[Custom Map] Ziggurat

Shadow Ziggurat (a work in progress)

Introduction:
The relationship between the Lizardmen and their aquatic master is an unpleasant one.
He demands regular blood sacrifice.
If he's not satisfied, he sends the shadows up from his lake bed. Dark shadows that block out warmth. So deep, that they become physical and constrict around you.

One of your number has been taken by the lizards to become next in line to feed these shadows.

Rescue her if you can, avenge her if you can't, and try to avoid becoming food for the lizard's god yourself.



This started out as me just playing around with stairs, and before I knew it I had this huge pyramid thing. I didn't really like it until I decided to add the waterfall, when a really creepy idea occurred to me that dated back to all the old Conan movies I'd watched as a kid. This little aqueduct would make a really great delivery system for blood sacrifices that fed something big and icky living at the bottom of the lake to the west. A little version of Cthulhu began to suggest itself.
Next I started adding shadows, and I realized the map was a bit bland if most of it was just open terrain. I decided this would be a temple of shadows, where walking anywhere without light would be considered difficult terrain. It's inhabitants would be a bunch of cold-blooded lizardmen who desperately want to keep the shadows from spreading, so they commit all sorts of sacrificial atrocities to prevent it.

The "god" I ended up with is just a stench demon, lurking out in the water ready to hurl crap at anyone who comes too close. Defeating him isn't necessary for victory. Killing the lizards is enough to win.

To showcase the difficult shadow terrain, I included some units that teleport and use lightening (a natural enemy of shadows?) and some ranged enemy monsters. Getting the wizards to reunite should be pretty hard to do without one of them dying, after I've got this balanced a little better.

I'm not satisfied with the wizards as they are, and may switch to a different class for either or both of them. I need suggestions. At least some of the allied units need to be effected by the shadow terrain or it's whole significance may be lost by too many units that can simply ignore it, so maybe switch to slower creatures like dwarves?

I'm also considering adding a VP to the top someplace, otherwise there's really no reason to rush your way up there anymore if the one trapped team member dies. You can just sit at the bottom and slowly shoot them as they approach. In fact, I don't think there's any way this won't become a necessity in the next revision I make, unless someone's got a better suggestion.

I'd like suggestions on enemy type and quantity, too. I noticed a whole lot of lizardman stuff in the monster lists, and I'm not terribly familiar with any of them. I suspect they're part of a treasure hunt that I don't have unlocked? The little netters seem a little too squishy, and the allied whisps a little too powerful.

 

really cool story and the map design looks prety amazing. tonight i will give it a try

 

Netters are squishy but also pretty annoying, but all that difficult terrain makes them redundant. Read through the wiki entry on Temple of Scales for more examples of lizardmen. In particular, I'd use Darters instead of Warriors, and the Four-Headed Hydra instead of the Stench Demon.

 

Cool idea. I liked the story behind the scenario and I always give extra points for anything Conan related. I was planning on doing my own Conan adventure but none of the NPC's fit the role.

As for gameplay, it felt a bit like "just kill everything" type of a deal. It would have been cool to see something different or something that requires a specific strategy.

I think the art is solid, especially those things in the middle where the lizardmen hang out. Map is quite large though, forcing me to constantly scroll the screen (resolution 1920x1080). A slightly smaller structure might have been better, especially for people with smaller resolutions. The issue is magnified by the fact that the party is slit up in opposite corners.

Suggestion: add an extra row of plain grass squares in N-W and N-E sides of the map. This will give you a much better 3-d illusion because the background grass will make the structure pop out better. And yes, I realize this goes against what I just said about the map being too big

I definitely agree that there should be a VP at the top. Otherwise it's easy to just kite and shoot.

 

I like a lot of what I'm reading here, because it seems the stuff that annoyed you all was also what ended up annoying me a lot.

