Triblade Tournament

Deep in Ashenvale forest, there lies a small alcove where many lives have been spent. An elite sect of Nightelf warriors hone their combat skills here, in a small tournamant of their own fashion. Lethal rules allow the combatents to truly unleash their power, while keepnig their guard up at every oppurtunity. This year, you have been graced with an opportunity to visit grove to battle, along with 11 others. Let the games begin!

Basicly, it's a small multiplayer map I thought would be interesting to play after looknig at an old spell form wc3search. The combatents use a speical weapon, the "Triblade", to attack each other from a ranged distance, while also having potent spells to defend themselves with, and limited melee attacks. The idea is to utilize the blade's diverse uses and effects to utterly slaughter your enemies. Your unit (Warden), will have relatively low HP, around 500, while the blade does a good 50-100 damage a shot. Anyway, on to some other stuff.

Features:

• Triblade range can be adjusted easily via dialogue menus
• Blade will pick up any items it encounters on it's path
• Blade follows physics, it will bounce off trees, walls and doodads
• Once fired, the blade will always return to it's owner
• If blade passes through an element, it will gain an effect for it's flight duration
• Wardens (name pending), will have various customized abilities for defense
• Magical centrepoints at corners of the map spawn various elements for blades
• Various game modes allow for different play styles

That's what I have at the moment, but I'm hoping to add a bit more. Terrain will be 64x64,becasue as far as I know, I need to make regions for the stuff to bounce off of. The Magical centrepoints are stationed at the corners of the map, and the idea is that the other palyers will flock to the area when it becomes active, and depending on who's there first and what the element is, you'll be able to wreak quite a bit of havoc. Planned elements are:

Fire:
Although it doesn't alter the blade itself, once fire has been acquired, your blade will ignite and leave a trail of flames as it flies. Great for blocking off a layers escape route, you'll take heavy damage upon contact with the blaze.

Wind:
Once the blade passes through this potent element, it will instantly jump to maximum speed. If moving faster wasn't enough, the RPMs of the blade skyrocket as well, letting it tear apart enemies with ease.

Earth:
I'm not really sure on this one, but I'm thinking the blade will be slowed considerably, but have a blinding effect on enemies with the dirt and debris it sprays at enemies. A semi-transparent fade filter could probably work for that.

Water:
Upon contact with water, the blade will become a vortex of force and mist, sucking in nearby units and slowing them with the spray. A great slowing tactic if you want to try and get in a few melee attacks, you'll also leave your opponent vulnerable other player's triblade attacks.

And to answer your question, yes, they are supposed to be overpowered, very much so. While few and far between, when a centrepoint becomes active, you'll be notified on-screen, and expected to get other there. If you don't use them, you'll be a hile longer taking down your enemies. Game time isn't expected to last long though, 5-10 minute tops, you'll be offered the option to rematch after every battle. I'm hoping to add the following modes as well:

Deathmatch: What you see is what you get. Slaughter your opponents and emerge victorious!

Tag Team: Partner up and draw blood from all who oppose you. Dominating team takes home the gold. (So to speak :P)

Domination: Massacre the most opponents within a set time limit and you'll be champion.

There will also be various runes to improve your overall combat. Now, Triblade ability and counter abilities are done, what I need to do now is:

• Implement core functions
• Create units and abilities
• Custom models (A customized warden, maybe)
• Do terrain (64x64, won't take long)
• Add other triggers and regions

I think that's it. Sorry for writing so much, I got a bit carried away :\
If you want me to clarify on any points, just ask.

Sounds very interesting. Just a hint, you don't need regions for bouncing, you can simply do terrain pathability checks, do them with a little offset in all four directions from the triblade and you can easily determine from which direction did it hit a wall and how to bounce it; but that's no reason to make the map any larger, for a fast paced game like this, the smaller the map the better.

As for the earth element, how about a slower triblade that becomes heavier, making any contact with it instantly leathal?

I was contemplating that for earth, but it seems too much like the wind element, just slower. While I don't want any to be instant death, one should do considerable damage. I maybe edit that though if I can get a better idea for wind. And thanks for the tip, that will be very handy.

