Staredit Network

I am in the middle of making a new Capture The Flag map. Now, it's not going to be like any ordanary CTF Map. These are the Specs:

[center]Map Name: None yet, please post suggestions
Map Size: 128 x 128
Map Pallate: Jungle
Players: 6; 3v3[/center]

Description: At the start, you pick between four units: Marine, Ghost, Firebat, and SCV. The SCV is used to make Bunkers and Sentry Turrets. When you build a bunker, than walk away from it, it is givin to your Team (P7 or P8 Computer, depending on which team your on). When you or someone else on your team walks up to it, it turns to their posetion. This way, you can use any of your teams bunkers that are on the field. To make a Sentry Turret (Photon Cannon) you build a Missle Turret. Then I used the 'Make Pylonless Cannons' trick to replace them with Pylonless Cannons. Also, all units get a Jetpack (Wraith) You can switch back and forth between them, but if your Energy (Gas) runs out while in Jetpack Mode, you automaticly turn back, and start recharging again. Also, the flags are on a cliff, but can only be picked up in Infantry mode, so you have to jetpack up to the cliff, then turn your jetpack off to get the flag. This makes it more challanging. You can also get Vehicles. These are more powerful, and help you manuver around more. I havn't totally finished the Vehicle triggers yet, but I am close. Last but not least, you can use Items. In game, you pick up Health Packs, Mines, Repair Packs for Vehicles, and ect.

I am still working on this map, and also have a couple more things in the map that I havn't told you. If you have any comments or suggestions, please post here. Thanks, and look out for updates on this thread.

What a Ctf map? Anyways. Once you get your outline done man i would love to see some screen shots. Be original man. I love seeing new things. Good luck with this map and i hope you finish it. 1 question is this like an Rpg or somthing?

Thanks, Snipe. I will post some screenshots soon.

For those of you that don't know, CTF = Capture the Flag

Ooo haha, stupid me.. O ok i like these games. Make it witrh 2X speed it will be helarious. well Gl and it sounds nice like i said.

lol snipe u didnt know what CTF stood for? Oh well, sometimes I don't know what it stands for either.

Hey man this sounds pretty cool and I would like to test it with you once you get to that point. U should really make it 2x speed. But I don't think that you can now.

i think you can. It would be awsome. You just add it in. It would cause some problems but thats what map making is all about

He would just have to delete every unit placed on the map then replace them, thats not much [/sarcasm]

Uhh dude... This sounds almost EXACTLY like the map I'm currently working on...

http://www.staredit.net/index.php?showtopic=16618

Yeah, what Shatter said. I can't add it in now unless I want to delete all the units and replace them agin, which i really don't want to do. It would make it to easy with x2 speed anyway.



Well not really. I have had this idea for a long time now. Yours is more based on Tribes, and from the screenshots looks a whole lot different than mine. Mine will be more about the CTF part. Don't worry, they will be different. But sorry for any inconvenience.

thats crazy .

Tribes is CTF. That's the main gametype which will has always been the focus point of the real game and will also be in my map. (There's nothing really else to focus on considering capturing the flag is the only way to win)

I made a Tribes map 4 years ago but it was one of my first maps created so needless to say it isn't worth mentioning.

I'm not mad or anything, but I'm just failing to see any differences?

A couple of quick suggestions...

1. Make it "locks only"; i.e. the player must actually click attack on the enemy unit. This increases player involvement in the play and also creates more room for skill.

2. Grenades (bouncing if you want it to be fancy) and LAWs would make nice items for this and would really not be too hard to implement. If you wanted to be really cool, you could have a combat knife too, and maybe a repulsor; these are also not too bad to do with triggers. I like the idea of a player having lots of weapons to choose from, and skillful use of their arsenal being an area in which players can develop skill.

3. "True" third person combat: keep the view centered on the player's unit to enhance their feeling of "being" that unit, to regulate combat awareness, and to remove the annoyance of always struggling to keep the view on the unit.

4. Anti maphack is always a good thing. Always. Even if a maphack wouldn't influence gameplay at all, it's still nice to see those bastards get wasted by your hacker-crasher-thingy at the start. B.t.w, it IS possible to make an easy, reliable anti maphack in staredit (though you have to steal a doodad trigger from Maze D...).

5. If you wanted to be really, really, really ambitious, there's a concept that I've been contemplating for a while and never had the will to actually carry out: Have there be a "store" at which players buy items and weapons (i.e. additional, "higher level" classes) for a certain amount of money. That in itself is not the ambitious part. The ambitious part is this: Every game is run by a "moderator", who records the amount of money and items that each player has at the end of the game. The amount of money and the items are then recorded to a central database somewhere, accessable to all the people who you have approved to be moderators. Then, the next time a person comes into the game, they get the money and items that they had left over from last time. This system means that you can have some items which are only really affordable after a player has played several times.