The size of the map actually took some real getting used to, for me. I'd focus on the party at the bottom, and suddenly hear my wizard up top get hit, and be like, "What? What happened up there?"
I had no idea going into this that the map size would end up obfuscating the action so much. Somehow I just instinctively figured that when the map got large enough the game would autofocus on an enemy as it took it's turn so you wouldn't miss it, instead of just going ahead and doing sneaky stuff offscreen immediately after you take a turn or pass.
I'm also not terribly crazy about the way that for the building to work and look as intended, it's gotta be really large. I sat there staring at it trying to figure out how I'd trim it down a row or two to make it smaller, and I'm thinking maybe get rid of an entire row along the bottom?
I'd hoped to add a few weird obstacles that cast shadows, so that not as much of the map was just pretty much 50/50 light and dark. I think that's too boring, and more light could hit the right side somehow, and more dark could cover the left if I'm clever about it. Hell, maybe this is just something I should save as the clever mechanism for a theoretical battle #2 that continues into the building's interior. Did anyone else just think the shadow gimmick was being wasted on this map?

With the netters, I wanted something that would make the shadows and encumbrance feel like a persistent issue. Like you can't go anywhere without a struggle. It was supposed to feel really threatening, but ended up just feeling like a game of whack-a-lizard. I'm going to read up on that wiki entry Kalin suggested.

 

I actually tried this, and my personal experience was that it did almost nothing for the illusion in question, but created a weird sort of new one where it appeared that the building was built into the side of a grassy hill. I imagined players getting angery with questions like, why can't I step off onto that grass along the top? Why is that blocked terrain? I finally decided to leave it completely gone, so at least there would be no question about it. What I'd really like is some decent looking sky terrain. I feel that a little blue sky along the top would look spiffy.
In my next version I'll add it and you can tell me how you feel about it.

Edit:
I think I'll try and solve both problems first by having the lake extend around the structure. impassible terrain won't create the same issues, and will also give the ground floor more permanence to the illusion toward the top of the map.

Here I have it sunk into the ground a bit so it's not so darned tall, and the lake wrapping around it. The height illusion can be better preserved because the water does a great job holding shadows that mirror the angle cast from the southwest corner. I'm assuming sunlight from a directly northwest direction.
I'm glad to report that every unit may finally be visible at once.

 

It feels strange now with these lake borders

 

You think so? Is it because a building like this looks weird up against the water, or is it something simpler, like it just looks weird to you to see a strip of blue around the edge? Are we talking aesthetics or thematic? I'm really curious if you can pin it down, because it sort of looks weird to me too, but it's easier to imagine it in my head than it is to "see" the image from the map view right now.
I think for me, the problem is the little stream/waterfall running down the side of the building. It gives the impression that the waterfall is the same height as the surrounding water, and this causes the stream to ruin the illusion that the building has any height. The more water I add to this map, the more that stream running down the building looks weird.

I think I may remove most of that stream and just have the outlet for it at the base of the building. It's not really doing much except for serving as a means for holding back the big monster on the west side of the map, and I probably need to stop fixating on it and just get rid of it.

 

To me, it's weird that there's no fire visible on the northwest or southeast corners of the pyramid. Also, it would really help if you had some way of adding white streaks to the waterfall.

 

Definitely. I'd love the ability to show turbulence, or that the water is falling. bubbles, vertical lines... anything would help me with this illusion. Unfortunately, I don't think I have the tools available, so it's probably better to remove it than force the player to accept it and have the whole west side of the building look so confusing. It was a weird experiment that captured my fancy, but ultimately only looks good in my imagination and not in actual practice.

What do you mean about the fire? are you saying that it would have looked better with a symmetrical platform in those corners like the one in the southwest corner? The problem I had with that (because my very first plan was to include that) was that it destroyed the illusion again. The 2 doorways I wanted couldn't be placed exactly halfway down the wall, because doing so messed up the perspective. After placing them where I felt they looked more 3D, they ended up taking up so much room on the corners of the building that placing the corner platforms would have not fit anymore. :/ For that reason, I just placed a fire source at the mouth of each doorway instead... I'll see what I can do to make the building look more symmetrical though, if it is currently giving the impression that the NW and SE corners are being "cut off" due to perspective demands.

 

For me, its strange because i feel this view is incongruent for a 3d pyramid. Without the water borders, the picture seems right because it looks like it's a frame over the complete view of the pyramid (not sure if I wanted to say frame or shot, i was looking after a filmmaking related word)

 

It occurs to me that anyone reading this may want a model picture of the sort of structure I'm trying to build. Not that I'm saying you guys don't understand what I want, just that I could have made this clearer for anyone who found my project confusing.

