[Miscellanous / Other] Non-Interactive Endless AOS

[Damage]

So my friend and I have been making a map for about 5 years on and off.

We created a bunch of systems (Knockbacks, Projectiles, Damage over Time, Event Handlers for attacks / spells etc.) that we basically coded ourselves, and we decided to just put all them to use and push them to their extreme limits and make a pile of custom spells.

Then we decided to make 2 armies with spawning units attack one another and use all these spells we'd created.

After about 5 years, we've made a pretty incredible spectator game at this point. We called it "the Endless AOS" as it's like a Dota type game but it can never actually finish as the armies sizes and the towers etc. are all so numerous it's unlikely for any team to actually win (though in some of our tests, a team can actually win after about 3 hours).

Now, the only reason we made this was for our own entertainment. We get a lot of enjoyment out of just watching our creations fight one another endlessly.

Thing is, would anyone else be interested? What we're aiming for here, is to perhaps add in some kind of "Spectator Game" features (like I dunno, betting, achievements for seeing super rare events). The idea is that you only watch, and you're not actually playing at all. The only thing we'd let the players do perhaps is influence some of the random unit spawning every now and then - though we currently haven't implemented any kind of interactivity at all.

To give you some scope, this map has over 200 unique custom spells, about 100 unique custom units, and about 1MB of trigger coding to support it all. Not only that, we coded it all in GUI entirely, even though some of the spells really are incredibly outlandish and unusual. When the armies kill enemies, they gain points and those points are spent automatically to summon stronger units. There's currently about 30 unique special units organised into 2 tiers. There's also a neutral hostile faction that fights against both armies in the center, and they have a series of special units. All units display tooltips of their abilities when you click on them, so you can see what they're doing. All the spells in the map are of course MUI, and we're happy to share the coding for any of the spells if you see something you like and want to implement it into your map.

In order to see "Everything" (all custom units, all custom spells, all events, neutral special units etc.) in a single game, you'd have to watch the map for about 8 hours straight.

If anyone's interested in seeing it, let me know and I'll post a "sample" version of it here.

EDIT: On second thought, this might be better put in the "Map Development" forum, as we already have a working base. If any mod also thinks so, please go ahead and shift it over there.

 

[A]mun]

I'd like to have a look, i had something similar in mind the other day, just with more interactivity.

 

[Damage]

Here's the version so far.

Just remember - it takes at least a few hours before you'll see most of the things the spectating has to offer, so don't pass judgment in only a few minutes

 

[Damage]

Any thoughts @A]mun?

 

[A]mun]

Yeah like i wrote, i think this needs some interactivity, like:
- fast forwarding (or choosing chapters/starting tech level etc so you don't have to start from point 0 everytime)
- choosing race/heroes and their abilities for one side or both
- choice of random events, betting on which hero will level up to x first etc
- even more basics like weather effects, starting gold and the likes
edit:
- oh and something very sublime, announce bigger happenings to the player (foreshadowing even) so nothing important gets missed

Just some ideas off the top of my head

 

[Damage]

But this map doesn't have tech trees or heroes. Did you actually take a look at it? It's all about the custom spells.

And the map does announce all the major events, and minimap pings point to special spawnings etc.

Interactivity we're planning right now is for the players to be able to determine which units spawn, but they can't ally themselves to a specific side... well, they can sort of by picking the worst units for the given situations, but still.

 

[A]mun]

Well that's true, i didn't give it a thorough viewing at first.
- That's mostly because the game doesn't invite the player really, when dealing with such a niche cinematic map you probably should make it more cinematic.

At the moment i enjoy watching the "Cleaver" Felguard slicing through enemy lines, also most abilities are interesting to look at - namely the Iron Destroyer's Falcon Punch is very cool.

Still, some accentuated interactivity would be really nice, like mentioned.