Rinpun's Solo Project --- War of the Universe

Well, I figured since Rao Dao Zao has kindly allowed me to use his models and such to support my map in terms of visual look, I might as well announce this project to wc3campaigns as well. It's already on www.thehelper.net, for those who know about the forums there, so I have some support over there, to say the least.

And, last note before I post the summary of my actual map, it's solo in the essence of all the OE and JASS will be done by me. It doesn't mean all of the custom models and stuff in the map will be done by me, and I accept this as my animating skills could outsuck a leech. Not to mention I don't have a good grasp on particle emitters either. Anyway, without further babble, here is the actual spiel on the map.

Game Summary --

War of the Universe is an AoS with many special twists. It is fought over an area of outer space (cliff platforms to represent planets over a void only traversable by flying units), so it is impossible to be confined to any particular area of space except by sheer firepower.

You will need to build marines and take them around in transports in order to capture bases on planets, allowing you to create interplanetary engineers that can strengthen your hold on that particular planet and grant you the income you need to win your wars.

And how will you protect these transports and such you may ask? Well, for starters, for serious planet warfare, you can build mechs to send along in your transports. They can't build outposts, but they're much stronger than foot soldiers and can deal splash damage, taking out massive armies of foot soldiers quickly. Most importantly, however, you will need to defend the transports themselves with your very own spaceship fleet, made up of fighters, battleships, and your personal flagship, which levels up as a hero and can gain various abilities by doing such. Your spaceships come pre-equipped with cannons, but to add to the unique aspect of this AoS, you can construct buildings to provide more cannons.

In terms of moving across the huge map, all of your spaceships can go into hyperspeed in order to rapidly move from location to location (not taking into consideration that said engine has a cooldown). However, as your spaceships can only go so far before their hyperspeed engine needs to recharge, there are wormholes you can travel through that will randomly take you from place to place. They may not take you to the right place, so you must be willing to take the chance. However, this also means there is a possibility that whoever was pursuing you ends up in a different exit, thus allowing you to hyperspeed back to a dock for repairs.

At the moment, with the money you get from controlling planets (every player controls their own planets at first for their empire, which auto-builds ships and sends them to uncontrolled planets to help you control them. If your central empire captures a planet, the empire gets the income, but then it sends out a small portion of the profit to all of the playing players on the team. If a player owns a planet completely, he gets most of the profit from taxes and gives the rest to the empire, which spreads the money around to the other players. With extra money you can build bigger and better fleets and buy more durable marines and other units.

An extra way to get money is sending trading ships to planets owned by either empire (so you may get into trouble if you go to the enemy empire...though their planets will usually send you back with more money). Then once a trading ship dumps its crates of supplies on a planet owned by that player (the farther away the more money it gives), the player gets some extra money. You can also find asteroids full of minerals floating in deep space and mine them as well.

And then it's all up to you as to which empire will win the War of the Universe.

Completed Features --

New

Complete wormhole system. At the start, 20 wormholes will be created. Then, every two minutes a wormhole is created and a random wormhole is removed. The created wormhole is added to the pool of wormholes and if you move any spaceships near the wormhole, they will be instantly warped to a random wormhole. They are purposefully warped in batches, so try to bunch up your units as close as possible and send them through the wormhole at once so that you can at least get several at the other location. If you send them in one by one, chances are they'll most likely be completely spotted all over the map. Also, bear in mind that some ships get lost in the wormhole network and end up going back through the same hole they enter, so don't be surprised to see your ships reappear nearby the same wormhole you ordered them to go through.

The space texture is now even more convincing using alphaed out ground around the cliff planets to reveal the custom skybox made by Rao Dao Zao.

There is now a system for "multi-casting". If you have multiple spaceships selected and you order one to hyperspeed to a location, originally only that spaceship would go to that location. Now all of the spaceships with hyperspeed available will warp along with the ordered spaceship to the location. This works the same with the Battleship Cannons. This will not be done with Board Ship, as then any player would abuse the strength of Board Ship and concentrate it on a target, quickly killing it.

Battleships can now board other ships.

