GitP WarCraft 3: The Frozen Throne group (thread II)

[Winterwind]

It's nice that the newest patch supports wide-screen, too. Though I admittedly still haven't fully gotten used to everything no longer being all stretched and distorted.

In any case, welcome back, Nooblade!

Also, reminder: Tomorrow is our next custom map session. I hope to see you all there!

[nooblade]

Err, is anyone still attending? I missed it by some time but not more than an hour (and there's no chatbot to tell who had logged in or anything like that, I actually miss the annoying thing). But I guess I had fun anyway, some SWAT people were playing. I wasn't expecting much, but it would've been nice to see someone. I hope I can get into the Sunday group better than the experience today.

#Edit: Oh, I feel silly. I was on USWest.

[Winterwind]

#Edit: Oh, I feel silly. I was on USWest.

Regarding attendance, we usually have about 10-12 people per session, with about 6-8 people usually being online at once.
It does sometimes happen that, if even after waiting for a longer while we're still very few that we switch to something on Steam for a while before checking back in WC3, but that's rather rare for the melee session and never happens for the custom map session.


Reminder: Our melee session is tomorrow. I won't be there, unfortunately, due to staying over at my parents till Monday, but I wish you all lots of fun.

[nooblade]

I think I am looking forward to tomorrow (hoping people show up), it's a battlefield that I'm a little familiar with.

I looked at EotA again, that map makes me want to do CfG/BfG editing stuff. But EotA has a learning curve for sure. I saw this time around that the hero I was using could gain a magic/static charge on himself by moving around and use that to heal or do a little damage--it was confusing to extrapolate that from his innate skill tooltip. It's a little depressing how long it took to notice that. And some other things, like how a tooltip on the townhalls lets you teleport to them for some gold.

But yeah, now I want to work on CfG/BfG again. I thought I had escaped its clutches when SC2 came out. Thanks a lot? It is kinda a bleak project since we never had a much of a game with the gitp group (and not for lack of trying much).

I wonder, are there any other warcraft 3 groups like this I could advertise to?

[Woodzyowl]

WOOT I love my new computer. Rocks my socks off compared to the last one.

EDIT: has problems with WC3 for some reason though.

[Winterwind]

Personally, I wouldn't mind trying your CFG-version, Nooblade. And if it changes enough, I might imagine even the people who were opposed to the original wouldn't mind giving it at least a try.

Reminder: Tomorrow is our next custom map session. Hope to see you all there.

I'm rather sick today, so bear with me for not sending out the PMs.

[nooblade]

Aren't new computers great? When they run warcraft.

Hmm. I have a little project to finish by Friday, but some time reflecting on this will be fun. I definitely want to churn something out in spring break next week.

Haven't looked at the custom versions in a long time, I was thinking more of the new development stuff. I remember there being some problems remaining with the druid (and a conversation with Faith, that was his favorite class IIRC, but it's in a sad way for healing now) and bandages were pretty unsuccessful (people expect the designated healer to take care of it all with a skill). And to be honest there's not much fruitful stuff to get out of the deprotected map. Probably the only part I don't understand is the sneaking but I think it will be faster to write it from scratch.

Time to start BfG in earnest! I did save some files from moving computers. Who could be opposed to trying that? Well, except that it's not done... Better not to list features as if I'm sure it will be like the plan. But on the other hand, revealing something with lots of changes (I've never seen some of the things I'm thinking of before; that's why I want to do it) may be bewildering. Maybe I'll just talk about the things that I'm not sure I can do (or that I'm not sure I want to do, if it makes things less fun) to get input.

I think I will spoiler this here due to length. This is actually a good fraction of my old notes.

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I have that terrain that I posted a while ago. I guess it looked nice but looking now I don't think it's optimal just because I've never seen another map with cliffs like that (a sharp vertical incline that isn't normally possible). Also those cliffs really took up a lot of space and made scrolling around the map a pain (note: some function in preventing wallhack ranged attacks?). But other than that, I like the map with lots of empty space to move around in, I think it will be best to avoid narrow corridors or cliffs that are like indestructible redoubts for ranged attackers. In the second CfG map (the one we played on the most) there were a few chokepoints where most battles would occur, usually right outside of a town, I want to try changing those places. Make more towns, more spacious and with many ways out, with extra defenses to compensate, see if that's better or worse.

Also some plans for the classes... I hope noone is attached to the dark stalker model because I think it's hideous and I want to work in the mountain king and tauren chieftain. I figure that the dark stalker will be replaced by an blademaster model hero called the slayer (with similar death knight powers and lifesteal plus a whirlwind-looking combo, but I wish he looked undead and not just red like the blackrock blademaster) and those other two should be used for warrior and dragoon respectively. The priestess of the moon model is a good one, too, that can go to the priest class, but faster movement for a mounted caster will have to be offset somehow. I wish there were something better for the warlock but I guess shadow hunter is closest to what I want and it has some neat animations too. I think that whole setup gives a good representation of the warcrafty races except for the 4 night elves (ugh) maybe I won't change the priestess model. And I have a few plans for the way that normal attacks may become more powerful than a combo skill, mostly that's by way of removing levels and experience and making all progression use gold but there are some backup ideas. Removing levelup stuff will make multiple hero features simpler for the player, too, and another extension will simplify items by making attributes do the things that basic items (gauntlets etc) previously did. And an economy will be more fun with all those towns to possibly pillage or develop, with more stuff to spend gold on, but I'm not sure I want to make it possible for one side to be set to desperation attacks with the other forced to defend its investments. But landsliding with things like this was a problem in CfG too and I think it will work out well if it proceeds at the right pace (you could fix mistakes or misjudgements).

