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Legacy of Darkness

This RPG is in it's infancy, but I've already got most of the skills (and their triggers) nailed down. I've got a loose idea of a story which I will update this post with. Questions, comments and criticisms are definitely welcomed!

I will add some screens of the skills in action later.

The combat is real time, and not turnbased.

Game Features:
•Equipable Armor System - System treats protoss shield points as equipped armor by keeping the shield level at a fixed number. Aural/relic armors will also increase maximum life and mana, and may even impart special abilities!

•Skill Tree - Each character will have 5 spells/abilities each and can be leveled up to lvl 10 each. Some abilities can only be gained by performing core story or side quests.

•Dope Animations - Sure everyone can do this nowadays, but I've spent hours creating and revising a single spell/ability effect and they really represent and deepen the feel of what the spell/ability is supposed to do.

•Different Forms of In-Game Transport - You can rent Shrivens (Hydralisks) to ride through the forest, hop on a Cloud Ferry to cross the mountain and you can even ride the wind.

•Hotkey system using siege tanks for abilities. This is superior to the dropship system of spell/ability usage as all you have to do is hit the hotkey and "O", whereas in the dropship system you have to move your mouse off of the playable screen, and click the correct unit. Siege tank system has built in cool-down time between spell/ability usage, as well as auto-cast depending on what you want for a certain ability.

•Potion system using the dropship method because there's only 2 possible icons (life or mana) to hit making it less troublesome to use.


Character Abilities:

•Phane Silphias

1.) Enveloping Wind (Auto Cast) - Slows random enemy unit(s) for short duration. A small wind unit (interceptor) uncloaks above the target unit, signifying the slow status and once the affected unit dies, the interceptor flies away. Investing skill points in this ability increases the types of units that can be affected by this ability. Bosses cannot be slowed.

2.) Summon Spirits of the Wind (Manual Cast) - Offensive aura that attacks enemies. The summoned Spirits fly in different directions about Phane's character. Investing skill points in this ability allows Phane to summon more powerful Spirits and increases their durability.

3.) Divine Wind (Manual Cast) - Armor aura that increases armor rating, but slowly drains mana.

4.) Fury of the Storm (Manual Cast) - Allows you to cast psionic storm an unlimited amount of times, re-charges the Spirits of the Wind, slows all units possible (regardless of current skill level), and gives a + armor boost that increases with skill level, all for a short period. Need quest to unlock skill.

5.) Cloud Daemon (Manual Cast) - Channels power of the Cloud Daemon himself.


•Jirit Aesocalon - This character will have some tough unit upgrade choices as he can invest in protoss (unmorphed) upgrades, or zerg (morphed) upgrades.

1.) Druthwood Imp Morph - Morphs into Imp (zergling) for a limited time, which increases with skill level. Hyper attack upgrade available through side quest.

2.) Tame - % chance to tame enemy creatures. Tamed creatures are player owned, but computer controlled. Jirit can tame only zerg units.

3.) Druthwood Shriven Morph - Morphs into Shriven.

4.) Hibernate - Heals Jirit when he's morphed only.

5.) Gaian Behemoth - Summons a number of sunkens (Skill will likely be revised).


•Erydan Netherlight

1.) Avatar - Creates an avatar the looks just like Erydan. Unit is player owned, so it shares Erydan's upgrades, but it will be computer controlled.

2.) Dodge - % chance that attack will miss Erydan.

3.) Martial Training - Gives additional minerals to upgrade with. Unlocked after core story quest involving Erydan's hidden village.

4.) Evade - Erydan cannot be hit directly by any attack for a short period.

5.) Any ideas??


I will format this post more attractively later, it's 4:30AM in the morning right now, so...

use reavers. rivas>tanks cuz u keep the binds and they work faster

i think this map is unoriginal. d2 rpgs r all around (dont deny that its d2) i rly think its too much work 4 a map thats never gonna b played. i would change the mana 2 magic power and it has a good storyline, but i personally dont like it

I like the armor system and real time battles. The skills sound cool enough, but I'm sure they'll be cooler once I actually SEE them.

