Aerie of Ruin .com is Live!

Almost forgot to mention, the site is up:

www.aerieofruin.com

The Road to 1.0

As promised here is the change list to 'final' Aerie of Ruin to version 1.0. There are some exciting changes here, notably the Human hero revisions to make them more active (5 new trigger skills!), and adding more Fate, as well as balancing out the more powerful heroes at the end game.

I'd like to point out that many of these changes came from the great feedback I recieved from the community. Thanks to everyone who played and contributed!

Death penalty shortened for Heroes

All heroes now have air attacks


Black Kingdom Armies

Darkling
- Removed hero target from silence ability

Gate Upgrade cooldown reduced significantly

Death Hand
- Twist fate no longer able to 1-shot heroes Deathhand is much slower now, slowest in game
- Dark rite + artifact balanced
- Remove slow effect from Twist Fate against heroes only

Black King's Subservience was causing confusion to friendly units
- fixed by removing friendly dmg


Free People Armies

Eagles have reduced armor

Human Heroes got some lovin:
Warrior Poet
- War Wind dmg reduced at highest lvl
- New Skill: "Morose Iamb" – Machine gun of energy, ranged attack inflicts silence on area
- Rolled Inspiration benefits into natural stat progression

Duchess of Drake
- New Skill: “Tap Ley Line” - boost stats of nearby towers
- Rolled training aura into brain pipe
- Balanced artifact cost and custom quest with low Fate expectation
- Reduced cost of all tower upgrades
- Siege tower range has been extended

General
- New Skill, 'Enlist" - create a retinue of healed, upgraded spawns
- Merge aura skills
- Disable Gravity of Will until game begins

Blacksmith
- Merge passive upgrades into new skill called Forge Arms
- New Skill: "Ringing of Anvils" - active ranged ground ability that is a line attack explosion ending in an area cyclone
- Replaced blacksmith Hammerclaw with Heavy Hammer

Bishop
- Merge auras
- Bring starfall dmg in line with tristan’s lightning attack
- New Skill: "Violent Exorcism" -melee attack that pushes unit away


Customized Loading screen
- Add the logo and some info
- Mark fate and hidden areas on map preview

AI upgrade costs adjusted
- AI heroes were on a very accelerated upgrade schedule, this is no longer the case

Removed outdated hints
- Free peoples actually can undo upgrades

Demon upgrades better explained
- Clarified with tool tips, text color

URL now in map description

Leak pass
- found a few point leaks in recurring triggers

Hidden path no longer too narrow (center grave)
- removed offending tree

Quest msg now sent when a gate or outpost is destroyed

Ghost hero bug fixed
- Blightspear was killing unused heroes in hut area

Text bug in cheat karma, unrounded string, fixed

XP quest lvl 12, 16, 20 fixed

Expanded fate system
- gold 4 fate
- More fate shards on map
- AI forces drop fate shards upon kill plateaus (i.e. every 250 kills for humans, 500 for demons)

Tutorials clarification

Change terminology: creeps -> spawns

Complete tool tip pass

Fixed artifacts broken by skill changes

Updated AI to use new skills

Balanced the Fate cost of all artifacts

Acolyte no longer appears when manifest pain uses Soul Barb

Improved AI hero response to being shot by outposts/gates

High level Hero balances:

Blacksmith
- reduced honest toil agi bonus
- reduced blacksmith str/lvl
- remove extra armor upgrades from Forge Arms

Manifest Pain
- Flay dmg pulled way back
- Reduced armor and life

Old General
- Gravity of Will high level dmg reduced

Interesting Times!

So many things have been going on that it has been a rush of excitement lately, surrounding Aerie of Ruin and otherwise. I launched a new version of my portfolio here (flash cs3 is the devil!). My girlfriend landed her dream job! It also seems like everyone I know is having their birthdays so there have been lots of positive vibes too.

I conducted a series of private playtests with people with a variety of experiences: some had never played warcraft, some had never played dota, some played dota a lot! The feedback was good and only a single small bug popped up.

