[New Mode] Mazers Mode

[jolin012]

Ok, time for a new mode idea. I could have made a shorter post, but I believe many of these things would be asked about so, I prefered making it a long post... that's a sort of tradition of my mode posts still there might be questions ofc. if you read only the first 3 paragraphs, that explain the general idea, you may still comment upon that part

I had an idea that is actually pretty simple, make an eletd mode where it's possible to maze. I guess everybody has had that idea since it's not really anything new, many td's out there have it. Anyway, for a long time I ignored the idea since it'd be impossible to have eletd with the possibility to maze with your towers. it makes your defense too strong in the endgame and makes balance too different from the regular game. also some strategies, juggling, would be too effective, you could clump any creeps. and we can't remove selling, that's an important part of eletd.

so - how about this, instead of maze-ability by placing towers, a mazeability by allowing the player to decide where his path, and where his buildable hills should be? this is an example of how a custom maze could look compared to the original. This offres for different strategies, that stack well with different builds. some that have both fast and slow areas, some that have 3passes, some that go well with radius, some that have the ultimate 1100range longpass for early strong bosses. anything is possible

there would be a couple of rules. you can't remove the random/etreme sign areas, and not the elemental trophys area. and not the hills on the sides. creeps have to start, stop spawning at the portals. maybe in a later version portals would be able to be moved as well. each hill has to be at least 2 towersizes wide both vertically and horizontally, plus 2 towersize of "cliffs" on the sides. (one tower size on each side). the edges of the map count as hills, and thus you can build path next to it. just like the current maze looks. the path has to be 2 towersizes wide too. Remember that we use pathing blockers, and NOT checkpoints, so having crossroads will make the creeps use it as a shortcut.

How the player will do to create his maze:

at the start of the game if mode is selected, all players are given X(eg 5) minutes , or until all players have confirmed that his/her maze is finished. During this time, there is no interest and no SW spellbringer regeneration, (or if easier, the spellbringer doesn't show up yet). all hills are lowered, so that the ground is flat. and paths are removed. I have also heard that it's possible to remove dodads ingame.

The players will construct their map my selecting checkpoints aka corners (represented by perhaps scout towers or sentry wards) for their creeps's path. (the creeps don't follow checkpoints, but this is probably the easiest way to construct the maze. The first checkpoint is already placed, since it is mandatory. The player will place more checkpoint to finish his maze and connect it to the last checkpoint, which is also mandatory. The player can build checkpoints with his builder (this ability is where the waygate button usually is, if SW is on, then the camera ability is added after mazing is finished). Every placed checkpoint has 3 abilities.

"connect to existing checkpoint" that connects a path between that checkpoint and another checkpoint (with <2 connections) on the same x- or y-axis.

"connect to new checkpoint" pops up all possible x and y axis locations as units. (scout towers or wards or w/e. same as checkpoints but smaller? w/e). one of these may be selected with the ability "keep" that removes all other possible scout towers, and turns the selected one into a real checkpoint.

"remove checkpoint" removes the checkpoint and all of it's paths connected.

I am not exactly sure about rules for mazing... how close to each other should checkpoints be allowed to be? how wide must ledges be at least? may there be cliffs that are so thin, that there is no buildable hill? should everything be allowed?

it would be possible to make so that 700 and 900 ranged towers could attack for a very long time, but this only works for singleplayer. The real problem is probably only radius tower. this tower deas more damage the bigger the area is that it covers. and if infinite amount of corners is allowed, this tower can have 100% coverage at a 1100 range. this makes the tower deal probably up to 5 times the damage it currently can - and is not affected by rushing, so can be used in multiplayer. such a defense would look something like this:

So probably there would have to be a rule against either too many checkpoints, or checkpoints too close to each other. maybe checkpoints within X range of each other any not connect. and maybe unconnected checkpoints may not be within Y range of each other when the maze is finished. Anyway, I've waited with solving all these details until I know if the idea is aliked at all don't wanna work on something that sucks

anyway, when the player decides his maze is finished it has to have connected the start to the end. If all players finished their mazes the game starts. if all didn't finish their mazes within X (eg 5) minutes, the game starts anyway, and unfinished players get to use the original maze. The game knowss where all corners are, by the checkpoints you have placed, and since it also knows how they turn, the game will easily place pathing blockers, to make creeps walk in the middle of the path. eg. anti-clockwise turns from a horizontal to a vertical path will add pathing blockers from where the checkpoint is in diagonal directions, upright and lower left, to connect to the closest cliffs.