6. Name the forces "Titan Militia" and "Collective Marines." Even if you don't know what I am talking about, you should trust me on this one .

Well, I think yours has more buildings and revolves more around the Tribes concept like I said, and my is more General CTF. I know Tribes IS Capture the flag, but you have a Tribes theme and setting, and I don't. I am also thinking of alternative ways to be able to win. I am trying to get it so it's not so related to your map.



Thats a good idea, I might do that. I always enjoyed 'Lock Only', because you can actually hide behind trees and such, and it takes more skill, and is more like a 3rd person shooter.



I like the grenade idea, but how would i make grenades? And what is a LAW? Alos, I can't really make it so you can switch weapons, because everytime you switch a weapon, you can't set your new unit to the exact health as your old unit unless using the 'One Hit Death Counter' technique thing, which I am not going to.



At first I thought this was a good idea, but you need to be able to look around the map to be able to access your your Jetpack and Inventory. So, this wouldnt work.



Yes, I probably will add an "Anti-Maphack" to my map, Because each team can see their half of the map, but not the other half. So I will probably make one.



Well, I found many problems with this. First, you would have to have the same Moderator over and over again to be precise. And the Moderator would have to manually record all the scores. He/She could then lose this if was written down, and people could get mad. Also, the Moderator could be unfair and give someone extra money, items, guns, ect, making the game unfair. Also like I said earlier, every time you switch your weapon, there isn't a way to have all the units with the exact health without using certain techniques that I don't want to use.



I might use those, they sound cool. I was in need of team names. But what do they meen? Did you make them up?


Thank you Wing-of-no-Wing for all your suggestions and comments.

Okay, there are several ways to make grenades. The first, easiest, and least realistic way is simply to make an infested terran. Unfortunately, all things considered, this method is pretty worthless. A better way of making grenades would be to create a temporary virtual cursor, such as an observer. You have three choices on what to do next:

1. After a certain amount of time, denoted by either a wait trigger or a bunring building, center a location on the observer and remove it.
2. When the observer or w/e moves out of a location centered around the player unit, the location is moved to it and it is removed. This method is fairly simple and it is the most "controlled" in terms of what the grenade can do, but not my personal favorite.
3. This method is the most complicated, but the best. When they use the item, they are given the virtual cursor and allowed to move it around. In order to throw the grenade, they use a new item that they are given by the same trigger that gives the virtual cursor. In order to limit the range of the grenade, a version of #2 is used with it.

That's the first part of the grenade. The second part governs the actual motion of the grenade. You could:

1. Make an explosion at the location left by the observer. This method is reliable and simple but less visually satisfying, and not mechanically satisfying either.
2. Make a computer air unit (i.e. scourge) and order it to the observer's location. When it gets there, make the explosion.
3. Do something fancier involving ground units, maybe combined with air units and a location that centers on the grenade for detonation purposes, and maybe even involving a direction detection system (I know that there's at least one in the database). You could make some very "realistic" grenade systems with this, but it would take a good many time and triggers, with a lot of testing to get it working right. In my view these would not be worth the time and could also complicate things for the player.

Okay, now we move on to the explosion itself:
1. Kill the units at the blast location. This is the simple, easy way.
2. Move the units to a seperate location, which is constantly being hit by enormous splash damage from some trapped units of yours. This has two advantages: you can get kills for it, and it gives you a way of registering friendly fire as well (whereas using units without splash damage for the execution would not; make a unit in the center of the execution chamber so that the splash units are always firing).
3. Use #2, but after a certain length of time, as measured by a wait or a burning building, move them back to the location. This system is more complicated but it allows you to deal a certain amount of damage which may or may not be fatal. If you want to be fancy about this one, you could, instead of moving one location to the cursor, move several locations of different sizes, to denote different proximities to the grenade; then you could move the unit to one of several locations depending on how close it was to the grenade when it hit, enabling you to have a more realistic effect of greatest damage close to the grenade and less damage further out.

Wait until the grenade is resolved before allowing the player to throw another grenade.

LAW: http://world.guns.ru/grenade/gl11-e.htm

Basically this would be a specialty item for use against vehicles.

Oh, by the way, you can get around that problem of item use in "true" third person by using the dropship firing system found in the tutorials. Simply give the player some time at the start to hotkey it, before the vision kicks in. That system has the advantage of being "smoother" to use as well, when compared to a beacon system.