KSer Tower Defense

02-01-2008, 02:47 PM

Kill-Stealer Tower Defense
concept by Gorman

Type: Mazing TD, VS TD
Concept: There is a single track that all the creeps will go down, each player is on a separate team, VSing each other to get the most kills (goal is subject to change, so its pretty silly at the moment)
You can maze, but remember because you are on a track with others they could block up your maze, and build their own. Players can build towers, and mazing blocks. Once per turn a player can destroy 1 mazing block from another player (this can open up their maze so the destroying player can build his own maze onto it).
Gold is awarded per kill, so each player is trying to get the most kills, to get the most money, to get the best towers, so they can continue the cycle, and win the game.

As far as I know this is a totally new concept, and so i want to make it very very good, so when it hits BNet it will be able to hold off all competition, with the benefit of being well made, well thought out, and unique.

Towers: Mazing blocks, arrow, AOE, speed, damage, range, and anti air, will be the basic towers. Once you have certain towers reached to certain levels you can unlock more towers. Eg, should your damage and range towers both reach level 5, you will unlock the "sniper tower", high damage and range. Towers will all belong to a tier: T1 towers are the basic towers (as said before), T2 are towers requiring low level combinations, T3 require generally at least 1 T2 tower in the combination. Each player can only have 4 T2 towers avalible to them, and only 2 T3 towers. There is a total of 8 T2, and 5 T3 towers.
This should ensure that noobys can still play, but pro players will be better. This should also stop the game from getting too complicated, as i want the focus of the game to be on mazing, and hijacking mazes.
The will be an upgrade center to add effects and increase damage/range/speed of your towers.

In this TD there are many other tower opportunities that aren't avalible to other TDs, such as a tower that heals the mobs, this could be placed in another players maze to prevent them from getting kills, at max level this tower could cast invisiblity on units. Or aura towers that give bonuses to creeps (for the same purpose as healing tower), or bonuses to ALL towers in the area. This possiblities in a TD such as this are staggering, and soon i will open a thread to allow people to post tower ideas (latter!)

Team play: To encourage the players to work together a little bit, there will be a 'team play encouragement' system. Whenever a mob is leaked, each player will lose one random mazing block. If they don't have any then they will lose twice the value of one.

The game may also include 2v2v2v2 and 4v4 settings, aswell as the default free-for-all setting.

Misc: There will be a 'Rock mode' like in Eeve (that TD is awesome!) where rocks randomly spawn all over the map at that start of the game. The track will also resemble a basic mazing over track style TD, like BK's Gem, and Eeve. With simple terrain, simple towers and hopefully a simple concept, the focus should all be on the gameplay!

This is the basic idea for the map, it still needs more developing, and more ideas before i actualy start on it.

The map shape is very important, as the corners will be heavily sought after ingame, so the track needs to be simple, yet with enough corners and loops to make an interesting game, that is the first thing i want to sort out.

Also if you want to help make this map please PM me, or post on this thread, or do both (although its still in the concept phase, and im not realy looking for people yet, its still good to show ur interested)!

02-01-2008, 08:19 PM

darkwulfv

Blocking other people's mazes sounds both awkward and clunky. How do you block someone else's maze with your own? Build in front of it?

On that note, this idea seems like it has potential, but not in a mazing TD. A mazing TD, especially with this many people, could never support so many players just mazing on top of one another. And there'd be flaws everywhere... As well as deliberate blocking, and stuff like that. I like where you think you're going, but I don't think it will work well in a Mazing TD. Especially the towers that aid the creeps. Those could cause some serious backfire, and blah blah blah.

I think if you combined individual mazing with towers that effect other teams' mazes, it'd work a lot better. But one big maze for 8 people who aren't on teams... I can't see it working as well.

02-01-2008, 09:44 PM	#3
TaintedReality	That's kind of the point though. It doesn't matter if the maze sucks and all the runners leak, you're just trying to kill the most. Could be interesting.

02-01-2008, 10:16 PM

Salbrismind

I've been thinking about this ever since you first suggested this yesterday! I will definitely help you make this, if you will accept my help that is.

