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| Thread: 3 Levels of Terrain | |
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RedSoxFan3
Admirable
Legendary Hero
Fan of Red Sox
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posted November 21, 2003 07:13 AM |
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3 Levels of Terrain
Currently in HOMM we have seen simply the regular map and then underground.
Why not have a third level called the sky. This would add yet another dimension to HOMM. For all you addicts, imagine an XL random map with 3 levels instead of just two.
You could even have a town for this too, just as you have dungeon for underground.
I propose to make a slight alteration of Tower. I don't have a great idea for the name of the town, but I'd call it for now Sky Palace.
All of the creatures will be able to fly.
Level 1 - Could Sprites --> Storm Sprites
Level 2 - Stone Gargoyles --> Crystal Gargoyles
Level 3 - Air Elementals --> Ice Elementals
Level 4 - Lightning Elemental --> Blizzard Elementals
Level 5 - Genies --> Djinns
Level 6 - Frost Falcons --> Thunderbird
Level 7 - Angels --> Arch Angels
Cloud Sprites
HP: 5
Attack: 7
Defense: 4
Speed: 7
Base Damage: 1 - 3
Special Abilities: (None)
Cost: 45 gold
Storm Sprites
HP: 5
Attack: 7
Defense: 4
Speed: 11
Base Damage: 1 - 3
Special Abilities: No enemy retaliation
Cost: 65 gold
Stone Gargoyles
HP: 15
Attack: 6
Defense: 5
Speed: 7
Base Damage: 2 - 3
Special Abilites: None
Cost: 120
Crystal Gargoyles
HP: 18
Attack: 6
Defense: 5
Speed: 9
Base Damage: 2 - 3
Special Abilities: Reflects 25% of all unfriendly spells to an enemy creature stack
Cost: 170
Air Elementals
HP: 25
Attack: 9
Defense: 8
Speed: 7
Base Damage: 2 - 5
Special Abilities: None
Cost: 190 gold
Ice Elementals
HP: 25
Attack: 10
Defense: 8
Speed: 8
Base Damage: 3 - 6
Special Abilities: None
Cost: 250 gold
Lightning Elementals
HP: 25
Attack: 10
Defense: 10
Speed: 9
Base Damage: 6 - 10
Shots: 12
Special Abilities: None
Cost: 325
Blizzard Elementals
HP: 25
Attack: 10
Defense: 10
Speed: 9
Base Damage: 6 - 10
Shots: 24
Special Abilities: No melee Penalty; ranged attacks target an area of terrain with radius of 2 hexes(total 7 hexes), affects only enemies.
Cost: 475
Genies
HP: 35
Attack: 15
Defense: 14
Speed: 10
Base Damage: 10 - 12
Shots: 2
Special Abilities: No melee penalty
Cost: 575
Djinns
HP: 40
Attack: 15
Defense: 14
Speed: 13
Base Damage: 10 - 12
Shots: 2
Special Abilites: No enemy retaliation; no melee penalty
Cost: 650
Frost Falcons
HP: 75
Attack: 19
Defense: 20
Speed: 12
Base Damage: 20-25
Special Abilities: Casts Ice Bolt
Cost: 850
Thunderbirds
HP: 100
Attack: 24
Defense: 20
Speed: 12
Base Damage: 20-25
Special Abilities: Unlimited retaliations; casts lightning bolt
Cost: 1400 gold
Angels:
HP: 200
Attack: 24
Defense: 20
Speed: 12
Base Damage: 50
Special Abilities: +1 morale to all friendly troops
Cost: 2000 gold
ArchAngels
HP: 250
Attack: 30
Defense: 30
Speed: 18
Base Damage: 50
Special Abilities:
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Go Red Sox!
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Sir_Stiven
Honorable
Legendary Hero
banned
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posted November 21, 2003 01:29 PM |
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hmmm ive read about this idea of having 3 different land levels before, but then it was heaven, earth and hell.
That would IMO make more sense then instead of an underground.
The importance of having 3 levelled maps can be discussed since IMO playing only XL+under wont happend in multiplayer. Its just to big and the games would take forever to finish.
