[Update]The first version has been released! See this link for further information http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=9663[End Update]

Introduction

Having played a lot of WC3 I must confess I barely played any ranked matches in that game (no micro for me, sir). Instead, I have blissfully wasted countless hours of my life playing custom games. Thousands and thousands of custom games. If it weren't for those, I would have turned my back on WC3 long ago, because even the AI whooped my hiney. Perhaps the popularity and longevity of SupCom would benefit greatly from custom games that go further than ye olde "2v2 no noobs dual core only!!1!".

I am now really looking forward to the patch because of the optimisations and especially the map editor. It would be great to see a remake of Footman Frenzy (Mech Marine Mania perhaps? Those guys need some love ).

Huh? Footman Frenzy?

For those who are not familiar with it: You get a Castle that you need to defend. Every few seconds, a footman spawns at the side of it. After a while you get a small army along with your hero that you take out to bash some heads in. For every kill you get a small bit of gold that you need to upgrade your castle, which results in a new unit that starts spawning.
There were four teams of three people, with each team placed in a corner and an open field in the middle where most of the fighting would take place.

Now translate this to SupCom.

The Castle would be a Land Factory where once every 3 seconds a mech marine, hunter or flare would spawn according to the chosen race before the start of the game. If this spawning thing turns out to be too tricky, you could also create a button that instantly builds a LAB for 1.5 mass and give the Factory 0.5 mass generation and a mass storage of 10 or so. Then you take those out to crush some metallic craniums. For every kill you would receive some energy while your factory has an energy storage of... a lot, anyway. This energy would be used to upgrade your Factory and your hero-type unit (but more on that later ). If the energy rewards for killing others doesn't work, but the spawning of units does, you could give units a certain value of energy and have engineers built at your factory reclaim wreckages for energy. Giving the factory a small energy generation would help the players that fall behind keep up a bit with the players that are racking up kills.

Imagine an arena where a continuous stream of bots and machines flow from the four corners to meet eachother in the center of the map to duke it out. Of course, the map would be a bit larger to allow for some maneuvering. Not too large, mind you, since the action must be fast and especially messy!

The units would go like this:
Cybran: Hunter > Mantis > Rhino > Loyalist
UEF: Mech Marine > Striker > Pillar > Titan
Aeon: Flare > Aurora > Obsidian > Harbinger

A big part in Footman Frenzy however, is the hero. It is often if not always the deciding factor in a game of FF. SupCom doesn't have a hero that gets stronger with experience and can gain skills when leveling.
But it comes close.
You could simply use an ACU or SCU. Veterancy can be tweaked, starting with low health and gaining a great deal with every level of veterancy, and for each upgrade slot you can find something suitable for combat/survivability, with the stronger upgrades like the MASER costing quite a bit. The one thing that bothers me a bit is the lack of reviving. On the other hand, that would make you really careful with your Hero.

All this would result in the elimination of micro-managing your economy, which is a big obstacle in this game, and offer quick action. This combined would make playing SupCom online a lot more attractive to casual players who are overwhelmed by the brutality of ranked games.

I really hope all this would be possible to create with the upcoming patch, as I'm confident wacky ideas like this will help make SupCom last years.

I'm really curious about what you guys think on this.

For this to actually work, we would need a script editor/trigger editor to go alongside the map editor. Any word on that?

Yeah, but I'm afraid SupCom will follow the example of every other RTS and not make a decent trigger/script editor.

That would surely make me go "Oh NOES!!", because that would limit custom games to mere "3v3 No RUSH Good players Good Computers ONLY!!shiftone!!". You have those too in Warcraft 3, but the wacky scenarios are way more fun and consequently way more played.

This is totally doable now, and wouldn't be hard either.
Let's see, land factory building units every 3 seconds : easy.
You could easily give resource for every kill.
Reviving would be also possible. You can just spawn a new acu after the old acu died with the same upgrades etc.
I actually like the idea and will see what can be done about it :p

*Cheers. Positive feedback! *

I haven't dared to look into script files yet, but I'm looking at that unofficial map editor I've seen on several sites.
A map exchange system would be needed to make it widespread, but that's something to be worried about later.

