Battle Grounds - Announced

I feel the time is right to announce a small project I have been working on, like all my projects they usually begin as nothing, usually an experimental creation or a test. I have created good maps in the past but never got to publish them officially as I always would start on a new project or just make it bigger and bigger, and eventually discard it.

However, this project is different, it’s a simple concept, easy to play and in some aspects unique.

NAME: Progress: GAME TYPE: PLAYERS:

General Concept

Basics

Like all AoE’s, Battle Grounds take place with two forces battling it out for domination over the map, unlike “Defence of The Ancients”, Battle grounds is using a landscape setup for the initial map, not the diagonal setup (Bottom left corner base 1, top right corner base2) which you see in DOTA, TOB, etc. Instead it uses the old fashioned landscape fight.

Teams

Each team consists of a computer controlled player and 4 human controlled players. As standard to an AoS map, each side will generate units of which they will be sent across the map to meet the opposing teams units.

The two sides are:

• -The legion: Left side of the map, demonic race with undead aspects. This will take the roll of the Attacking team.
• -Defenders of Azeroth: Humans, elfs, orcs, basically the good side, who are resisting the attackers.

Control Points

I tried to implement as many ideas of my own creativity into this map, making it more unique and more of a new experience then rather than DOTA with a different name. One of the ideas I shall reveal now is “control points”. These are points in the map that when captured by a player will gain towards the capturing forces resource income, of which I will get to shortly. There are initially six “control points” on the map, of which each side upon default will own 3 each, and they are places in exactly symmetrical positions to produce a more balanced game play.

Resources

Resources are going to be a more important factor in this map, as players will be able to build bases, but have a limit to the amount of buildings they are allowed to build.

Bases

As each player will be able to choose a hero at the start, they will also have a reserved area in there team’s side of the map for there base. I decided I will not be using workers, such as peons to produce buildings but build buildings via there primary structure, through the use of triggers, preventing imbalances. Through these buildings a player will be able to train units, gain researches or totally ignore them and just go all out on there hero and buy items with there resources.

Here is a picture of the mini map to get an idea of the base layout.

Here is a more realistic view, but harder to see. The red points indicated on the more realistic view of the map, are the control points. the two on the righ and centre top are owned by team 1, and the two left and the bottom centre are owned by team 2 at the start. To capture these a player first must destroy the flag that is on this point, then it will be given to the enemy team

Heroes

This part of the development stages of my map is still in its early stages, but I have managed to create a fairly good hero selection system which I haven’t seen in any maps so far, I wouldn’t be to sure if I was the creator of this method, but its very simple and works beautifully.

Each side has a choice between 15 heroes; each side has the basic concept of the heroes, e.g. Warrior Classes, Mage classes.

The next part of the hero design was a risky decision on my part, as there will be 3 types of armour and attack types, inspired by WoW. For example, a mage hero would have a magic attack, with unarmoured. A Ranged hero, would have medium armour and pierce attack, a melee hero would have heavy armour and normal attack. Producing the good old 3 way cycle, ranged beats cloth, magic beats heavy, normal beats ranged.

Items

I have not developed any items as of yet, as I don’t know what I will bring to this part of the map.


I guess that’s my map, I hope to be releasing it soon, and I appreciate any comments or questions. Obviously I have a lot of balancing in mind, so I’m trying to be efficient by implementing these balances before I create an imbalance.

-hezza

Elaborate more on why this map is new and unique. All the above features I've seen in many AOS spawns.

I suppose the general gameplay will be similiar in most aspects to AOS games, but the primary difference in this will be the tactical elements, not just select a hero and go to point x y and z, but actually having to have a workable tactic.

as i said its in its early stages of development, though playable, its not balanced as of yet.

Is that a typo, like all AoS's?

- So is it going to be 3 lanes, looking at the minimap?
- Could you elaborate more on the player building a base and units?

woops sorry, just relised. Was missing a comma :).

Yes its going to be 3 lanes, im thinking of adding the extra concept of air controled players, so there will be aerial "dogfights" as well as ground fighting, im still playing on this idea.



You start off with your hero selection, you choose your hero and you get him, as well as this, you will have a main building. If you look on the mini map, on the start positions (red square, blue square etC) this is where the main buildings for the corrosponding playing will be.

From this building, you can build your other buildings, which is totally triggered. However, you dont get to choose where they go, as my original idea was to build a building without a peasant, and use the mouse to choose where it was to go, like on Command and Conquer, didnt work out that way. You will select a building to build, e.g a barracks, which is basically a unit your training, that is removed from the game soon as its completed, and once its completed a barrack will be created or whatever building you chose.