Sanity's Requiem

Greetings,

Introduction

First, an introduction. I am OdinsFury aka OdinsRagnarock and have been a long time lurker in all WC3 modding forums. On my own I have worked through around four or five projects none of which ever came to a truly playable version because I either lost interest or was a bit too ambitious. My first map for instance was the set to the largest scale possible and had nearly 30 completed heroes and four very customized races before I realized it just wouldn't get finished. I haven't modded too much since then but occasionally have started on projects which were a bit too ambitious.

The Project

The current project which I intend to complete is tenatively titled: Sanity's Requiem. For those familiar with the map Battle Royale created by Will-Kill, this is intended to be essentially a variant of that. That map was essentially a map where you take control of a hero and have to kill off everyone else on the island with a unique skill set before time runs out.

The map will be set in outland, though I already have in mind further branch off maps that are re-themed and re-tooled with new heroes. Tenatively then the project would be called Sanity's Requiem: Outland. It will feature 10 playable 'fighters' with between 4 and 5 skills that will be polished if not unique. That is to say I'm not expecting that every spell a hero has be JASS based and many of the abilities will be incredibly simple. I'm also using custom models or skin for every fighter, in my mind with otherwise fairly simple gameplay this will help me to emphasize the terrain and good looks of the game.

The simplicity in that map was in my mind, its greatest strength and I want to capture that while also adding in some new mechanics.

New Mechanics

Items

One of my main issues with the Battle Royale map was that there was no bonus for killing an enemy, I intend to correct that. Each fighter will have a unique item associated with it that will drop on death and provide a subtle boost of some sort or have a usable quality. Thusly, there will be incentive to engage enemies early rather than just outlasting them. The other restrictions featured in Battle Royale, the time limit and the healing fountains, will also be done away with while increasing a fighter's natural regeneration to facilitate more agressive gameplay.

Zones/Pads

Another new feature will be Zones/Pads. These will be areas scattered throughout the map and at every player start location that provide a meaningful buff that is either short lived or 'charged' and after casting a spell or making an attack will fade. Certain Pads will help certain characters over others and some will provide universally beneficial effects such as sight over the entire map for a brief moment. The idea behind this is again to push players around the map and give them incentive to accquire multiple buffs and bonuses before engaging in combat.

Combat

Combat I also feel needs to be more psychological than button mashing. That is to say at least one skill per hero will function in such a way as to mess with an oponents mind and their fundamental control of their hero. I realize that these mechanics are indeed awkward, but I feel that they would add significantly to battles and if four or five fighters happen across each other chaos would break out. I'm not looking to make hugely complex skills, just skills that feel in tune with the hero model and are genuinely fun. There WON'T be heroes with a bunch of passives, effects will mostly be activated and short lived forcing a player to guage when to use an ability.

Most nukes will also be skill based, rather than point and click based.

The Story

Currently the story for the game is pretty much non-existant. I'm not opposed to adding story elements, but it is basically just these 10 very different forces vying for control over a significant chunk of an Outland based area. All of the characters have their own reasons behind this and very few of them are 'good'. Even the characters that appear good are generally intended to have motivations that are less than saintly.

What I'm Looking For

What I'm looking for help with is first and foremost, ideas. While I could always use a hand in making nifty spells and refining terrain etc. etc. The primary thing I need are good, solid, ideas. Ways to refine the base ideas layed out above and make them really shine. I don't mind being the manual labor, I'm expecting my project to be largely solo, but I don't want to be the only one contributing to it's growth as an idea.

Other things that would be nice but not essential:

A person fluent in JASS and willing to log in some time coding spells at some point in the future (a month or two away).

A person willing to go over my terrain with me, refine it, improve it, tweak it till it shine real nice (a month or so away).

A person willing to get my file size to a managable level and compress the skins/models I'm using without hurting the quality too much.

How Can You Help?

Give me feedback and ideas, it's really simple. I'm sure I'll mingle my own ideas with other people's and give credit where it's due. For instance the first hero I'm fleshing out is as follows:

Fable Anarchist -- Based on Erwt's skin of the same name (Linky)

Skills:

Place Sentry Gun/Activate Sentry Guns: A very simple skill, it places an invisible crate at a location that can be activated either manually or if the Anarchist chooses he can activate all crates at once. The gun lasts only 10 seconds before dying and deals fairly moderate damage. (This skill is already made and works)

Other ideas -- Spells not yet made (but they are easy enough to make.

Hellfire Missle: Fires a missle at a targeted area that deals light damage and coats all units in it's AOE with flames that cause all attacks made against the unit to have their damage increased for a short duration.

Self Destruct: The Fable Anarchist explodes dealing damage in his immediate area and forms two smaller versions of himself. If even one survives for an extended duration he will be re-assemble himself. (This spell would use the clockwerk goblin models, who are also effected by Erwt's skin)

Etc. etc.

If people are at all interested I can and will post further ideas I have based on other models and skins I have in the game.

I am fully aware this topic might be more fit for the map/campaign projects area but I felt that I was in a manner potentially recruiting for the project. Feel free to move it to the other area if you feel the need.

Sounds good, ill get involoved if i can

i cant jass, im not bad at terrain, i can do spells, balancing of characters, all that kind of stuff,

so if u need a hand with pretty basic stuff (triggers terrain units spells, etc) ill help u, im kinda bored just sketching and skooling =)

Cool, progress is slow but steady, I'm somewhat jumpy as far as what I work on. Some days I'll flesh out an area of the map's terrain and other days I'll work on a hero or units etc. Anyways, the very basic terrain was finished awhile ago so I'll post a picture of that.

Testers will definately be welcome when I get to that phase and if you want to bounce some ideas around feel free to do that too. I have mostly completed the Fable Anarchist hero at this point with the above spells finished and properly triggered and am gonna polish him up today I think with a last skill. In about a week I'll be taking off for awhile, so, assuming you are interested in getting involved I could send you the map for awhile and you could play around with the terrain and such. I can lay out what I basically want, but I'm a fan of minimalism and well placed doodads rather than an overabundance of crap.

The basic terrain is as follows.