Combat might just remain similar. I want to make combos in melee lock you in range of the target, but stopping movement for one player or restricting it for both may be bad, that's a big problem and it's all lose-lose. And a general way to cancel a really long combo like embrace or dancing edge. And there are some problems with skills like fireball or holy light where you can get killed unrealistically after running away for half the length of the map, although I resolved this by making fireball in particular target an area rather than a player. I like how it's possible to run away, though, no shame in that. Also for sure I want to make attacking from behind always cause extra damage or ignore armor or something. I have something in mind for replacing the warcraft 3 armor system with a flat reduction one, too, based on strength and some other things. Damage is mostly scripted anyway, especially if it depends on which direction you attack from, so it's not a problem.

The most controversial thing I'm thinking about (maybe even leaning toward) is to make melee combat (attacks and attacking) slow movement speed just as a given. Or maybe match their speeds at a lower than normal value, since having one unit move faster causes some problems. I haven't seen anything else do it across the board and I'm not sure what function it would serve except to make some problems with melee combos (above) work out better. It would be a buff for ranged attackers, except that they could get slowed too without being able to slow whoever they want (or whoever they can stand next to, also sometimes impossible) but that's not a terrible loss with tanking being acceptable the way it is currently (and ranged heroes are usually the faster kind anyway). Maybe I will also add a function that lets your hero sprint away, but there will have to be some downsides too, like disabled attacks or some damage, maybe damage depending on how many enemies are around so you can't sprint away from a big fight unless you're a strength hero at full health. But then it's just an increase in complexity with little result. Stealth attacks already stun people, so there's surprisingly little effect there, but still some if you happen to survive the first attack. But the absurdity of this solution just goes to show that I feel the need to do something to make melee combos look better without making them easy to avoid by the faster stealth heroes or mounted heroes.

For stealth, I want to take some of the randomness out, and there won't be anymore level-based parts, and add some influence by the day/night cycle. If you're staring right at someone in stealth mode in the bright of day for example, there shouldn't be a chance for them to keep hiding unless maybe vanish magic was involved. Also maybe some distance factors, and maybe another time-based factor, to make it less secure to stalk someone. And maybe this will be modified in city areas or a forest or something to make some places ideal for ambushing, but eh.

Yeah, I think I've been typing long enough. Better get back to work.

#Edit: Getting back into JASS stuff is slow and pretty boring... So distract me with conversational input please? I expected to get a rise out of someone what with gutting a good bit of the Warcraft 3 engine.

#Edit2: I read an interesting hive article about timers in the War3 engine that suggests that hashtable lookups and handle ids in those timers can really slow you down. And it rings true, the slowest part in the fireball code was the periodic part with some simple trig and those hashtable values.

I wonder if I can kinda fix this by using some object features in vJASS or some other system with structs. But circuitmongers like me are taught that OOP is slower and adds overhead... Anyone here have a better understanding of this subject? I probably need to post on a more technical forum.

[Winterwind]

I think Bane's input yesterday had a lot of merit - stealth shouldn't be countered primarily by items, nevermind consumable or random items, and there should be more than one ideal item build for any one hero.

Further suggestions on my part: While I always liked CfG, I thought the different classes countered each other a bit too hard. I understand that classes countering each other and teamwork being necessary is intentional, but I thought CfG overdid it a bit. Fighters countering stealth, stealth countering casters and casters countered fighters is fine, but the counter shouldn't be so hard that the respective class has basically no chance at all, and may even not be able to escape.

I can't say anything about JASS, sadly; never looked into it.


Reminder: Tomorrow is our next melee session. Hope to see you all there.

[nooblade]

If you wanted more diverse equipment, well, eh. I was going to shift some other items in the game to being consumable like are flares are if that's alright, like the one that gives a chance for you to ignore a snare or something to reduce damage from magic. Those aren't necessarily for magic classes, putting hp regeneration alongside those effects is pretty dull. And I like consumable bandages although they don't fit yet. There are some stealth items that I wanted to remove or put somewhere else because non-stealth heroes kept buying them. But I agree that consumables are annoying to manage, that's a resource I shouldn't stress too much. At the moment I'm thinking of a few healing things, a few combat things, and then flares. I'm not sure what a stealth consumable would be like except maybe invisibility potions, and that doesn't sound great. Maybe movement speed or blinking? Stealth compatible blink. It should be pretty important to avoid the spaces that enemies are facing.

I'm still thinking about stealth. It's definitely a thing I want to keep, more like it's a cornerstone of the game, so developing that system will be important.

#Edit: I am really enjoying some features of vJass. I can make structs again!

#Edit2: Did stuff off and on today, I think most days will be like that. I have a nice script in progress for towns, but it really hinges on the unit address staying the same when you upgrade it (like going from a tower to a guard tower). So I hope that turns out to be the case! Testing... Results are positive.