Well, I've started the terrain, I'll get some screenshots up soon. I'm also contemplating adding Light and Dark elements, presenting the relationships between the Nightelves and Elune. They might come in the form of runes though, I think 4 triblade combos is enough.

It seems to me that a sucessful use of a triblade element combo is mostly up to luck. you have to fire the triblade in the direction of the element to pick it up, so this leaves little maneuvering space for actually aiming for your enemies. Seems to me the map would be more about random fireing and dodging skill than about aiming skill.

How does the triblade return to the player anyway? I'm assuming that it will follow the rules of popcorn-style games when bouncing, or does it go directly towards the player after one bounce?

The triblade continues bouncing until it's timer is up, then it returns to the player. Keeping this in mind, it moves a a set speed, so you can effectively blink behind others players and they'll be cut by your returning blade. I placed the first element zone far enough away so that it's accesible form all sides, but I'mstarting to think it might be a better idea if your unit gets a buff that represents the element, so once you fire the blade, and if you have the proper buff, it will gain the element's powers.

Oh, and the blade turns red when it hits an enemy, it's kinda neat :)

Hmm, then here's an interesting idea for the stone element, when the blade picks it up, it slows down to the speed of the hero and starts returning to the player right away. This way, you can drag it behind you (since it's too slow to catch up) and slice anyone foolish enough to get near you. :)

Do blades bounce off players like they would off terrain or do they slice through? This is another possible difference between the elements (make all except wind slice through, or make all except stone bounce, or make it 2/2).

Just throwin out random ideas...

They go through. But, that idea is an interesting one, I'll probably go with it. And buncing stone too, I'll check that out, it would be an interesting thnig to add... I'm trying to keep the filesize low as well, under between 200-300kb hopefully, I'd make customized models for each triblade, but I think I can pull it off with effects, alpha and vertex colouring ingame.

Oh, and another thing about the blade, as I stated above, the players can adjust the range of their blades easily, if you want to fire them quick at opponents or chain up combos with a long-firing blade. I want to include a little variation while keeping things simple enough, is that the impressino you're getting so far?

Oh, I missed that part about adjusting blade distance. Silly me.

Yes, it sounds good. It's nice how you decided the best way to use this system is in a fast paced small map, and aren't trying to overcomplicate matters too much. Sometimes, simple ideas are the best, just look at the map Mortar Ball in our maps section. :)

More random ideas: an element (wind seems like the best candidate) could make a blade invisible. Another thing to consider are element combos, although, the way you have it now, elements are very rare, so chances that a triblade would pick up two seem low.

Invisible idea is good. I believe the blade model leaves a ribbon emmiter as well, so made just about completely hide the blade enough so you can see the trail it leaves :) As for combos, they'd be a good idea, but I'm not really sure how to implement them. Like I said, your unit will get buffed once you run throguh the magic, and your blade will be affected for as many throws as the timer lasts. So, to implement combos, I'd either have to:

1. Give your unit an item to represent the element.

2. Give your unit the ability to remove the buff and store the element as an item, which is a bit too complicated for my taste.

I think I'll utilize light and dark runes for something though, maybe you can combine them for a powerful blade effect, while they have seperate, lesser expendable abilities. The possibilities...

Oh, and jsut for the record, this map was inspired by Mortar Ball :)

That stuff sounds good :P And I think not even professional made games have used that idea. Will you make that terrain with random locations of forest like in real life or will it be somekind of melee terrain? Anyway, if you need those abilties made in jass because of local variables or anything else just ask me :P

Sounds very good, i love short deathmatch maps!

One thing sounded really bad though, dialogs to change range? Dialogs are BAD!

Agree.





(Except in my Race Chooser System Map )

Well, it's dialogues or chat messages, which I wouldn't really like to add. Oh, and this might not be out for a while, ma nad Seruk are owrking on another map in the meantime :)

It's an intruging idea. I suggest that there should be a few more elements so you can sorta get a random factor in there but at the same time it would be skill to know which element does what. Also, a randomized element that can do anything (like, any of the four elements, or instantly kill (or half damage) you or everyone else or all sorts of other effects) would be cool too.

Good luck with it... and whatever other map you're working on :D



PS. About the dialog thing, you could use abilities on the unit to choose.