Essential Elements

I'm working on 2.0 of my RPG Seasons of Uncertainty, and I'm looking for input.

Basically, what do you expect from a War3 RPG?

Not limited to these, but to help you along:
- Difficulty
- Strategy
- More Single Player or MP oriented (if MP whats min and max player?)
- Aesthetic Design (doodads, terrain contour, etc.)
- Suspension of Disbelief
- Plot
- Side Quests
- Number of Controllable Heroes/Units
- External Music

However, I won't be putting in skins or altering the spell data because of the time required, and I believe it adds a lot to file size, which I'm trying to keep down (1.0 is 2mb, but so far I've gotten it down to 1.4).

If you have played the original Seasons, any suggestions on that are welcome as well. If I think of anything else I'll add it to this post.

I expect it not to be so damn big :D

Yeah... I learned CBWhiz's Map Protector can compress file sizes down, you really should try using that. Its nice, turn a 500kb AbilityData.slk into 50kb of data and still work fine.

My thoughts as follows:

Difficulty - variable. Make it so you can choose easy, normal, or hard. Make easy designed for noobs, normal designed for 80% of the community, and Hard for the guys who laugh at the Insane difficulty in War3 for being too easy.
Strategy - Make not too obvious hidden strategies that reward the player's scrutiny (one example would be a path hidden behind a breakable tree that leads to a secret item or backdoor into the enemy fortress.
Single Player - I never play B.net. I got tired of the dumbasses back in StarCraft.
Aets...Aesth... Whatever the hell you said next Design - Um, cool? What am I supposed to say here?
Suspense - Make this alot better than you did in Resident Evil. I want you to have to cut the tension with a knife!
Plot - yet again, more than in your RE. Making a map single player makes it easier to put a plot in too.
Side Quests - Several, some obvious, and some well hidden.
Heroes and units - Hell, I don't know. No more than 3 Heroes, and no more than 12 total units.
External Music - Less than I did lol.
Skins - These add a hell of alot less to file space than music does! I'd say get at least your Heroes skinned. I can do some for you, since I'm getting quite good at this. Seen my Buu or Nekrix skins yet?
Map size - Unlike Fear Factor, I like bigger maps. Hell, you guys should see what the LotR guys are doing, a 512 x 512 map!!! The same size as your RE map should be fine.
Secrets - As far as I was concerned, there wasn't enough secrets or hidden parts to your RE, so you should add some parts to this.

There ya go!

-Insaniteus-

Points:

Filesize - Heh, forget the ppl who tell you that they won't dl big files. Most of the time, it's the extra music/whatever that making the map so big that makes it so GOOD. If it's a quality map, almost everyone will wait for the map to finish downloading.

Mapsize - Make it big enough to fit in EVERYTHING that you want. (and then some) My DBZ one is a 384x384 and I'm praying that everything will fit into it. 480x480 is the max size though (I'm pretty sure) The last time I tried 512x512, it wouldn't load. :)

Difficulty - For the love of God, make it beatable with only one human player. If it's multiplayer, give the heroes of empty slots to a player. It is so annoying going through an entire game with whosyourdaddy on just to beat it.

Plot - What can I say? Make it good. You know, out of the norm.

Strategy- give the player(s) a lot of choices. when there's a lot of choices, players can be good or bad, and play the map differently each time. most good maps have many choices, instead of things that are 'supposed' to happen.

SP vs MP- i think that multiplayer is more fun, but its usually harder/more work, and if it is a long map, it may be hard to finish

Really? Cool :D

You mean using the 'add a file' method? It uses Warcraft III's compression, whereas I expect mpq2k uses starcraft's old compression.

Thanks, keep the input coming. I'd also like to hear from anyone who has played the map and knows of any bugs or inconviences that can be fixed.

Perhaps my 2 biggest goals are file size reduction and making the completion time shorter. I don't want people to start thinking of the map as tedious.

Here, then, is another question. How long do you expect to spend playing a WC3 RPG?

A good WC3 RPG. I expect it to be at least over an hour and a half.

Oh, and I like single player maps better (for RPGs)

Hey Draco, go to war3files.com and do a search for Seasons of Uncertainty RPG. In its current form it will definetly take a while to beat, and can be beaten by any number of people. I desperately need someone who has patience to play a RPG all the way through to give me feedback on the later stages of the game. It would be cool if you or someone else could do that.

About this CBWhiz's Map Protector, where can I download this? If it can compress files from 500 to 50 then I need it! NEED! But I can't find it...

for some reason, i cant get to war3files.com. if u could send me the map, ill test it out for u. my email is [email protected]

It is too large for me to send through hotmail, unfortunately. However, I also uploaded it at www.umsmaps.com in the War3 maps section under RPG and letter 'S'. War3files is hard to access.

Trav, have you ever played the campaign Dark Angel in starcraft? The whole campaign is a god damn mini game and it's FUN! what i,like most on RPG maps is music, cool skins and mingames and if you manage to make good story it's great. About the minigames, as we all know itäs way easier to make mingames in we then in se. so make a couple to add some variation, and as insaentius said dosn't matter if it's big. I also think you could put some time in terrain, I haven't played ur map but good terrain always add up too the feeling and so does cinematics.

Does anybode know what happened to Campaigncreations?

God Damnit! My name is INSANITEUS

Insani - from insanity
Te - (pronounced Tay)
Us - Latin masculine power ending

All together this makes Insaniteus, the lord of Insanity

I hate how EVERYONE gets mt name wrong, and yet can spell Weaaddar's name right!

-Insaniteus-