If you want I can also pitch the ideas I came up with for this, some are down a different path then yours but if you want I'll do a nice long write up of it. Funny thing is I named it Action Td instead of Ks td, and the goal is different. The goal is the same as any td just that people know can make the enemy(s) leak, basically thats the point. However, what I was hoping is that we could combine ideas. So in this case, because yours is about killing more and mine about making the enemy leak we could each make our respective modes and put both in the map as an option for players.

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Like Darkwulfv said there is that problem that this is gonna take alot of planning. You would need to decide how to give just enough control to the players, not so much where they can make another persons maze impossible to fix or be used, but just enough to make it interesting. In my version of the map, to remove this problem I thought of adding certain towers that can destroy enemy towers (limited of course), as well as a special tower that prevents you enemies from building near it.

Also, to prevent the problem of having too many people in one arena there could be an option to player with several smaller arenas where only 1v1 or 2v2 can take place.

Again if you want to hear the whole version just ask.

02-02-2008, 12:24 AM

Gorman

Well Dark, since you can only destroy 1 mazing block per turn, I think its likely that people would use this to make a hole in an opponents maze, then to add a corridor into their own maze, thus stealing basicly all of their kills, the only thing is that while that player is building someone could build in his maze, screwing it up. I was thinking maybe there needs to be a delay between each players building time, or maybe you cant build within 500 of a building that isnt yours, and is in construction. Although that could be abused, it could become part of the gameplay =P

I think maybe i will remove the part where leaking destroys random mazing blocks and steals gold, as i want people to make other people leak, rather then let them get kills.

@Salbrismind:I accept your help =) and please do post your pitch! It sounds pretty good so far =P
but im not sure about tower killing towers, they might be hard to balance, I think they wouldnt realy work the KSer, but the building prevention tower, that is good! Also I agree that it might become a bit crowded, maybe the player limit should be brought down to 6, insted of 8. Thats still alot of people, but still enough for free-for-all, 2v2v2 and 3v3.

02-02-2008, 03:08 AM

Salbrismind

My Version:

Name: Action Td

Currently I plan it to be for 12 players maximum with a possibility of 1v1 * 6 , 2v2 * 3, or freeforall in either no teams, teams of 2 or in large 6 vs 6 teams.

Possible Towers:

1. Standard towers like arrow, canon, frost
2. Mazing towers like a wall (with possible stronger version/upgrades), jump pads, teleporters, bridges, trap walls (think of a sort of "T" shaped block that can rotate, and movable walls (rectangular walls that can move to open or close areas, and fans to push creeps.
3. Tower killers: do little damage and have low range and are limited to only a few
4. Anti-Building Towers(name revisable): can only have 3 and will block the enemies ability to build towers around it.

Towers upgrade into stronger versions (also more hp).

Upgrades:

Each player can choose a maximum of 3-4 (depending on the final number)upgrades out of a possible 5-(to be determined) each with a different addition to help players.

1. Enhanced A.I: Gives all towers the ability to react more to what you want them to do. Meaning if you wanted a tower to attack only weaker units, or only units closer to the exit, or only units that are strongest (max hp/strength) then you can set that.

2. Wheels: Giving some towers wheels to move very slowly can help to destroy enemy mazes/get more kills.

3. Range increase for all towers cept tower killers.

4. Elementals (not sure about yet if I really want): basically just more tower options like cold, poison, fire, etc.

5. Increased hit points for all towers.

More to be decided.

Hero/Builder:

I had the rough idea that builders should also be heroes with a possibility of having spells that could help you win by killing enemy towers or giving aura to friend towers. The idea is that it will build and be able to cast spells and levels with kills u make (not with kills near it).

Modes:

In my mode I just thought about how players are setup against each other, by your idea to include the rock and tiles is amazing so I really want that as a mode.

