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[Deon]

Dwarf Fotress: Reclaim Party

======================================== [[ Overview ]]  ========================================

Greetings, friends! I've decided to make a [ RPG / Hero defence / Tactical management ] map for Warcraft III based on the awesome Dwarf Fortress world. You're a party of dwarven colonists who reclaim an old fort and try to rebuild it and establish defenses, while arranging deals with other nations and dealing with hostile races and possible threats.

The main emphasis will be placed on an extensive crafting system and randomness of events: you shouldn't get to similar games as you play it (unless RNG freaks out as usual).

The game will be arranged in "stages" based upon how deep have you dug into the fortress, and nothing should limit you from staying in some stage or for going further except for some possible bad events if you don't act for a long time. But also you should consider that the deeper you go, the more attention you drag and the more problems (and goodies) you get. Look at the "stages" subsection of this post for more info. Also please give your suggestions about it.


I am free to recieve any suggestions and feedback. Basically your attention pushes me ahead, it's my drive. Thank you.

======================================== [[ Progress ]]  ========================================

Terrain:

***Fortress Location***

• Basic
• Advanced

***World Map***

• Travel map
• Other sites
• Random encounters

Critters:

• Kobold thieves
• Kobold Ambushers
• Goblin ambushers
• Improved sieges
• Migrating animals
• Megabeasts

Crafting and skills

• Crafting and workshops
• Personal skills
• Artifacts

Diplomacy and trading

• initial caravan
• Annual caravans
• Random caravans
• Pets
• Immigrants
• Immigrant AI
• Declaration of peace/war

======================================== [[ Videos ]] ========================================

>>> Video: 008 Alpha (crafting,  woodcutting,  mining) <<<
>>> Video: 011 Alpha (changeable  weapons' graphics) <<<
>>> Video: 013 Alpha (cameras'  test & house interior) <<<
>>> Video: 014 Alpha (kobold  thieves'  gang  at  work) <<<



The game will be arranged in "stages", and the concept is taken from the 2d version of the DF.
The concept of stages:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Stage 0:
You arrive with a caravan and find a collapsed entrance. NPC miners dig though it while you provide defence from a wildlife and small goblin/kobold groups.

Stage 1:
Miners clear the entrance and you get an access to the first part of the fortress, with a dining room, some bedrooms and early workshops. Miners continue to mine further.

Stage 2:
Miners provide access to the next part of the fortress, with some advanced workshops and a Trade depot. Caravans start to arrive, with useful stuff.

Stage 3:
Miners provide access to a cave river. Now you have a farming plot (with npc farmer) running. I want to implement a requirement to eat, drink and sleep so this should be handy. Also from now on you have to protect the fortress from river attacks from time to time.

Stage 4:
Miners open the next area, with some further achievements.

Stage 5:
Miners provide access to the chasm. From now on you have to protect the fortress from chasm creatures too.

Stage 6:
Miners provide access to the next area, with advanced metalworking and other useful stuff. A dungeon master arrives, with some good and bad results.

Stage 7:
Miners provide access to the magma river. Some nasty critters there . Also, a wall of adamantine is on another side, so now you can get some cool adamantine gear. A king arrives.

Stage 8: When you mine adamantine for a long time, the HFS is revealed and you're pretty much doomed. Game over.

======================================== [[ Tables ]] ========================================

Critical hit table:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Basic prices' table

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Note: you sell everything to caravan with 1/2 value.


I request a help from someone who can script, also I would like you to help me with concepts about stages, this is the most important part: Which stages should provide what.

All ideas are welcome, and if you can provide a good concept which I agree with or borrow something from, I will definitely make some easter eggs for you and list you in the authors.

[Deon]

Some further concepts: if you die, you have to wait for a caravan to arrive, with it you "immigrate" (respawn), losing your items (all items are dropped on the dead body) but retaining your level (and you can re-adjust your skills).

Mana = tiredness, it decreases normally and is used for various actions and skills. You have to sleep to regain it.
Hunger - if your hunger meter reaches 0, you start to slowly lose hp.
Drink - if your thrist meter reaches 0, you make everything slower (slower movement/attack speed).

All dwarves are "mercenaries", but can level up in civillian professions or military professions:
Military - some advanced abilities like shield bash and battle rage are unlocked when you level this line
Metalworking - abilities to buff your weapons/armor, and even to craft new stuff, are unlocked when you level this line
Rustic - abilities to fish, craft things from animal products and farm are unlocked when you level this line
Hunting - abilities to get better results from hunting and some ambushing skills are unlocked when you level this line
Mining - ability to help miners to reclaim fortress and skills to mine for ores are unlocked when you level this line

More ideas = more paths .

[The Architect]

I suggest selectable classes with different abilities, but be absolutely sure you use the same base unit for all heroes. Otherwise, some heroes have inherent advantages due to their base programming. Despite all efforts, you will have a huge balance problem. You can do a lot of things with different heroes and even totally custom heroes if you have a ton of experience, but if you did then you wouldn't be asking for help.

[Deon]

Actually, I consider two possibilities:

1) All heroes are the same, but the abilities are numerous.
2) Different classes, but their abilities are specialized, by this I mean that every skill should be useful in some specific situation which would lead to good team synergy variants.

[The Architect]

Number 2 is often attempte, but you have to realize that the WCIII community has shrunk considerably. Finding someone to fill all of the varied spots was always a problem; even the best old games always had some position that everyone wanted to fill. All of them would be required (such as in Balin's Tomb) but people would quit if they didn't get the one they wanted.

The main problem is in the base type of hero. No matter how many agility upgrades you sink into a peasant, they can't equal a blademaster.