Oooh, Jass NewGen let's you customize object ids. I always kinda wanted to do that.

#Edit3: Long bit about stealth.

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So I have an idea (I think it's good) for the stealth system. Rather than using an ability, you'll search for stealth heroes actively by using the patrol button, hoping to have your hero directly face the stealthy enemy. This is almost impossible to do in battle, you'd either have to do it manually if you have a spare hero or you'd have to use flares (and I think I might increase the hp of flares so they can actually keep stealth heroes off your back). Or just take the stun and damage from one sneak. But it is a habit to get into that will help against pickpockets or a stealth attack that might come before a battle, and it gives the faster mounted heroes something to do while waiting for everyone to catch up. I think patrol can be rallied too, that might help is there's one object that you want to circle around like a tree. You can also be extra zealous about it by having two or three heroes patrol in a tight circle but slightly out of phase.

Visual detection will be ugly because I have to collect everything in the line of sight of a hero and use some math to determine if something like a tree is between the detector and the stealth. But loops like that are quick, even faster than the fireball script. Depending on how the game engine deals with it, the spot for 100% visual detection will be 1-5 degrees wide in the direction a hero is facing, but it falls off after that to 0% chance for everything to the sides or behind. Stuff in between there depends on stealth agility versus detector intelligence and also on distance. Maybe. It might not be worthwhile. Although I will certainly lower the radius of visual detection at night. I was thinking about doing an auditory part for detection too, but eh, it's very similar and it would just make agility even more desirable for stealth heroes. Maybe I'll give some detection to the sides and call it auditory (say in a situation where someone is sweeping vision around and the stealth hero runs right beside them and maybe around the back to avoid being seen). It'd also be kinda silly if you could have a collision that doesn't reveal a stealth hero.

So, part of the reason why I figure this detection will be good is that I want to play against it as a stealth hero. Those bits where you're walking around some unsuspecting victims were pretty exciting. I used to cringe when walking into someone's line of sight, but with a high level rogue with boots isn't detected by anything short of flares (plus you already want to get those anyway, the critical strike on that skill was nice, better than any other skill, and the boots let you stealth more). But looking at the original CfG script closely, the only thing that facing does is to prevent detection from being possible if facing the other direction. You can walk right in front of someone and force only a normal sneaking check (which rogues always win) and even sneak attack them from the direction they're facing.

So the plan here is that you must go after the slower heroes and take advantage of mobility more than relying on those some cheap items. Things that improve stealth ability give more movement speed for this reason, and the stealth blink consumable is perfect (and useful for the other heroes too). That item may also allow for a more harassment style of play if you can bubble and then blink out to get away, great for pick pockets. The skill of the detector involves setting up the patrols in the right spot to cover allies, the sneaker must find weaknesses in that setting. And it gets more interesting as heroes are added on, there are more available patrols and greater possibility of stragglers not being covered. I'm interested in seeing how it would work in battle but I expect that that will need more thought. If it gets too hard I could always ease up a little.

#Edit4: I'm thinking about making it harder to detect if the stealth is standing still, but there isn't much of an easy way to do that without another button. Still, interesting idea. And it's possible since stealth would turn off attack ai.

#Edit5: I find myself spending more time on towns, making them more complex and interesting with a great big OOP object for each of them. Not much real progress, but I'm having fun (watch the little guys run around!) and getting used to the editor again. I might want to change terrain again, maybe I could even import the old one (or import the scripts into that), but I think I'll just leave it alone for now and finish the big scripting project.

There's so much to do, I don't think I'll be done by Friday. But it's getting to be a good start.

Images!

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Lindblum, currently neutral in this conflict, just finished a barracks. Good for them.

The construction is based in a repairing ability (actually holy light since autocast repair was causing AI problems, but who cares), so a big problem there is the building flames you'll see as they're constructing, like in this next picture. I haven't figured out how to turn them off yet. Maybe an animation? Or some "set effect" thing. I'm not sure if I want to have the game's ground texture, too, or maybe use one of the game's rocky or path-like terrain in the various towns.

But that's pure pickiness. Better to get something working first.



Midgar starts building their front tower at about the same time. Notice how vulnerable it is, with current hp and armor based on the wrecked structure. I'm not sure if I like that or not. I'm probably going to adjust these timings too (less buildings, more favoring units), but balance will come in much much later.



A picture of a complete capital site with a full complement of peasants who're in wander mode because there's nothing to do. Tell me I love peasants too much. I might make player farms vulnerable if it actually serves a game function other than organization. Or maybe just move them to the back. I dunno. Behind that you can see a bunch of passive heroes (one is selected: he has the wrong skills currently but I don't care enough to change it) that I'll use for selection and to store information. I kinda want something to remove level information, either that or I'll use it to store kill numbers for individual heroes.

I kinda want a better market model, maybe one that has a building animation (I used an intermediate step with a lumber mill, not sure how to change it other than that) and shows off the nation color.

Oh, and I'll change minimap colors (except neutral, they stay black) sometime before the script for capturing.

#Edit6: It turns out that Neutral Hostile is forced to be black on the minimap and that non-player entities will always be black when you turn ally color modes on. Shame. But that leaves me with at least one good mode.

