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Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 15 Oct 2009, 15:21
by TheFatController
I have this idea based on the gameplay for BA Skirmish which if you are not familiar with the game play the idea is basically:

- Each Player places a static home flag (could be any structure really) and gets a free squad of units teleport in approx every minute (currently raises by 10 seconds each spawn).

- Gaia critters spawn in groups on metal spots and carry points.

- Player units get points by killing the critters or by killing enemy units that carry points.

- Players need to return their points to their flag via the units which pools the points from the units.

- Players can spawn more units and upgrades / perks via their flag using these points.

- Goal is to destroy all the enemy flags.

Currently BA Skirmish also heavily uses Resbots however i'm not sure if these improve gameplay or not, it may be better just to have repair only bots to make micro even more important or make ressing cost points or reclaiming grant points.

Anyway, onto the idea...

Using this basic gameplay concept i'd like to create a 'Super Smash Bros' of the Spring engine with the sole aim of fast paced gameplay, micro and tactics. I don't think BA Skirmish fully achieved this but with more time and a less limited unit set this should be possible.

This project also will not include *A units (although may include a team based on something like MR-D's remakes if this is acceptable to the contributors) so the aim is for it to be fully kosher to share and promote around the internet with the benefit that if your mod has a team in Spring Skirmish then it also promotes your own mod.

The main goals of the mod will be:

- Fun to play.

- Well balanced.

- Doesn't take itsself too seriously.

On the last point this means that every team will be balanced against eachother whether its space chickens fighting orcs fighting cyberhumans from the 21st century fighting nano robots from a million years in the future, there doesn't need to be a plot to explain this other than that it's a simulation or a wizard did it or w/e.

To make this work well the project will need contributors for teams of units, ideally some of these will be from recognisable existing mods but totally new teams would also be fine if anyone wants a mini modelling project, the goal will be to have over a dozen teams with their own little quirks and unique power-ups and such.

A team will consist of:

- A weak fast scouting unit.
- A generic combat unit (the type you get free every minute or so).
- A more specialised but still generic combat unit (the cheapest you buy with points).
- A builder (bought with points, only used for repair/reclaim/ressurect/capture/(terraform?!) - not all teams will have access to all of these).
- A medium-heavy combat unit (the type people will end up wasting their points on should you successfully raid an unguarded flag).
- A heavy combat unit (for assaulting a defended flag).
- A game ending super heavy combat unit (for tie breakers and to force people to raid eachother to drain their points).
- (optional) A weak fighter aircraft for the areal surveillance perk.
- (optional) Any additional units bought with perks.

(Since most people know BA as a reference an example of this set would be in order: Jeffy, Stumpy, Hammer, Rector, Zeus, Razorback, Bantha, Avenger).

In the coming few days/week depeding on interest i'll cobble together a demo with two teams of something like Chickens vs some CA units to demo the concept.

What i'm really looking for in this thread is feedback on the concept and to know if other modders are interested in contributing teams of units (and also if you're not - for whatever reason) and once their in helping to polish and develop the mod to meet the most important critera: 'Fun to play'.

Re: Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 15 Oct 2009, 20:10
by KDR_11k
There's obviously Kernel Panic available for taking (you'd probably have to merge two factions to get your unit count) and I think Micro Modules could work.

Re: Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 15 Oct 2009, 20:21
by Pxtl
KDR_11k wrote:There's obviously Kernel Panic available for taking (you'd probably have to merge two factions to get your unit count) and I think Micro Modules could work.
Lolimod. You've got to make something out of Lolimod.

Re: Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 15 Oct 2009, 20:21
by Regret
*summons a wild Smoth*

Re: Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 15 Oct 2009, 20:24
by Nemo
Sweet idea, I wanted to do this with n00berhack a while ago. I'm totally up for pitching in/helping to deal with S44 units.

Re: Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 15 Oct 2009, 20:42
by zwzsg
TheFatController wrote:[..]