As things are now XL maps are enough even for allied 2v2 games because of having RMG so you can edit your own random maps. That way you just edit in big blocks between different zones and there is no way to break and expand much earlier then RMG maker has thought.
The good sides though would be that you could add more ground based alignments on creatures. For instance having just one heaven/hell town wouldnt be much fun since there would be maybe 5-6 earth towns too. But if you could split it up and make maybe 2 heaven towns, 2 hell towns and 2-3 ground based towns and add to that special locations to each level it could bring some more depth to the game.
And i can understand that might would be fun for single player and playing campaigns. For us multiplayers as stated earlier it wouldnt be used as much though i guess concidering game length would be too long. But playing an 3lvl Medium map might could work i guess, would be fun to test if implemented.
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RedSoxFan3
Admirable
Legendary Hero
Fan of Red Sox
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posted November 21, 2003 04:19 PM |
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It could be really cool in single player if you had a labyrinth of three levels.
The multiple levels creates more intricate pathways for the maps whether or not you try to make it a labyrinth.
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Go Red Sox!
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Sir_Stiven
Honorable
Legendary Hero
banned
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posted November 21, 2003 04:58 PM |
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hmmm actually no they dont.
Because no matter how you put it some zones will go to eachother, no matter if making a set map or a random one.
Like for example when you make an RMG to a random map (RMG is the core from which your random template builds on) you always set which zones that will lead to another.
Say you got a map with 5 zones, one starting zone for each player + one zone for a 2nd town and a 5th zone that would work as a meeting zone which you can reach through your 2nd town zone. Then your zone set up would look like following:
Zone 1 (player 1 starting zone) - zone 3 (2nd town zone)
zone 2 (player 2 starting zone) - zone 4 (2nd town zone)
Zone 3 (2nd town zone) - zone 5 (meeting zone)
zone 4 (2nd town zone) - zone 5 (meeting zone)
Now this is a very simple example, for instance when i make a template i make usually 7-11 zones. But you could always add more zone meeting possibilities like:
Zone 1 (player 1 starting zone) - zone 2 (player 2 starting zone) and just add a really tough border guard between them.
But back to point again, the number of levels doesnt really matter because its still the number of zones you can reach that means something. Only real difference between having the above example as Small map or XL+underground is that the zones would be bigger. Same would go for example having 3 levels instead of one, its just the zone size that will differ since nr of zones and zone to zone possibilities will stay the same.
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Draco
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted November 21, 2003 05:53 PM |
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i can honestly say i dont like the idea of a third level, even the second level can be removed.
make maps bigger if you need, but dont have underground or sky. it leads to a long confusing game.
if all units need to fly, how do you get heroes in the sky? heroes with wings? then how would you attack a castle in the sky, how can there be a castle in the sky?
underground is at least a little conceivable, not entire map because it would cave in, but at least little pockets of land underground (what 3do planed)
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted November 21, 2003 05:53 PM |
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Air/Sky layer has been proposed before.
But I don't think it's a good idea.
The sky should be virtually empty of things, or it would drop down. I'm also in favour of removing underground versions of everything to instead improve the map landscape.
What I would like instead is "Layers" which can only be reached by using Teleporters. All layers would use the normal tile-set, and some additional tiles suitable for it.
A few settings on each layer could also spice up things.
Say you could call the Layer, the Plane of Death and give All Undead units boosts to a number of parameters like Health, Movement, Attack, and or Defence. Living units would receive penalties, while Elemenentals & Machines would remain unchanged.
These parameters would affect all fights and movements within this particular Layer.
The most common thing I'd guess would be to base the bonuses on a Player's colour, but it could be for many other things also. Law-Chaos, Evil-Good, Undead-Living, Tech Machine-Maqical Constructs.
Basing bonuses on player colour could make the feature usable for generating Multiplayer, whereas basing it on something else is not so easy if the alignment is random and so would likely be of use only in Singleplayer.
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"A brilliant light can either illuminate or blind. How will you know which until you open your eyes?"
