User:GreenSamurai/Labyrinth Mode

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

This mode generates a labyrinth on which a timed death match is played.

FEATURES LIST: Armor, Armor generator, Boosted stats, Crates (squares, triangles, and hexagons), Crystals, Dominators, Floor colors, Gray area, Hallways, Lighting, Rooms, Portals, Vengeance (armor), Voting, Walls.

PART 2: CREATING A LABYRINTH

CREATING ROOMS

The board would be the same size as the ones currently employed, but with 100 rectangular rooms, evenly spaced, on center, throughout. Each rectangular room would be assigned a size by way of 4 side dimensions, ranging from 8 to 20 units (tile widths) in length. The first side dimensions defines the length of the southern wall, east of center. The second defines the southern wall, west of center. These dimensions are mirrored on the north walls. The third and fourth side dimensions define the length of the eastern wall's north half and south half, which are mirrored to the western walls.

Each room would be assigned one of 10 floor colors: orange, pink, purple, dark blue, yellow, red, green, light blue, white, or gray.

After the assignment, there will be on average 10 rooms with gray floors. 6 rooms with gray floors are downgraded from rooms to simply gray areas.

CREATING HALLWAYS Rooms are, at first, interconnected by 3 evenly spaced hallways, each are 2 units wide, the first is on center and the others are, center to center, 7 units to either side of the first. Each room is connected to each neighboring room (maximum of 4) rooms.

A 2 unit outer hallway, with a white floor color, encircles the map.

The numerous internal hallways are assigned one of 2 floor colors: gray or white.

All other areas of the map, outside rooms and hallways, are assigned a gray floor color.

The gray floor area (5 units wide) between parallel white hallways (each leading to the same two rooms) are reassigned with a gray or white floor color. The white hallways connected by white areas are transformed into a single hallway. This creates wide (16 unit), medium wide (9 unit), and narrow (2 unit) white hallways in various arrangements. They will vary in length from 7 to 55 units.

White Hallway Odds No hallway - 4/32

Single hallway - 19/32: 12/19 small, 6/19 medium, 1/19 large

Double hallway - 8/32: 6/8 small, 2/8 medium

Triple hallway - 1/32

The gray hallways are consolidated in a similar manner to white hallways.

All gray areas (gray floors, gray hallways, gray rooms) are isolated from the colored floors (white or other colored hallways and rooms that make up the labyrinth) by walls. The rooms and hallways of the gray area are not given their own set of walls and are featureless parts of the gray area, as a whole.

Note: There can be rooms which are isolated and hallways which lead to nowhere. These areas will be included as part of the labyrinth.

CRYSTALS AND ARMOR GENERATORS Baddies and crystals (small and big) spawn inside rooms with white floors (not the halls with white floors) and 10 armor generators are randomly placed in rooms (gray, white, or any other color room)(multiple generators might be randomly placed in the same room).

LIGHTING As a server-side option, lighting can be added to the labyrinth. Each large light will illuminate a circular area of 11 unit radius. Medium lights have a radius of 4 units. Small lights (ammunition lights) will have a radius of 1 unit.

The gray area is a fully lit "outdoor" area. The narrow hallway encircling the board will be unlighted.

Big crystals and armor will have a large light at their center. Tanks will each be equipped with a medium light that can be turned on and off by pressing 'F'. Armor causes this light to remain on. Armor generators, ammunition, and small crystals will have a small light at their center.

Each room will have 8-16 lights: 4 large, 4 medium lights, and up to 4 small lights. An exception is rooms with white floors do not have the large lights.

The 4 large lights of a room are placed on the midpoint of the sides of a square cross, which is now in the center of the room. Each arm of the cross is equal to one half the smallest "side dimension" of the room they are in (see section describing room creation). This fixture may oscillate slightly when disturbed. The 4 medium lights are placed in the corner of each room, represented as a torch. At the center of each wall, not interrupted by a hallway, is a small light represented as a gas flame.

Hallways have 1-3 medium lights. One light is halfway between the center of either room, represented as either a stream of light and collapsed pieces of brickwork or a hanging lantern. Without the two rooms, there is no light. Additional medium lights are placed 3.5 units from the entrance to a room and represented the same as the light at the center of the hallway; once again, without a room to have a room entrance by, there is no light placed (gray rooms are counted, for the purpose of hallway lighting).

The baddies, crates, and neutral dominators have no lighting. When dominators are spawned at the center of each room, the central light is removed. When dominators are assigned to a team, they will have large lights at their center.

GAME-PLAY IN THE LABYRINTH

Crates (squares, triangles, and pentagons) spawn inside the colored rooms and white hallways. Players try to accumulate experience by busting crates and shooting other tanks, while seeking out the randomly placed armor generators and crystals. This is somewhat similar to the original game-play.