- Each Player places a static home flag (could be any structure really) and gets a free squad of units teleport in approx every minute (currently raises by 10 seconds each spawn).

- Gaia [..] spawn in [..] metal spots and carry points.

- Player units get points by [claiming the flags from gaia] or by killing enemy units that carry points [and taking their spot].

- [..] spawn more units [..] via their flag using these points.

- Goal is to destroy all the enemy flags.

[..] the sole aim of fast paced gameplay, micro and tactics. [..]

This project also will not include *A units [..]
Sounds like The Cuberor's Finest!

Re: Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 15 Oct 2009, 21:03
by knorke
teams of "Jeffy, Stumpy, Hammer, Rector, Zeus, Razorback, Bantha, Avenger" are fail.
instead make "german k98 infantry + optimus prime + kernel panic worm" VS "sphere bots + star wars wookied + xta commander"

Re: Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 15 Oct 2009, 21:50
by MidKnight
More varied teams with different sets of unit roles are a good idea IMO.
Also, special conditions and tech trees for units would be cool.

Also, the nature of this project makes it a shoe-in for CA umbrella development (no obligation toward CA required). :wink:

Re: Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 19 Oct 2009, 00:31
by MergeNine
I really like the idea of mixing up the races.

It would be great if you could hand pick your own team at the start of the game: one light unit, one medium, one flying thing etc etc.

You might be able to get something out of the deploy mode in CA after a bit of lua magic to get the desired functionality.
To add to this it you could give each unit a bit of personality and maybe have a glamour shot with quick blurb & stats to pick each 'character' in a similar fashion to Mariokart.

Re: Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 19 Oct 2009, 01:17
by 1v0ry_k1ng
do want EE, SWS 1.0

Re: Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 19 Oct 2009, 05:00
by chillaaa
1v0ry_k1ng wrote:do want EE, SWS 1.0
Droid rush time!

Re: Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 19 Oct 2009, 06:16
by CarRepairer
I think it's clear what's going on here. TheFatController has mistaken Zoy's ashes for ovaltine and drank them up. Now he's possessed with the ghost of Zoy.

Re: Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 19 Oct 2009, 08:10
by KDR_11k
MergeNine wrote:It would be great if you could hand pick your own team at the start of the game: one light unit, one medium, one flying thing etc etc.
I don't like that, it means a team couldn't have a strong unit in one area with weaker ones in others.

Re: Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 19 Oct 2009, 08:41
by Tribulex
I have lots of cool units that dont fit into my game projects. If/when i texture them i would love to have them in this mod. They would have to be balanced by me of course and given some certain OP powers that no other units have. Also they would only be allowed to be used in this mod.

Re: Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 19 Oct 2009, 09:58
by Gota
This is a great idea the only issue is the ba skrimish gameplay.

If i remember correctly BA skrimish critters did not attack.
They were just walking cash.
So what is expected from the player?
Just collect all possible money,by killing creeps, from all metal spots and than start fighting vs other players?

There is no interaction at the phase of killing creeps.
Why kill creeps at all?
Why not just start fighting other players from the start instead of having to spend time on just going around killing creeps without any need to do anything cause creeps don't even fight back.

IMO you should change the gameplay a bit.
You have to ask yourself how does one player beat another?
There has to be some element in the game where the player is actively doing something better than his enemy which causes him to win and that element has to be noticeable so the player can feel he played well or not.

This is a tactical strategy kinda game.
Maybe instead of having units that function and battle in a similar way to BA the teams can be of units that are more similar to other tactical rts games?
(since in BA like games its more about making a good eco and expansion and not letting your enemy do the same as oppose to the tactical rts where its more about trying to outkill your enemy's troops)

You can have most units with low los,one or 2 with high los and scouting ability.
So you tell the unit to show you a circle of los actively and it can only show one circle of los at a time.
You can have an artillery unit that is slow and has low los but has a long range.
small units that are infantry with 2 weapons,one long range vs other infantry/kbots and one short range vs vehicles and tanks and heavy and light tanks.

