Maze Mode

[Karawasa]

SC2 allows for the modification of the minimap. Thus, a mazing mode is now possible. Imagine it like this;

-There would be an alternate section of the map that mimics the current 8 areas, except cliffs would be removed

-The creeps would have a different pathing; they would go straight down, to the right, straight up to exit

-This mode would work for both Tower Defense and Tower Wars

I was also considering adding a new tower that does nothing but block (like a rock) and costs 3 minerals. I'm leaning towards no (too easy to maze) but want opinions on this.

Thoughts?

[WindStrike]

Might as well do a rock, because the next cheapest are level 1 ray and grenade towers (7 minerals), and here's the problem with them - they'll get auto-buffed by forge, well and trickery. Speaking of trickery, how would that tower work? Would you be able to set its clone placements so that it doesn't end up screwing up your maze?

Alternative idea is when you build a tower, you can build attachments of it anywhere within a 1 radius block. They would cost less and do proportionally less damage as well, but it would enable you to maze with them still. Though honestly, I'd just go with the rocks and make then 5 minerals or something. It's not like you need to maze in the early game, even on very hard.

Regarding the terrain, it's not going to be one plain stretch of land with the only variation showing checkpoints, is it? I figure there'd be some amount of differentiation and variety of the terrain across the area to be able to plan your tower locations out and the like (ex, there's currently room for a width of two towers at any given area).

Though now that you're supporting maze mode, it brings another idea to fruition - Elemental DOTA Tower Wars! (lol) In a nutshell, it'd switch to a 4v4 mode with the standard DOTA type pathing, and instead of controlling heroes, you control elemental tower builders to defend against the oncoming waves (every minute, maybe faster, the wave spawns) and you'd be able to change the element/type of creep for each lane spawn. If you want, I can post a full topic on this; it was some crazy idea I came up with shortly after SC2 came out, minus the Element specific stuff. And this idea is not referring to jolin012's idea in any way (in fact, I didn't even know about it until two seconds ago).

[Karawasa]

Might as well do a rock, because the next cheapest are level 1 ray and grenade towers (7 minerals), and here's the problem with them - they'll get auto-buffed by forge, well and trickery. Speaking of trickery, how would that tower work? Would you be able to set its clone placements so that it doesn't end up screwing up your maze?

Good point about the rock. Trickery will be trickier to use . There will be an algorithm that prevents blocking so in the worst case you just lose the clone.

Regarding the terrain, it's not going to be one plain stretch of land with the only variation showing checkpoints, is it? I figure there'd be some amount of differentiation and variety of the terrain across the area to be able to plan your tower locations out and the like (ex, there's currently room for a width of two towers at any given area).

In the beta version planned for the next release, yes. In the future I will have the terrain guy modify the landscape so that it fits the flatness.

[dvdlesher]

While I like this idea, the current space for each player for mazing is very small, don't you think?

[Twilice]

Rocks are so boring But the map with 8 players is laggy as it is already.

What about removing grenare/ray towers as markers for support towers?