There are 12 Heroes with 4 Abilities each and 42 Triggers to enhance the effects of those abilities. Here are some notes on half the heroes.
Black King
Removed Rend the Earth, made Order 2 his special. Rend was just another earthquake, and Order 2 is so unique that I made it the special of both the Black King and the Old General.
Broodmother
I had to change Penetrate the Earth and also Perversion, as there is no way to make this happen in a trigger. The function is still unique in that higher levels of PtE make stronger towers. Perversion simply increases the max number of towers which is an effective compromise.
Wyrm
All his powers made it intact and all had to be trigger enhanced...except possibly Blighted Step which I think already exists as an ability, but I had already written the trigger when I noticed it in the editor :0
Bishop Sophrosyne
In her case, all abilities were implemented intact. Divine Light was the only power that even required a trigger.
Duchess of Drake
There were some GOTCHAs with her tower building powers, the biggest being the limitation of a single "tiny" ability. After a lot of experimenting, I decided to make magic towers summoned via triggers (and therefore able to be placed anywhere). There was no way to give the Duchess a discount for tower upgrades though.
Strongarms
AoE permanent stat upgrades were not an option, but I really like the alternative. His ability now upgrades all the armor and weapons for all Free People units (as if it were a paid building upgrade in vanilla WC3).
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Heroic Conformation
My original designs for the hero and artifact powers were made knowing that not everything would be possible to create, or possibly even create in a timely manner. In the end several changes were made, several concessions for sure, but imo even more improvements. I'll post a few heroes and the changes to give you an idea of how they evolved.
Artifacts of the Past and Present
Wow I'm really bad at blogging. Ah well, yesterday I finished the last of the 48 Artifacts of Power!
After the majority of hoorah-ing was over, I set about putting the artifacts in player specific stores, only to find a big GOTCHA: stores that Select Units (and thereby drop purchased items on them) are shared by the whole team. Turns out there is no way to do this with the editor itself (my conclusion after many tests and much net searching). Player-specific shops drop items directly on the ground. Since it is very very important that artifacts only go to the associated heroes, this would have been a major set back if there was no work around. Ah the fun of shoe-horn development on doc-lite tools!
Luckily I remember playing other maps with player-specific shops so I knew there had to be a way. My hack around involved creating regions around the different shops, removing the item model (to avoid popping) from each artifact, and creating a trigger for each shop, like this:
Duchess Artifact Hack
Events
----------------
Conditions
----------------
Actions
----------------
This gives the illusion that it works like a normal shop, but this would never do for a final game, ---------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
---edited out to prevent cheaterz!---
After the majority of hoorah-ing was over, I set about putting the artifacts in player specific stores, only to find a big GOTCHA: stores that Select Units (and thereby drop purchased items on them) are shared by the whole team. Turns out there is no way to do this with the editor itself (my conclusion after many tests and much net searching). Player-specific shops drop items directly on the ground. Since it is very very important that artifacts only go to the associated heroes, this would have been a major set back if there was no work around. Ah the fun of shoe-horn development on doc-lite tools!
Luckily I remember playing other maps with player-specific shops so I knew there had to be a way. My hack around involved creating regions around the different shops, removing the item model (to avoid popping) from each artifact, and creating a trigger for each shop, like this:
Duchess Artifact Hack
Events
----------------
Conditions
----------------
Actions
----------------
This gives the illusion that it works like a normal shop, but this would never do for a final game, ---------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
---edited out to prevent cheaterz!---
Thursday, May 29, 2008
950716 steps to go...
Saw this when doing some maintenance. The blue really draws the eye!
Blogger is being difficult....click on the image to bask in the glory of MS.
Monday, May 26, 2008
!(a blog)
All 12 heroes are now in the game, and artifact implementation has begun. Some of the powers have been altered and made more interesting. I'll post a change list soon.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
It's Been Such a Long Time
...but don't worry I'm not going anywhere. Lots of real life happening, but now that is safely taken care of for a while, it's back to mapping!
The AI is in a better state now, with only three outstanding behaviors left to add: melee hero temperence, gate defense, and gate upgrading. Even without those it is quite fun (for me) to start up a 4v4 game played with AIs and see who comes out on top.
I've fixed many small issues and have now completed 8/12 heroes and started on #9: the Broodmother. After her I'll tackle to Duchess of Drake, and finally crown it all with the General and the Black King. Once those are in I'll turn my attention to the artifact creation and work on adding a few final layers of strategery before final AI work, tuning, balance, and map beautification.
It's been almost exactly a month since I've started this project, and when it moves, wow does it move fast. What a testament to Blizzard's incredible tool and asset work that such a major departure from W3 can be created, with no prior knowledge of the toolset, in such a short period of time. Also it is worth noting that I decided a few weeks ago to expand the scope of the project rather than diminish the quality and vision of the final product. It wouldn't do to show that I had picked up bad habits and felt the need to rush this to release!
The AI is in a better state now, with only three outstanding behaviors left to add: melee hero temperence, gate defense, and gate upgrading. Even without those it is quite fun (for me) to start up a 4v4 game played with AIs and see who comes out on top.
I've fixed many small issues and have now completed 8/12 heroes and started on #9: the Broodmother. After her I'll tackle to Duchess of Drake, and finally crown it all with the General and the Black King. Once those are in I'll turn my attention to the artifact creation and work on adding a few final layers of strategery before final AI work, tuning, balance, and map beautification.
It's been almost exactly a month since I've started this project, and when it moves, wow does it move fast. What a testament to Blizzard's incredible tool and asset work that such a major departure from W3 can be created, with no prior knowledge of the toolset, in such a short period of time. Also it is worth noting that I decided a few weeks ago to expand the scope of the project rather than diminish the quality and vision of the final product. It wouldn't do to show that I had picked up bad habits and felt the need to rush this to release!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)