There's more to do with towns (trade caravans from the markets, training units from the barracks, upgrades from the armory, something for the nation to do with its vault, plus utility for heroes isn't very good at all yet), but I think I will pause with them here and work on something else. Probably scripting a hero.

#Edit7: Starting the druid's shapechanging stuff was more than I bargained for, but it works (or is going to work, when everything else is done). The goal was to have 5 forms (including normal) and that any of the four other forms are available from the current one. I wasn't guessing that it'd be the most difficult hero thing to implement, but I hope that the others won't be any worse. Here's a long rant/explanation and an image.

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I thought first that I'd add and remove bear form based abilities, but that didn't go very well at all, there was interference somewhere. So I did some google fu searching for the problem (I'm sure someone out there has wanted to make a master of many forms of some kind) and found that some abilities (metamorphosis, robo-goblin, bear form, crow form, burrow, chemical rage, maybe one or two more) can be used on the same unit to turn it into different forms without even triggering it. And it does technically work, although burrow has a nasty side effect of removing all your other abilities for some reason. But I have trouble fixing triggers to that (still haven't figured out how to make heroes use bear form, don't want to anymore), which would be important for disabling abilities like in a snare. That amount of work took most of yesterday afternoon.

This morning I got a bright idea from a post about the chaos ability (used to change orc units in the game campaign, also used for siege engines with barrage) which turned out to be the solution. The only other thing I hadn't tried was polymorph. You see, editors worry more about chaos than other form changing abilities, but it actually has most of the same limitations and bugs. The benefit of using chaos is that you can triggerize it much more easily, it's easier to keep track of the limitations of form-changing, the ability is invisible to the player without any extra effort, and only the target form of the unit is required, not any "normal" form. I've found three (four?) limitations: to add a new chaos ability you must remove the old ones first, to revert to normal form you need to use one extra chaos ability for that normal form, a unit changing into the same unit that it already is will do buggy things like double damage permanently. I'm not sure if setting unit dependency fields on all the units is required, but that's pretty trivial.

So here's what I did:



I fixed some of the minimap colors, although ally colors probably won't work on town stuff. The problem with this image now is that the selection circle on the druid in tree form is so small that you can't see it. Well, and it's just a demo of shapechanging, the abilities you see should go into the menu for the final product.

The five "form" abilities that you see are all based on channel, and they don't do anything except give information to the player and signal the form changing trigger on. I plan to completely remove the ability corresponding to the form the druid is already in (the next step is to set up an object for it), but for now I'm showing off the skill disabling interface that I'll use later. This will be indispensable for having MUI and also showing ability cooldowns to the player, although the mana cost looks annoying and the tint is blue rather than gray. But I figure that the functionality gained is much greater than that lost. The secret is to make the unit ability have multiple levels and use triggers to change the ability to a level with infinite mana cost instead of removing or replacing it. The cooldown isn't changed because it's the same ability, and the MUI isn't lost because I'm not using a dummy unit to control when the ability is available like CfG did.

If you don't know what MUI is (other than an acronym for multi-unit instanceability), just lookie here.



Isn't MUI lovely? You can have as many druids as you want! They all use the same triggers and it doesn't interfere between them... Oh, and the names for all those druids. I had fun one day thinking up like thirty names per class, some of them are pretty awful (fear the mighty druid, "Burningcat!"). Hopefully that won't be enough.

I'm not sure if I want the tree form to be so big, especially if I decide that it needs to be mobile. There is another problem with displacing the unit if it's too big to fit into a space, like if it's surrounded by heroes. I might just have to make all the druid stuff the same size, or triggerize it so it's forced to stay in the same place (forced movement) but then there might be problems with units getting stuck. But I'll worry about all that later.

Thanks to the chaos-based abilities, changing forms is as simple as taking off one ability and adding a different one. So... Why don't other mapmakers just do that in the first place?!? Chaos is almost perfect for this functionality and google-fu just barely revealed it to me.

Like I said, the next step is putting this code (and more) into a druid object, that'll make it easier to use in other functions like a combat system, say if someone snares a druid then it's just one call to that object and the appropriate abilities are disabled. I'm glad I decided to use OOP because the project is probably going to be too big not to.

#Edit8: There are problems with attributes too, almost forgot about that. Bear form had the same ones though, and I suspect polymorph would too. Oh well. Just have to compensate with a fast script and possibly keep track of druid attributes.

Also, I thought of a possible way around the mana cost interface, but it also has rather harsh requirements. But I think I will have enough scripting that it's possible. So, the idea is that you make every hero in the game afflicted with an invisible silence spell (or maybe cover up some other ability or buff with it to give it another use), and then change the "physical cast" option in channel when you want a spell to be enabled/disabled. But the problem there is that I won't have direct access to any magic on heroes. But it would look much better. I bet it would make a really interesting system.

It would be a lot easier if I could just change the icon used by channel depending on its skill level.

I need a break. I was thinking that I might finish one class and have a working demo up by the week's end but that doesn't seem wise anymore. Better to mix in work for school and some fun stuff into this other work-play stuff.

[Winterwind]

Oh, I never realized you were making further edits there. Silly me, should be checking that more often.