I addressed the major concerns and rebalanced, then released the map to the public last weekend as Aerie of Ruin 0.99 Public Beta. A few of the release sites:
http://war3.incgamers.com/?p=mod&m=11176
http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/resource.php?t=99161&prev=status%3Dg%26search%3Daerie%2520of%2520ruin%26d%3Dlist%26r%3D20
http://clanmapz.com/forum/showthread.php?p=953#post953
http://www.epicwar.com/maps/68603/

It's been great playing public games on battle.net. The feedback seems consistent...about 1/3 of the players absolutely love it, and are vocal with praise. 1/3 of the players hate it, and usually drop out within the first 5-15 minutes. 1/3 of the players are silent but play the game to the end (and usually the high scorers).

Since they usually skip the cinema and tutorial, bnet players tend to be confused about the creep upgrade system, and unaware of Fate and artifacts of power. I think this turns some DotA players off, since they are unware of how to really customize and blow out their heroes.

The Darkling's silence really demoralizes some people. Some DotA players really like how tough the spawns are. I think they welcome the micro-ing challenge. Some DotA players don't like how much the spawns effect the balance. I think they miss the easy farmings.

The dual aura heroes are scorned by dota vets. I'm seeing why too, and plan on merging the auras to provide those heroes with active skills.

I've learned some interesting things about the map and genre in general by playing with strangers and getting quality feedback from forums. I've only seen 2 game breakers so far...Twist Fate and the Gravity of Will rush (very creative!).

There is a lot more but I have to go...I'll upload the 0.99 -> 1.0 changelist soon!

Real Life Wins Every Time

Lately I've needed to step back and let real life into the driver's seat for a while, but I'm thinking that Aerie of Ruin is almost ready for release! The latest play balance is promising...after some more testing I should know how close it is, and I'll post back then.

Moving Right Along

It's been a busy few weeks since the last post: writing, story-boarding, learning, experimenting, implementing, and debugging cinematics for AoR. Happily, I stumbled on Anitarf's Cinematic System during my research; his work has allowed me to implement easing camera moves, sweet fog effects, and precise character control where I needed it. My hat is off to you guys!

There are two parts to the cinematic, a drama portion and a tutorial portion. I chose not to record voice actors, mostly for file size reasons, but I thought having a performance in the drama portion would add a lot, so I relied on sounds that already existed which I could use out of the original context.



The tutorial is more detailed than I originally intended, a recurring theme in the AoR development. I think it must be a side effect of having a great tool that makes it easy to add such detail.

Looking back at the to-do list I posted in July I'll update my progress here:

1. MAP - I was looking for a tileset that would allow a subtle and balanced progression from the thriving Free People to the blighted cold of the Black Kingdom. In the end I chose Ashenvale as the base set which gives a slight emphasis to the lush southwest of the map. If I could have added just one more texture to the palette I probably would have chosen Felwood or Northrend instead.
2. EXPERIENCE - I did a series of playtests incorporating feedback and levelling out the heroes a bit. Feedback so far is great. I'll do one more big private test before I release.
3. QUESTS - I decided against more complex quests (delivery, escort, collection, etc.) in favor of more general quests. The level quests will reward heroes who gain experience quickly but can't get a whole lot of kills on their own. Fate Fragments and scattered gold pick ups really highlight the hidden areas of the map too. I had some NPC related quests designed but cut them for scope. I did add a hint system that drops random hints every 5 min.
4. BALANCE - The heroes have been integrated into the Balance Spreadsheet (of doom) with a more accurate way of calculating DPS. I've redesigned the upgrade paths to allow for more coherent strategy and strategic responses. I'll use feedback from the final private test to create the first release balance of AoR.
5. TOOL TIPS - Done.
6. TECH - There are no outstanding bugs that I'm aware of, but I'll take one more leak pass before I call this one done.
7. CINEMATIC - Done.
8. STORY - I've had it critiqued several time and recieved excellent feedback, which helped me reshape the last that darned paragraph and cut out some of the fat.
9. WEBSITE - Squarely in the design phase right now, but it shouldn't be long before it's done. I'm not going to make a big community site, just an info center.
10. LOADING SCREEN - Icing on the cake.

See you on the flip side!

Poor Man's Patching

To test the map I logged onto bnet the other night, which gave me the 1.22 patch. Hah what's the worst that could happen?

How about the map crashing at seemingly random times with an access violation and no call stack to trace through? Yuck.

After a day of letting my AI players run through the map on 3 different computers (so glad I chose to build AIs even though they've been a horrible time sink), I was finally able to pinpoint the problem.