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Sir_Stiven
Honorable
Legendary Hero
banned
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posted November 21, 2003 06:42 PM |
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so what you basically mean is that you wanna characterise the grounds more of which alignment that stands on those tiles djive?
hmmm... in SOD version of game there is landscapes like that but they increase luck/moral. Myself i dont like that much though, because it messes things up. Id rather have landscapes like discussed by hydra in a thread, starting landscapes can also easily be adjust and dont have to be colour based. Just put down native starting ground and thats what you get (unless playing dungeon without underground because then they will start on dirt).
But i guess you could set landtiles like mentioned as set to in different zones, would work but problem is that map would be unbalanced. Say for example a "Middle zone" in a random map that would get evil units an advantage and human units a disadvantage... no one would like to play a probable end fight at a ground where your opponent gets much stronger unless you have freaky good arts or been really lucky with dwells. Thats suicide.
Just having +1 speed from native ground can be a game decider, adding much else to that can and problably will unbalance the game too much.
As single players i can understand that this is an tempting thought as it can give space to much tougher battles and better challenges. But as far as multiplayer is concerned it will just be a thing that can unbalance a game.
back to 3 levelled maps... seems strange to me that believing in black dragons and medusas is ok but not be able to walk on clouds?
Afterall it is a fantasy game we are playing.
And making for example a heaven level at map can contribute with possibilities as having two heaven based towns for example. It can bring more to the game aswell.
I believe that making better landscapes is a more important priority but i dont see how one has to exclude the other?
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Draco
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted November 21, 2003 06:54 PM |
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you could walk on clouds on might and magic 4 clouds of xeen, hoever you needed to cast a high level spell to do so, if you didnt have the spell you couldnt walk on clouds.
you cant make a air walk spell simply so you can capture a town in the sky... can you?
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Maximus
Famous Hero
Bronzed God
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posted November 21, 2003 08:47 PM |
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problem with h3 was that the underground was abused. it was never meant to b another map pallet that map makers used it as. was only supossed to b for dungeon passageways, jon von blah blah said that i belive, and unless there is a way to add more levels but so they cant b made into another map per-say then it shouldnt b used.
i do belive some sort of underground or dungeon level needs to b in, as native terrain for dungeon towns like h3.
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Maximus
Famous Hero
Bronzed God
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posted November 21, 2003 08:53 PM |
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hmm, landscapes. what if the landscapes changed??
i mean, like we get wk of the XX of whatever, but the landscapes would change also.
maybe if wk 1 has grass, then wk 2 it would rotate to dirt, then something else, then snow etc. so landscape is always in motion.
in effect adding "season's" to the game.
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted November 22, 2003 02:34 AM |
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Layers could for instance be used as follows in multiplayer.
Each Player has a Layer of their own. This is a small standalone map with one or more Teleporter entry/exit points, each of which has a Guard stack. (Perhaps 20x20 squares or so, perhaps bigger.)
On this Layer there are the basics of what a player needs but no relics or really rich structures.
Then the main map is in a separate layer. This would be a small to medium map and would be quite rich, and have hero powerups. The bonuses to be gained from conquering this main map would far outweigh the bonuses given on the players home turf. In other words, players must focus to take the middle as quickly as possible or they will lose.
It's also possible to have a win condition by defeating a stack in the middle first. Not all games must be based on defeating the other player.
I mainly suggestion to give the Layer bonuses here, but terrains should also have a larger role than now. (The Sky/Air and underground are both Layers the way i see it. Terrain is not a Layer, bus something which comes on top of the Layer.)
It's not SOD landscapes I want, since the special terrains replace the normal terrain in SOD. The Layer parameters I suggested are in addition to terrain, not instead of terrain.
The importance of creature speed in combat should be reduced as compared to heroes 3. It should be important but not as important as it is in H3.
I agree that the possibilites for using this is much better in single player than in multiplayer.
Moderator's note:This topic has been closed, as it refers to an older version of the game. To discuss Heroes 3, please go to Library Of Enlightenment, to discuss Heroes 4, please go to War Room Of Axeoth, to discuss Heroes 5, go to Temple Of Ashan.
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"A brilliant light can either illuminate or blind. How will you know which until you open your eyes?"
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