...wow, you sure have made it ambitious. I'm seriously impressed.

Regarding Stealth: So how exactly would this thing with the patrol button work? Would the game be checking whether you were moving or patrolling, and if you were patrolling, you'd have a chance to unveil stealth heroes? If so... what is this added requirement of the patrol button needed for? Why can't the game just keep checking whether you are in somebody's arc of vision regardless of whether that somebody is patrolling or not? Because simply adding the requirement to move everywhere by using the Patrol button seems like unnecessary tediousness to me, not actually adding anything to the gameplay...

Regarding the towns: So the towns spread/upgrade? Or how does this construction thing work? Does this mean that, over time, the map would become increasingly urbanized?

Also, making player farms vulnerable doesn't sound like the best idea to me, unless they would be very easy to rebuild - I mean, if a player's farm was destroyed, they might pretty much as well leave immediately, as they would be nothing but experience on legs very shortly.

Regarding the druid: So what's the function of the different forms? I mean, five different forms, all with different abilities, is getting very complex for the player controlling the Druid; I'm curious how you intend to make it so that all five of them have their uses, all five are distinct from each other, and yet the hero doesn't become too complex to use for anyone not willing to invest dozens upon dozens of hours into just learning how to use that one hero.

Either way, as I said, I'm very impressed. Looking forward to seeing it in a playable state.



Also, reminder: Tomorrow is our next custom map session. I hope to see you all there!

[nooblade]

Oh, I never realized you were making further edits there. Silly me, should be checking that more often.

...wow, you sure have made it ambitious. I'm seriously impressed.

Yeah... Surprise! But only the stuff in screenshots can be called "done". I've spent most of the time up until now figuring out if everything was possible. I'm still not sure if the hero numbers I want are possible all at once. And now you'll get to wait another month or so (at least) before things are ready for testing even. But I don't think I will edit in much more stuff. I think I should've waited until just before release before typing up this even.

Regarding Stealth: So how exactly would this thing with the patrol button work? Would the game be checking whether you were moving or patrolling, and if you were patrolling, you'd have a chance to unveil stealth heroes? If so... what is this added requirement of the patrol button needed for? Why can't the game just keep checking whether you are in somebody's arc of vision regardless of whether that somebody is patrolling or not? Because simply adding the requirement to move everywhere by using the Patrol button seems like unnecessary tediousness to me, not actually adding anything to the gameplay...

No, patrol just changes the direction a hero is facing. And constantly. The facing, the visual detection is the important part, the only thing gained from patrol is that the player can set it up without much microing. I checked to see if you can rally up more than one patrol spot, and you can, which is fortunate because patrol doesn't always give a full circular sweep when you only use two points. So yeah, I found a legitimate and functional use for patrol, without using it as a button to activate other ability, without even having to design a game around it. I'm sure you're just in shock and denial.

I was thinking about making all the heroes slower (in a search mode, like Incursion) with a lowered perception mode that goes at a bearable speed, but I agree about how it shouldn't be tedious.

Regarding the towns: So the towns spread/upgrade? Or how does this construction thing work? Does this mean that, over time, the map would become increasingly urbanized?

Also, making player farms vulnerable doesn't sound like the best idea to me, unless they would be very easy to rebuild - I mean, if a player's farm was destroyed, they might pretty much as well leave immediately, as they would be nothing but experience on legs very shortly.

The purpose of the "wrecked buildings" is to save space in the town for construction by the AI and peasants prefer to stay in their hometown. And if a building is destroyed, then it reverts to a wrecked building with 1 hp and only that same space-holding function. So no, I don't think they will expand out of that space, but instead they'll build up the town. Unless someone knows a lot about how to make AI in Warcraft 3, I don't think I can do it properly. Making the map look more urban sounds attractive, but it isn't one of my design goals. I'll investigate further if I can finish with the current goals (and if I'm not sick of it all by then).

Also, farms don't upgrade items, their function is to keep track of nation progress. And heroes don't gain experience, they are upgraded with gold only. There are many reasons for replacing the leveling system with a gold-using training system, some are so far away that you'd have to bribe me to hear them. If things go according to plan, I'll ask for input on those much later. But the main practical reason is this:

It's much easier to balance gold compared to experience and even small amounts of gold feel like "progress". Bear with me... This is a theory that I really want to test in the early versions of BfG. I've played lots of AoS games where I could gain a level and think that it was really "dead" or hollow like, "that didn't feel like a levelup at all," but I've never failed to notice how gold was coming in. I think that this is more because gold is displayed prominently, or maybe some inner greediness, but it's just an idea. CfG had the opposite problem compared to those AoSes, lots of good sized levels and easily upset balance. And then there's DotA's last hit mechanic, which can add up to a significant amount of gold for a player actually, but I think that another result is that each gold amount is rewarding for the players who like that kind of thing. Plus it's going back to the roots of the first AoS game I played in Starcraft, which I still kinda like. So I want to see how things roll with lots of gold and no experience.

Another fun thing is that you can't levelup or change equipment without being near a town.

Regarding the druid: So what's the function of the different forms? I mean, five different forms, all with different abilities, is getting very complex for the player controlling the Druid; I'm curious how you intend to make it so that all five of them have their uses, all five are distinct from each other, and yet the hero doesn't become too complex to use for anyone not willing to invest dozens upon dozens of hours into just learning how to use that one hero.

