essentially give you a new hero depending on what your Class and Subclass are. Your hero will retain the spells of the main class and be given Two Subclass skills plus a special skill only available to your final class. For example, if you choose a Warrior and then the Necromancer subclass, you will be given a Shadow Knight with the Dark Knight (undead Arthas) model and skills that reflect your dark alignment.

Classes: Warrior, Berserker, Sorceress, Archer
Subclasses: Knight, Wizardry, Necromancy, Ranger

Any combination is possible, for a total of 16 possible final Heroes.
Extensive Item System
Your hero starts out with 2 items, a Weapon and Armor. They represent the starting stats of your hero, the Armor and the Damage your hero does. This system is an extremely modified form of the Shadow Orb quest in Blizzard's Night Elf TFT Campaign. Heroes can collect multiple upgrades for their weapon and armor to increase its stats as well as several completely different weapons and armor as well, as well as upgrading them with Runes.

Weapon and Armor runes are found all over the place, Named creatures tend to drop at least a rune everytime you kill one but anything can drop them as well on a more rare basis.

Other Items are going to be plenty as well, for example you might be lucky enough to find a ring that increases the amount of heal runes or mana runes that drop from enemies.

Quests
You will be able to choose your path early on, helping either the undead elves or forest residents who have no alliance ties with Crun'Grin and would love to see him wiped out ofthe forest. This will affect where and what you can buy from the town you choose to a certain. Quests will grant items and other rewards in the forms of opening up more things you can buy. For example, you'll need to defeat certain foes to make available the possibility of aquiring the best weapons and armor.

Combat
Combat in this map is going to be fairly fast paced. I personally hate maps where you beat on every creature for more than 15 seconds, most creatures with the exceptions of bosses and named monsters will die quickly after a few chops or spells as long as your not trying to take on anything extremely powerful.

Progression
This is my second map, and the complexity of it is huge compared to my first, extremely linear map. It is sort of linear at first, but opens up in the second part of the map. The open endedness of it is going to be a little different than what most people have seen I think, as it uses an idea that as far as I know, is quite original and I think, fun.

I'm guessing as of right now I'm about 60% done with the map, if anyone has any suggestions please post or send me an email. If you guys see something like and especially dislike and wish to comment on it, I'd love to hear what you have to say, good or bad.

heres a tip for u my friend

1-4 players not enough u wanna make it online

6 players is about right, otherwise everyone will ignore a player map

1-4 players is a good idea in my book, too many players and you run the risk of getting noobs\retards, also its harder to get a private game with friends. Remember in RPG's like this you NEED teamwork and backup, stuff you just dont get in public games. I can really see this becoming a private game RPG between friends.

wow sounds good and unique at the same time. the storyline sounds intriguing, and the subclasses give it a bonus worth trying in my book. hurry up and finish so i can play!

My main problem is how to handle the death.

I plan on adding some kind of save code but the map won't be one you can play for hours on end. It would be easy to say, if you die without an ankh your out permanently but if someone's a long ways into the map then it can really ruin the fun.

Personally I hate playing games with friends and having me or someone else die permanently.

Anyone have suggestions?

Perhaps, upon death, the players must start from the begining, but with the heros they made during the previous game... that way, they can just hack'n'slash their way through the easier parts to where they died... I don't know, this idea could be comepletely useless if your map design isn't compatible with it...

or if you die you get a 2 minute revival timer, when you revive you've lost 50% of ure items and 50% of ure gold.

If i could make this an online campaign I would make it 10 players but I'm cramming a ton of my ideas onto a "Huge" sized map. With 6 heroes there would be little room to breathe except in the second part of the map maybe where things are more open ended.

I'm not settled on the Hero respawn yet. I think i'm going to make it eat up a bunch of your gold when you die, something like 25%.

Recently, I've adding a few things:

Pack Mule. You can aquire a pack mule to help carry stuff around. There's quite a few items planned so hauling treasure around with just a hero would be a huge PITA. It works like this: The mule is invulnerable, you can load and unload but you can't tell him to move places. If he gets a certain distance away from you for any reason the game moves the mule to your hero and slowly fades him in from 100% transparent to 0%.

Second, is the GOLD. To make things 100x easier, any unit will have a chance to drop gold coins, and this except for selling items will be the only way to make Bank. The amount of gold creeps will drop will depend on the level of the units. Gold drop will be random and if your playing multi, then it will be divided between everyone. This lets me to add special items that increases drop rates, etc...

Any feedback on these two things?

Oh and here's one pic. Your looking at a level 50 Berzerker/Necromancer class(Dark Brawler) who just laid waste to a low level bandit leader and his cronies. Notice the Axe Rune, they can drop anywhere and you collect them to up the stats of your weapon. The Vorpe Warlord is the Hero's pet.

looks cool....im always looking forward to a good RPG keep up the godo work...also maybe you mentioned this but what is the hero level cap?

Right now I have 50 spell levels for every major class so level 50 will be a minimum requirement.

But, lately i've added a spell resistance to the game. Every unit will have a certain resistance, particularly based on their level but not limited to that. Heroes will have magic power that increases with level, a level 10 hero taking on a level 15 monster with spells would have a lot harder time even if the level 15 didn't have many more hp's than a level 10 monster, etc...

That in mind, I plan on having at least a level cap of 60 to let the magic power increase, making your spells more powerful. I might just make it 300 and make it hard to level up that high too, I haven't decided, something i'll probably decide on late in production.

Example:

Knight Subclass gets the spell: Judgement

It works like Holy Light except it works on Everything and anything. If you cast it on an enemy(undead or not), it will have special effects indicating damage and they'll take damage using a formula that takes into account your magic power and their magic resistance.

If you cast it on a friendly, it will heal based on what your Base MP should be at for your level, and what it actually is (increased by items etc). So if you Judgement a creep with 30 MR and you have 40 MP, the spell will effectly do the amount of damage listed + 33% (Form: MP/MR).

This sounds really good...
espeially with the magic resistance...

ANd dalten,
don´t forget to edit the buffs...
I hate when people forget that so a spell based on bloodlust still have the bloodlustbuff...

Hah yea, i've been on top of that so far. For example out of the five abilities every hero will get one aura type ability and if you hold the cursor over the aura it indicates the correct name instead of the generic one.

I love paying attention to detail :)

Great story line and nice ideas. I also se you pay attention to detail which is always a bonus. If you could get voice acting it will make this map super.
Also are you going to balance the game for 1 player?

Updated the first post.

btw, it'll scale in difficulty automatically for 1 to 4 players.

Sweet sounds very unique hurry finish finish! =p
Me and my freinds would love this map
Sounds verryyy nice i kinda like 1-4 players