A question about the casting system:
Will it be like Incubus where the tanks are destroyed after you siege/unseige? The problem with that system was that you had to keep hotkeying the tanks over and over again after each cast (since they get destroyed).

It's not D2. Some spells are similar, but you don't know enough about it to make that kind of comparison. For one, this map actually has characters WITH NAMES. That means that there will probably be a PLOT. Doesn't sound much like D2, now does it?
And how do you know that no one is going to play it?
'Magic power' sound stupid. What a useless comment.
Did you even read the post? He hasn't posted a story yet! Stop posting useless stuff.

I personally think ninja is a n00b spammer/flooder (same thing who cares) bcuz he barely reads most posts then writes small comments saying "o i love this cant wait to see it" or "i hate it no one will play it"

ON TOPIC: Looks cool... im kicking myself now that i nvr thought of the armor with the shields. i forgot u can sitll take life dmg with shields on. lol

This map sounds like going be lots of fun, i'll check back later when your posted storyline see what that is like. You have lots nice ideas in this map.

Off Topic: If you learn how mod well you can give terran shields and stuff ^_^

But that'll crash SC unless everyone gets the mod.

The Siege Tank casting system is crappy because you have to re-use the hotkey every time you use it... unless you want us to unsiege it manually. Is that the built in cooldown?

No actually. I'm using the Siege Tank System in FF7 World and to make it work is quite simple.

All you do is have a siege tank in siege mode by default, and when a player unsieges it, itll give the unsieged tank to a computer player, and do the spell for that player. Then once the computer player owns the siege tank, you tell it to attack in the location its in and you set an invisible object that it can see, so itll activate its siege mode. Then once it activates its siege mode in the location, itll give the tank back to that player and the hotkey will still be available.

I've already tested this and it works great, and has a good cooldown time to prevent massive spell casting, personally, I think this is the best way to cast spells.

No, the siege tanks don't die once you siege them, so you only have to hotkey once (barring typing mistakes of course). Siege tanks have two modes sieged and unsieged (on and off) which is perfect for spells. To be more specific, you see that the enveloping wind ability is auto cast, what this means is that when the tank is sieged (on) the spell will automatically trigger once the unit comes in range. To take off auto-cast you would unsiege the tank. The cooldown time of course the time it takes to siege and unsiege, which leaves the characters potentially vulnerable for a bit, which I like because it makes you think a bit more and you can't mindlessly plow into battle. An example of this is Jirit's morphs, which are timered, and once the time runs out, or his morphed form dies, he morphs back into his normal form, at which point you have to unsiege and re-siege to cast, and during that time, if players have totally neglected upgrading Jirit's unmorphed form, he would be extremely vulnerable. And so there's an awareness element there, and also risk/reward because if you solely invest in his morphed form, you obviously are going to be more efficient when morphed but then you have a weakness in your unmorphed unit, so being a skilled player will matter.

Two things:
1.) I haven't decided on the penalty of dying yet, so if anyone has seen a good system for it, I'm all ears.

2.) I was thinking of having the screen tether to your character when you leave a town. I had a couple reasons for this:
a.) You can stumble into monster packs more easily, making the environment feel more dangerous.
b.) Makes you focus more on your character and his environment.

Some of the drawbacks are that it's kind of jerky, and the screen is wider than it is tall, meaning that attacking north/south you are stuck with really limited visibility. Some feedback on this potential feature would be great.

I don't recommend hold view because people just don't ever get used it (I'll cite the 50k PMs/emails for Kill Me saying how annoying that was), and if you have to rely on hotkeys that makes it all the worse that you can't move your view to the area if you accidentally bind them wrong or unbind them (I sometimes do that).

If you absolutely must have the effect though, then what you could do is use it only while a player's unit is moving, as that makes it sort of like a strategy element: if you're moving you can't see wide but you can avoid encounters, and if you're not you can see wide but can't avoid encounters.

