BnB's first draft

Okay, so here’s the deal. Many of you who where ever on the inside of the Blades and Billets project, must have heard my whining about it. I always said that things weren’t as I imagined them, etcetera etcetera. Due the fact that I actually know nothing about modding at all and have to completely rely on others, I have adjusted the original draft of the BnB concept many, many times.

Eventually, largely due erwt’s wishes, the project became mostly an AoS. But my first original plans had little in common of that genre. As you will shortly see, it did have similarities with the genre, but doesn’t tower defence also have some things in common with AoS?

I think the main reason of BnB’s flawed gameplay was caused by me trying to cram my original ideas in to a different game. This caused some very big gameplay flaws and abuses, which ruined the game in a experienced player’s hands.

I’m not actually arrogant enough to say that this concept would have been better than the current (unfinished) game. Actually I think it is a lot better. Largely due to the efforts of people like erwtenpeller, murloc-lover and Dominant-Male this project became an AoS based on charismatic heroes, the thing I hope BnB will be rememberd for.

I may have changed these concepts a little bit from my original draft, but the core remains largely the same.

Introduction

The original BnB was actually mainly inspired by a Night Elf mission. Do you remember the one where your enemy is cutting trough the wood to reach Malfurion? That’s what the first draft was about. Cutting wood, in a loose AOS coat.

Needless to say that the terrain was full of trees. In the current version, you can still see some of my small attempts to sneak in some of my original concepts. Like the Shredder mercenary, which cuts trees for a tactical use. Or the Pandaran Lumberjack, who had an ability that was very usefull in my first draft, but seemed largely useless in the actual game.

Each team starts with one base with two spawn camps and two Lumber Companies. The spawn camps immediately send units trough the intial lanes, but the Lumber Companies sends out a fixed number of Shredders. These shredders are designed for one thing: cutting wood.

From the Lumber Company, players could set a direction for the Shredders to cut in, and could also hire additional Shredders (with a cap, off course). The main use of these Shredders was to clear the wood, as wood cut by these spawnies did not respawn. Most of the game’s infamous Zones are actually hidden in the woods, and you need to cut your way trough them.

Ironically, this actually solves some problems BnB’s current zone system has. One of the biggest problems include Gold Mine rushes, people pulling for fast fountains etcetera. In the first draft, it took at least 10 minutes to get to your first zone if you knew the level design well enough.

Lets get into detail, shall we?

Level Design



Ledgend:

Red = Team 1
Blue = Team 2
Bright blue = Lumber camps
Purple = Zone
Yellow = Gold Mine Zone
Black = Lanes (The black lines in the middle are not default lines, the two default spawn camps will not use them, but custom spawn camps can, and heroes can use them to travel)

As you can see, there’s a lot of forest. Off course, this map is supposed to be symmetrical, but I’m no artist. If you are looking for one, head to the bigger brother.

Zone Buildings

Gold Mine: Can only be build on Gold Mine Zones. Increases your team’s income by X gold per 5 seconds. Requires Lumber to build.

Spawn Camp: Spawns additional creeps. In this building, you can set the direction for the camp. You can choose four directional directions. If the spawns can not walk trough one of your given paths, they will find their own. Requires Lumber to build.

Fountain: A fairly cheap building that restores health and mana to nearby allies.

AI owned buildings:

Shops: don’t make me explain this.

Lumber Camp: the place where Shredders deliver their wood. You can build up to 3 maximum shredders per camp. Your team starts with 1 Shredder per camp. These Shredders are computer controlled and cut in the direction you set in your Lumber Camp. (It would be optimal if you could just use set a Rally Point from the building, same goes for spawn camps). You can also buy Workers here. Workers can make and repair zone buildings.

Spawn Camps: the default spawn camps. Destroy to stop the spawn flow.

Castle: the building your opponent needs to destroy.

Items: basic stat items, nothing too fancy.

Speculation on Gameplay

So, the general is idea that you use your team’s Lumber Camp to cut your way to Zones, and as soon as you reach them, use them to your atvantage. Another use for those Lumber Camps is to craft additional lanes for your buildable spawn camps to use. I have no idea what utter chaos this would unleash upon the forest. Imagine two player made lanes clashing somewhere in the forest. It would give some hilarious gameplay.

It’s a level design that is lightly customizable and will grow as the game commences. You have to divide your attention between two things: the two outer lanes, and the economical situation in the middle of the forest. This really emphasizes my original concept for BnB. You are two opposing goblin factions who fight for supremacy over a forest for purely economical reasons.

I wouldn’t be so bold to say that this would be a genre on its own. At its core, there is still hero gameplay, there are still spawnies, and there is still a castle to destroy. The ammount of costumization in the terrain just makes it a different kind of experience. I realise that this game would probably be overcomplex and annoying to learn, but it could turn out fun if you experiment with it.

Woah! That is one of the most interesting concepts I have heard in a long time.

What was it that turned BnB away from this? (What were the criticisms, etc.?)

Probably the fact that an AOS style map requires a very small learning curve.

Well, I've been caught by the idea. Anyways I had this addition: due that lumber is the main focus of this game, you should make it essential, in such way that the lumber can be converted into gold, and replace the goldmines by markets where you trade the lumber and get gold. In this way you can add an additional strategy factor to this game: to block the commerce of the enemy players and reduce the enemy's gold income.

Well I actually really liked the BnB ideas/gameplay, I just wasnt to fond of the Heroes. With a little work I think it could have become something.

I realy dont see the complicated part to it; there is forest in t3h way, it need 3 be goned good. me needs tree cuttas *player sends tree cutters*, oo look a zoney thingy, they is gd, can get me healy or gold or w/e else, i want.