The halls and rooms of the labyrinth are separated from the gray area by walls. The gray area and walls are discussed further in a later section.

The game advances as players gain levels, select attributes to improve, and earn points for their team.

ATTRIBUTE BOOSTS

Tanks spawn either inside rooms with colored floors (not white or gray rooms) or the wide white hallways. Each color of floor is matched with an attribute (stat). See table. When a tank spawns in a room, the associated attribute is filled instantly with 7 white cells, to show that the attribute has been boosted fully. Boosted attributes may be selected and improved in the usual manner, replacing the white cells with colored ones.

GAINING AND LOSING BOOSTS

For any tank travelling into a new room, for a period of time, empty cells for that attribute are boosted. This is an incremental increase of an attribute up to its maximum value of 7 takes. This will take time; the instant boost to an attribute for spawning inside a room is a unique bonus.

The attribute is awarded a boost after a waiting period of 3 seconds, multiplied by the number of empty cells remaining on the attribute, inside a room associated with that attribute. In this manner, the first boost to a completely empty attribute would take 21 seconds. The second boost would occur after 18 more seconds (for a total of 39 seconds spent inside the room), and so on. To get a complete boost (7 cells), to this single attribute, would take a total of 1 minute and 24 seconds.

When leaving the room (entering a hallway) the loss of attribute boosts would begin, in a reverse manner, with longer time intervals than for gaining boosts. They are lost at a time equal to 5 seconds multiplied by one more than the number of empty cells for that attribute. For an attribute that has been boosted full, the first boost lost would be at 5 seconds, the second after 15 total seconds; and it would take 2 minutes and 20 seconds to lose all 7 boosts, in this manner.

WALLS AND PORTALS

To enter the gray floored area, tanks must go through the walls of the rooms or hallways of the labyrinth, by using a portal. When a player's bullets hits a portion of the wall, a section 2 grid spaces wide turns white. When enemy's bullets hit a wall, that section of the wall turns their team color. Walls cannot be entered through enemy portals and only one portal can open on a section of wall at a time.

A wall is breached by shooting at the wall while simultaneously pushing the tank against that section of wall; the tank will receive light damage, similar to busting a crate and is pushed through the portal. No ammunition of an type has the ability to travel through enemy portals. Coming back in from the gray area requires can be done using the same portal method.



THE GRAY FLOOR AREAS

While standing inside the rooms and hallways of the labyrinth other hallways and rooms are visible, regardless of ones field of view. Tanks can see through walls but they cannot see the gray area, it is covered by a white field. Gray rooms and hallways are bound together as an interconnected gray area. Like the labyrinth, the whole area is fully visible to players once they are inside and the rooms and hallways inside the labyrinth are whited out.

The walls enclosing the rooms and hallways will inhibit a player's movement all the same, whether they are inside the labyrinth or inside the gray area, and stop bullets, traps, drones (all ammunition). Armor can be used to move and shoot through walls and is covered in a later section.

Medium width hallways assigned as gray floors generate small crystals and small baddies. Rooms and large hallways assigned as gray floors generate large crystal and large baddies. The extent of the crystals and baddies in a room or hallway depends on the size of that room or lengths of that hallway.

Tanks are counted as either being fully in or fully out of the gray area. Once in the gray area, all attributes will gray out, to indicate assigned attributes are inactive and all boosts are lost. The assigned, permanent, attributes are instantly recovered once hallways and rooms are entered again. While outside the hallways and rooms, in the gray area, tanks become visible to baddies inhabiting the gray area and the baddies will pursue the tank straight through walls, once the tank has been spotted.



ARMOR

There is another way to travel through the walls of the labyrinth and that is by using the armor. There are generators in a few of the rooms.

Collecting the armor wraps the tank in a light, the color of the tank. The tank and its bullets are able to pass through walls and the attributes are unaffected by entering the gray area. The player will retain all their boosted attributes and points. Players in armor can also see areas on both sides of the walls.

ARMOR COLLECTION AND TIMER

Once an armor is collected, a multi-colored timer appears in the lower right-hand corner of the screen and beings a count-down. The time is composed of 8 sections representing 7.5 seconds per piece. Picking up armor from a generator, while out of armor, puts 30 seconds on the timer. Collecting armor from the generator, while in armor, adds 15 seconds to the timer. Players can boost the timer to a maximum of 60 seconds. Once armor is taken, the generator will wait 60-120 seconds before producing another armor.

While the tank is Inside the gray area, its armor timer depletes twice as fast.

The armor acts as a shield and reduces damage taken in all areas of the map by 50%. The timer is further reduced when a player takes damage. This does not depend on where the player is located and is not affected by Health Regeneration. The timer is reduced in proportion to the damage to the tank, as a percent of Max Health. If damage to the tank is 50% of Max Health, then the timer is reduced by 15 seconds. If damage to the tank is 25% of Max Health, then the timer is reduced by 7.5 seconds, and so on, rounded to the nearest 1/10 second.

