Off Topic: Try out my Warcraft III Map!

[Wazat]

This isn't Quake related, but I figured I'd share with the community what I made.

Some time ago I posted what I was working on, then neglected to post a download url.

Well, now I'm fixing that. If you own Warcraft III: Frozen Throne, try out my map below and let me know what you think (and if you rate it + comment on the website, that helps!).

Dragon Swarm.



The site doesn't let me upload a readme. Below is what that would have been:

===========================
= Dragon Swarm =
= By Dan "Wazat" Hale =
= static_void@hotmail.com =
===========================

Introduction
============

Warning! Enemies are coming to steal your infinite gold supply. If you don't get towers up quick, you're toast! And you've only just started harvesting! Luckily you've discovered some magic among the ruins and gold that may help you...


Dragon Swarm is a castle defense map. You must build towers to protect your castle from the swarming hoards that want to steal your treasures and kill you just for the bragging rights. There are many different types of enemy waves, and they come at you in random order and in larger and larger groups. Some groups are flying, some are magic-immune. Some prefer swarming, while other groups sport fewer but heavily defensive behemoths. You will need a variety of towers to compete with the varied and increasingly deadly waves of foes.

Your castle is the source of the magic protecting Jaina, and it provides research to improve your towers and unlock new upgrades. It's the most important building to protect because if it goes down, it's game over.

Jaina has discovered magic in the ruins she occupies that made her invulnerable, and gave her and her peasants the ability to fly. Unfortunately, she is also trapped by that same magic and cannot wander far from the ruins. If she can become powerful enough, however, she can learn the ultimate destructive spell and wipe out the enemy bases one by one, from any distance! There may also be other ways to destroy the enemy buildings...

The game ends when your castle is destroyed, or you destroy all enemy buildings.


Towers
======

Early on, you can build several types of basic towers. With upgrades and research, your options increase and eventually you can build incredibly powerful towers. What follows is a brief description of each tower. If you want to build more towers, have Jaina learn her Greater Command ability.

Guard Tower - Fires split-shot arrows at multiple enemies. Air & ground.
Glaive Tower - Fires powerful bouncing glaives. Air & ground.
Sniper Tower - Fires single power-shots that spawn skeletons from enemies they kill. Massive range. Air & ground.

Cannon Tower - Attacks single units for high chaos damage (equal damage to all armor types) at a lower fire rate. Ground only.
Fire Tower - Sprays flame at a single unit. Blasts a wave of flame on occasion for crowd control. Ground only.
Flame Tower - Spouts powerful bursts of flame in a line that continue to burn the ground for several seconds. Ground only.

Arcane Tower - Attacks slow their target. Air & ground.
Spark Tower - Attacks with electricity, purging buffs from enemies and slowing them. Air & ground.
Lightning Tower - Attacks with powerful electric blasts. Also uses chain lightning against ground troops and lightning storm against air, making it the ultimate anti-air tower. Ground & air.

Circle of Power - Continuously and automatically heals allies and auto-repairs all buildings in its range. The auto-repair can be toggled to preserve resources. Unlike peasants, generally left alone by enemies but takes up more food.

Fire Pit - Burns ground enemies around it. Traversible, and generally left alone by enemies.

Spider Cage - Able to summon spiders on command. Spiders distract enemies from your towers, automatically net air units, and dish out high damage. Takes a while before it can summon spiders again.
Spider Den - Summons much more powerful spiders.

Mine Tower - Plants invisible mines in corpses. These proximity mines can be devastating to swarms and single units alike. Ground only.
Cluster Mine Tower - Places fewer but more powerful mines. Cluster mines blast a large area for high damage, and stun enemies.

Necro Tower - Summons skeletons from corpses for a short time. Skeletons are invulnerable and won't distract enemies, but they damage enemies quite well in large swarms and their bash attacks occasionally stun.
Scarab Tower - Summons scarabs from corpses. Scarabs are invulnerable and permanent (never run out of time). They also bash enemies for the occasional stun. Deadly in large groups.


Multiplayer and Heros
=====================

You have one hero by default -- Jaina -- and she's quite competent at protecting your base. Heros in Dragon Swarm are invincible, meaning they can never die but enemies will ignore them and run straight for your buildings (the advantage of summoned creatures that are not invincible is that they distract enemies).

