Homeland

[ZachWileman]

Game Title: Homeland

(Top-Down, Turn-Based, Overwatch Style Game)

The Story (Theme)

Groups of androids have awoken back from slumber and are trying to take back what they believe to be their homeland. The only thing is that the androids are groups of clones of themselves from a lost civilization where these androids were created to help different countries fight their wars. Now, they’re all that’s left of this world and they must fight their clones to take back their homeland.

The Game

This game is based off of ideas gotten from the popular videogame Overwatch. The game mode is also based off of the game mode “Control” from Overwatch. In Control, each team will try to capture the “Control” point points located an equal distance from each player’s spawn location. To capture a point, players will need to sit on the “Control” point to capture it. Having more of your characters on the point can cause your team to capture the point faster, but if both teams have at least one of their characters on the point at the same time, the timer for the Point being captured is then paused until there is only one of the team’s character(s) on the point. After a team has captured a point, they must keep the enemy team from capturing the point until they reach 100% on the control point or the time for the game runs out.

Important: Each team is only allowed to have 3 characters, out of the 5 available, out on the map at the same time. Also, they can only have one of each type of character out on the map at the same time.

As of right now, I’m undecided on whether teammates can cause damage to each other when shooting towards each other. Right now, I’m leaning towards no, but this also means that bullets can’t travel through your teammates.

Victory Conditions

• Hold the Control point point(s) until your team gets to a 100% capture
• Else, whomever has the most points when time runs out wins
• Else, coin flip

Character Types

To more easily be able to picture in your head the characters I’m talking about. I will use the name of the Overwatch characters that I’m getting my ideas from. NOTE: Not all of the characters I discuss have the exact same abilities as the characters in Overwatch do, they are merely based off of them. Also, when it mentions Range for each character, it is referring to the distance that their gun can shoot before no damage is done. Also, each character’s special will continue to rollover to their next life assuming the character isn’t changed. So for example, say you character’s special is at 60% when your character dies. When that character respawns, it will continuing charging where it left off at 60%.

Each character will be able to move 2 spaces (except Tracer) in a turn as well as perform an action (an action being the characters attack or special).

Mercy (Support):

• Abilities: Able to heal teammates when she is within 2 tiles of the teammates. Can also shoot enemies, but the damage is severely low.
• Special: Able to revive teammates that are within 2-4 tiles of her (depends on map size). This character can only revive teammates that have just died (as in 1 turn); multiple characters can also be revived at once. To be more specific about when a teammate can be revived, say it’s the enemy team’s turn, they just killed one of your teammates, and now it’s your turn. Assuming Mercy is within range and her special is ready, she can resurrect any teammates that are dead on this turn. On the following turn that is available to your team, Mercy will no longer be able to revive teammates that were dead the last turn. This is done to avoid issues with enemies or teammates moving onto tiles that could be possibly be “reoccupied” by revived characters. This ability is only available once a certain amount of turns have passed. Once the ability is used, the same number of turns have to be waited before the special is available again.
• Damage: Low
• Range: 4 blocks

Roadhog (Tank):

• Abilities: Able to deal a large amount of damage when in close proximity to the enemy.
• Special: Able to “hook” enemies in from 3 blocks away. This ability is only available once a certain amount of turns have passed. Once the ability is used, the same number of turns have to be waited before the special is available again. (The other idea I had was Roadhog doing damage to all surrounding tiles).
• Damage: High
• Range: 2 blocks

Soldier (Offense):

• Abilities: This character is able to shoot other characters and put down a shield (more below).
• Special: Able to put down a shield in front of him that takes up one tile. The shield will disappear after a certain amount of turns or if the enemy put enough damage into it. Bullets can’t travel through the shield from either your team or the enemy team. Extra damage done to the shield to destroy the shield by the enemy team will hit the character behind the shield (if there is one). This ability is available to the character when they spawn in. After they have used it once, it will take a certain amount of turns before the ability is available to them again.
• Damage: Medium
• Range: 5 blocks

Widowmaker (Defense):

• Abilities: Able to shoot characters from a far distance. To do the long-distance shots, she first has to charge up in a somewhat familiar fashion as to the sharpshooter from Saloon in MegaMinerAI18.
• Special: Able to shoot an explosive round instead of a regular round that is able to do damage to the character it hits and a small amount of damage to the surrounding tiles (1 tile radius). The explosives can hit a wall and still do damage to the surrounding tiles (as long as the damage isn’t passing through walls). This ability is available to the character when they spawn in. After they have used it once, it will take a certain amount of turns before the ability is available to them again.
• Damage: Medium - High
• Range: 10 blocks

Tracer (Offense):