The game does not have to check if the map can be walked because every checkpoint has to connect to exactly 2 other checkpoints. except for start and end that have to connect exactly to one other checkpoint. when mazing is done Scout towers are removed, and every piece of land that is NOT path will raise ground and become buildable. adding hills is possible immolatusburn told me, however, cliffs can not be added, so, in this mode it's looks something like the problem we had in, was it beta 21? no sharp edges. and I dunno bout doodads.. also dunno about areas with water and such, what will happen. if the game lowers all terrain once and hten lowers back, for all areas, before the mazing starts, maybe dodads and water dissappear automaticly? I dunno. maybe mappers know

[Brule]

could work, but will be a pain code all that, extreme work on it, but if kara agree, is simple awesome, original mazes, diferents estrategies, this really could work

[jolin012]

thing is, from what i've heard it might be relatively easy. adding mazing rules might make it harder though, but i'm still not sure which rules should be there. IMO we should not have any unnecassary rules. in other words, we don't have to make rules against something that wouldn't be abuse-able anyway.

[Karawasa]

I like the idea, it is definitely novel. However, I don't see this materializing. I could list a bunch of reasons but I would prefer not to rack my brain. Instead I will just say calculating where pathing blockers should go, inability to modify cliffs, removing doodads is fine but placing them etc..

[jolin012]

in this mode, people would probably have to suffer the fact that there would be no cliffs or dodads. just hills and path. and pathing blockers.

pathing blockers wouldn't be too hard, since every checkpoint knows which other checkpoints it is connected to and thus should know which directions the pathing blockers should go. maybe it would be simple if it worked like this:

when a checkpoint is connected with a path to one other checkpoin, the checkpoint unit will face that direction. when a second checkpoint is placed, it can either be on the right or the left side of the checkpoint, from the pov it is facing.

if it is on the right side, it will auto-use the skill "lay pathing blockers in a diagonal forwards-right, and backwards-left, leaving the small space where the checkpoint itself is, wihtout pathing blockers.

if it is on the left side, it will auto-use the skill "lay pathing blockers in a diagonal forwards-left, and backwards-right, leaving the small space where the checkpoint itself is, wihtout pathing blockers.

well, infact, I have no idea if this is hard or not^^ i should probably listen to you. but I have seen skills laying out stuff in a line which it is facing, like fissure rom dota. perhaps that's not possbiel with pathing blockers though.

[holepercent]

this is definately interesting and should be fun as a mode if it works out.. restrictions would have to be worked out though, if there is a need.. how does a large stretch of unbuildable area help a defense? Is it possible to make a 3-pass, 6-pass or 8-pass build. in gem td it is possible but that uses checkpoints.

if not, something like a random maze generator could do as well.. click to generate a random maze.. the player would have to work out how best to place towers.. and adding more randomisation to random mode and chaos mode.

and to add on... designing the path for your opponents.. every one designs a maze, then the areas are randomly shuffled.. players who don't finish their area have the area randomed (rather than getting the original)

[jolin012]

interesting ideas from hole - random maze, shuffle maze - I like those ideas.

but unfortunately, it is probably true what kara sais. I've got more understanding of this. cliffs and dodads just can't dissappear. if I add a new ground level on top of it, the cliff is still there, to look weird and ruin creep pathing and stuff.

this would only work in either a separate map version (and i don't even wanna see that happening), with all terrain removed, open and ready for building - or in the current version but at a different building area, which would mean increasing the mapsize (I don't mean filesize)a little bit and placing the players on custom mazes between the regular mazes (there's already an area between default mazes but it would have to be a bit wider)- this one I don't see a problem with though - do you?.

and also cliffs wouldn't work to add still - no 90 degree edges, only those smooth ones.

thanks to immolatusburn for telling me how these things work.

[Karawasa]

But hey, once we escape WC3 this ought to be a lot easier to do .

[Karawasa]

Ok, we have escaped WC3.

[Twilice]

lol

[Severon]

Lol Thanks Karawasa

[Karawasa]

This is probably one of the most game changing modes possible. I'd like to hear from a coder on the viability of this. To break down the tl;dr version:

After dialogs, there would be a terrain crafting phase. You basically would be given a unit that can either raise or lower cliffs. There would be some time limit. You could mark yourself as done beforehand too. To prevent abuse, another creep would spawn and run to the end. If it doesn't make it, your maze is invalid. If you marked it done, it would be unmarked and you could fix it. If the timer expired, then you're stuck with the default. If you pass the pathing test, then that is your maze for the game!

[Karawasa]

I've talked with two different and knowledgeable people. The conclusion is that it is not possible to raise/lower cliffs. Thus, it is unfortunately impossible to do this.

[holepercent]

this mode is definitely interesting.. but it has to wait to yet another platform of eletd..