ARMOR OF VENGEANCE

When you are killed by another player, while still wearing armor, the armor has a way of wanting revenge. Armor currently sitting on a generator anywhere on the level is immediately removed and the usually multi-colored generatos turn white.

The tank which was destroyed in its armor is spawned into its team area, with fully boosted attributes and its own indestructable armor. The timer is set to 45 seconds and the target of revenge is indicated by a white arrow, highlighted with the target's team color.

The timer will begin counting down immediately and if the player that destroyed that tank is eliminated before the timer expires, then all the attributes of the tank they had destroyed are returned to you. Whatever time you had remaining on the timer is retained with the armor. No points are awarded for this kill.

If you fail to eliminate the enemy, or if you kill a tank that was not your target, then your revenge mission immediately ends and you are re-spawned, as you would have been previously.

In either case, new armor is immediately available on all generators.

PART 3: GETTING A GAME STARTED

WARMING UP

Each match begins with a warm up period. Warming up takes place in 1-minute free for all on 3 different generated maps. Players have 1 minute to vote on the map they want for the upcoming match. If there are 20 or more players, the players will vote to decide whether or not to have 9 teams.

VOTING

If there are 20 or more players, they will have one extra minute before the match begins to vote on whether to divide up into 4 teams or 9 teams. Once that is decided, players are assigned to their teams.

Another 1-minute voting period is initiated to remove any unwanted player from the teams. Each team member has one vote at the start of each round. If one player's whole team casts a vote together against that player, that player is removed from the team. Once removed from a team, one vote from one member of each other team will then ban that player from the server, for a 3-hour period. Otherwise, once the vote is complete, the removed player will be swapped with a member of another team randomly.

SPECTATING

5 or 10 slots will open up for spectators, one for each team plus 1 extra position for an unassigned spectator. New players coming to the server will go into the unassigned spectator position. From that position, they view the entire board, all areas are visible to them. If a spectator position on one of the teams opens up, the unassigned spectator will be assigned to that team.

The square board is divided into 4 or 9 team areas of equal size, where players from each team will randomly spawn into a room. Extra players will sit in a spectator position for their assigned team, at the start of each round (unless more players happen to join in time), and they will be able to spectate the game within their team's area, with the ability to simultaneously view the gray area and labyrinth rooms and hallways.

As players are eliminated, they will be able to spectate their team area. They will join the game when their team is outnumbered by the other teams or when all teams can be joined simultaneously by the spectators. If multiple spectator positions are available, the unassigned spectator joins the team with the lowest grand total.

PLAYERS JOINING THE GAME SIMULTANEOUSLY

If all the team spectator positions are full, and one unassigned spectator has joined the server, then all the team spectators will be spawned; leaving all other spectator positions empty. The remaining unassigned spectator is then assigned to the team with the lowest grand total.

ROUND MANAGEMENT

There will be 2 rounds, each lasting 10 minutes. The final round may take 6-10 minutes.

THE FINAL ROUND

The final round will be announced. Spectator spots will be closed and any unassigned spectator will be assigned to the team with the lowest score and all the spectators will join their respective teams on the board.

Play will ensue for 6 minutes, players are awarded points for kills but respawn with the same points as when they died, allowing them to reselect class, stats, and other upgrades. No points are transfered to the grand total until the end of the round, when bonuses are awarded.

After the initial 6 minutes, a warning is presented that eliminated players will be unable to re-spawn and dominators are being placed at the center of each room. Dominators are dormant for a short time. All availavle armor is removed and the armor generators turn white.

The order of elimination in the final round will decide the assignment of bonus points. The round will stop at the 10 minute mark and all players eliminated.

The points a player had in the final round, when eliminated, are multiplied by factors based on the order in which they were eliminated. The longest surviving player from each team is given a 20% bonus added to their round score. In case of tied, the player with the highest points is rewarded. If even the points are tied, then both players are rewarded.

The round scores of each player are added to their team's grand total. The time of survival in the final round from each player are added to their team's final time. An additional 20% bonus is awarded to the grand total of the team with the longest total survival time. Ties are handled the same s before.

PART 4: CLOSING DISCUSSION

PREDICTED CLASS ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

11. Overseers (drones). Drones pass through walls, while a tank has the armor on. Otherwise drones interact with walls to create portals, as do traps, but cannot themselves travel through a portal. While in the gray area, this tank would have some serious hurdles to overcome. Overseers do however have one advantage over all the other tanks inside the labyrinth and that is the ability to strike around corners and may be useful to your team. They also might be good at uncovering cloaked snipers. With the limited floor space, the necromancer would not have many drones and would simply be dead meat once trapped out in the gray area.