We already have the perfect trigger/script editor, direct Lua code that can modify just about anything. Custom maps (though not necessarily footmen frenzy) are coming soon

Do I have to make it as a mod, or can unit values and stats be contained in the map itself?

You can actually tie a mod directly to a specific map very easily. So if you choose that map it will automaticly enable said mod

You can't currently tie a map to a mod, nor can you currently change units in a map without a lot of trickery. You'll probably need a map and a mod.

One of my best friends irl loves this game and plays it constantly on WC3 to this very day, and I cannot for the love of anything convince him to buy Sup Com, so being a modder I plan to at one point add this into the game. But first comes the heros. I am already planning and have started a WC3 Hero Mod, but got a little tangled up into a Strategic Space Layer mod, that adds spaceships and laser sattilites and various other sweet stuff. Im almost outta school, only got a little bit of time left, and when that happens im doing nothing but modding, so i will post a link of my Mod Collection thread, and you can track my progress with all sorts of mods there. I will probably release a beta for the Hero Mod, and once i get that mostly sorted out I will start working on a map, and mod for Footies for SupCom.

Linkage: http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=3841&highlight=wip

yay cant wait i love footman wars

I've made a 5x5 map for Mech Marine Mania with 8 players. Those mountain-block-thingies don't make me go 'Wheeee!' either, but they'll do for now . Now I need someone who knows his way around LUA Scripting to come up with the mod for it

i liked starcrafts Zone Control better
But i agree we need custom scenarios.
We need a trigger editor!!!!!

btw, it would be awesome if we could mod the map editor, can we?
like if it had no scenario editor component, we could mod it in. would be useful.

Swieb, I can do that. Just lump me the map and I will see what I can do.

I've sent you a pm with the link (Filefront). Thanks mate! I have lan-parties every two weeks with some friends and they are all into SupCom, so I can test it once you get it working.



I liked ZC even more, but I wonder how you could recreate all those upgrades. I got another slow day tomorrow, so I can at least make you the map . Good thing ZC didn't have much elevation, making those square mountains for the MMM map with a round height brush is a pain. Instead, I can now focus a bit more on the eyecandy ^^

Yeah.. are you going to remove the mex spots as well? It doesnt really matter since I have removed absolutely all building ability, full stop, but it would be nice.

Eh? I don't recall ever placing any mex spots? *Checks the map* Weird. There aren't any. *confused*

Forgive me if I missed something here.


Why would you make this mod a MAP based mod instead of just a regular mod? And then release maps that are 'good' for this mod.

It's perfectly possible to remove all builder units, add the upgrading factory and SuperCom to just a straight up mod, no map needed. Maps like Isis would be perfect for it already.

Since a mod would be needed to use with the map, I don't see any reason why your proposal wouldn't be possible. However, the map I made is quite tiny, especially considering it contains 8 players. That way, you don't have to wait 10 minutes for anything to happen. That is the point of MMM, it removes the tedious things about SupCom like the economy and waiting for your units to arrive and skips to the battles.
I meant it to be a nice alternative to ranked games and custom 2v2/3v3/FFA games on often the same old maps.

Granted, it takes a lot out of SupCom that makes it unique (huge maps for instance). But with a little luck, the most important thing is retained: Fun .

The basic scripting is complete and there are no mex points on the map- i just thought i saw a mex on the screenshot.
This can be released as soon as I get some help from the devs with the remaining scripting issues, which should be minimal.
A beta version of the map could be released.. it would lack a bit of functionality though.

I could always place some mex spots on it (3 around the start location of each player, 2 just outside the base and six in the middle), which I planned to do anyways for the lanparty I will have with my friends next saturday.

As long as there's competent AI so it can be played skirmish, then cool!

What script issues?

I liked playing footies so I wouldn't mind giving this a whirl.

That indeed would be great. Even for those who play this online (as I hope it will be) it will be nice to fill up player slots, because SupCom doesn't have as many players online as WC3, where the games would fill sometimes instantly.

DeadMG is currently working on the mod and we'll have to wait to see what he comes up with. Once it's functional, maybe someone who knows his way around AI can look at it.

WC3 never had it, perhaps SupCom will .