for those who are sick and tired of my map ideas; i'm sorry this is the second last one for a few days at least.

now for my new idea.  while i was doing the Lake Front one i was also thinking about the peaceful nature setting and then thinking of the opposite.  when i play a DG match the isn't much time to just wander around the place watching birds and sniffing flowers.  no no.. its all about the fight.. and fighting for power and destruction.  with this in mind i thought of an interesting idea with fire and rock... and more exact a Volcano.

Map: Volcano

This map is going to be based on a volcano so with any good volcano level there needs to be fire... and there needs to be lava.  so i came up with an idea to incorperate this.   the basic outline of the amp is below with a nifty spiral shape twisting up to a volcano peek.

each Citadel would be in the lumps on the left and right of the map with three lines of grunts running around and up the mountain.

Enviroment

so obviously this is a volcano, and volcanoes are basicly mountains.  so to better show this mountain i have two pictures.  the first one below is an altiture map with the lines in red and the outline faded in the back ground.  for those who might not like this kind of diagram i have a simple photoshop paint job to help you out.

note: the numbers in the middle in black is the altitude in meters.

Note: i really hope someone at GPG could do a better graphics job than me.

so you can see the central mountain with its peek between the circling paths as well as the bases on each side.  the bases are also elevated as well as the two flag paths above and bellow; this is for the lava which i will explain in a bit.

i'm still unsure if the Demigod coding will allow for elivation yet, but for now i'm going to assume that its in there somewhere but hasn't been utilized.  with what i was envisioning in my head the mountian would be big enough for the camera angle to only be focused on one side at a time, meaning you would have adjust as you scaled the mountain or go fr a top down view.  this way i think its makes the battle more interesting as allies ping for assistance on the other side of the mountain.

Grunts and Towers

with grunts this basicly an up and around job.  grunts have three paths (shown in the picture below) they can either go around the mountain, a pretty simple, level path.  or they can wind there way up the mountain, around the lava pit and down the other side.

something that i though would be really neet is right in the middle where the peek is, there would be a lava pit... basicly a big pool of molten metal.  obviously the creeps want to go around this so i added the twist.  however when the creeps take the twist they actualy end up missing the grunt wave that left at the same time as them and end up fighting the other enemy wave half way down the mountain.  this way when a DG is going up the middle will have to decide if they are going to either push the line or defend their creeps... all the while worrying about where the other DG's are.

as for towers is basicly this....

as you can see there are no towers in the middle untill half way down the mountain... and this is to support the grunts that miss each other.

Lava and Fireballs

so we can't have a volcano that doesn't shoot fire and rocks...  thats just bad posture.  so there are two elements to this map that i thought would be very nice.  first is randomly shot fireballs that land in random locations around the map.  these can be an AoE damage with the same range as Rooks hammer smash, with people right unter the ball getting hurt a lot mor than those who were just winged.  for damage sakes it might be nice for it to do say 500 damage, this way if its gets lucky and hits creep wave then its game over for those minators.

the second effect is the Lava. and when i say lava i'm not talking about the occational little spash from the top.  for lava to be done right it needs to pour over the edge, run down the mountain and pool and harden for about 5 min of the game.  this way not only do u mold the shap of the map as paths become dangerous to travel, but u also can adapt for defensive or offensive pushes is the lava ends up taking out a whole lane of grunts.

for the actual mechanics of this i think a simple damage per second burn similar to TB's fire circle would be best.  this way its still safe for DG's with good HP and regen, however creeps will feel the pain up untill giants who are bad ass tank anyway.  i'd really like some suggestions, but for now something like 20 hp/sec might be good enough to make DG's think twice before wading though lava to get a flag.  as for when they will start pouring i think its important to keep people on their toes.  say having one wave of lava pour every 7-10 min with the wave lasting around 3-5 min.

to help visualize this i got a few situations:

so the situations are:

1. Here the lava pours from the centre down the mountain taking out the middle and bottom lane.  creeps burn and dies and DM's find them selves in the middle of a firestorm.  if you look back thou at the altitue diagram you can see the flag hill is elivated so the lava will just pool at its base and not  devour the hill.  after a few minutes of fire the lava cools and returns to a normal path way.  maybe with omse smoldering trees for effect.
2. Here its a bit more simple with lava just winging the middle and taking the bottom lane, then falling off the side.
3. This is where adaptation is needed.  as you can see the base is now cut right off.  this is bad, very bad.  here creeps are dying and the enemey is pushing in, however the enemy can't cross the lava either so this might be a good chance to regroup and defend while the enemy pick off any flags that isn't capped.  however when the lava harden both team will need to push to regain controll untill the next wave that might hit the other player this time.
   

on a note before i forget, i think it makes sense for the fireballs and lava to do damage to the building as well.  this makes sense because if a tower if hit by a fireball... it hurts it.  however to provent lanes being pushed by the map and not the grunts i'd say maybe a 25% damage reduction to building.

Conclusion

so thats the map.  hope you enjoyed it.  i'd really liek some feed back or some ideas to help balance out the map a bit... maybe some more realistic numbers for damage and timing. 

If you liked this mapp then you might also like some of my other maps:

Lake Front

Canyon

Gate

Knot

(1 more coming soon)