10. Destroyer. This class seems like it would have the advantage in hallway confrontations and ambush attacks, but would be in danger with an under-powered weapon in a gray area. It seems like it would be extraordinarily difficult to escape through a wall. But being more confined in the labyrinth may not be much of an issue. The rear mounted machine gun upgrade may prove to be its saving grace.

9. Smasher. These tanks would be ideal for ambushing other tanks. If the armor is ever acquired, a smasher will be able to cause significant damage without any warning. However, they may also become trapped in the gray area and would need a vigilant teammate to help get them out. If a level had armor somewhere in the gray area, a smasher would be an option

8. Quad and Octo Tank. Due to the confined spaces and special features of the labyrinth mode, these two tanks have significant advantages and disadvantages that will be difficult to predict. Most of the shot pattern will be absorbed by the walls, making them easy to locate from outside. However, that would also be great at hindering ambush attacks and protecting a room. They can make quick escapes through walls and have a fair chance of dispatching numerous baddies and crystals out in the gray area, simply due to the large number of cannons.

7. Sniper. These tanks could make use of their long site range and invisibility to surprise other tanks heading up long hallways. A sniper could be dangerous, in the right location, and while in the gray area, these features might allow them to sneak around and avoid the armored tanks.

6. Sprayer. With the advantage and disadvantages already mentioned in the Quad and Octo tanks the more focused attack may prove advantageous or they may be too ambiguously designed to serve any clear purpose.

5. Twin Flank. This seems to be the perfect class for venturing down long hallways without much worry and giving chase to other tanks. They are defending both ends of the hallway without giving away their immediate location to outside viewers. Firing multiple directions may also prove useful when entering a well defended room, able to attack two corners simultaneously.

4. Auto Tank. This class debuted recently. This class will have the advantage in numerous instances already mentioned. It will be able to defend both sides down a hallway. It will perform well in the gray area. And quickly attack around corners.

3. Tri-Angle. This class would be able to pursuit and ambush other players through the walls effectively. Its guns give it a distinct advantage over the smasher and leave it well equipped to handle itself in the gray area. In a similar case to the destroyer, these tanks can make speedy escapes.

2. Gunner and Triplet. All the strengths of these tanks are working for them in the labyrinth: they can block wall ambushes/escapes, to pin other tanks in corners, fill hallways full of lead, and could focus their numerous guns out on the gray area. With a bit of teamwork, these classes would be one hard class to knock down.

1. Trapper. The strongest tank will likely be the trapper. While in the gray area, the trapper has a relatively powerful weapon attached. They can also do a good job of blocking access to hallways and rooms and this would make one indespensable for attacking and defending rooms.

TAKING REFUGE IN THE GRAY AREA

The gray area allows one to level up their tank, while being protected by the complexity maze of walls and large penalty incurred for going into the gray area. Newly spawned tanks will likely not sacrifice their spawning bonus and most will try to navigate through the halls. More developed tanks may venture through the gray area but will be a high value target. Players will most likely avoid going in altogether, unless they need to.

Gaining higher levels by staying in the gray area would take forever, as would fighting other unarmored tanks in the gray area. Tanks may attempt to camp out here, but would soon be overwhelmed by tanks with the advantage of armor.

PROTECTING THE ARMOR

The armor keeps tanks moving. It gives people a very good reason to explore the labyrinth and run from players with armor. Players with armor will be defending their turf. The armors greatest strength is ambushing tanks in the gray area and performing sneak attacks on players inside the labyrinth but the generator must remain defended.

The team that can protect its armor generators will control the game. The timer and spread out armor locations will keep them busy trying to prevent another team from snaggin their armor. The random generation of armor is critical to the game.

To stop a top player, who is using the armor all the time, simply sneak into the armor generator room from the gray area and snag it before they kill you. The revenge feature will give you a huge bonus to take down the top player, if they kill you in the armor. No matter what bonus or advantage the top player may have, this threat will force them to abandon the generator.

In a 4 team game, each team would have a good chance of finding an unoccupied armor room to boost up in but in a 9 team game, several teams will probably have a hard time finding armor. The original purpose of armor, was to chase out anyone hiding in the gray area. Through the spying ability of armor and retaining abilities in the gray area. The shielding component of armor makes acquiring armor important to the game.

MONOPOLIZING AN AREA

Bonus attributes and armor could be extremely advantageous, boosting players up well beyond usual limitations. With careful planning, such as fully boosted attributes in two attributes, one player could dominate multiple teams, quickly smashing through the weaker tanks.

However, all this boosting takes time. In contrast, the spawning tanks given a room bonus will have an immediate advantage and can quickly level up to a tank with high stats. By giving teams a smaller respawn area, the teams are allowed to recover and mount a comeback.