It's not supposed to be hard. The combo-bubble-snares for the druid will all be the same, but sometimes disabled in a new form like they were in CfG, each form has only one distinct ability and then the rest is ability and attack mode changes. And probably the tree form can't move. When the druid is buying a new form, he's buying that form's ability: tranquility from the tree, sneak from the wolf, roar from the bear, and probably faerie fire from the moonkin. The difference is that the form also gives him the set of tools needed to use those abilities: tanking for the bear, stealth for the wolf, and mana for the tree (healing) and the moonkin (spell spamming). And I think I will give the normal form druid a stasis totem-like ability. Maybe.

The point is that the druid is extra-versatile. Actually, I don't even have a staff weapon particularly for the Druid, mostly because it's very convenient to have 11 weapons but also because I expect him to pick different ones depending on the desired role. The difficult part of playing the druid should be deciding exactly what your team needs at a given moment and saving enough mana (form changing uses some mana) to use it.

Either way, as I said, I'm very impressed. Looking forward to seeing it in a playable state.

I shouldn't have posted at all. Not only have I jinxed myself, I've generated hype. But I wonder if it would have been more terrible if I showed up one day wanting to play this game that doesn't even look like warcraft anymore, with questions flying from every directions and people saying all around that nothing was thought out, or, "why did you kill that, that was my favorite part." The jist of it is that someone out there, for sure, will say that I made a lot of pretty code but failed in design. Oh, and it will almost certainly fail in balance. That day will be fun.

[The Orange Zergling]

Hey, if there's one thing I've learned in my mapping experience, it's that things are never as balanced as they look like in the editor and your text documents.

Anyway, definitely looking good so far. Some criticism/answers, though:

- Building models that catch fire at low health are like that because it's an animation of the model itself, and to the best of my knowledge it's hardcoded. If that's true, then the only way to solve that would be to make/request/find a custom model that's removed the fire and then import it.
- The druid having 5 forms, all of which having only 1 ability seems very superfluous and unnecessarily complicated to me. Basically, it just adds another step to the spellcasting process that's just tedious and doesn't really add anything to the gameplay, because each form only has 1 spell, so you're not creating choice so much as just having the player click an extra button every time they want to cast a spell. I understand that you like the shapeshifting mechanic and want to expand on it, but perhaps this isn't the best way to go about that; the CfG druid had only 3 forms and was by far the most micro-intensive hero in the game (due to constantly swapping forms, rather than the spells requiring aiming or any such thing), to my recollection.

[nooblade]

You know, I hadn't actually considered much about how someone would play with 6-24 druids. I've thought about heavily fortified positions, shock troops, encirclement, and harassment, but not so much about going through a menu and pushing buttons. Most of the other heroes get passives for their purchasable abilities, putting him at a disadvantage. And actually, I thought the shapeshifting was what made the CfG druid really fun, probably why I wanted to continue it so much. Note that there isn't a cooldown on any shifting skill or on tranquility, so you'll only be watching your main three skills and health and mana per hero. But I suppose it would be wise to keep a possibly laggy player in mind.

I think I would want to keep tree form because it would prevent a druid from using tranquility and starfall at the same time and I think immobility may be a neat way to limit healers. Bear form and moonkin forms are the ones I would be willing to eliminate. But I don't know yet. Speculation and designing abilities is getting really boring, I want to run some tests with an actual game. And I'm sure that that will reveal more about what I haven't thought about. Hopefully it will solve itself, and not in the bad way. I could just decide that the cost of the druid's versatility is that extra micro, and that he's a hero that you just won't take 6-24 times unless you're the host and absolutely gosu, but I'll keep some of these ideas in mind.

#Edit1: Here's an idea (for future reference): I could modify the trigger on shapeshift so that if you select multiple druids and have one of them shapeshift, then they all shapeshift. I did that before in Fireball Arena, it's just a matter of setting the player's currently selected units as a group (and weeding out the non-druids). Or if that's too unintuative (you usually have to tab through groups to do that), then it could happen when you hold shift while using that ability. But both methods would be dependent on what druids you have selected.

[Winterwind]

Wait, wait, wait... I'm confused. So each player is supposed to be controlling a dozen heroes at once? I thought that picture where you have all those druids was just testing the limits of the engine!

So... how is gameplay supposed to be like on that map, then? Until now, I had assumed it was basically supposed to be a remake of CfG, with better balance/hero design, more towns, etc., but essentially similar gameplay...




Reminder: Our melee session is tomorrow. Hope to see you all there.

[nooblade]

Well, I warned you that it wouldn't look like Warcraft anymore, didn't I? And you know that I don't have modeling or animation skills... I'm not sure if the engine can do it, but 24 heroes per player and 12 players is my best guess, and therefore it is my goal. I could run out of storage room for triggers (I think I might have already found a limit in the town object for vJass conversions (it uses lots of arrays to do OOP junk), but I can move some trade-related functions off of it easily, I think I will just fit in everything), but as a rule of thumb, the size of a map is determined first by the area of visuals like terrain, so I don't worry much about that. Processing looks promising so far, I'm more worried about battle.net connection. I'd still be pretty happy with 72 heroes total, and that might be the best number anyway.