It seems great to me. concept and potential gameplay.
Many times people have said that cutting through trees to the enemy is the way to go, plus then by the time the forces clash they will hav had some experience fighting on the less intesne outer lanes etc. it seems like it will be pretty noob friendly.

yet another map that id like to see made =P

Oh hi gais.
Im in your BnB.

OK, is it just me that would want elaboration on this

This seems like a fun idea tbh, a shame no-one knew about it till now.

Oh, well its been over a year since Ive played so I really cant remember the Heroes now.

Probably largely because there were alot of bugs, atleast when i was playing, but also the spells seemed quite weird & randomly placed together.
I'd really need to play it again to give good critiique.

But as I said b4, the gameplay was very interesting and unique. Certiantly thought it had potential.

Hell, I remember every hero and every yummy texture that goes with it! But alas, no point in crying over spilled milk. B&B ended how it ended and that's it. I was hoping in seeing ToB vO soon enough but seems that also has ended.
Now I'm looking forward to DoE 1.09 and AotZ 3.00 so, Dusk watch out. X)

It already has.

It just mutated to a much better game.

I always felt there were aspects to B&B that made it so frustrating to play that you no longer cared about all of the novel ideas in it, you just wanted to quit the game.

I have consider including foragers. Do you remember the Settlers game? Well, those kind of forages. I considered either a building that spawns AI controlled foragers who plant trees in the area around the building, Settlers style, or just have a player controlled unit plant trees.

It would add considerable ammounts of depth to the gameplay as you could actually block lanes as well as create them. The problem though, indeed is the overpopulation. But I think giving the AI control over most aspects of cutting and foraging would solve a lot.

I once again refer to Settlers. You could not actually control your cutters and foragers, but they would work in the area around the building, so you had some kind of control on where they where doing their stuff. I think that really is the most inuitive way to implent a system like this. You don't want to spend too much time micromanaging your units with RTS accuracy in a game that is based on controlling your hero.


It seems we share the same frustration, but for different reasons. I dislike the novelty of B&B's implented systems because they where pushed to the background in such a way that they excisted out of the basic gameplay. You could remove workers out of B&B and you would basicly have the same game but without the gimmicks.

That's why I think the only real sollution to the problem my "concepts" created is giving more power to the AI. Settlers style. You can invest resources in to cutting trees and loosely adjust the direction, but you are never truely actively cutting trees. You only invest a part of your time in the creation of additional lanes and building additional "expos".

The thing I've always felt about AoS is that the gameplay becomes really stale far in to the game. After 20 minutes of pushing back and furth, I as a player start to rapidly loose interest. Sure, mad hero chasing is fun but I really just want to win the game and get over it. One of my "novelty" sollution to this was adding an additional factor in the game that had a mayor influence on the core game.

A lot of AoS seem to also try this. You have the spawn towers in ToB, additional spawn waves in AotZ if I recall correctly, and the zone system in B&B. However, I feel none of these sollutions hit the nail on the head. I'm still stuck playing a game where nor the playfield or the characters truely dramaticly shift to push the game in one team's favour.

The original BnB idea literally split the game in to two games. There's the initial, tradtional AoS that takes place in the two outer lanes, and a zone control battle that slowly starts as the game progresses. My ideal excecution would be that the players will first reach a zone 10 minutes in to the game so that they first had the opportunity to skirmish on the outer lanes and level a bit.

Then the game's focus shifts towards the middle. There you will get the freedom to invest as much time and resources as you want. You can choose to ignore the middle and focus on pushing the two initial lanes, or start to invest time and money in a skirmish in the middle.

Actually, the more I think about it the more I am leaning towards making zone building totally AI controlled. Instead of building a zone somewhere, a default building would be automaticlly created if the Shredders/Workers reach it. The players would only have influence in the direction the Shredders would cut to.

Removing some of the planning aspects in the game opens more space for wacky ideas like Foresting. Each new Zone building could spawn additional Shredders at a player's command so that the team would also cut wood from that location. In addition, players would be able to build small foresting huts anywhere in the middle to try and block roads again.

Well, this has become quite the brainstorm. I was literally just thinking of shit while typing, which you could consider my speciality. Thinking of gimmicks on the fly, so to speak.

For me as a player, control over my environment is one of the things I enjoy most. As much as it might solve B&B's problems to make everything AI-driven and just have players act as the guiding hand, I think removing too much of the control will result in similar frustrations, even though I agree that the zone system could use better integration with the map's gameplay.

Actually I think the biggest problem in B&B (besides the ucompleted heroes off course) is the level design. If I had the chance to revamp the level design, I'd either remove the two middle lanes completely or change them in to one lane. There's just too little space around the middle zones, which is very frustrating when you try to mess around with them.

Zones are supposed to be gameplay living side-by-side with the initial lanes, not together. With the current level design, if you take one step outside of the zone you are already literally walking in a lane. In fact, sometimes the default spawns even attack the zone buildings. Ideal to me personally would be one middle lane that would be un-inhabited untill players invest money in spawn buildings. The spawn buildings in them middle would simply use that lane.

I think the current BnB system, with a sollution so that you cannot build gold mines early on in the game, more space in the middle, fixed spawn buildings and finished heroes would actually easily be superiour to the ideas I have posted in this thread.

You could also consider getting rid of default initials spawns and use somekind of creeps system for initial cannon fodder to level up, but right now i wouldnt know how to intergrate that in a competatively-interesting way.

I'd be down with whatever as long as i can play cool characters and murder other cool characers with those characters in a team-based envoiroment. :P