The Black King's Spoils of Conquest power, based on the Tranquility spell, sometimes crashed the game...not often but once identified it was reproducable (on my map, but not on a test map unfortunately). Thank goodness for the Logs folder saving replays for crashing games!

I thought it was my trigger, but it would crash even with that disabled. I had removed the Tranquility (Target) buff from the power, but once I put it back the crashing seems to have stopped. Oh boy I sure hope the issue is limited to that power.

Feature Complete!?

It just hit me that Aerie of Ruin has recently become feature complete! I must have been so focused on planning out the finishing touches that I didn't realize until now :) How did this happen? I shall review the last big feature, share one of my most powerful tools, and then discuss my to-do list:

I migrated the creeps from individual to group movement.

I played with group movement before but ran into a mysterious problem; units would randomly run away from the group and wander the map! It seems this behavior is a known issue with “Unit Group - Order Group to Attack-Move To (Center of LOCATION )” so a work-around was in order.

Group movement has many advantages over individual, though it is trickier to pull off. Groups move in formation without running into each other whichmakes them more efficient in terms of both combat effectiveness and pathfinding performance.

Ranged units became MUCH more effective since they actually attack in sync with the front lines.

Fortunately the individual group system is still being used by the AI Heroes, so I didn’t have to throw it away.

The game feels very different now and certainly for the better!


I created and now maintain a balance spreadsheet which tracks and rates the effectiveness of every unit type and spawn group.

Here is today’s copy. So far it has been an invaluable tool for visualizing and implementing balance changes. The game has undergone drastic changes in troop roles and balance, and even spawning patterns, and this spreadsheet lets me navigate those big changes while keeping the creep tug-of-war balanced and even.


I created a prioritized plan to git ‘er dunn.

Here is a glimpse at my high level ‘sprint’ plan which details the path the finish line.

1 BUGS (check)

My backlog of bugs has been pretty small at this point, since I usually try to fix them as soon as I find them. Some of these I had tried to fix before but ran into gotchas or dead ends, and some had been recently broken by movement system changes. The Warp VFX was popping up and sticking all over the place and it took a while to squash. The only open bug is the Rot Structure Icon that randomly attaches itself to human heroes when the Black King upgrades to (uses?) his Rotting Touch skill. There must be an ability side effect I am missing since the trigger seems so simple. I will try again on that one if I am bored.

2 AI (check)

Hero AI has turned out to be a huge task, and has probably accounted for 1/3 or possible even ½ of my dev time so far!

I’m sure it will be worth it. Playing against and with AIs that have almost full knowledge of how to play the game has shown me some very exciting in game moments! The convenience of the AIs for dev testing has also been a great boon in aiding the development and balance of AoR.

The last major items I checked off recently are: Stand Back from Enemy Bases You Fools! Warp Forward, and Warp to an Assaulted Base. The added survivability and mobility this allows makes the AI more competitive. In terms of emergence I saw a beleaguered AI hero warp home then buy and chug a health potion while warping back to the fight. It happened so fast I thought I was lucky just to have seen it happen at all!

3 MAP

It’s finally time to make the map look pretty and terrain more interesting! This kind of work will be a major shift in thinking so I expect it will be quite refreshing.

4 EXPERIENCE

Time to play several games with each hero! While implementing this excruciating task ;) I’ll be making meticulous notes about the experience, identifying all tool tips that need to be made, including color info.

5 QUESTS

I’m thinking of adding a few more advanced quests to diversify the gameplay just a wee bit. We shall see!

6 BALANCE

Take a pass at Artifact Costs, Hero Balance, and Spawn Balance based on the notes from #4!

7 TOOL TIPS

This will be a total pass for content, color, format, and style consistency based on notes from #4!

8 TECH

Time to address the few lingering technical tasks, like combing the triggers for outstanding leaks and handling player disconnects. Optimization might be necessary.

9 CINEMATIC

A quick set-up of the world, and maybe a simple tutorial? This will require more thought but it is low on the list for now so that is OK.

10 STORY

Write a short story presenting the fiction of the world, characters, and game.

11 WEBSITE

I’ll probably just dress up a free net blog page with a link to the download location and maybe a few custom images.


Time to get busy!