Tourny Mode: Either alone or as teams of 2 players will fight off in separate arenas one for each pair of teams (1 v 1 or 2 v 2 per arena) and face off against the other team/person to assume dominance over that arena or in other words beat their rival. Once 3 or more teams do this the game is put under a 30 second pause as 2 teams are put back into a new arena against each other. This continues until one arena of teams is left and the winner of that arena is the winner. Tourny can also be without the moving of ones base, the specific mode can be selected by the host. In that case spawns will still go to the next arena and the winner still be last alive. However in that mode only income can be chosen as a means for money.

As in most modes there is a choice of either constant standard levels (1.rats, 2. dogs, etc) or where players have to spawn units for income. In both players get money from kills but less money in the income mode. If income mode is enabled then spawns from a player are send to the next arena up (1>2>3>4>1) and the spawns spawn for both teams equally.

Example:

Code:

a = arena
1,2,3, etc = teams

a1: 1 v 2    a2: 3 v 4
    \/            \/
  1 wins       4 wins

new arena is:  a3: 1 v 4

Individual: Like tourny in the fact that there are smaller areas however rivals only fight each other and not the whole map of players. When one wins in income mode the game is over for them, and they can wait for a new game to start, watch other players or leave. If in standard mode, they could just stay and try to beat it.

Free for all: In this mode all players in the game will be in the same but very large arena competing with everyone else. There could be no teams, thus truly free for all, or teams of 2, 3, 4, or 6. Though only 1,2, and 6 are recommended as they would seem to be more fun.

Map/Arena Layout:

The map layout is probably the most important part of the map which is why I haven't fully layed it out yet. My current idea is to have either a spiral shape from the center of the arena or just a few zig zags from the center. Either way I want it to have non-buildable corners and at least 1/2 the amount of spawn points/lanes as players/teams. Thus in 1v1 arenas I think there should be either 2 or 1 spawns, and in the ffa arena there should be at least 6 or so possibly depending on the teams.

Final Notes:

It also nice to note that I wish to have the selling of towers to be perfect fair and also allow for the entertaining ability to rebuild at any moment. All towers sell for their full price, only as long as they are not damage. Thus the selling amount of a building is based on its current hp. If a tower has full, then full price, but if a tower has 1/2 hp it will sell for 1/2 price. This prevents a possible problem where players can build a tower in a persons base and sell then rebuild full health again.

What do you think? And please be as critical and painfully truthful as possible.

02-02-2008, 03:59 AM

Gorman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Salbrismind

2. Mazing towers like a wall (with possible stronger version/upgrades), jump pads, teleporters, bridges, trap walls (think of a sort of "T" shaped block that can rotate, and movable walls (rectangular walls that can move to open or close areas, and fans to push creeps.

that sounds cool, but i think they could be abused to stop the creeps from moving, eg by placing two jump pads so the creeps jump back and forward, and the towers just destroy them slowly, and i think trap walls may not be very useful, as the creeps wouldnt realy follow the path properly, and the game would detect a blockage. maybe insteed have 'alternating walls': you build more then one of these, then you link them using a spell. That groups them together, then only 1 of them can be 'open' at a time. so once a creep walks past that one one of the others grouped together opens, etc etc, spreading out the creeps into different areas using teleporters or whatever.

The hero builder sounds good, but it might be a bit too much for the map too have too many features, i think that the builder should be one of the last things to be worked on so that it will be easier to decide if it is too much, etc.

I like the modes, the Tourney realy helps to bring these new TDs away from the old style TDs, where each game would last a long long time, and once you win or lose you just leave. Tourney is usually just for troop spamming games, and stuff like that, but for these it will be awesome! One slight problem, i dont think its possible to Un-upgrade stuff, so if you want to have upgrades in the tourney they will either have to stay for each round, or be triggered in some special way.

I think the map would be good if it was like how it is in XP TD by rain9441, how it changes depending on what mode you select. would be great.

Im not sure about the tower killers tho, although they will be limited i still think the builder should have an ability insted, as it would be more balanced (i think).

I wont be able to post tomorrow, or probably not the next day, but then i will be back =)

02-02-2008, 06:31 PM

Salbrismind

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