How it is supposed to be like is a good question... That's why I'm making it. I want to see if the bubble-combo-snare system is going to be broken (everyone always uses combos as quickly as possible to the exclusion of all else), or if it's going to be made more interesting because there are more things to watch out for. It might even turn into attack-move with copies of one particular hero, I can't eliminate that possibility yet. I want to see if players gravitate toward splitting up forces that won't all fit in the same battle or if they want to actually hold a group in reserve. And if it is broken, I want to see if it's fixable or just ludicrous. If there's too much for humans to do by sheer micromanagement limits, then I can try setting computers to play this game because it might be fun to watch or to direct from a more strategic vantage. But I'm hoping that it will be something like CfG.

The original reason why I wanted MUI was for even 2 people to still be able to have an interesting game, CfG was so limited by the number of heroes on the map. And another possibility is to move heroes around on a team if some player doesn't want them. I don't think you'll be forced to use 24 heroes except for testing purposes, the intention is to make it possible to play with more heroes if you want them.

[Gamerlord]

...I am speechless.

[The Orange Zergling]

Erm, I have to say that 24 definitely sounds on the far end of the ridiculous scale to me. 2, maybe 3 heroes is the absolute limit I would ever expect from a human being, and even then there's a very significant and noticeable increase in clunkiness and reduction in micro quality. I'm not only speaking from personal experience but also observations of other people.

This is exacerbated by the fact that controlling multiple heroes isn't something that the WC3 engine handles well. Let's say that you have 3 Blood Mages selected and you order the group to cast Flamestrike. Not only will only one of them cast Flamestrike, but if you try to cast it again it'll tell you that the spell is on cooldown, necessitating that you press the Tab key to select the next Blood Mage in the group.

I don't really want to sound like a wet blanket, but yeah, this is a feature I would shy away from.

[Gamerlord]

Erm, I have to say that 24 definitely sounds on the far end of the ridiculous scale to me. 2, maybe 3 heroes is the absolute limit I would ever expect from a human being, and even then there's a very significant and noticeable increase in clunkiness and reduction in micro quality. I'm not only speaking from personal experience but also observations of other people.

This is exacerbated by the fact that controlling multiple heroes isn't something that the WC3 engine handles well. Let's say that you have 3 Blood Mages selected and you order the group to cast Flamestrike. Not only will only one of them cast Flamestrike, but if you try to cast it again it'll tell you that the spell is on cooldown, necessitating that you press the Tab key to select the next Blood Mage in the group.

I don't really want to sound like a wet blanket, but yeah, this is a feature I would shy away from.

I am going to have to second this opinion.

[Spartacus]

This is why you train to get 300 APM :P

[nooblade]

Notice that I'm not talking about features like I'm advertising them. I would have to test them before advertising, to see if they're actually features. So I'm not advertising at all yet, this is a warning for what you might see in a confused beta test. I'll have to think of something for tabbing or individual selecting heroes, maybe they would have to be units with invisible attributes rather than heroes, but at least items and the druid part could be resolved. I wonder how a hero-directing interface would be received, if you could use your farm to have some trigger order your nearest unit (with an adjustment for a ranged snare and also in case that unit being busy with a combo) with an available snare to use it on some opponent unit. I'm reluctant to try snares that are automatically used, though.

But let's return to the topic.

Why should perfect micro be a necessity? Or even have perfection as a possibility? It's not like I'm making it this way because I'm so much better at micro than anyone, I don't even like the greater part of micro which is keeping your units alive. Is taking unnecessary damage what makes a game less fun to you, would you cry if most of your heroes die without accomplishing much? I think that this should be re-thought and, again, tested.

Heroes don't have to be the ultimate resource for players to protect and cherish (that should be gold). You don't even have to use hero abilities to have it do something useful if that's the case, plus they revive somewhat automatically and cheaply (hero kill rewards come from your allied nation, not from thin air or from the killed hero, and revival costs go to the revived hero's nation, putting you in debt if necessary). In fact, heroes in this game might be cheaper than normal units in a melee game. So I hope you all think that the challenge is getting something out of your heroes rather than keeping them alive. Distractions or cover for other heroes would be a vital service in that case, especially where it would take maybe one or two focused normal attacks from every hero on the enemy team (or from a single enemy player's set of heroes) to kill one of yours. A distraction can't be made by something that isn't a threat, except perhaps ninja images.

Players with 300 APM would have an advantage, but I wouldn't mind. One of the things I'm looking into is automatic balancing based on statistics. Maybe players could save a code from in-between game hosts, too, I'd just need something as incentive for using it. But that's for later on, or if testers are persistent but teams are unbalanced.

It'd be a little sad if noone wants to try playing that way, or if everyone else wants to give it up when I think that there's still more to it. Part of deciding to make this game was steeling myself for any failure, but I'd accept decisions to not play. I don't want unwilling beta testers (they should be quality stuff) and I would leave if you all tried to force someone into playing it.

[Winterwind]

I would test it before discounting it, definitely. Count me in.