You can have up to two friends join you to cooperatively manage the same base, and each player gets a hero. All three players share unit control, so you'll need to cooperate, but you can each manage any part of the defense. More heros means harder enemies, so all three will need to work together to defend the base. If you have no friends to join you, you can add computer players to increase the difficulty or just enjoy the other heros. The computer will attack enemies with its hero and occasionally use abilities, but will otherwise leave building the base and choosing abilities to you (and you can still control their heros).


Credits and Legal
=================

Credits go to Blizzard for Warcraft III and the original map on which I based this one (I basically saw the level, played it a bit, and thought "hey, this would make a great castle defense level"). Beyond that, credits go to me.

I love feedback! Please e-mail me (static_void@hotmail.com).

My strategy toward sharing is this:
You can edit this map and make your own version, learn from it, etc all you want as long as you follow these rules:
1) Give me credit for the original (as Dan "Wazat" Hale) and include my e-mail address.
2) Don't use this map to distribute viruses, porn, etc
3) Don't use this map to make your own cheat version for making other players' lives miserable (this is less common in coop than competitive maps, but griefers are everywhere).
4) Don't sell this level or its derivatives for money without my permission (and the permission of the other author in case of derivatives).

Beyond that, have fun. Make your own versions and tweaks to your heart's content. I'm an old relic of the original Quake community and I figure when people share their source code, the community wins.

[Wazat]

BTW, yesterday AVG was incorrectly identifying Warcraft III's executible as a virus. That's all gone now. Hopefully no one thought my map was a virus!

Does anyone here even play WC3?

[SusanMDK]

I tried it once. Then I got enough of the human hero guy's shine and wanted to kill him. Dungeon Keeper is more fun

[Wazat]

I tried it once. Then I got enough of the human hero guy's shine and wanted to kill him. Dungeon Keeper is more fun

What's Dungeon Keeper? Another map, or a game?

And is the human hero too powerful, or just annoying? I can balance out the "too powerful" bit.

[SusanMDK]

I tried it once. Then I got enough of the human hero guy's shine and wanted to kill him. Dungeon Keeper is more fun

What's Dungeon Keeper? Another map, or a game?

And is the human hero too powerful, or just annoying? I can balance out the "too powerful" bit.

Dungeon Keeper is another game. You command the evil creatures of the underworld and battle against the goodly heroes of the overworld. There's also a sequel to it.

And with the human hero I meant the human hero in the original campaign.. I think it was this guy http://gamerpk.files.wordpress.com/2008 ... arthas.jpg

I like Starcraft more...

[Supa]

I don't normally play TD maps as I generally prefer DOTA/teamplay lane control maps, but since it's the end of the year I thought I'd help out. :)

I didn't like the randomised waves - one of the fundamental strengths of the TD genre is the satisfaction of improving your build order over multiple playthroughs, not knowing what's coming next basically invalidates that. I played through it twice and both times it felt like I could only react to whatever just happened a minute ago. Attempting to change up my tower mixture between waves to address a specific threat would just result in a creep wave appearing that I had no real way of dealing with, aside from resorting to my hero and scarab micro. You could say I found out that nukes will break down your back door the hard way. :P

I did like the lack of mazing as it makes it easier to change up tower mixture since it's all in one place. If you're dead set on keeping the waves randomised, I'd recommend providing vision over each base and playing a minimap beacon alert every time a creep wave spawns though.

I did like how the victory condition is more proactive than surviving for an amount of waves, it's a nice touch.

One suggestion, It'd be nice if the fire tower flame wave ability was an active ability (ala spider cages) and not a random passive. Give us something to burn APM on, please. :P

[Wazat]

Supa: Thanks for the feedback!

I've been considering giving the flame towers (and other towers) a toggle icon like the dark elf hero's blink ability. His blink can be told to auto-happen whenever he attacks (this is actually quite awesome, please try it btw ), or you can turn that off and only blink when you specifically say so. I could just as easily add that ability to the towers. For the most part, that's the role the heros play (activating abilities when needed), so I didn't think players would want that on the towers too.

Just so you know, here's the tower's AI for using their abilities: Each time they attack, they check their mana. If they have enough mana, they fire off their special ability instead. Then the start recharging their ability while attacking normally. Each mana charges 1/second, so if an ability costs 7 mana the tower uses it every 7 seconds. So it's actually not random, though it may seem so.

Being able to manually fire it off would allow you to wait until the full swarm is in range, but it would take a lot of micromanaging (which I was trying to avoid in this map). I think the toggle button idea above is a nice compromise -- the player can choose whether he does it manually or spends his time elsewhere.