• Abilities: This character is able to move an additional tile space making her total moves possible 3 with an action still available.
• Special: Able to stick bombs to a surrounding tile or to an enemy that is on a surrounding tile (1 tile radius). The bomb will explode when an enemy gets close to the bomb or if 3-4 turns have passed without the bomb exploding. The bomb can also not do damage to teammates, only enemies. This ability is only available once a certain amount of turns have passed. Once the ability is used, the same number of turns have to be waited before the special is available again. (Not completely sure as to how I want the bomb to work; ie. When to explode, who it does damage to.)
• Damage: Low - Medium
• Range: 3 blocks

NOTE: Whenever I say it will take a certain amount of turns for the ability to be available to a character, as of right now, I’m thinking 8-10 turns. Just depends on map size. Also thinking of giving each character a varying number of turns it takes to get their special, just depends with balancing and what not. A major difficulty with this game, I would imagine, would be trying to balance the damage that each characters’ attacks does.

To Help With Snow-Balling

• After coming out of spawn, players are invulnerable to enemy damage for their first few turns (depending on number of tiles and map size). Another idea is making the area in which teams spawn invulnerable to damage. As in, if I spawned a unit in, an enemy player couldn’t get inside of the area and be invulnerable, only my unit would be since it is my unit's spawn area.
• Each time a character dies, there is a small cool-down timer before a new character can be spawned.
• After the captured point has been held for so long, let’s say the enemy team has gotten 25-30% without the point being taken from them. Each of your team members would then have increased damage for so many turns. (This is just one of my ideas. Pretty much, the losing team should receive some type of small boost.) Another idea is increasing the number of tiles that each character can move each turn for a certain period of time on the losing team.

EDITS:

• Have 2 control points on the map that are both still an equal distance away from the player's spawns.
• Allow both players to use all units at once.
• Have the cool down on each unit's death be 1 turn (need at least one for Mercy's special).
• Just to clarify, once a team has captured a control point, they don't need to stay on the point to keep it captured. As long as the enemy team doesn't touch the control point, the team controlling the point will continue to gain points.

[JeffreyStrahm]

I would recommend there being several control points, so it would allow people a point to fall back to, closer to their spawn, as a form of rubberbanding mechanic. The cool down for player respawn adds to snowballing, but depending on the map size and speed it may be necessary to have a negative for units dying. Otherwise, it's a sound game. We would definitely want some form of map generation, like walls for example, but otherwise, it's a sound 1st-semester game. The theme is a bit weak though.

[ZachWileman]

@JeffreyStrahm I made some edits to my game idea. Also, I don't think having control points near the spawn would be a good idea because both teams would most likely be able to hold that point while the other team wouldn't be able to capture it all, essentially I think it would boil down to both teams gaining an equal number of points from those control points and would just make the game end quicker. On the other hand, it would be interesting to see enemy teams try to push near an enemy spawn. Not really sure if it would be a good or bad idea, just giving you my thoughts.

Also, here's a drawing of what I think the map could look like:

Just some notes about the map:

• Assuming the control points and safe/spawn points can shift 100 tile spaces up and down when starting from a corner:
  1. Randomly choose a number between 0 and 100 (Lets say you get 87)
  2. Shift Spawn/Safe Point A at the top, starting from the NW corner, 87 tile spaces to the right.
  3. Shift Spawn/Safe Point B at the bottom, starting from SW corner, 13 spaces to the right.
  4. Shift Control Point A on the left, starting from the SW corner, 87 spaces up.
  5. Shift Control Point B on the right, starting from SE corner, 13 spaces up.
     • This is just an idea I had for the random map generation.
• The walls will then be randomly generated next on one half of the map, on then mirrored onto the other side. I have somewhat of an idea for how they're randomly generated, but its bit hard to explain over a message.

[JeffreyStrahm]

I do feel like some form of control point closer to spawns would make it easier for teams to recover, and make the respawn time more important. I am not saying at the door step or anything, but like a move action closer. Enough to make a difference, but not enough it is untakable. Whether or not you add it won't make or break your game, as important decisions like that are made after the game is decided.

I think I understand what you mean by map generation, the main point is the points are equidistant. Right?

[ZachWileman]

yeah

[JacobFischer]

• Obviously we'd need to retheme/reskin this game so Blizzard doesn't sue our asses.
• Control point objective is neat and simple, we've never done that [directly]
• With the set number of characters and respawning it's similar to Saloon; which had good snowballing and balancing.
• I think control points should be biased towards the middle of the map, but could spawn near players (rarely).
• If we wanted to lean in hard to the OW theme we could add Ultimate abilities that charge up over time, but then the game becomes Ultimate Watch like the current OW meta