Though I am admittedly worried that it might simply prove too stressful to be fun. When something becomes too complex it becomes overwhelming, and when something becomes overwhelming, it all too often becomes frustrating; that's utterly separate from whether one is doing well or badly, so the fact everyone else is confronted with the exact same complexity and may in fact deal with it even worse doesn't help.

And, while APM are important in RTSs, they aren't everything. A player with 240 APM is not necessarily able to beat two players with 120 APM simultaneously; indeed, plenty other skills are important enough so that the 120 APM player may indeed be the far superior one and beat the 240 APM player reliably and consistently. With so many heroes to micro, especially if they are as micro-intensive as a CfG druid, however, I'd fear there would indeed be a linear relation between player quality and APM - that is, a player with 240 APM would indeed be consistently as strong as two 120 APM players at once. Or, put more succinctly, it would be a game where APM was indeed all that mattered. Which is not objectively a bad thing, mind, but very many people prefer to have other skill sets challenged, rather than only their reflex speed and twitchiness. Moreover, I reckon the group that enjoys a challenge of their reflex speed and twitchiness to the exclusion of everything else would more likely be the players of one of the less-tactical FPSs, rather than RTS players (which pretty much all of us are, considering this is the WC3 group).

Just expressing my worries, mind. Not saying this is necessarily how it is going to turn out; just what I fear might happen.

[The Orange Zergling]

Yeah, having a large number (or, hell, even just plural) of heroes with a complex array of spells each is just too overwhelming, clunky and, subsequently, frustrating to use to be fun. Even disregarding any correlation between APM and skill, I just cannot imagine this hypercomplexity being fun for basically anybody. Complexity is good, because it makes the player think, but you can't go too far in that direction or you just overload them with information and they won't care about or even use any of the spells or mechanics you put so much work and thought into because they're too busy managing a group of units or just feel like they can't or don't want to get good at or expend the effort needed to get a grip on the numerous heroes.

Plus, if you have 24 heroes, does that mean you have to manage 24 separate inventories, too, or are items shared?

[Arcanoi]

I'd say capping heroes at around 6 is a good benchmark. Any more than that and low APM players simply can't keep up. I used to play alot of the Azeroth Wars and War Of The Ring and the like, and those seemed relatively accessible at about 4 heroes per player. Some races had more heroes (Two had 9) and these races were much, much harder than the others, with a return of them being able to annihilate other players if played well.

[nooblade]

I had my first bnet melee game in TFT just now. I think that opponent underestimated me as a level 1 player. How unsatisfying. I hope he didn't ragequit or start having a bad day because of it. And with 100% as my win ratio, the next game will likely murder me.

But for BfG, I think we'll just have to wait some months and see what amount of heroes works well. Personally I've lost count of the number of times I thought I'd like to have another hero or two, especially in CfG. CfG heroes were more straightforward, I thought.

I don't have a off-hero system for items in mind, but that's the kind of suggestion that could profit me. I think it might cause problems for stealth heroes who need to use blink very carefully in low hero count games, though. Maybe I could fit in both somehow. But I also have some chat commands (or maybe another shift+click thing again would be better) to make buying many of the same items repeatedly for heroes easier.

#Edit: As I mentioned on Sunday, it looks like school starting again gives me a bunch of stuff to do, including a graded project that's due in about a month to replace the possibility of working on this monstrosity. So, I dunno. See you when I see you? Sooner or later.

[Winterwind]

Awww, alright, nooblade. We'll hope for your return as soon as possible, then.


Also, reminder: Tomorrow is our next custom map session. I hope to see you all there.

[Gamerlord]

I am not sure I will be able to attend tomorrow.

[Level8Mudcrab]

It's been ages since I've played any Warcraft. What is the custom map scene like nowadays?

[Winterwind]

I don't know what exactly the custom map scene outside of our group is (though judging by the games listed when joining custom games, I get the impression DotA's stranglehold on the custom map scene seems to have lessened somewhat); in our group though, maps we tend to play include (but are not limited to), in no particular order:

Rabbits vs. Sheep, Castle Fight, BattleShips, BattleTanks, Desert of Exile, Stand of the Elves, DotA, Legion TD, Regicide, Dark Deeds, Pest Invasion, Tropical Tag, a wide selection of TDs (MTG TD, Eeve TD, Element TD, Stackerz TD, Corrupted TD, Island TD, Skibi's TD...), Against the Darkness, Predator, Obsidian Depths, GolfCraft, Eve of the Apocalypse, SWAT, Marine Special Forces, occasionally some RPGs (The Black Road, for example)... also a few maps made by our members, most frequently The Orange Zergling's Imperial Castle Defence or The Fifth Crusade, or my Pandarena. And many, many more.

[Level8Mudcrab]

I'll have to come on and join in a for a few games sometime. A quick google search tells me that it'll be 7AM Saturday morning for me when you meet up. So it'd be a feasible time, assuming I could manage the whole waking up thing.

The maps I generally played were things like Island Defense, Parasite, RPGs, survivals (island troll tribes and the like). Never really liked DotA and I prefer team games to PvP type maps.

[Winterwind]

All of the maps you've mentioned we've played at some point or another, too (though there is a fair bunch of people who don't particularly like at least the first two).

Anyhow! Welcome to the group, then; I hope you enjoy your stay!