I'm open to giving vision to enemy bases so you can see at least the start of the upcoming attacks. Some ideas for how this could work:
* Just give full vision of enemy bases at all times
* Let the player build "spies", 1 food each, or Jaina can simply summon them. These spies might even be able to auto-kill some spawning enemies.
* Give the one of the towers or Jaina the ability to scan all bases at once. Then the player can actively scan constantly and for free, but must do so manually.

Any preferences?

The randomized waves were to keep things interesting. You don't get to memorize what's coming, so you have to stay ready for any type of attack that may come your way. This is why you have 1-3 heros with powerful abilities, spider dens, and other emergency procedures available to you. I wanted the point of the game to be to build a robust, well-rounded defense that can almost hold its own against most attacks, and then the heros fill the gaps.

I could set up the waves to be a canned sequence, and that could probably make the game more balanced and reliable, but it would also take a lot of the fun of "what's coming next" suspense out of it. Games are more fun to me when I don't have everything memorized and the game can still surprise and challenge me by not being predictable. It would be like Quake randomizing the locations and types of enemies so they're not in the same spot every single time you play. Some players like that, others don't and it's hard to find a middle ground there.

If more people prefer the scripted waves I can do that though -- I have a pretty good idea of how to modify the code to allow for that. It's just a matter of adding and testing and balancing all the waves after that (takes lots of time).

I liked the victory condition too. You don't just survive the enemy, you get revenge one base at a time. And you have to survive long enough to fire each nuke.


I didn't realize the nuke kills the back defense. That will be replaced with towers/wall pieces owned by the players soon anyway, so no worries.


Agreed -- I don't like the maze effect of most tower defense maps, so I opted for the cluster approach. This is, btw, a castle defense map (not tower defense) in that you're defending the castle and enemies don't just run right past & ignore your towers. WC3's tower defense seemed so futile to me because you couldn't block the enemies and hold them back, and they just ran right past before towers could do much of anything. This was sort of my revenge against that style of game -- enemies attack your towers, but you can do worse things to them and it's easier to hold them off.


Thanks for your feedback!


BTW, one pure tower defense game I do like is Defense Grid: The Awakening. Plants vs Zombies is awesome too, and really in a genre of its own. (both Steam games)

[Wazat]

I tried it once. Then I got enough of the human hero guy's shine and wanted to kill him. Dungeon Keeper is more fun

BTW, I'd like to point out that in the WC3 storyline the human hero you dislike (I'm assuming for being too goody-goody)...


*spoilers*




...turns evil and joins the burning legion. You do get to play for the evil side for a good while.

[Urre]

*spoilers*



Haha, yeah I reacted on that too! Like, "you know he goes evil and becomes the new Lich King in the end? Pretty big deal, 'twas." It was actually pretty fun to see his goody-goody-ness do a 180.

Haven't played WC3 in a long time, but I really enjoyed it when I did.

[Supa]

I've been considering giving the flame towers (and other towers) a toggle icon like the dark elf hero's blink ability. ... the player can choose whether he does it manually or spends his time elsewhere.

This sounds like a fine compromise. And I think I will keep this one around, so I'll try out the other heroes soon.

Each time they attack, they check their mana. If they have enough mana, they fire off their special ability instead.

Ah - I must have missed this, that makes sense.

Some ideas for how this could work:
* Just give full vision of enemy bases at all times

I'd just go with this right now - when you're in the middle of a doubled-up golem wave and you need to resort to drawing aggro with skellies/scarabs in order to keep them off your towers, the simpler solution would help best. :) I'm not familiar with the War3 map editor, can you assign different player colours to different wave types, so you can tell what's coming by watching the minimap?

If more people prefer the scripted waves I can do that though ... It's just a matter of adding and testing and balancing all the waves after that (takes lots of time).

Giving it another thought, I guess the randomised waves would work better for a coop game - and considering the map *is* focused on coop.. Don't worry about it if it'll take too much time. :)

[SamUK]

Haven't played WC3 in a long time, but I really enjoyed it when I did.

Agreed.

[Wazat]

This sounds like a fine compromise. And I think I will keep this one around, so I'll try out the other heroes soon.

I'm looking forward to your feedback.

Basically, the game will get a bit harder by adding heros, but those heros do a good job of pulling their weight.

I'm not familiar with the War3 map editor, can you assign different player colours to different wave types, so you can tell what's coming by watching the minimap?