I went Googling for images, and unfortunately there's only a couple really popular structures that are getting all the hits , so it's hard to find one that truly resembles what I'm trying to build... but I'm going for something along these lines:

I didn't pick this picture because I thought it was particularly great, but because I think it does the best job recreating the angle of view I'm dealing with on my map. The entire back half of the building is pretty much invisible, and if it were just a bit steeper you could see why only two sides hold the focus. You can also see why at this angle, it's not unusual to expect to see the ground beyond the rooftops, simply because in spite of the height perspective, you're still ultimately looking downward at the whole thing. Envision this thing rimmed by water on three of it's sides, and that's something like what I'm trying to create... just with more stairs.
Here's another really good aerial view of one that stands out nicely

 

That's a really pretty map.

I thought about it, experimented with it, and ended up not liking the color mix. It ended up kind of hurting my eyes, and also looked really strange having such dark looking water right next to something that's supposed to be brightly lit by sunlight. It's a case of me artistically painting myself into a corner, so entirely my fault. I'll post a sample of a few water changes in a little bit.

 

I drew this 3D trunked pyramid to illustrate what i've said. these are different views:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kwiahtir3z2st9l/pyramid sketchup 2.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z9tixdm19uq9c64/pyramid sketchup.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/97amf1ijiipyv1o/pyramid 3.jpg (fit in a square frame)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/evuaxgvglpd75rl/pyramid sketchup 4.png (don't fit in a square frame)

The map with water borders looks like this for me: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6yqlzps2om3kv6w/Sem título.jpg

 

It's funny how attempting to make a line more obvious can make an object bigger, and then you have to find another part to trim off to compensate.
Right now It's looking like this, because I'm starting to think the inclusion of more walls is going to make things a lot more interesting, and it's already starting to look like I'm building a UFO.


I wanted the first floor to be clearly very high above ground level, and that wall is giving me major grief trying to get it to look right. If it weren't for the shadows I'd probably give this up. The corners are especially fugly.

 

I swear that I'm trying to figure out how it could look like that kind of angle, and I just don't understand. You're saying that it's making it look like you're seeing both the front and the back faces, somehow? Is that shadow on the water looking like a back wall to you, maybe?
Wait, or are you rotating it, and the perspective would be coming in from more of the right side of the picture? Because if so, then in a way, you could be completely correct. The intention was to display the top and 2 sides in such a way that they would provide maximum facing while obscuring the back end. This means that for all purposes, the other two sides may as well be completely missing like a sheer dropoff (as seen in that picture of yours). Because you can't see them or know their slope, it's impossible to know. I do see what I think you're saying, though.

Edit: so, what would you feel about a perspective a little more like this:

Just ignore the shadows for now, they're clearly only half-assed for the purposes of demonstration.
The idea is a tall first floor, a shallower second floor, and then a tall top floor. Does that idea come across as a terraced structure allright for you now?

 

Alternatively, I can go way exotic looking, but it's also really freaky.



I dig this look a lot, but even if you can forgive the really blocky nature of all the corners, the problem crops up again that we've got a really huge map. I could restrict all the enemies to the south side of the building, and leave the rest just sort of there as a backdrop, and I suppose that would keep the bulk of the action all on one screen. It would also be nice to have an alternate route to play hide and seek on, considering there will be a four-headed hydra on the loose running around the first floor.

 

Yes!

Yeah, you got it.
But in the last shot the problem persists in that upper layer of the Ziggurat. I would make the dropoff line coincide with the end of the board like in the very first shot of yours - making the impression that the board is a frame, so the rest of the pyramid would exist (in imagination) on an undisplayed area
and/or
I would make all the elements shown in the displayed area symmetrical, framing any space of that top-down view: https://www.dropbox.com/s/97amf1ijiipyv1o/pyramid 3.jpg

wow, its so hard to express myself about this in english

 

I think I may be in a position where in order to better describe the angle I'm trying to display, I'd need to start drawing pictures like yours, but I don't have the software. In the meantime I'm going to sleep on it. trying to balance a map's potential to get this enormous with it's required perspective may simply have to stay a compromise. Because this isn't intended to be a top-down view, I have no plan to use the back end of the building for anything, so letting it appear behind the foreground, or slightly smaller as a result seems satisfactory to me. Were this top-down, it would be a completely different story.