The first flagship everyone starts with has been made the Carrier model. Unlike the Battleships series, each model will NOT be better than the others. Each model will have their own traits for defeating other models. Thus, don't look to junk your Carrier as quickly as possible if you like what it offers...backup support. The Carrier has one hero ability for it so far and that is its Release Ships. Release Ships releases eight ships that swarm around the carrier, damaging the targets they choose to attack. The swarm lasts 30-75 seconds based on the level of the ability (it can be leveled 10 times, so each level adds 5 seconds to the duration). Thanks to Rao Dao Zao's animations, you get to see the nice effect of the carrier having ships, casting Release Ships, and then losing all of its ships until Release Ships ends.

Rao Dao Zao has agreed to let me use some of his extra (and more recent) models cache that are currently not released for public use. Hopefully this will make the game even more interactive. I personally love the touch they add to the spaceships and mechs that use the models.

Mechs now have three stages of expensive extra firepower and endurance.

Flagships now have a completely redone complete-JASS (life drain just didn't cut it at all) Board Ship ability (and it's now VERY powerful and effective at taking out fighters ships one by one, though it of course has a recoil effect on your ship in that it drains plenty of health). I'm thinking of adding it to Battleships as well as they have a huge amount of hp for doing so too.

If you drop an item, it will automatically terminate in twenty seconds to avoid item clutter. When a spaceship that isn't a flagship dies, it drops all of its equipment on the ground for anyone to pick up.

Autoturrets now fire projectiles that Rao Dao Zao made. They look much better.

Spaceships can hold two equipped cannons. Buying them from the dock gives them a free gun or two that they use to attack. They cannot attack without them, so don't get sell them!

Mechs now use RDZ's awesome mech models and stand as complete powerhouses on the ground. However, they can only target one unit at a time, either firing their missiles into the air enemies or their explosive cannonballs into ground enemies.

Old

Marines capture planets by damaging the Outposts (they are the only ones who can explode it in short order with their outpost-only Exploding Shot) and building an outpost near the Build Here! that appears.

All spaceships have the Hyperspeed ability, allowing them to zoom large distances. Takes a while to cooldown though.

There are three stages of marine and spaceship (fighter and battleship class) development:

Marines become more die-hard and their gun equipment is upgraded...the v3 version boasts an energy shield that can absorb damage.

Fighter class Spaceships get free stronger autoturrets and extra endurance...the v3 version gains a manual-fire battleship cannon.

Battleship class Spaceships gain extra endurance and an extra even stronger manual-fire battleship cannon installed for each version...the installed cannons stack, so the v3 version has three manual fire cannons with varying power. They all have decent-length cooldowns, with the most powerful one taking longer to cooldown. Thus, there is a strategy behind firing off the three cannons so that the enemy is continuously barraged. Last of all, the cannon blast stuns the target briefly, so well-timed cannon blasts from more than one battleship will make things very difficult for enemy.

Features in Progress --

Recent

Add upgrades to be researched for troops, mechs, and spaceships.

Capturing Planets will take a portion (based on how many planets the player owns...more for fewer planets) of gold from the owner of the destroyed outpost and give it to the killer. This will hopefully end the potential issue of a cowardly player hoarding his gold and abusing the hit-and-run aspect of the Hyperspeed ability to conserve his ships to make an invincible fleet.

Planned for the Long Run

Work on asteroids to mine for materials, and the whole trade ship portion.

Create an ultimate mech creation that, though very expensive, provides crucial offensive firepower.

Create a repair ship for both races to efficiently repair their spaceship fleet in the depths of space.

Abilities for the Flagships.

Different classes for Flagships to change into to specialize at particular fields.

Current Progress --

Well, all I can say from my first impression, is that this both sounds and looks quite different from most other AoS' , and that's the most important thing ;) Would be easier to read the features if you could list them one by one, with small headlines.

I think I already do list them one by one, but they probably do need some sort of headline system. I'll work on it :)

Edit: Bumping up with some screenies and an update on the progress.

coo, looks neat, and im still just glad you started mapping again, ....don;t remove my name ;)