Just an idea. Take it or leave it.

"•Hotkey system using siege tanks for abilities. This is superior to the dropship system of spell/ability usage as all you have to do is hit the hotkey and "O", whereas in the dropship system you have to move your mouse off of the playable screen, and click the correct unit. Siege tank system has built in cool-down time between spell/ability usage, as well as auto-cast depending on what you want for a certain ability."

That's what I kept saying, and I agree with Killer that it's the best, with only a few things thta are better in other systems, but that's just me.

"use reavers. rivas>tanks cuz u keep the binds and they work faster"
By Binds, do you mean hotkeys?
If so, then no, why would you lose a hotkey with a Tank?
If you hotkey a Siege Tank, it counts as the same unit, thus same hotkery, when you Siege it. DER

" im kicking myself now that i nvr thought of the armor with the shields."
Me too, I pride mysefl on creativity, so I hate when people get to good ideas before me ;\ xD

"he Siege Tank casting system is crappy because you have to re-use the hotkey every time you use it... unless you want us to unsiege it manually. Is that the built in cooldown? tongue.gif"

Again, why would you need to re-hotkey?

"All you do is have a siege tank in siege mode by default, and when a player unsieges it, itll give the unsieged tank to a computer player, and do the spell for that player. Then once the computer player owns the siege tank, you tell it to attack in the location its in and you set an invisible object that it can see, so itll activate its siege mode. Then once it activates its siege mode in the location, itll give the tank back to that player and the hotkey will still be available."

Personally, I just use switches or similar...

I just noticed something interesting...

Legacy of Hæan was originally called Legacy of Darkness. Hæan (if pronounced as intended) is 'darkness' in Chinese.

you're chinese? er...i'm chinese and thats not how you said darkness I thought it was more like hei or something

Holding the view on the action during a movie is good. (How could anyone complain about Kill Me, that was great!) But holding the view on one unit while your playing is very annoying. Don't use it.

I don't know what kind of story you have in mind, but you could have a part (or the whole game) that is open ended, maybe with 20 different things to do, each with a different reward/effect. But after you do 5 or 6, the story picks back up and you move on. Because in alot of games you do everything in order, and once you beat the game theres no point in playing it again. You could even have the story branch off, with more than one ending to the game.

Oh, and leave some time for the player to hotkey his stuff, and maybe a reminder. Because if you start a new game you can easly forget to do it. Just an idea.

The only thing about using reavers is that if you're only going to use it for "on" and "off", it's harder to tell at a glance if it is on or off. Now if you were going to use it for charges, or an accumulative effect, that would be awesome

Sound's good , like the spell ideas , glad you took the time to work on them so it will look good ..... nothing makes me happier in an rpg to have sweat looking spells, music, and of corse nice terrain.

The siegetank system would be a little anoying because you will have to hotkey more siegetanks depending on how many spells you have ... I prefer the dropship system. dropship system doen't take up enough time to have you die its not a ig pause pushing down 1 on the keyboard moving mouse to bottem and clickin on a guy then geting ur character again.

Screens?

If you look at the abilities, every player has 1 or 2 core abilities and the others are either passive, auto-cast, or single cast with a long duration, or aren't super important, so really you'd only have to use hotkeys 1-4 which are all in reach of your left hand. I guess I play a lot of melee too, so just having to use primarily 4 hotkeys seems pretty easy and is a lot faster and easier than using the dropship method.

Yeah, I will post some screens soon but I gotta add some more game content to take screenies of

Thanks for all of the feedback everyone has given so far!

Hmm, sounds like my map with a few twists and turns. Much like Pirate's Legacy of Hæan too. Oh well, sounds awesome. Posting Screenshots ASAP is a must.

Good luck on your map!

hey pyro if i was a nub spammer would i still b here??? ya ok onto the map it sounds ok, i think its pretty cool, but how big is the map and when is the release?