1 shield unit to allow troops to advance without getting hurt for a while.
1-2 builders that can build bunkers that need to be manned by kbots/infantry but without any infantry actually manning them the bunkers are neutral and can be taken by any player's infantry.
the builders can also repair tanks and capture points and terraform to abstract los and allow you to fortify points u capture.
You don't get many tanks only a few and they are powerful and have different armor depending on where u attack them from(if they have such an armor you cant have big numbers of tanks cause otherwise you cant micro them properly to face the enemy with the side that has the strongest armor).
All teams can take the lua from s44 mod for the armor.
The unit types can be different but i think the mod will benefit form focusing on unit specific abilities and LOS and scouting much like many other tactical rts games.

at the beginning you select your starting area where you get your first point.
across the map you have more points scattered around depending on the player count in the game.
the more points you have the better troops and troop amounts you get every x time.
it can also be that you only start getting waves of units if you have more than 1 point which makes players go and expand and interact.

The porblem is how to spread points across maps.
You can have mod specific maps,or make lua for specific maps that already exist and for those maps the mod will know how to spread the points.
Or you can make some lua to spread points randomly across maps...

Re: Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 19 Oct 2009, 13:49
by Saktoth
A mix-n-match game taking the best content from every game and turning them into factions sounds like a pretty fun idea. Id look at other mini-mods for other games, popular maps for warcraft etc, for inspiration if you want game design ideas, though the 'creeps' here give me the impression thats where it came from.

So if you are recruiting devs, what are you expecting people to do on the project? Each developer makes a team for themselves? Wouldnt you have to have complete veto over that if you intend to keep it balanced?

Also wondering about unit roles: If the game is about micro and tactics, the roles you give there are about the sort of economic, strategic role of the unit. Do you want the game to be pure execution, or do you want unit selection to be important beyond how much cash you have?
Gota wrote:This is a great idea, but ba skrimish gameplay is an issue.

Critters are dumb. They dont attack, they are just walking cash. Killing critters is not interacting with the other player, and isnt challenging. So why have it?

How does one player beat another? There has to be some element in the game where the player is actively doing something better than his enemy which causes him to win. That element has to be noticeable so that the player can feel he played well or not.

Units should function like in other RTT games, rather than in BA, which is more about economy and strategy than small scale fixed-force tactics.
*some suggestions for unique unit abilities*
Basic i fixed ur post.

Re: Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 19 Oct 2009, 14:28
by Pxtl
KDR_11k wrote:
MergeNine wrote:It would be great if you could hand pick your own team at the start of the game: one light unit, one medium, one flying thing etc etc.
I don't like that, it means a team couldn't have a strong unit in one area with weaker ones in others.
Agreed.

As for the player-interaction issue, I'd just make sure players have to compete violently for the creeps - just make sure there are always fewer creep-zones on the map than there are players.

Re: Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 19 Oct 2009, 16:19
by KDR_11k
Or at least you'll want to control multiple zones.

Re: Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 20 Oct 2009, 02:08
by TheFatController
Saktoth wrote:So if you are recruiting devs, what are you expecting people to do on the project? Each developer makes a team for themselves? Wouldnt you have to have complete veto over that if you intend to keep it balanced?
Once I have a demo together of some non-BA teams some of the questions about how this will work will be answered, the gameplay fundamentals can be improved i'm sure or tweaked to encourage more combat.

As for devs ideally someone could create their team with effects sounds and a general playstyle as a drop-in mutator or commit, balanced against the existing teams to their own preference and tweaking can be taken from there, I would initially have veto over balance aspects but if the project never takes off (ie never gets played) then a change of direction would have to occur I suppose depending on feedback :P

Re: Collaborative mod idea, Spring Skirmish

Posted: 20 Oct 2009, 18:15
by AF
This would eb interesting for AI development =]