Yes, I certainly could. I'll need to enhance the scripts that order units around etc, but it shouldn't be too hard. I believe there's 12 colors, and the human players use Red, Blue and Teal. That leaves 9 colors (purple, yellow, orange, green, pink, gray, cyan, forest green, brown) to assign to the different categories of waves. I'm thinking the wave types are:

Swarm
Armored
Siege (heavy building damage, splash damage, etc)
Flying
Magic immune
...what else?

The waves don't follow rigorously follow these categories very well. For example, the orc wave has some siege, some swarm, etc. I'm wondering if would be better, in fact, to color each unit by its type instead of the entire wave. Would all those colors be too hard to distinguish on the minimap? Some testing might be in order...

Giving it another thought, I guess the randomised waves would work better for a coop game - and considering the map *is* focused on coop.. Don't worry about it if it'll take too much time.

*wipes sweat off brow*

Good to hear it. Work avoided!

I've added your suggestions to the top of my TODO list. BTW, I just found a bug -- I'd messed up an array init, and several enemy waves weren't spawning! I wondered where the necromancer wave had gone!

I'll try to have a fix up at some point soon, with as many of your suggestions implemented as possible. The feedback makes modding that much more fun -- I know what's working, what needs changing, and I come back with cool new ideas.

[UrbanKid]

MAKE quake 1 for warcraft hahaha

[Wazat]

MAKE quake 1 for warcraft hahaha

You know... you almost could. The player could carry any number of weapons in his "backpack" using a redefinition of the spellbook feature. Using an ability in the backpack would morph the hero into a different character that was identical except for its attack. You could also have a "quick swap" as one of the hero's abilities that lets him swap between his last 2 used weapons.

I wonder if you could pull it off though without identity conflicts between the morph spells. You could always use channel (an ability that can be assigned any ability id when you use it as a base), and add a temporary ability to the hero to pull off the transformation.

So the player's weapons could consist of:
*1 axe melee attack
*2 shotguns (instant hit spreadshot attacks; double-barrel targets more enemies and from farther away, maybe more damage)
*1 nailgun that maybe offers an extra ability that fires super nails for mana (ammo). Alternately, 2 nailguns and one just takes more ammo (see ammo section below)
*1 grenade launcher (mortar artillery attack)
*1 rocket launcher (straight-fire artillery)
*1 lightning cannon (lighting attack, maybe rapid-fire)

I think these are all very do-able.

A hero can carry 5 hero abilities. These could be things like jumping to a location, dodging, etc. There could also be a special ability some weapons have, like the nailgun firing super nails, or the lightning cannon doing a chain lightning attack.

If you got tricky enough maybe you could even allow the player to attack while moving. Make the player invisible and then add an object with the locust ability that moves to his location each frame by directly setting origin, and it's free to attack/etc while he moves. It's going to be a pain in the arse though to control that entity, so maybe not a good idea.

Ammo could be handled several ways.

Ammo method 1: Mana
All weapons use the same ammo type, mana. Powerful weapons like rockets just use more mana. The player regenerates mana over time and can find pickups to replenish more of it.

Ammo method 2: Consumable Items
The player finds ammo items throughout the map. The 4 types of ammo are Shells, Nails, Rockets, and Cells. When the player picks up ammo it just increases the stack count on the item he's carrying. He can also carry some other items like some hand grenades, heal packs, shields, etc, and he may have to drop a type of ammo to pick up other types of items.

When a player attacks something, a trigger catches that event and makes sure he uses the appropriate ammo.

Even shields could be consumables, if you reduced their stack count properly in an on-damage trigger. Imagine red armor, which gives a high defense value, with a 250 stack size. On damage, he loses some amount of armor count based on the damage taken.


There's a variety of enemies in WC3, but you'd really need a proper modeller to make the Quake enemies and give it the authentic Quake feel. You may be able to do well enough without though...

Jumping fiends, for example, are possible in WC3. Might be kinda hacky though.


Now you've got me interested, maybe even obsessed... you jerk.

[Wazat]

An update:

I have weapon changing working in Warcraft 3, so I will be able to do a Warcraft III Quake mod (weapon changing was the biggest technical risk jeopardizing the project). So far I have a shotgun, super shotgun, and axe. I'll do the other 5 weapons soon (and maybe a flamethrower because it's so easy). I change player models between weapons to make sure the attack animations look good (rifleman doesn't work for everything, after all), but it could all be done with one model if I didn't care about looks.

Once all the weapons are implemented, I'll probably do ammo next.

Ultimately I'm hoping to have a map that can play either Quake Deathmatch or Capture the Flag. Wish me luck!