Monsters! - QUENCHED! - Considering GP Revamp

[samuelc812]

What are the witches worth??

[dolomite13]

The witches (actually wizards) are not currently worth anything but they are your starting location. I was envisioning the monsters or a portion of the monsters being neutral to start and each player starting on a wizard. I supose taking out an enemy wizard should be worth something. Maybe +10?

[dolomite13]

I have the art currently in a crappy old program called Microsoft Image Composer ... I am transfering it to Photoshop this week because it will be easier to work with if someone wants to help out and have me pass them the art file.

[dolomite13]

I have it moved to photoshop and I am removing all of the dropshadow layers and edges on the monsters so I can clean it up a bit.

[dolomite13]

I have some ideas to run by the forums this coming week for the map and game play. I want to keep this map simple as it my first attempt. But I would also like to create an "Advanced Monsters" map if this one goes well.

[edbeard]

I have some ideas to run by the forums this coming week for the map and game play. I want to keep this map simple as it my first attempt. But I would also like to create an "Advanced Monsters" map if this one goes well.

then I hope you go with my suggestion and remove the wizards.

[dolomite13]

I like the wizards but there might be an easier way to implement them for the simple version. For instance they could just be images on the map and not have units on them That way the wizards would be represented but not part of what needs to be conquered to win the game. You would just need to take out every monster to be declared the best wizard.

I am just thinking out loud here but ... I like the idea of having a wizard that would require some effort to defeat and that could fight back right up till his demise.

There are a few maps that have functionality that I would like to utilize.

"New World" has the reinforcement concept in that the homelands get 5 armies every turn and can bombard or attack to a specific landing point and reinforce. If I could use something like this with the wizard it would be ideal. I was thinking that the wizards could have set monsters that they favor as sort of a location that they must first conquer to start enthralling other monsters. Perhaps I could add an aura to a monster that matched a specific wizard or give certain monsters a different colored eye to designate they are they are prone to follow certain wizards.

"Arms Race" has missiles and a warhead that resets to 15 every turn that you need to conquer every turn to use to bombard with. If the wizards neutral energy shield reset to 15 or 20 every turn it would protect the wizard from less than sincere attacks and let you get through and attack the wizard if you were serious enough. "Arms Race" also lets you bombard and turn territories neutral again. I like this and think that it would be a great way to defeat your opponents. I had toyed with the idea of separating the map into two halves so that you would have to maintain a presence on both sides or use bombardment to cleanse the other side of your enemies. I am not certain yet how I want to do this.

I also want to remove the torches and weapons and instead add a horn or claws to the monsters. There are several maps that do a really good job of giving you negative armies unless you hold an opposite territory such as the "Supermax: Prison Riot!" Warden & Gas Chamber. I would love to have certain monsters that you need the combination of in order to score the bonus otherwise you get a small negative. I also like the resource pairs in the "New World" map, which are just a simple way of giving bonuses for combos.

I am going to spend some time at lunch today playing around with the graphics and getting them as clean as possible so that I can look at the connections on the map as well as the mechanics I would really like to implement.

Thank you so much for your help and I welcome any comments =)

[dolomite13]

Just updating that I added a new map and some gameplay ideas to the thread for consideration. See the first post.

[dolomite13]

Well the lack of responses tells me that I need a poll to ascertain what people think.

[dolomite13]

CURRENT VERSION:

v6: 10/23/2008

I added "Mind Link" gems to create three monsters that are adjacent across the map so that the center of the map isn't a complete bottleneck.

I also added "Horns" to 8 of the monsters. I am thinking they will make the monster worth +1 and will be the first 8 locations that players are assigned when deciding starting monsters for each wizard.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3135/296 ... 5620_o.png


MAP FEATURES:

[dolomite13]

I was thinking, what good are wizards without spells to cast.

I am toying with the idea of adding spell scrolls to the map that would give a wizard access to learning a spell (the spell would be one way conquer from the scroll). Once you knew the spell you could use the spell (which would automatically reinforce by x amount) to bombard the monsters and the other wizards shields.

Any suggestions on how to make this feel more epic and wizardly like the spell scrolls are welcome =)

Dolomite

[Natewolfman]

i like the uniqueness of this map, keep going! id play it

[edbeard]

how will the wizards be eliminated? right now it seems like the only thing you can do to them is bombard their shields from your own wizard. But, how do you attack a wizard and/or a shield?

Are you planning on starting all the monsters neutral? The gameplay will be very very tough already to hammer out with the wizards and needing to eliminate people from there but making people do conquest gameplay as well will make it that much harder to figure out.

starting everybody with a wizard and starting people on the monsters might be a cool idea. you could start specific monsters as neutral so no one drops with a bonus. you could give each wizard a colour and perhaps allow them to bombard that specific colour. I don't like the idea of them being able to bombard everything because that makes holding continents tougher and slows the game down (I need to keep placing armies on every territory to hold a bonus rather than expanding).


I'm still not sure how'd you do the wizard thing. because you need to eliminate them to end a game and because of their bombarding power these games will be very long. as I said, I'm not even sure how you attack them currently. the wizards are the most important thing for you to figure out. right now they determine the direction of your map. it seemed like you had said at one point you wanted this map to be relatively simple but then you talked about complicated maps like arms race and new world. I know you're just brainstorming but figuring out fair gameplay on those maps took quite some time.


so again, figure out the wizards and how they'll work and how people can eliminate them. you don't want this to be the type of map that becomes a stalemate.

[mibi]

The graphics on this are very solid. The background doesn't work though. Its not very clean and has a 'cheap filter' aesthetic. Given the 'cute' nature of this map, one thing I was disapointed in is the naming of all the territories. It really kills the feeling. If you are going to use the forheads of the monster for naming, why not put real names in there. They would have to be short but I would rather attack a Bix from Roy and r1 from b2. Another option is to move the army circle to the monster for head and bring the name down to the stomach where you have lots more room. Same goes for the wizards. W5? W7? lame. If you don't think you can get names in such a small space just look at the Supermax map.

It would be a real shame if such a kitschy and fun map were ruing by a boring alphanumeric naming system.

[dolomite13]

Sorry I was away on vacation ... I will work on the map again this week and have some revisions =)