Combine 1 and 2, but just use the same base hero so no one can whine, and you can get enough players together who are willing to be something other than their absolute favorite character in your game. How many custom games have ended because some position was vital and an idiot got it wrong or a selfish player refused to play it?

[Pillow_Killer]

Second idea seems nice, if You use same hero, but instead, have heroes being able to level up different skills when they progress a level, therefore eliminating hero balance issue, while keeping the diffrent roles. have a look at map "Survival" for a good explanation of that unreadable clusterfuck I wrote above.
I would help You with coding, but looking back at all the development I participated in, You better not do  it with multiple coders.. Maps quickly become a clusterfuck of everything, impossible to navigate, to find out who added what, and eventually ending in a ragequit of the whole team. I could probably help with map protection, which I am somewhat decent at.

[Deon]

By help with map coding I meant custom scripts and solutions. It was never a problem for me, I helped a friend before by writing some scripts for different things end effects, like changing weather or graphical weapon switching.


Right now I make some map drafts. Because there's no good "magma" in WC3, I've decided to make a magmariver this way:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It looks better in game because there's a flow on surface, but I'm still not happy with it and I will remake it at some point.

[The Architect]

Use whatever Escape from Hell used for magma. That looked great and worked great.

[Asehujiko]

GUI is much simpler to understand for your other testers to read and if you clean up all leaks(which there are scripts for) it won't lag either. GUI is about 2-3% heavier at max and the majority of WCIII's load is not from triggers but pathing.

May i suggest incorporating a form of tower defense to simulate overcomplated doomtraps? Not as a fullscale mechanic but some upgradeable sentry towers providing early warning/defensive assistance for chasm/river/magma/pits attack? Nothing massive, even a sentry totem that you can town portal to would add some depth and remove tedious walking.

[Deon]

Asehujiko
1) I won't use GUI in most cases except for some very easy things (I am not one of "JASS" elitists who use JASS only, I think simple things are ok as they are because JASS actually is easier to read in most cases and provides much shorter code. I tried to convert my previous GUI scripts from other maps to JASS and they became a very unproductive code which could be made much easier. But the main point is that I can use JASS to make things how I want, while in GUI I have to follow pre-defined patterns and BJs which are not always good. I don't really consider it a problem to make full JASS scripts.

2) I am already going to incorporate traps for a "mechanic" skill line. I just forgot to write it . This should really be an option because I don't think that it would be fun to run back and forth from the entrance to river to chasm to magma river and back all the time.

[Deon]

Also, I've got these guys already:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Darkwind3]

I think I'd call myself mediocre (or possibly great--I don't have much to compare myself to, and haven't really done much with Warcraft lately) with GUI, but I don't know JASS (I wish I did, but effort, you know). I'd love to help, but I do understand if I can't due to your problems with GUI.

Also, will there be solely support or economic lines? For example, will players be allowed to become craftsmakers and help others by using gathered raw materials to build crafts to sell (selling crafts to caravans could give gold equally to every player), only indirectly helping the fighters? I'm just throwing out an idea here (honestly, I'm not sure it'd be a good idea myself).

And how will you deal with magic, or will you just gloss over it? I do realize DF doesn't currently deal with magic, but I'm reasonably sure it's a long-term goal of Toady's, and a unique magic system could add an extra layer of fun--the normal kind(and the DF kind if the AI can use it properly)--to the game.

Finally, how will sieges and megabeasts be handled? Will you just not do them, or try to add them in mostly like they are in DF, or some crazy third option?

Also, because I don't think I've said this already, awesome idea. And awesome model/skin/whatever of whatever the thing is that's in the post above mine.  Rhino? Elephant?

[LegoLord]

I never finished a map I made, and I couldn't do everything the people who made the more amazing maps did, but I have some experience with scripting, and could pull of some neat stuff.  I think I know how to do the fatigue thing, too.
I'd have to open up the editor and get a look at stuff, though.  I'll check back in a little while.

[Deon]

The fatigue thing is easy to do . Just a negative base mana regeneration, affected by intelligence (which becomes toughness by the way... which makes sense; so strength, agility and toughness).

Darkwind3: I don't want the "Sim" aspect to take me away from the "hero defence" concept too much, but I still want it to be a noticeable part of the gameplay. So fortress will generate some "raw resource" over time based on the amount of "discovered" workshops, and when a caravan arrives, it will give that much gold to the "fortress", which is divided between players. Also players should be able to gather resources and craft things to sell to caravans or to use, but with a cooldown (to avoid someone spending his whole time in the mine while others try to fend off attackers).

The sieges will be in. The game will start with ambushes, but will at some point get sieges which will require traps and possibly hired mercenaries. The balancing will come the last, for now I need to make a system.

"Megabeast" is another thing, and I will definitely implement them in one way or another. One idea is to use them to force players to progress through stages. I.e. you won't be automatically moved through all the parts of the game, but rather have to vote to uncover another part of the fortress (which would bring additional bonuses but harder problems), and if you decide for too long (stay in one stage), a megabeast comes.

I am not sure about magic yet. I don't want to go over the top with it, but I am fine with some alchemistry for rustic line and geomancy for mining line.

[Deon]

So, here's the current progress with the draft of the map.

I needed some basic places to make areas there to attach scripts to.

Here's the entrance:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Now I will learn how to make a "scoreboard" to display current status for each player (about hunger/thirst tiredness, fortress wealth and other stuff) and I will code a "season" system (I want all DF months to pass, and each month will be 1 Warcraft day).

P.S. And here's the quick dining room design. I won't add much more details to rooms for now, I want to focus on more fundamental stuff.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)